At that moment, finally she understands that she has to do something and decides to run away despite the terror that her husband Norman might discover her. Rosie’s slumber state is upset by an incident that seems trivial when she finds a drop of blood on her bed’s sheets. The continuous abuses have thrown her into a state of submission that the author describes through the woman’s sensations and emotions. From the beginning the reader gets thrown into Rosie’s nightmare with the brutal violence she was subjected by her husband. Stephen King had already addressed in some of his novels the theme of domestic violence but in “Rose Madder” it becomes central. When she tries to make some money by pawning her engagement ring, in the shop she finds a strange painting of a woman with a rose madder gown that hides much more than it seems. Forced to handle herself for the first time in her life and terrified by the possibility that Norman finds it, thanks to a meeting she discovers the existence of a women’s shelter, where she finds help.

For the woman it’s like an awakening from a long slumber that convinces her to run away from that horror.įrantically, Rosie runs away from home and travels to a distant city.

When he hits her yet another time, it seems just one of many abuses she has suffered but the next day she finds a drop of blood on the sheets of their bed, lost from her nose after the blow. The novel “Rose Madder” by Stephen King was published for the first time in 1995.įor years, Rose, called Rosie, has been the victim of her husband Norman’s abuses, which even caused her a miscarriage beating her when she was pregnant.

Rose madder stephen king painting