Enter Wendy Torrance
Wendy Torrance doesn’t receive much love in the film version of The Shining, and that’s a mistake that needs to be “corrected.”
While many love Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining, hatred stems from fans who don’t appreciate the director’s deviation from Stephen King’s boring, drawn out novel that’s 300 pages too long. Others can’t buy into the fact that Jack Nicholson’s character goes bonkers from only a few days at the Overlook Hotel. And whether one loves or hates the film, most agree that Wendy’s an annoying train wreck.
To set the stage, Kubrick presents the Torrance family in a far from normal light: Both Jack and his son Danny (Danny Lloyd) are presented as being off the deep end, and Wendy fights to keep the family dynamic together, even though she’s in denial about the mental stability of both her son and husband.
Mother, Wife, Stateswoman
Shelley Duvall, a model (“The Texas Twiggy”) and actress, portrays Wendy Torrance, a homemaker who is the force that keeps a lid on her family’s insanity.
Jack is a failed teacher, wannabe writer, and a recovering alcoholic who yanked Danny’s arm out of its socket several years before the events at the Overlook. Danny, who can “shine” – communicate telepathically with the living and disastrously departed – uses Tony, “The little boy” who lives inside his mouth as a conduit for what happens at other locations. Tony presents Danny with knowledge of what’s taken place (his father securing the Overlook job) and what may come (REDRUM = murder in a passive/aggressive sense). The latter is something Danny can’t wrap his head around, but Tony’s there to protect the boy by possessing him.
Wendy, bridges the gap, navigating the harsh world between Jack and who he wants to be, while taking care of her son, who may have created Tony to protect himself after the pain and shock of his father’s drunken abuse. Although we know Danny ended up with a dislocated shoulder, we don’t know what day-to-day life was like with his alcoholic father, but it was most likely full of emotional tension and fear.
Regardless, Wendy Torrance represents a sort of emotionally strained matriarch trying to maintain balance in a family wrought with pain and financial struggle.
Torrance Family Life
Jack’s trying to get back into his role as bread-winner in an age when the US dollar went much farther than it does now. That means Wendy could stay home to care for Danny and keep the family humming along, though we don’t know if she had other aspirations outside the home.
Apparently, even though it’s never mentioned in the film, Wendy’s homeschooling Danny, especially since they’ll be at the Overlook for several months. One would think Danny’s school teacher father would take that lead while at the abandoned property, but that doesn’t seem to be the case.
We can surmise that Jack’s reputation, mostly due to his alcoholism, has gotten him into trouble with many an employer. To think playing caretaker at the Overlook is the only gig he could get is mindboggling considering he has a college education and professional experience.
But adapting to the Overlook, with its severe social limitations and claustrophobia, will put Wendy Torrance in a position to truly set herself free.
Don’t Overlook the Energy
Jack doesn’t become crazy because of the Overlook. The hotel becomes attracted to Jack because of it (Danny too). After all, the place is crazy on its own. With a sordid past of murder and mayhem, Kubrick presents the hotel as a character and location where nothing is right:
- The entrance to the maze changes several times
- There are doors that shouldn’t be where they are in the building
- The window behind Ullman in his office cannot exist
- Pay close attention to the doors in Halloran’s pantry tour
- The pink and gold ballroom is too big for the actual structure
- There are stairs and passages to nowhere as if we’re in an Escher drawing
Crazy Connection
Jack and Danny are clearly connected to the place. While Jack has conversations with Lloyd the barkeep and imbibes in what becomes a party infused ballroom (the heart of the Overlook), Danny sees dead sisters and gets attacked by a ghost woman who could be the wife Grady had murdered. While Danny ultimately gets warnings from Tony, Jack is wooed by the Overlook to kill his family.
The latter is easy. Jack’s lost. He’s an impotent provider and admits to a ghost that he’s having “trouble with the ol’ sperm bank.” He’s questioning his own manhood because he can’t provide for his family in any possible manner. Losing a teaching position is indicative of a problem that would have most prospective employers questioning his character. Plus, he knows what he did to Danny, and though we never hear her bash Jack, he says to a ghost that Wendy often brings up the incident – look in the mirror, Jack: It’s your guilt talking.
To prove he’s a man that can take charge and “write his own ticket,” Jack must go to extremes – by getting rid of the people who know his secrets. The ones who know the truth of his actions and character: his wife and son.
Murder and mayhem may be the thing that keeps the Overlook alive, living up to the old phrase that “misery loves company,” so the property helps propel Jack’s psychosis and feelings of emasculation and insecurity.
Wendy Misses the Signs
Wendy, however, gets nothing from the Overlook. To her, it’s just an old hotel with a lot of history.
She does notice that her husband’s becoming more of a jerk and that her son’s becoming more distant from reality – and Wendy Torrance will do her damnedest to keep the family unit together, even if she must play what seems to be a submissive role to Jack’s nastiness when he wants her to stay out of his writing domain. Wendy actually isn’t submissive, she’s in shock by his outburst and to protect herself, she detaches and rides out the conversation. But when Jack has his horrible nightmare of himself as a killer, she’s right there to play the consoling wife and comfort him.
