Rosemary's Baby

As someone who loves horror and thrillers, I couldn’t just skip past a classic like this.

A quick note before the review: I watched the 2014 mini-series long before reading the book, and then checked out Roman Polanski’s 1968 film after. I don’t remember the series very well since it was so long ago, but I do remember thinking the ratings were too low — IMDb 5.5/10, Rotten Tomatoes — & 33%, and Kinopoisk 6.0/10 — it didn’t seem that bad to me. As for the 1968 film, I watched it recently and liked it. The only thing missing for me was not seeing the baby — or at least some of his attributes, like horns, weird eyes or a tail. I think it would have worked really well for the atmosphere of that era.

Now, to the book! First, I want to note that if Ira Levin had added more tension and removed the mention of Satanists from the description, this could have been a solid psychological thriller — one where readers would have wondered: is Rosemary losing her mind, or are the neighbours really up to something? Unfortunately, the twist was spoiled from the start. The book is a very quick read — it took me about 3.5 hours.

Rosemary is presented as a typical housewife of the 60s and 70s, who dreams of a large happy family and always tries to agree with her husband. Her husband, a rising film star who was in no hurry to have children, suddenly changes his mind after meeting the new neighbours.

The book is written from Rosemary’s perspective — her thoughts, feelings, worries and so on. What’s interesting is that Rosemary gaslights herself throughout the entire book. It’s not entirely clear whether it comes from her religious upbringing, her relationships with her parents and husband, the context of the time, or something else entirely.

The following contains spoilers — proceed with caution!

For example, her husband rapes her while she’s sleeping. Her initial reaction is completely natural — she’s hurt and insulted — but later she starts gaslighting herself, telling herself it wasn’t that bad, that she wanted to make a baby that night anyway, and so on.

Rosemary’s husband is revealed to be “vain, petty, selfish and deceitful” — which is exactly what Rosemary herself thinks deep down, yet she doesn’t leave him because she keeps gaslighting herself.

The book isn’t just the story of Satanists and a poor woman who crossed their path — it’s also a story of immense disrespect, discrimination and betrayal by Rosemary’s husband. Not only did he sell her body to the Satanists like merchandise, making a deal for his own benefit without her participation — when it was literally her life and health at stake — but he also tried to make her doubt her own sanity, dismissing the strange things happening around her and telling her outright that she was crazy. Good old gaslighting again.

Rosemary’s habit of convincing herself that things are tolerable carries through to the very end, when her thought of killing the Antichrist and saving the world gradually shifts into “he can’t be bad, he just can’t” — reassuring herself that the devil’s child isn’t so scary after all.

Rosemary’s story isn’t just a horror story. It’s a story of epic gaslighting — not only from the people around her, but from the one person she trusts the most. And that, to me, is the most horrifying part: if we trust the wrong people, it can lead us to stop trusting ourselves and our own instincts.