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Literature / Rose Madder

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First edition cover

A 1995 novel by Stephen King, and the final part of what some fans call "the abused wife trilogy".

Rose Daniels walks out of her marriage after years of emotional, physical and sexual abuse. She arrives in a new city and slowly begins a newer, better, more hopeful life. Only this is a Stephen King novel and her husband, Norman, is not going to let her go as easy as that. And is also befitting King, there's also a mysterious portrait of a woman in a rose madder dress...


This novel contains examples of:

  • Action Girl: Gertrude Kinshaw. She even manages to fight off Norman, who is much stronger, is a reasonably skilled fighter, is armed with an electroshock weapon, and of course, utterly psychotic.
  • Alien Geometries: The Temple of the Bull, and the Bull Erinyes itself, don't quite fit with conventional geometry: looking at them is described as giving a headache like watching a movie out of focus. The temple's geometry becomes two-dimensional when the Bull is no longer in residence.
  • Animal Motifs: Bulls. Early on, Rose muses that people used to call police officers bulls, the baby that she has to save for Rose Madder is guarded by a monstrous bull called Erinyes, Norman steals a Ferdinand the Bull mask for use as a disguise, and through it becomes the avatar of Erinyes.
  • Anti-Hero: Rose Madder is a very psychotic individual but she does help Rose out in her strange way.
  • Ass Shove: Before causing her miscarriage, the worst thing that Norman had ever done to Rose was sodomize her with the handle of a tennis racquet.
  • Ax-Crazy:
    • Although Rose Madder is Rosie's ally, she's a few cards short of a full deck due to a disease that is making her slowly rot, losing both her mind and control of her magic.
    • Norman is most of a deck short of a full deck, into outright delusional.
  • Babies Ever After: Rose and Bill have a daughter after the whole adventure named Pamela Gertrude (after Pam Haverford and Gertrude Kinshaw).
  • The Bad Guys Are Cops: Since Rosie's major experience with police is Norman and some corrupt buddies of his, she's terrified of cops. She does eventually meet some good cops who take guys like Norman very personally.
  • Bait the Dog:
    • Despite being abusive, Norman did seem to spend a lot of money on the diamond ring he gave her... but as Rose discovers after she leaves him, the diamond ring was actually worthless.
    • Norman is a fierce believer in the "Blue Brotherhood" and comradery between police officers, regardless of his own personal opinions of other officers, but when he murders two fellow officers, including one who was so tough that Norman mused that he would have been proud to serve alongside him, he feels nothing, despite knowing that he should be devastated by what he has done, a contradiction which causes a disassociation in which he puts all of the blame for the murders on the "Bull."
  • Batman Gambit: Rose Madder wanted to kill the Bull Erinyes and save the child being guarded in its maze, but it was invulnerable as long as it remained within. So she had Rosie do it knowing that it would leave the maze in order to kill her, where it would be vulnerable.
  • Beardness Protection Program: In preparation of his attempt to find Rosie at the Daughters and Sisters picnic, Norman goes to a barber and has himself shaven bald to lower the chances of anyone recognizing him.
  • Becoming the Mask: Inverted with Norman, as it is implied that the mask represents what he really was all along: a mad, mindless, charging bull. In his case, he also literally becomes the mask, as it soon becomes his actual face.
  • Berserk Button: Norm loses it when Gert calls him "fagboy".
  • Big Bad: Norman Daniels, Rose's abusive and psychopathic husband and a crooked cop from whom she escapes at the start of the novel and who searches for her using his skills as a detective.
  • Bilingual Bonus: Perhaps unintentional. Given her connotations to the world of insects and decomposition, Rose Madder's surname may just possibly be an allusion to the German word die Made meaning "maggot".
  • Blue-and-Orange Morality: Rose Madder's value system is... different.
