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Mothering a Demon: Rosemary’s Baby 133This is the only direct confrontation with the Devil in the novel, andtherefore of central importance. Again, an ironic (double) reading is invitedby the text: Rosemary perceives the situation as an enjoyable love scene withher husband – but the reader is able to see the situation as a rape. The attributesof the raping creature are derived from the early, beastly version of theChristian Devil: it has sharp claws, yellow goat-eyes and a huge phallus. Thepowerful, phallic beast is emphatically sexual and masculine; it is morearousing than Guy, Rosemary’s husband (this is the only occasion in thenovel when she is said to be having an orgasm). Whereas Guy has been evadingthe idea of having children, avoiding the “dangerous days,” this creaturemakes Rosemary pregnant in the first attempt. As the whole novel is calledRosemary’s Baby, this pregnancy is pivotal for the work. The fantastic intercoursewith the Devil is how Rosemary’s desire to have a baby is representedin the text, and the Devil becomes a substitute of father – here as the literalfather of Rosemary’s baby. Psychologically, of course, this situation has itsown, peculiar logic; as Rosemary left her own father, she also rejected GodRosemary (Mia Farrow) studying her scrathes from the previous night (from Rosemary’sBaby; dir. Roman Polanski). © UIP/Paramount Pictures, 1968.
134Demonic Texts and Textual Demonsthe Father. 23 Rosemary’s modern marriage is haunted by hidden insecurities,primarily caused by the treacherous role-play that she herself is also involvedin. Her conflicting impulses – to reject and repress the religious identity,and to hide the uncomfortable aspects of her modern identity – can be interpretedas the inner conflict motivating the use of a demonic figure. TheDevil is the Other to both sides of Rosemary’s self, an antithesis of God theFather, and an excluded delusion from modern, scientific reality.Paradoxically, the fantasy of an intercourse with the Devil could haveintegrating potential for the liminal existence of someone like Rosemary.The demonic figure threatens both the religious and the modern, secular attemptsat self-definition, and is therefore able to dramatise their limits. As Ihave pointed out in the first part of this study, demons as ambivalent opponentsand interaction with them (possession behaviour in particular) havebeen traditionally used to transgress fixed social roles, and to alter social reality.The fiction of Rosemary’s Baby has incorporated into itself an analogousstructure in its pursuit of success as modern entertainment. 24 Rosemaryeven fits well into I.M. Lewis’s observations as to how women and sociallyoppressed groups, particularly, find in demons some ways to expressthe inner conflicts of their social selves. 25 Rosemary is powerless and a victimfor a large part of the narrative, but there is an interesting developmentin this area, as she comes to face her own connection with “demonic” powers.An analysis of how the heterogeneity figures in this novel can bring uscloser to understanding this process.The coincidence of the sex scene with the Pope’s sermon is one aspectof the blasphemous strategy in Rosemary’s Baby. The heterogeneous materialsthat amalgamate in Rosemary’s dream – Pope, John F. Kennedy’s yacht,black mass, women in bikinis – confuse the limits between holy and unholy.In the context of media celebrities, like Jackie Kennedy, even the significanceof the Pope attains an ironic aspect. The Mass is also a huge mediaevent, and Guy claims (with the other Satanists) that it is just “show biz.” 26The repeated references to the assassinated President, John F. Kennedy, andto the conspiracy theories evoke another context which contributes to theirony in the novel. The seriousness of Rosemary’s plight is contrasted withscenes of the Castevet couple (the key conspirators) reading a conspiracybook critical to the Warren Report about the Kennedy assassination – or the23 Freud has analysed the psychological role of the Devil as a father-substitute (andGod as the idealised father-image) in his article “A Seventeenth Century DemonologicalNeurosis” (SE 19, 69-105). See also below, p. 151.24 There does not seem to be any absolute or clear-cut limits between “mere entertainment”and those discourses that are dedicated to “serious” expression of some culture’sconcerns or myths. On the contrary, if entertainment grasps the attention of itsaudience (as Rosemary’s Baby and The Exorcist did) it has found its own ways to addresssome significant questions.25 See above, page 30.26RB, 52.
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Note on this editi
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TAMPERE STUDIES INLITERATURE AND TE
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Tampere Studies in Literature and T
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ments, and also such further lines
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IllustrationsCover: “Possessed Re
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The BeginningsAnd Jesus asked him,
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The Beginnings 3mons form an import
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The Beginnings 5negative, demonic a
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The Beginnings 7chapter four), but
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The Beginnings 9scious conflict, fo
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The Beginnings 11that is produced o
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The Beginnings 13The History of the
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The Beginnings 15emphasised that su
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The Beginnings 17turalism,” but i
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The Beginnings 19the materials I ha
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1. The Ancestry of the DemonicÑH.
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The Ancestry of the Demonic 25ness
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The Ancestry of the Demonic 51tween
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2. The Demonic in the SelfBut ancie
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The Demonic in the Self 69influence
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The Demonic in the Self 71LEADER:Yo
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The Demonic in the Self 73Particula
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The Demonic in the Self 77ing into
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The Demonic in the Self 79Nietzsche
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3. Unravelling the Demonic TextThe
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Page 124: PART II
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184Demonic Texts and Textual Demons
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8. The (Un)Traditionalist:Clive Bar
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The EpilogueIf there are answers to
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BibliographyA note on this bibliogr
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Index2001: A Space Odyssey; 207abje
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