Rose Madder (novel)
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Rose Madder is a 1995 novel by Stephen King. It deals with the effects of domestic violence and has elements of Greek mythology, most notably in the monster Erinyes (who appears to have been based on the Minotaur).
Plot
In 1985 Rose Daniels's husband, Norman, beats her while she is four months pregnant, causing her to suffer a miscarriage. Rose briefly considers leaving Norman but dismisses the idea: Norman is a policeman, and is excellent at finding people. Norman also has a violent temper and was recently accused of attacking a African-American woman named Wendy Yarrow, which has made him even more volatile.
The story then jumps ahead to a morning nine years later, when Rose is fixing her bed. She notices a drop of blood on the sheet that had probably leaked from her nose the night before — Norman had punched her in the face for spilling some iced tea on him. Rose realises that she has passively suffered through Norman's abuse for fourteen years and that if she continues to put up with this treatment, she might be killed. But then Rose wonders: what if Norman doesn't kill her? What will she be like after fourteen more years of Norman "talking to her right up close", as he puts it?
Rose then makes the difficult decision to leave her home and flee to a faraway city in the Midwest. After Rose arrives in the new city, she is disoriented and afraid. Fortunately for her she is given directions to a women's shelter called "Daughters and Sisters", or D&S for short. There, she quickly makes several friends and gets a small apartment with the help of the D&S director.
A few weeks later Rose decides to pawn her wedding ring, but learns that it is worthless. Before she leaves the pawnshop, however, she notices a painting of a woman in a rose-madder gown and immediately falls in love with it. She trades her ring for the painting, which strangely enough has no artist's signature. Outside a stranger asks her to read a passage from a novel, and is so impressed that he offers her a job recording audio books. Then, one of the workers at the pawnshop, Bill Steiner, asks her out. It seems that after suffering for years, Rose finally has everything she could want: a great job, a home of her own, friends and a man who loves her...
Unfortunately for Rose, Norman is determined to punish her for leaving him. Using his excellent tracking skills, he finds out where rose went and begins to hunt her down. While Norman gets closer to finding Rose (and begins to lose what little self-control he has), Rose discovers that her new painting is not as ordinary as it appears.
For one thing, its image expands to show more of the painting's world. For another, Rose finds that she is able to enter the painting, much like how Alice steps through her mirror in Through the Looking-Glass. And on the other side, there is a woman called Dorcas who resembles Wendy Yarrow, and the woman in the rose-madder gown. Rose never learns this woman's real name so she refers to her as "Rose Madder", not only because of her outfit but also because she is insane and possibly dangerous.
Rose Madder asks Rose to enter a maze and rescue her baby from a monster called Erinyes. Rose does so, and Rose Madder promises to repay her. Rose puts the strange incident at the back of her mind, but when Norman attacks some of her friends from D&S and then follows her to her apartment, she realises that she will need a little help from Rose Madder.
ISBN numbers
- ISBN 0451186362
- ISBN 0613096258
- ISBN 0670858692