  • Body Horror: Although Rose Madder appears to be a beautiful woman, underneath her glamour she's rotting from the inside out. And on top of that she's actually some sort of spider being hiding her true form so she doesn't drive mortals insane. Also, Norman when possessed by the Bull Erinyes is turned into a cyclopean Minotaur.
  • Bring My Brown Pants: A panic attack causes Rose's weak kidneys to act up, so she pees in a yard.
  • Character Catch Phrase:
    • Norman - "I want to talk to you up close."
    • Rose Madder - "I repay."
    • Rosie - "I'm really Rosie, and I'm Rosie real..."
  • Clingy Costume: Norman should not have put the bull's head mask on. Though at first it is more like he's clinging to the mask once he's possessed by the Bull Erinyes. Once he enters the world of Rose Madder however, the mask becomes his true face and he is no longer able to take it off.
  • Consulting Mister Puppet: Norman begins using the Ferdinand the Bull mask that he stole like a hand puppet, regularly consulting with it as it talks back to him due to a combination of his own psychosis and possession by Erinyes.
  • Continuity Nod:
    • "Wendy" refers to ka and the city of Lud a couple of times, putting the novel in The Dark Tower universe.
    • Paul Sheldon's Misery novels make an appearance.
  • Contrived Coincidence: A wizard seems to be doing it. For example, as Norman is being possessed by the Erinyes he happens to see a kid with a bull mask that he steals for a disguise.
  • Conveniently an Orphan: Rose's entire family died not long after she got married, conveniently leaving her with no one to turn to for help against Norman.
  • Cop Hater: Rose's abusive ex is a cop, so she became afraid of all cops.
  • Creepy Changing Painting: The Rose Madder painting keeps changing over the course of the story. First small changes, like new details being added, but it undergoes a massive change after Rosie's adventure in which she saves the baby from Erinyes; the sky in the painting suddenly clears up, no longer showing an approaching storm.
  • Cruel and Unusual Death: Peter Slowik and Anna Stevenson are bitten to death by Norman. In the end, Norman gets one of these when Rose Madder talks to him up close.
  • Deadly Distant Finale: It is offhandedly mentioned that Rob died of a heart attack in the Epilogue.
  • Demonic Possession: Once Rosie angers the Erinyes by rescuing the child it was guarding, it possesses her (already insane) husband to get its revenge.
  • Depraved Bisexual: Norman may be a homophobic bastard, but he does rub a guy off to get information about where Rosie is (though it turns into a Groin Attack at the end). It's also implied that he bit off Peter Slowik's penis.
  • Determinator: Norman, when it comes to finding Rose. Not a good thing for anyone in his path.
  • Dirty Cop: Norman and, to a lesser extent, his partner. (It says something about Norman that this "lesser extent" includes rape.) After her life with Norman, Rose thinks that all cops are like this, but eventually realizes that it isn't so. A police detective working Norman's attacks specifically tells her that he hates cops like Norman above and beyond "ordinary" criminals because they have betrayed the public's trust in them, and make the job for honest cops that much harder.
  • Disproportionate Retribution: It is repeatedly mentioned that the act which really tips Norman off the deep end and results in a path of destruction in his bid to kill Rose is the fact that Rose had paid for her bus fare by stealing his bank card.
  • Does Not Like Men: Surprisingly most women from the shelter avert this. Anna even scoffs at other shelters for abused women that follow a strict policy not to involve any man with their work, and claims men are not their enemies unless they prove themselves to be. Rose Madder, however, thinks all men are beasts and at best can be tamed.
  • Domestic Abuse: Rose married Norman Daniels, and for 14 years suffered domestic abuse which included physical violence that took away the life of her unborn baby. Rose eventually has enough and runs away from Norman's house.
  • Doppelgänger: Rose Madder looks awfully similar to Rose McClendon.
  • Dramatic Irony: Once Norman reaches the city Rose is staying at, he passes a woman in a shop, and comments to himself that she has "an ass like Rose used to before she let herself go." Unbeknownst to him, it is Rose, who had dyed her hair blonde and styled it differently.
