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

142Demonic Texts and Textual Demonspoint that I’m not going to argue about. This and the clothes. He can’t wearblack all the time.’ 51 The oppositions between what is natural and unnatural(the supernatural, the bestial, all that is rejected from the ”normal“) breakdown as the demonic is brought into a dialogue with the conscious and theordinary. In this sense Satan’s baby in Manhattan is able to articulate verywell some of the different conflicts and uncertainties lurking in the constructionof a modern self.To summarise the analysis in this chapter, I conclude that Rosemary’s Babysupports the view that the demonic functions in modern horror in intimaterelation to the problematic differentiation/undifferentiation of the self fromthe Other. The independent, modern and secular identity of RosemaryWoodhouse is attacked and questioned by the demonic otherness both fromoutside and within her self. In the novel’s ambiguous ending, Rosemary isable to find herself as an active agent reacting against the witches, the externalthreat. At the same time, however, she has to face the otherness fromwithin; her demonic baby is a “half-breed” of herself and the mythicalOther. The heterogeneity of the baby articulates the hidden tensions and insecuritiesstructuring her “modern” self. Some of the borderlines betweenmyth and reality, old and new, good and evil are shockingly transgressedand, in this process, their existence as significant cultural categories are bothquestioned and reconfirmed.The next chapter continues such explorations, but without the humourthat Levin’s novel was still capable of displaying.51RB, 205.