Note on this edition: this is an electronic version of the 1999 book ...

Mothering a Demon: Rosemary’s Baby 141uities visited by the God worshippers upon His never-doubting followers!’[…]‘Go look at His hands,’ Minnie said. ‘And His feet.’‘And His tail,’ Laura-Louise said.‘And the buds of His horns,’ Minnie said.‘Oh God,’ Rosemary said.‘God’s dead,’ Roman said. […] ‘God is dead and Satan lives! The year isOne, the first year of our Lord! The year is One, God is done! The year isOne, Adrian’s begun!’ 48The contrast between contemporary reality and religious myth is soprofound, that the text achieves its most blasphemous effects just by combiningthese two. Rosemary’s pain and anxiety are mixed with the farcicalcomments of elderly ladies singing the praises of a mutant baby’s tiny hornsor his tail. Stephen King remembers a student comment when he was teachingthe book at the University of Maine to an undergraduate class: “tenyears later Rosemary’s baby would be the only kid on his Little League teamwho needed a custom-tailored baseball cap.” 49 The strength of the reader’sidentification with the tormented Rosemary enables one to read even thiscombination of incompatible elements; the demonic child is not presentedas an unconnected element. Instead, it focuses all of Rosemary’s fears, uncertaintiesand contradictions into one figure. The Satanic chanting and thepraise to the Antichrist give the confrontation with otherness a discursiveshape. The farcical dissonances make sure that the mythical Other is not articulatedas totally alien and detached. The final irony lies in Rosemary’s(relatively easy) acceptance of the demonic, when she has finally been allowedto face it, and to see the otherness for what it is.Rosemary’s thoughts find ways to accommodate her sentiments for thelittle demon: “He couldn’t be all bad, he just couldn’t. Even if he was half Satan,wasn’t he half her as well, half decent, ordinary, sensible, human being?”50 Rosemary remains an ambiguous figure even at the end of the novel.She is seduced to join the Satan’s party through her desire to be a mother,desire to love. At the same time, she is decisively not a victim any more; sheattains a position of authority, and gives the baby a name of her own choosing.“His name is Andrew John. He’s my child, not yours, and this is one48 RB, 198-99.49 King 1981/1987, 335. – The future fortunes of Rosemary’s baby did not trouble onlythis student; in 1997, Ira Levin finally published a sequel that offers a closure (sort of) tothe original story. Son of Rosemary updates the milieu to that of year 1999, and links theAntichrist narrative to Millenarian concerns. The paranoia and anxiety of Rosemary’sambiguity in relations to ‘significant others’ have remained the same. The final resolutiontransforms this sequel into a classical Oedipal fantasy, and may be deemed as betrayingthe tenets of the original novel. The 1990s’ context shows an increased tolerance towards‘taboo’ areas (such as incest, sexuality in general, or drugs) and, subsequently, the relativelack of interesting tensions connected to these areas.50RB, 204.