  • Dye or Die: Rose dyeing her hair from brunette to blonde on a whim ends up inadvertently saving her from being recognized by Norman on the street one day.
  • Earn Your Happy Ending: After Rose Madder kills Norman, Rosie is free, knowing he can never harm her or any of her loved ones again. She and Bill lead a happy, normal life raising their daughter.
  • Easy Amnesia: The waters of the stream near the Tree of Death have amnesia so easy you can forget your own name. A drop at a time of the water every now and then stops Bill from going mad from the revelation.
  • Excrement Statement: While fighting Norman, Gert is able to pin him down and pee on his face.
  • Eye Scream: Pam Haverford gets her eye pierced by a coat hook when trying to escape Norman after he caught her at the Whitestone Hotel to ask about Rose.
  • The Fair Folk: Rose Madder herself—she's never called a fairy, but she has the traits.
  • Fate Worse than Death: What drives Rose to leave Norman is the thought that if she stays with him, one of two things will happen: either his excessive abuse will kill her or his abuse doesn't kill her and her miserable existence will prolong for another fourteen years.
  • Freudian Excuse: Norman's father, Ray, taught him to hate Blacks (and presumably everything else) when not beating him and his mother over slights like sneaking cigarettes, with the abuse only getting worse after Norman's mother left (something which he hates her for). He inherited his warped "catchphrase" of "I've got something to tell you, and I want to tell you up close" from Ray, who would say the exact same thing before he beat or sexually abused Norman (who felt "lucky" whenever he was just molested instead of hit). His biting fetish stems from his childhood coping mechanism of violently gnawing on his own fingers, and he at one point has a kind of panic attack during which he regresses and nearly bites one of his own fingers off while scoping out Daughters and Sisters.
    "The cop said nothing, simply swayed back and forth on his feet, but Norman's sly bag of a mother had been fond of saying 'Silence gives consent,' and Norman thought it a good motto, certainly better than his father's favorite, which had been 'If they're old enough to pee, they're old enough for me.'"
  • Gainax Ending: We never find out what Rose Madder really was, why she wanted to save the child from the maze, where she was taking it, what she planted the Erinyes body with, who made her sick, what will happen to the new Tree of Death... however, based on other stories King has written and has contributed to, it might be inferred that Rose Madder is Rosie's "twinner" or an alternate version of her, perhaps from another level of the Tower.
  • Giant Spider: Rose Madder's true form.
  • Greater-Scope Villain: Norman's father, Ray. While he has no involvement in the story and more than likely died long before the events of it, what he subjected Norman to unsurprisingly caused Norman to grow up to be a violent, perverted bigot in a clear cut case of Like Father, Like Son. As the book progresses and Norman steadily becomes more and more unhinged, he begins hearing his father's voice chittering away in his head along with that of Erinyes.
  • Groin Attack: One of Norman's signature moves, and in line with his Freudian Excuse. When interrogating a male street hustler who saw Rose at the bus station, Norman squeezes the poor bastard's balls till they almost pop. Later, when he blacks out while torturing Peter Slowik, Norman bites his penis off and swallows it. He also notes it's not the first time.
  • Halfway Plot Switch: The book starts out as a grounded thriller about a woman escaping from her murderously abusive husband, but then about halfway through it suddenly introduces fantasy elements by eschewing all notions that the Rose Madder portrait is anything but supernatural as it is revealed to be a Portal Picture.
  • Hero of Another Story: Rose Madder, possibly. She seems to be on the Order side of things cosmically speaking, which is as good as cosmic beings ever get in Stephen King's world. She's desperately trying to complete some epic scale quest before dying, and it's large and complex enough that her role in helping Rosie isn't even really a blip.
  • Hidden Depths: Rose admits that Norman is a surprisingly good tenor, and we do get several scenes of him singing.
