(New York: Signet, 1996)
Paperback, 479 Pages, Fiction
ABCD Rating: CHECK OUT
From the Cover: Rose Daniels saw the single drop of blood on the bed sheet—and knew she must escape from her macabre marriage before it was too late. But escape was not as easy as fleeing to a new city, picking a new name, finding a new job, lucking out with a new man. Her husband, Norman, was a cop, with a cop’s training, a cop’s technology, a cop’s bloodhound instincts. And even worse, Norman was—well, Norman. Rose knew she had been married to a savage brute. Now she realized she was being tracked down by a terrifying monster—but the only place she found to hide could be the most dangerous of all…
My Review: I have been putting off and putting off writing this review, not because I have not wanted to write it but, rather, because I’ve been trying to come to terms with what I think about this book. A little background: I picked up Rose Madder in the first place because I decided to write my final paper for my literary critical theory class on the depiction of women in the novels of Stephen King and had decided to use Rose as a point of entry into that argument, and since I hadn’t read this particular novel in five or six years, I felt I had better refresh myself as to the particulars.
After reading Rose I have not changed my position that this is a very seductive and dangerous novel when it comes to King’s depiction of women. Even though the female characters within its pages are the protagonists King (and this is most likely happening on a subconscious level) elevates the abusing husband character of Norman to the level of put upon hero, instead of bringing Rose to this level. How, you ask? Well, in short (because I don’t want to take up too much space arguing literary theory on this blog), it is that Rose’s character does not, for all intents and purposes, change. She simply changes one male stereotype of females for another; in this instance it is the “Wife Who Must Be Put in Her Place” (i.e. beaten) for the “‘Uppity’ Woman Who Must Be Shown Her Place” (i.e. beaten), add to this that Rose **SPOILER ALERT** succeeds over Norman not through her own ingenuity, but rather through he new-found sexuality and through a supernatural deus ex machina that seems to be the only way a woman can succeed in a King novel. **SPOILER ALERT END**
What this all comes to is novel wherein to be different and something other than a white male is to be ultimately punished (there is an incredible amount of violence against women and men who associate with and protect women (men who, through this association) are classified as “gay” or “communists” or “Jew-boys”)).
Aside from all these theoretical objections, I have to say that when compared to many of King’s other novels Rose Madder fails to be enjoyable not only because of the excessive violence, but because the whole novel feels over-determined and very “forced”; by which I mean that the novel seems very directed. This is something that King himself had acknowledged, though the words he uses are “over-plotted.”
Rose Madder just does not feel as “alive” a book as, say, The Shining, or Bag of Bones, or ‘salem’s Lot, and as such, unless you are a fan who needs to read each and every one of King’s novels (like myself), or (like myself) are someone looking at the depiction of women in King’s work in particular and the horror genre in general Rose Madder is a book that best left on the shelf.
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