Review: Misery (1987)
★★★ - minus 2 for sexism
Hi all, and welcome back to rumblewrites. This week’s post is another book review, this time of Stephen King’s psychological horror Misery.
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Warning: *spoilers ahead*
Synopsis
When best-selling writer Paul Sheldon gets into a drunken car accident, he is rescued by none other than his biggest fan: Annie Wilkes. Annie is an ex-nurse and lover of Paul’s Misery books. Not quite believing her luck, she decides to keep Paul for herself, refusing to take him to the hospital or to notify anyone of his whereabouts. She gets him started on a course of painkillers, to which he quickly becomes addicted.
But relations between the two quickly turn sour when Annie reads the latest of Paul’s works: Misery’s Child, and discovers that he had killed off the titular character! She flies into a blind rage and takes off, leaving Paul alone in a locked room for 2 days. With no food, no water, and no painkillers.
Annie returns with a wheelchair and a typewriter, and orders Paul to write another book bringing Misery back to life. So he does, and this becomes his main occupation in captivity. Aside from sneaking out. Which Annie knows about, by the way. And when she confronts him about this, Paul makes the grave mistake of lying about how often he’d escaped, and what he did while he was out. So, Annie decides to punish him: first by chopping off his foot with an axe, and later by removing part of his thumb with an electric knife.
It’s clear that she’s only keeping him alive so he can finish writing Misery’s Return. The two are hardly friends, and by this point in the novel her moods have worsened, and her behaviour become more erratic. She even murders the state trooper sent to search for Paul in broad daylight. So, he hatches a plan. He asks Annie for a cigarette, claiming that he always smokes one after finishing a book. Blinded by her excitement to read the Paul’s final Misery book, Annie concedes. And when Paul finishes, she rushes into the room in jubilation.
She finds Paul holding a lit match, not to a cigarette, but to his finished manuscript (or what Annie believes to be his finished manuscript). She dives to save the burning pages and Paul takes the opportunity to hit her over the head with the typewriter. A horrible fight ensues.
The next day, the police find a terrified Paul curled up on the bathroom floor, and Annie in the barn downstairs, her dead body gripping a chainsaw.
Review
This was my first experiece of a Stephen King Book. And I have to say that I did enjoy it, just not as much as I’d hoped.
I was surprised by how simplistic his prose is. Not that this is necessarily a bad thing, I suppose I was just expecting more from such a successful author. That being said, I do think his writing style is effective: stripping the narrative back to just Paul’s thoughts and experiences makes them all the more horrific.
Furthermore, I’ve seen some criticism of King’s inclusion of Paul’s Misery excerpts, but I actually really enjoyed this. They don’t add much to the overall story, sure, besides perhaps an insight into Paul’s psyche, but I found myself engrossed by the them. My only criticism here is that I wanted more. Paul spends so much of the book thinking about and writing this final installment, it seems like an oversight not to include more of it. Why is Annie so obsessed with these characters? Why does he hate them so much? And even: what were the other Misery books like?
This may have helped push the story along a little. As it stands, not much actually happens. Most of the narrative is a reflection of Paul’s inner world, and while this is insightful and terrifying, it does get a little repetitive. I suppose that may have been purposeful, to show how every day in confinement feels the same, but it just dragged for me.
Sexism
Now I want to get into a more contentious issue: King’s treatment of women. The sexism in this book is actually something that passed me by at first. I just felt uncomfortable reading it. I initially put this down to the horror genre, as sometimes it can make me feel a little squeamish, but the feeling persisted after I’d finished reading it. I eventually figured out that I was made uncomfortable by King’s descriptions and treatment of Annie. I’d heard that she was a strong female character, and that King is good at writing women, so perhaps I’d shoved this thought to the back of my mind. Of course, Misery is the only book I’ve read by him, and perhaps the sexism is just a product of its time (although this doesn’t mean I have to feel comfortable about it). Regardless, here’s my 2 cents on the matter.
On the surface, King’s portrayal of a woman capturing and torturing a man is a refreshing subversion of a traditional horror trope. However, it is just that: surface-level. If we drill down any further, it becomes clear that Annie is nothing more than a misogynistic stereotype. Let’s consider that from a few angles:
Annie as caregiver. Annie is an ex-nurse: a traditionally feminine role. She is also presented as quite motherly. She cares for Paul, chastides him for swearing, and infantilises him by making him entirely dependent on her. There is even an element of a Freudian relationship here, for example when she makes Paul suck tablet dust from her fingers. It is revolting, sexual, and a perversion of a generally female role. Despite this, Annie is still firmly within her socially-determined place: at home, as care-giver.
