‘Rosemary’s Baby’ explained: How did Rosemary get pregnant?
A seminal movie in the horror genre, Rosemary’s Baby tapped into society’s fears of the occult like no other cinematic work before it. The 1968 film by Roman Polanski paved the way for other horror classics such as The Exorcist and The Omen to develop the theme of satanism further in the 1970s.
As its name suggests, the movie centres on the titular character’s pregnancy and subsequent delivery of her first child. Of course, it’s no ordinary pregnancy, and what she gives birth to is no ordinary child.
The horrifying climax of the film shows Rosemary, as well as the audience, exactly what her child is. She finds her way into her neighbour’s house through a secret door, where she discovers a group of occultists gathering around her baby’s crib, the baby one of them had previously told her was stillborn.
“Satan is his father!” one of the group announces. Rosemary recoils in horror, unable to come to terms with the idea that she’s given birth to a child of the devil.
But if Satan is the baby’s father, the question remains: how did Rosemary become pregnant?
Does Guy rape Rosemary?
After moving into their new apartment in a historic Manhattan tower block, Rosemary and her husband, Guy, decide to have a baby.
On the first night that they plan on trying to conceive, their strange neighbour comes around and offers them her homemade chocolate mousse. After noticing the mousse has a strange taste, Rosemary feels sleepy and passes out.
The first truly terrifying moment of the film then arrives, as Rosemary has a vision during the night of waking in her bed naked, being raped. A close-up shot of her eyes bulging in terror is followed immediately by a zooming close-up of a pair of narrow, blood-red eyes. The eyes are surrounded by raw, red flesh. “This is no dream. This is really happening!” exclaims Rosemary as the rapist closes in on her. When she awakens fully the next morning, her body is covered in scratches.
Incredibly, Guy openly admits to assaulting Rosemary as she slept. He caused the scratches, he says, because his nails were too long and he’s since cut them to ensure that it doesn’t happen again. He justifies his actions by saying he didn’t want them to miss having sex on an optimal night for conception, according to Rosemary’s menstrual cycle.
Nevertheless, in the movie’s climactic moments, we learn explicitly from Rosemary’s neighbour, Satanist Roman Castavet, that Satan is the baby’s father, “not Guy”. Seconds before breaking this news to Rosemary, Roman explains that the baby “has his father’s eyes”. The camera pans to Guy, who is in league with the Satanists, covering his face. This sequence encourages us to recall the terrifying red eyes Rosemary looked into while being raped earlier in the film.
We are led to believe that it was, in fact, Satan, the devil himself, who raped Rosemary, and not her husband, Guy. He simply covered for the group of occultists in the building to which he belongs by claiming the crime was his own.
This ending hardly makes him look any less of a villain. Someone who sees raping his wife as a convenient excuse to cover up the devil’s violation of her should be viewed in the same light as the rapist himself.
In fact, the entire film could be read as an allegory demonstrating the lack of agency women in oppressive marriages have over their own motherhood. In this reading, Guy is still very much the central villain of the piece, who forces Rosemary to conceive, and to go through all the suffering that she endures thereafter.
