The ABC’s Of Stephen King : WendY Torrence

So I will be completely honest for these last two days of the challenge, I’m going to be stretching the parameters a little bit. I would love to have a name that starts with the letter Y, but I would rather have a chance to talk about a character that we all know and are familiar with. And hey, the name Wendy does have the letter Y in it. That’s good enough, isn’t it?

Oh, and if you happen to read my final post tomorrow, you can refer back to this rationalization.

Anyway, as Casey Kasem would say, on with the countdown.

Wendy is probably one of the most interesting characters in the King universe and for the same issues I discussed with Jack Torrence in comparing book to film. In the book, I think that Wendy is a great character. She’s intelligent and she’s strong. She loves her son and devotes herself to him and his safety. While her husband is clearly falling apart, she stands up to him and provides a firm barrier between his craziness and their son. She’s a great character.

Wendy Torrence in the Kubrick film is a horrible character.

She’s a perfect example of what I call the Buttercup syndrome (if you haven’t seen the Princess Bride, fix that immediately). She serves no purpose in the story other than to scream and be in danger.

And to be clear, I don’t blame this necessarily on Shelly Duvall, who played Wendy in the movie. From everything I have heard, Stanley Kubrick wasn’t exactly a dream for women to work with and he was particularly abusive with Duvall. Add to this his reputation for doing ungodly numbers of takes for even mundane filler scenes, and I’m sure her performance was affected.

Regardless of the cause, the effect on the screen is still the same and I will always prefer Wendy as she appears on the page, in the book.

.

.