The Shining’s Final Girl: Wendy Torrance & Vulnerability

The true horror of Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining (1980) isn’t the ghost story, or the mania imposed by isolation, nor is it the horror of finally realizing your husband is abusive and dangerous. No, the real horror behind The Shining is the emotional labor of Wendy Torrance (Shelley Duvall). Wendy Torrance is the ultimate Final Girl and the heroine we didn’t know we needed. She’s resourceful, smart, and yes, emotional. Her emotional vulnerability is exactly what makes her such a strong female lead, and an extremely interesting match for lead character and antagonist Jack Torrance. 

The Final Girl trope in horror is simple: She’s the last one left alive, the one to tell the story, the one who outsmarted the killer but lost all of her friends in the process. While Wendy doesn’t lose the one person she is trying to protect in the film, she certainly goes through hell to get out alive. However, Wendy doesn’t look like a lot of Final Girls. In fact, she’s more often than not positioned to be the first to die. She’s a little aloof, too pleasant, too eager to please, and portrayed as a pretty and simple girl. While this might have been a choice to make Jack seem even more vicious than he would seem otherwise, it does the viewer a great disservice because we gloss over her subtle yet important character traits. 

What makes Wendy so remarkable is her breadth of emotion, and her ability to fully indulge in those feelings throughout the entire film. In the beginning, we see her express joy and curiosity over the possibility of moving to the Overlook Hotel—a place known for its desolation in the winter. Once she arrives there, she comments repeatedly and with enthusiasm on the beauty of the place. We also see her struggle with her son’s episodes, which leave her nervous and shaken. Like any mother, she is worried about her son’s well-being and we see this through the scene where she speaks with a doctor. This scene is also our first introduction to Jack’s violence, as we learn that he harmed Danny in the past. 

This scene is important because it sets up the remainder of the film in more than one way: We are informed through Danny’s episode that the hotel has a dark past, information that is divulged with some of the most iconic imagery in horror film history, namely the blood flowing from the elevators. For Wendy, we’re brought into her world via the only other living woman in the film. The two women fulfill caretaker roles for a child who has a supernatural gift, the weight of which Wendy carries alone until they meet the cook, Dick Halloran, at the Overlook. As the film nears the climax she begs Jack for permission to take Danny to another doctor, as his condition has significantly worsened, and in response, she is threatened and humiliated. Her decisions throughout are based on Danny’s well-being first and foremost, and at this turning point, she pools her resources and takes stock of what exists in the hotel that she can use to get herself and Danny out safely. And she does this effectively while crying, screaming, and shaking. 

What is usually written off as naivete in Wendy’s excitement and happy demeanor at the beginning of the film is not her lack of intelligence, but rather her security in her own emotional state, as well as feeling comfortable in a foreign environment such as the Overlook Hotel. Too often Wendy Torrance is sidelined as a meme, and too often we see female characters that do not drive the story forward in a meaningful way. She is not that character. Firstly, the hotel doesn’t affect her negatively the way that it does Jack and Danny. She seems blissfully unaware of the horrors that are present in the place, but when we take a closer look, we see that Wendy seems to know the most about the workings of the hotel itself, rather than its history. She is frequently seen walking from room to room and interacting with each: the kitchen, the office, her bedroom, the bathroom, the grounds, etc. She is comfortable using the tools in the boiler room and in the garage, and she spends her time cooking, watching TV, repairing things, and playing with Danny. In each scene Wendy is present in the hotel in a way that is harmonious with the space, unlike Jack, who is frequently seen throwing things, making loud noises, or sitting unnaturally still. 

Secondly, Wendy immediately sets about making the Overlook a home and not just a temporary living space. She uses the amenities that the hotel has to care for her family in the same way that she would her own home, and in doing so learns about the place and develops a relationship with it that neither Danny nor Jack develop. The film is focused on Jack’s struggle with isolation, and that there is something about the hotel itself that is driving him mad, but his refusal to engage with the place is what really pushes him over the edge. In a scene where Wendy tests the radio, we finally see her loneliness break through. She keeps the operator on the line a bit longer than a simple call, and we see her heart sink as she realizes she needs to hang up the phone. But her loneliness doesn’t cause rage and violence the way that Jack’s does. Instead, she leaves the radio on for emergencies and continues on with her day. 

It is her domestic and emotional labor that ultimately saves Danny. Early in the film, before the snowstorm, Wendy and Danny walk through the hedge maze together. At the end of the film, Danny is able to trick Jack and escape the maze because he has already done it and knows the way out. Jack, who has almost never left the room where he writes, has no knowledge of the grounds and freezes to death. 

The Shining is iconic for its imagery and the actors' performances. How each character interacts with the space in the film tells the story in a way that can’t be told through dialogue. It is a subversive means of storytelling to watch the space around the characters rather than the characters themselves, and it reveals more about the Overlook Hotel as a figure participating in its own fate rather than an object that functions as a shell for holding some mysterious past. In watching Wendy’s interactions with each room the film’s ending comes to a natural close - she escapes and fulfills her role as the Final Girl because of her knowledge of the place and her willingness to live within a supernatural setting. It is no surprise that Wendy makes it out alive.

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Article written by Theresa Baughman

Theresa totally hates movies but sometimes watches them with her friends. She writes about the intersection of art & anthropology, gendered horror, and she loves demonic possession horror.

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