Rose Madder (novel)

This article is about the novel. For the color, see Rose madder.

Rose Madder

First edition cover
Author	Stephen King
Language	English
Genre	Horror/Fantasy
Publisher	Viking
Publication date	July 10, 1995
Publication place	United States
Media type	Print (Hardcover)
Pages	420
ISBN	978-0-670-85869-9

Rose Madder is a horror/fantasy novel by American writer Stephen King, published in 1995. It deals with the effects of domestic violence (which King had touched upon before in the novels It, Insomnia, Dolores Claiborne, Needful Things, and many others) and, unusually for a King novel, relies for its fantastic element on Greek mythology. In his memoir, On Writing, King states that Rose Madder and Insomnia are "stiff, trying-too-hard novels."

Plot

In 1985, police officer Norman Daniels brutally beats his wife Rosie while she is four months pregnant, resulting in a miscarriage. Rosie considers leaving Norman, but dismisses the idea because Norman is a cop who specializes in finding missing persons and she has nowhere else to go as her family died in a car accident years earlier. The short-tempered Norman has recently been accused of raping a Black woman named Wendy Yarrow, and the subsequent lawsuit and internal affairs investigation has made him even more volatile.

Nine years later, Rosie notices a drop of blood on the couple's bedsheet and realizes that, if she stays with Norman, worse than being murdered eventually by Norman, Rose may suffer a continuous life with him. Taking his debit card, Rosie departs on a bus to an unfamiliar city in the Midwest, with no clear plan of action. Once there, she meets a good-natured man named Peter Slowik, who guides her to a local women's shelter. She quickly makes new friends, including the owner of the shelter, Anna Stevenson, who helps Rosie find a small apartment and a job as a hotel maid. A few weeks later, Rosie decides to pawn her engagement ring but finds that the ring's "diamond" is fake. In the pawnshop, her attention is drawn to a painting which depicts a woman in a rose madder gown. Fascinated, she trades her ring for the painting.

On the street, Rosie is stopped by a man named Rob Lefferts, a customer at the pawnshop, who asks her to read an excerpt from a book. Rob likes her voice and offers her a job recording audiobooks. Sometime later, Bill Steiner, the pawnshop owner, asks Rosie out on a date. Rosie believes that her life is improving, and gradually notices that the painting is changing and expanding. Eventually she is able to travel through it. On the other side, she is met by Dorcas, who resembles Wendy Yarrow. She also sees the woman in the painting, whom she calls "Rose Madder" because of her dress and her apparent insanity. Rose Madder asks Rosie to rescue her baby from an underground labyrinth guarded by the blind, one-eyed bull Erinyes, who orients by smell. Dorcas leads Rosie to the temple grounds and warns her of the dangers that await. Dorcas cannot enter the labyrinth due to a mysterious illness that she and her mistress are afflicted with. Rosie ventures into the temple alone, and she ponders the reality of her situation. Rosie manages to save the child, whom she names Caroline, and Rose Madder promises “to repay”. Waking up the next morning, Rosie decides that everything that had happened was a dream.

Meanwhile, Norman conducts a search for Rosie, having resolved to kill her. He tracks down the city she is residing in and gradually loses his self-control; he begins killing people who have some connection to Rosie, including Peter and Anna. When Norman catches Rosie as she escorted home by Bill, she flees from him into her apartment and lures him into the painting, where Rose Madder kills him.

Rose gives Rosie some seeds and makes her promise to "remember the tree". Rosie exits Rose's world and burns the painting. Several years later, Rosie is married to Bill, with whom she has a daughter. Rosie begins to experience violent fantasies and outbursts of rage, which she realizes are characteristics that she inherited by being near Rose Madder. She plants one of the seeds near a lake where Bill took her on their first date. Visiting the resulting tree helps Rosie tame her rage and live a normal life.

Reception

The book received a mixed reception when it was published. Christopher Lehmann-Haupt of The New York Times describes in his review that the novel's "subplot seems forced, which is hardly surprising in light of how far-fetched it is," but he also describes that "Rose Madder is rarely dull and it builds to a vivid climax."

Adaptations

In 1996, HBO Pictures acquired the rights to the novel to make a television movie. This would have been the first HBO film based on a Stephen King novel, but the project never came to fruition. A film adaptation of Rose Madder was in development in 2011, but the project fell apart. There was an audiobook made narrated by Blair Brown and King himself.

Connections to other King works

• The character of Cynthia Smith appeared in Desperation and The Regulators.
• In the prologue, Rose is reading Misery's Journey, an entry in the fictional series of books written by the main character in King's novel, Misery.
• The city of Lud from The Dark Tower appears in this novel.