Pregnancy from hell
Rosemary and Guy Woodhouse are a young couple who have just moved into a new apartment. She is busy laying the nest and he is making a snail’s pace career as an actor. The couple meets an older couple, neighbors – Minnie and Roman Castevet, with whom they quickly become friends.
Rosemary becomes pregnant shortly after they move out. A familiar old couple reacts to this surprisingly enthusiastically. They send the woman to the best gynecologist in the city and look after the pregnant woman with care. Minnie gives her specific cocktails and always makes sure that a young married woman drinks them to the last drop.
Guy’s career is unexpectedly moving forward, and the aspiring actor gets more and more orders. Rosemary feels that her husband is distancing herself from her and is not particularly concerned about her exceptional condition. Soon, the woman begins to suffer from severe pains, which are underestimated both by the doctor and the immediate environment. Soon the woman falls into the hands of the book left by her friend who died in mysterious circumstances. When Rosemary reads it, everything starts to fall into a terrifying whole …
Do not trust anyone
Rosemary’s story at its most basic level touches upon the anxiety close to women who have been pregnant or are planning to become pregnant, and the questions may arise: “will my fetus be all right”, “won’t my baby die?” In addition, this fear in Levin’s novel was multiplied by Rosemary’s isolation from friends and family, and by the people she interacts with on a daily basis questioning her fears: the doctor, neighbors, and even her husband downplay her chronic pains and other distressing ailments. Rosemary’s fear for the developing child turns out to be not unfounded, which is reflected in the finale.
Rosemary’s baby is also, in a way, a marriage horror. I can’t be sure how I would perceive many scenes without knowing the plot beforehand, but watching Rosemary and Guy’s relationship from this perspective gives you shivers down your spine. It is also worth noting here that Levin, for a writer of his era, distinguished himself with a fairly developed feminist consciousness. He proved it brilliantly in his later novel – The Stepford Wives , but such plots are already subtly outlined in The Baby of Rosemary. In both of his books, the writer deals with the subject of treating women, which in the second literary proposition reveals himself in Guy’s attitude towards his wife’s body as a means of facilitating the fulfillment of professional ambitions, devoid of the subjectivity or personality of its “carrier”.
Satanic precision
Ira Levin uses a very precise language, depriving the text of any embellishments or unnecessary exaltation. The descriptions are short and to the point, but a lot happens at the level of dialogue, which covers the most extensive part of the novel. The author of Rosemary’s Baby has mastered the method of conveying as much content as possible with the least amount of resources – the succinctness of his descriptions does not prevent readers from constructing credible psychological portraits of heroes in their imaginations and the world in which they live.
In the case of this novel, it is difficult to avoid comparisons with the film, especially since it is better known in Poland than the novel. In the book’s afterword, the author revealed that he considered the Polish director’s production a perfect and faithful adaptation of the original. Bearing in mind the film by Roman Polański, it is actually hard to disagree with him – some scenes have been reproduced very accurately. The significant difference, however, is the very status of Satanists and the devil: the novel gives a fairly unequivocal answer to the question about their existence, while after the screening, we cannot be sure as to their reality.
A few words should also be said about the release itself. Vesper again took care of the beautiful graphic design of the cover and illustrations, for which Krzysztof Wroński is responsible. By default, the set also includes a bookmark, and at the end, the aforementioned MPs by Ira Levin are waiting for us.
It is difficult for me to judge this book unequivocally, because its reading was marked by a masterful film that is hard to dismiss from memory. So I can’t tell if Levin was too or too little suggestive, or if he revealed the cards too quickly. But I can assure you that even knowing the adaptation well, the novel read perfectly, and the story of Rosemary was just as terrifying for me as the first time I got to know her thanks to Polański.