  • Humiliation Conga: Norman, near the end. He gets beat up and pissed on by a fat Black woman, forced to wear a grotesque bull mask to hide his identity, has his sanity slowly ebb away, gets taunted by the wife he's abused for fourteen years and then, just as it seems things can't get any worse for him, he gets horrifically killed by a diseased insect-woman. Humiliation conga indeed. Not that he didn't deserve it.
  • I'm a Humanitarian: Norman implicitly eats Peter's penis.
  • Impromptu Tracheotomy: Norman kills a police officer by stabbing him in the throat with a letter opener, with the officer notably taking quite a while to finally die.
  • Ironic Echo: After Norman runs into Rose Madder (whom he mistakes for Rose), she turns around and shows her true form: a spider with bulging red fox eyes. She says to Norman, "Come here Norman, I want to talk to you and I want to do it right up close!"
  • Iron Lady: Anna.
  • It's All My Fault: Anna tells Rosie that battered women have a tendency to blame themselves for everything. She tells a story about a woman she met, who blamed herself for the Challenger disaster, because she wrote "...not one but two letters supporting the manned space program."
  • Jawbreaker: Rose dislocates Norman's jaw when he tries to bite her fingers off.
  • Just One Little Mistake: Norman, while posing as a paraplegic, pays the full fare to get into the Daughters and Sisters picnic instead of the handicapped discount, attracting unwanted attention (including from Gert, who eventually recognizes him) when the ticket booth attendant makes a scene yelling to him that he paid the wrong amount, something which someone who was paralyzed for as long as Norman claimed to be would be unlikely to do.
  • Killer Cop: Norman. He kills at least six people during the book (including two cops, three people who helped Rose, and a hooker), and while he's disposing of a hooker he strangled, he mentally comments it's not the first time, implying previous murders. He's also strongly suspected of killing an inconvenient victim of his own police brutality who was taking him and his department to court over it.
  • The Kindness of Strangers: Chapter II is even named after the trope, as it sees several strangers help Rose, starting with Peter Slowik from the traveler's aid point directing Rose to the Daughters and Sisters. The trope is also averted in the same chapter though, with some people that Rose asks for directions angrily refusing to help her.
  • Man Bites Man: And woman. Norm's favorite instruments of torture are white and pearly and number 32.
  • Maybe Magic, Maybe Mundane: Norman and his ability to "troll" for people, which reads like it could either be a psychic talent distorted by his own preconceptions or just good detective skills.
  • Neck Snap: How Norman kills Pam Haverford after his interrogation of her goes off the rails (see Eye Scream above) and she begins to scream.
  • Nice Guy: Bill Steiner.
  • Nonconformist Dyed Hair: Cynthia is a cheerful punk girl whose hair is dyed orange and green.
  • Not the First Victim: Already established as a ruthless abuser and corrupt cop, Norman Daniels' true insanity shows when he strangles a prostitute after deluding himself she's his runaway wife, Rose. He cleans up the scene and dumps her body, nonchalantly noting to himself that this wasn't his first time. Later, Rose is horrified when she realizes Norman murdered a woman who was supposed to testify against him while they were still married.
  • Obfuscating Disability: Norman Daniels. While hunting for his runaway wife, he shaves his head and pretends to be a paraplegic, to avoid being recognized by the (many) people on the lookout for him.
  • The Pen Is Mightier: In one of his strangest outbursts, Norman spent a long while silently tormenting Rose by jabbing her over and over and over again with a pencil.
  • Politically Incorrect Villain: Norman hates pretty much everyone, but some groups he hates more than others; he's virulently misogynistic, racist, anti-Semitic and homophobic.
  • Portal Picture: The painting of Rose Madder eventually begins to act as a portal to another world. In this world, there is another picture that shows Rosie's room, and acts as a Portal Picture back to Rosie's world.
  • Psychic Dreams for Everyone: Rosie and Norman have psychic dreams, about each other and the future. These are not always recognized.