Many may see Wendy as being passive here, but Jack’s vulnerability and expression of fear proves to her that he’s human and worth saving. Maybe for all his drunkenness and negativity, Jack’s shown Wendy his other side often enough to keep her invested in the marriage and in him as a man.
If that’s true, then Jack’s emasculation comes from within: Because he couldn’t face the fact that he had harmed his son and lost his position at the school. Guilt has overwhelmed him, even though he quit drinking, and he’s moving headlong into a nightmare of his own making, even when wife and son love him. Yes, it’s a damaged love, but one that could be repaired. Instead, Jack gives up almost immediately because he’s already too far gone, when they had an entire winter to mend fences.
Wendy Torrance Takes a Stand
The complaints about Wendy’s character are that she’s fearful, emotional, and cries and screams too much.
But that’s only surface reactions. For all her emotion, Wendy Torrance fights through with logic.
She may fear Jack to a degree, but once Wendy sees the marks on Danny’s neck, she doesn’t hold back from lashing out at her husband. Realizing that Danny has become lost within himself from whatever trauma he experienced in room 237, she comes up with the only viable plan: Get Danny out of there.
Oddly enough, Wendy never considers that Jack won’t see things the same way. After all, getting Danny medical assistance is the only logical recourse and she expects her husband to think as she does, though he cannot reason at this point.
Yes, Wendy could take the trip on her own down the sidewinder, but she’s once again trying to keep the family together.
Her protection of the family unit runs into a snag when Jack rips her apart in verbal fashion for wanting to take him from his commitment to the Overlook.
That’s because he thinks Wendy’s coming between him and his responsibility as a provider. Yet she’s allowing him every opportunity to be a responsible father and husband – and he fails to accept the role.
Moving Forward in the Face of Fear
Ultimately, however, with her son in distress and her husband on the verge of murder, Wendy must stand up.
And she does.
In the grip of fear and high emotion, and even with her lack of physical prowess – and her inability to get the most swing out of a baseball bat – she confronts her husband who announces that he wants to “bash her brains in.”
After knocking Jack unconscious, she puts him in dry storage, seals him up, and takes a knife. (Both weapons, bat and knife, are phallic symbols signifying that she now wears the pants in the family.)
Her plan, even as her emotions race, is to get into the Snowcat with Danny and take the sidewinder back to civilization and help.
But once the Overlook pulls a nasty trick and sets Jack loose, Wendy Torrance ends up trapped with Danny in their room. She tries to get out but can’t fit through the bathroom window. Instead, she sends her son out, willing to sacrifice herself to buy Danny time to hide.
In an iconic horror scene, Jack Nicholson pounds down a panel of the door, but Wendy slashes his hand as he reaches for the knob. Keeping up with the craziness of the Overlook, and that the place seems to morph at every turn, Jack had knocked out only one door panel with his ax, but we suddenly see that both upper panels have been hacked out. (To say it’s a simple continuity error would undermine all of the visual cues throughout the film of the Overlook being “off.”)
The Hotel that Jack Built
Hearing Mr. Halloran’s (Scatman Crouthers) Snowcat arrive, encourages Jack to investigate. Ultimately, in a single swing of the ax, he takes out the man who “interfered” and in Halloran’s death, the poor chef has been “corrected.” (Danny’s Teddy Bear foreshadows Halloran’s death – the one with a big red heart on its chest – laying on the floor where the man will ultimately die.)
As Jack chases after Danny, Wendy comes face to face with the creepiness of all the Overlook’s ghosts: skeletons, bloody heads, a man in a bear costume ready to perform fellatio. She’s spellbound and in awe, totally freaked out and overwhelmed – but she never succumbs. Even when Wendy Torrance sees poor Mr. Halloran’s body, she knows she must over-ride the fear and get to her son.
And when Wendy sees Danny coming out of the maze (thematic for certain), the first thing she does is let the knife – the phallic symbol – fall. She doesn’t need Jack or Halloran, or any other man to save her, and she doesn’t have to wield an imitation penis to act like a man. Wendy has saved her son and herself, and the pair hops into the Snowcat and rides to safety.
Final Woman: Wendy Torrance
Jack had succumbed to fear and lost. Danny almost succumbed to fear, but Wendy shook him out of it. And when faced with fear, Wendy kept it together, though it may not have seemed like it – and she won.
Wendy is neither strong or weak, but human. And although her character wasn’t incredibly complex, Wendy Torrance is complex enough to be a person who stood up to the nightmare and defeated the Overlook as she stood up to her own fears.
When one mentions heroic characters in horror: Alien’s Ripley, Wishmaster’s Alex, Sarah from The Descent, Hellraiser’s Kirsty Cotton, Crawl or Die’s Tank, Erin in You’re Next, among others, but…
Don’t forget Wendy Torrance.
The Plot Sickens: Check out Billy Crash’s review of a different kind of slasher: Last Girl Standing!
Billy Crash
Also known as William D. Prystauk, he loves great, in-depth characters and storytelling in horror, and likes to see heads roll, but if you kill a dog on screen he’ll cry like a baby. Billy an award-winning screenwriter and novels, writes for Macabre Theatre and co-hosts THE LAST KNOCK horror podcast on iTunes, and can also be found on Twitter, LinkedIn, IMDb, Amazon, Behance, YouTube, Instagram, and Google+.
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