罗丝玛丽的婴儿 (1967)

Rosemary's Baby is a 1967 horror novel by American writer Ira Levin; it was his second published book. The novel follows a young couple who move into an apartment building, where they befriend an older couple in the neighboring apartment, who become increasingly involved when Rosemary becomes pregnant. It was the best-selling horror novel of the 1960s, selling over four million copies.

The high popularity of the novel was a catalyst for a boom in popularity for horror fiction, which achieved enormous commercial success in its wake. In 1968, Roman Polanski adapted the novel as a film of the same name, amongst other adaptations.

Plot

The book centers on Rosemary Woodhouse, a young woman who moves into the Bramford, a historic Gothic Revival-style New York City apartment building, with her husband, Guy, a struggling actor. Guy has so far appeared only in small roles in the stage plays Luther, Nobody Loves an Albatross, and various TV commercials. A friend warns the pair that the Bramford has a disturbing history involving witchcraft and murder, but they discount this. Rosemary wants to start a family, but Guy prefers waiting until his career is more established.

Rosemary meets Terry Gionoffrio, a girl about her own age, who is staying with one of their neighbors, the Castevets, whom Rosemary and Guy have yet to meet. They took her in off the streets and helped her not only get clean but also help her with furthering her education. After Terry is found dead, presumably from suicide, they finally meet the neighbors Minnie and Roman Castevet, an eccentric, elderly couple, who welcome Rosemary and Guy to the Bramford. Rosemary finds them meddlesome and annoying, but Guy begins frequently visiting them.

After the lead actor in a new stage play suddenly goes blind, Guy is cast in the role. Immediately afterward, Guy unexpectedly agrees with Rosemary that they should have their first child. That night, Rosemary dreams of a rough sexual encounter with a huge, inhuman creature with yellow eyes. The next morning Rosemary finds claw marks on her breasts and groin, which Guy dismisses as resulting from his hangnail, which he has cut.

A few weeks later, Rosemary finds that she is pregnant and the Castevets convince her to see their doctor, Abraham Sapirstein, who is a celebrity doctor. She agrees but falls severely ill with intense abdominal pain and nausea causing weight loss, but her concerns are ignored by others and told it will pass. Her doctor and Minnie feed her strange and foul concoctions, and Rosemary also develops a peculiar craving for raw meat.

Guy's performance in the play garners favorable notices, and other increasingly significant roles follow. Guy soon begins talking about a career in Hollywood.

Rosemary and Guy throw a party for their old friends and the women convince Rosemary she should see Dr. Hill in order to get a second opinion about the pain she's having and her weight loss. She promises but later that night the intense pain and nausea suddenly disappear, so she doesn't follow through on the visit.

Rosemary's friend, Edward "Hutch" Hutchins, falls into a mysterious coma the night before he's supposed to meet with Rosemary to discuss something he feels is important. Months later, before he passes, he regains consciousness and has a friend send Rosemary a book on witchcraft, leading to her discovery that Roman Castevet is the leader of a Satanic coven. She suspects her unborn baby is wanted as a sacrifice to the devil.

She begins to believe Guy is also involved with the coven when she finds that he lied to her and that his behavior has become odd. She then goes to Dr. Hill to get his help, but thinking she's delusional, he calls Guy and Dr. Sapirstein. Threatening that they would place her in a mental institution if she didn't come with them, the two take her home and restrain her, where she ends up giving birth.

Everyone lies to her that the birth was stillborn but a couple of weeks later she hears a baby crying. Guy tells her that it's a new couple on the floor above but she realizes every time she hears the cry, one of the others comes to use the breast pump on her. She discovers a hidden door leading to the Castevets apartment and finally sees her child but realizes that they do not want to sacrifice him, but that she has given birth to the son of Satan. After her initial disgust and horror wear off, she begins to feel motherly towards him and changes his name from Adrian to Andrew.

Publication

Ira Levin published his debut novel A Kiss Before Dying in 1953, which won the Edgar Award for Best First Novel in 1954. His sophomore novel was Rosemary's Baby, which was published by Random House on April 13, 1967.

Levin was inspired by the idea of a woman pregnant with a fetus which was not human — he briefly considered having the father be an extraterrestrial but felt that this would be too similar to John Wyndham's The Midwich Cuckoos. Having decided on Manhattan as the setting, specifically the Bramford apartment building, which was inspired by The Dakota, Levin used contemporary newspapers to include real world events in the novel, such as the 1966 transit strike, the 1965 mayoral election and the 1965 visit of the Pope, which would lend a realistic air to the story.

Critical reception

Contemporary reviews

On the first edition dust jacket, Truman Capote compared the novel to Henry James's The Turn of the Screw, however in a review for The New York Times, Eliot Fremont-Smith favored a comparison to early Evelyn Waugh or late Thorne Smith. The novel was a best-seller, selling over four-million copies and becoming the best-selling horror novel of the 1960s. It received rave reviews upon its publication, including a starred review from Kirkus and declarations that it was a modern masterpiece.