  • Punk in the Trunk: After killing the two cops guarding Rosie's house, Norman stuffs one of them in the trunk of their police car.
  • Rabid Cop: To call Norman Daniels rabid, would be an understatement.
  • Rape and Switch: A minor character reminisces about having been gay ever since two of his father's friends took turns performing oral sex on him when he was a young child.
  • Sanity Slippage:
    • After Rose leaves Norman, he begins to slowly go mad. He's aware of it, but doesn't really mind.
    • Also Rose Madder herself as a result of her disease.
  • Sassy Black Woman: Gertrude Kinshaw.
  • Scry vs. Scry: Rosie and Norman spend a lot of the first half of the book doing this to each other. Especially notable since neither character is aware they're doing it. Rosie is just getting promptings from her instincts that save her without knowing it and Norman doesn't believe his detective skills are supernatural. See Psychic Dreams for Everyone.
  • Scars are Forever: Rose still bears the scars from Norman's abuse.
  • Secretly Wealthy: Peter Slowik worked the graveyard shift at a help desk in a grungy bus terminal, but after his death he is revealed to have come from a wealthy and well-to-do family; he was a humanitarian who simply decided to dedicate all of his time and resources to helping the less fortunate, preferably face-to-face.
  • Serial Killer: Norman's inner monologue implies that he's killed more than one person in his particular fashion, or is well on his way to becoming one, and he wonders if Rosie left because she sensed this.
  • Shout-Out:
    • The song "Really Rosie" sung by Carole King and written by Maurice Sendak for the musical with the same name is referenced throughout the book, including being on the preface of the book.
      I'm really Rosie/And I'm Rosie real/You better believe me/I'm a great big deal
    • In chapter 1, part 1, Rose believes her life isn't real, and that she would wake up in a Walt Disney animated movie as one of the heroines.
    • In chapter 1, part 7, Rose compares the bus station speaker with the voice of God from Cecil B. DeMille movies.
  • Spanner in the Works: Ramon. He saw Rose throw Norman's bank card into the trash, and fished it out. He still had the card on him when he was arrested weeks later for drug dealing, giving Norman the lead that he needed to begin his hunt for the otherwise untraceable Rose.
  • Spooky Painting: Before the Rose Madder painting becomes a Portal Picture, it is also this.
  • Stout Strength: Gert, who teaches self defense at the shelter, is a mountainous Black woman; most people (including Norman) think she's just fat, but Rose notes she has real muscle underneath. When Norman tries fighting her, she surprises him with her strength and gains the upper hand, forcing him to use a stun gun on her to get away.
  • Time Abyss: Implied for Dorcas, almost certainly for Rose Madder.
  • Took a Level in Badass: Rosie, especially once she enters the world of the painting, and has to deal with Norman.
  • Villainous Breakdown: While enough of his backstory is told for the reader to know he was always "off track", Norman's entire character arc through novel is him going through this after discovering Rose's absence, succumbing to animalistic rage and, ultimately, otherworldly possession.
  • Villainous Friendship: Norman sometimes finds Harley Bissington annoying, but mostly funny, raped and tortured a woman with him, stuck by him (and visa versa) during the ensuing investigation and, near the end, wishes that Harley was there to help him with Rose and Bill, even musing that he would let Harley (who had a thing for Rose) have first crack at her while he dealt with Bill.
  • Villain with Good Publicity: Norman taking down a major cocaine ring almost singlehandedly makes him one of these, something which disgusts Hale, a fellow police officer, when Rose talks about the real Norman.
  • World Tree: One of them anyway, the Tree of Death. Rose Madder makes Rosie plant a new one in her world to replace the one that died. Since this is Stephen King, it shouldn't be surprising that the Cosmic Keystone isn't exactly nice.
  • Wounded Gazelle Gambit: Norman manages to dispose of the two cops guarding Rosie's house by pretending to have a heart attack, killing them when they get too close and lower their guard.


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