Annie as fangirl. Paul’s disdain for his Misery series stems in part from its largely female audience. He views their passion for emotional and romantic stories as low brow, and is emasculated by their control of his commercial success. He’d much rather focus on more masculine, less financially rewarding, works like his Fast Cars manuscript. King therefore presents “feminine” forms of storytelling as less creatively valuable. Annie herself fits into the role of crazed female fan: she compulsively consumes his work, is very emotionally invested in it, etc. On a broader scale, she also fits into the social category of the crazed woman: governed by her emotions, becoming violent when she does not get her way. This regressive stereotype has existed for a millenia.
Annie as consumer. When she makes him burn his Fast Cars manuscript and return to the Misery series, she represents the ever-demanding (female) consumer. She forces him, the writer, to fulfill her wants: orders him to churn out pages at the cost of his physical and mental health, robs him of his autonomy, all for her enjoyment. Writing is not something done by women in King’s novels, but it is appropriated by them in the role of consumer. This points to the very real problems of writer burn-out and devaluation of creativity, but King’s criticisms are misplaced. He should direct this at the capitalist-driven consumer-culture, not the consumer herself.
Annie as non-feminine. Annie’s physical and psychological dominance over Paul is a reserval of traditional gender dynamics. However, it is not the nature of her power over him (i.e. torture) which is presented as horrific, but the fact that she has power at all. The focus is constantly on Paul’s emasculation, and on his view that Annie is not an attractive woman. She becomes a grotesque figure of unnatural power due to her unwomanly physical appearance and uncharacteristic behavioural traits. She becomes the stand-in for all unattractive women, at least those women not deemed attractive enough to be treated properly by a male-dominated society.
Therefore, while Annie may be a fleshed-out character with opinions and a drive of her own, this does not make her a good female character. She may not be the victim of the story, but she is a monster, and it is the kind of monstrosity she depicts that concerns me.
**Warning: I am now going to talk about the rape metaphors in this book. If you’d rather not read about that, you can stop here, as that is the final section.**
The other element of sexism in Misery, which was more readily apparent to me, is King’s use of rape metaphors. Within the first few pages, Paul describes Annie’s resuscitation of him as a kind of rape. This immediately made me feel uncomfortable as it just isn’t similar at all. It’s clearly designed to shock, but why?
It gives the reader a clear indication of Paul’s sentiments towards Annie. And also a clear impression of his disgust towards her physicality. However, it’s also doing something more sinister: in reversing the typical rape narrative, especially when it concerns a life-giving act, King presents Paul as being stripped of his typical masculine power (over women).
This euphemism is repeated on two further occasions throughout the book. I found a great essay on male power and masochism in Misery, and there are a couple of quotes on this subject I’d like to highlight:
all this male masochism merely leads to the triumphant assertion of masculinity in the end. As feminist critics have not failed to note, the “violence and bodily invasions in Misery begin with Annie’s oral ‘rape’ of Paul,” but they “end as Paul shoves burning manuscript-bond down Annie’s throat, thinking ‘I’m gonna rape you all right, Annie’” (Bosky, Bernadette Lynn, p. 154).
“In order to reassert the gender identity necessary for creativity in Stephen King’s metaphorical uni verse, Annie must be raped. . . . Thus Annie’s orifices must be filled—especially her demanding mouth—her power over thrown, and her sexual creative passivity re-imposed” (Lant, Kathleen Margaret, p. 110).
This goes back to the idea of Annie’s power originating in her role as consumer. By stripping Paul of his voice, she is usurpsing his position as creator. Taking this back is presented as a heavily gendered, very violent act of rape. As a female reader, I found this incredibly uncomfortable. I have to say that I don’t think this kind of sexism is deliberate, but it shows an obliviousness on King's part which comes to define the book.
That being said, I did enjoy Misery. It was a fresh, unique idea executed relatively well. King does a good job of making the ordinary terrifying, and we too are surprised and scared by Annie’s sudden personality shifts and violent outbursts. I was engrossed, and wanted to keep reading. Also, with the prose being so simple, I was better able to focus on the mundane horror of it all: every day being the same, each of Paul’s mini excursions felt like rollercoasters, and the ultimate reveal that Annie knew more than she was letting on made my stomach drop. I’d definitely like to read some more King to get a feel for the rest of his work. Any recommendations?
Next stop: watching the 1990 film adaptation!
I guess it's open to women to portray rapists as fits the story they are writing too. Very thought provoking