Rose Madder

The main characters include Rose or "Rosie Daniels, her husband Norman, and the kind but odd looking stranger. What we have read so far was interesting but a little boring. Basically, Rose has been living with her mentally and physically abusive husband who is a sheriff. He beat her every day because he was basically psychotic. He would take out all of his anger on her, just because he was "stressed out". When something in his mind went wrong her bones or organs would pay the price. Rose seems to be in a trance like state of mind. This seems to be a defense mechanism to me. She has dwindled into a scared little baby who is sheltered in the house all day. It seems she has some what lost track of time and life itself. Until one day a single drop of blood encouraged her enough to get out and never come back to that kind of evil. The Social issues involve the fact she was so droned out in the beginning. That is of course not normal, she never went outside or communicated with anyone. The only time she ever went out was to get groceries at a set time. Every day with her husband was controlled at a set time. The fact that the abuse was so accepted and tolerated from Norman was not normal.Norman seemed like a normal guy to everyone on the outside when really he was this crazy psycho. Another social issue with Rose is when she finally went out into the world. she is so scared of being found by her husband. She is paranoid constantly, because she truly believes he will kill her if he finds her. This makes her like an abused dog when around normal people. She's always expecting a slap in the face. The last thing we read was the stranger she meets at the station giving her directions to a women's shelter. She walks to find the shelter and gets lost.