Wendy Torrance

**Winnifred "Wendy" Torrance** is the deuteragonist in the The Shining novel, it’s film adaptation, and it’s miniseries adaptation, and a posthumous character in the Doctor Sleep novel and its film adaptation.

## Biography

### The Shining (book)

#### Personality & Appearance

In the novel, Wendy is depicted as a miserable depressed stay at home housewife whose marriage is extremely rocky. She is 32. She is noted as being blonde and being very beautiful.

#### Background

Wendy Torrance is drawn, like many of King’s female characters, as a traditional wife and mother. Wendy has some psychological problems of her own:

She is always unconsciously competing with her mother, who resented Wendy sense the age of 10 for the death of her younger sister, Aileen, who died at age 6 by getting ran over by a car. Her mother starts to get jealous of her relationship with her father and when her parents get divorced, her mother blames her for the incident. She worked at a hospital as a high school student. When she was in college, she met her future husband, Jack, and lived with him when her mother kicked her out. When she and Jack get married, her mother doesn’t even attend the wedding because she didn’t like her taste of men. The first year of Jack and Wendy’s marriage was the happiest, until Jack started drinking heavily after Danny was born (her mother criticized the way her daughter rearing Danny). She tries to be patient and understanding but Jack’s drinking was a constant source of anger and embarrassment for Wendy and has little pity or forgiveness for Jack (in this way, she is her mother’s daughter), forever reminding him of his failures. She also doesn’t trust her husband to be alone with Danny and competes with him for Danny’s affection. She considered divorcing him six months before he broke Danny’s arm while drunk. After Jack abused Danny—an event that created a major rift in their marriage—Wendy couldn’t bring herself to trust Jack, and when he was fired from Stovington, their relationship suffered more.

#### ​Main Events

While Danny is sitting outside waiting for his dad, she is inside cleaning their apartment to wait when Jack gets home. She sees him doing nothing so she goes outside to check on him, she tells him that he won’t be back in a long time. Danny then says a cuss word about their bug car and she scolds him. She then thinks about her son’s isolation ever sense they moved. Danny asks Wendy why Jack lost his teaching job, which she does. Danny asks if she actually wants to go to the hotel, which she does. Wendy goes back inside.

When the Torrances arrive at The Overlook Hotel on Closing Day during the busy time with the guests leaving and several heads turn to stare at her legs. She is nervous at first and notices the quietness of the hotel, after a tour of the kitchen when the last of the guests are checking out and the staff are finishing their cleaning and duties. At first, the hotel is a blessing to Wendy and she is extremely happy, but this quickly changes when Jack starts to show signs of being mentally unstable and Danny starts to pass out and have his trances more frequently. After Danny is strangled by Mrs. Massey and Wendy finds Jack in Mr Ullman's office, then looks for him outside and in the lobby and finds him with bruises on his neck, Wendy accuses Jack of hurting him, which Jack is furious about. Wendy soon starts to become frightened and becomes determined to leave the hotel. However, all possible ways are soon foiled. When Jack tries to kill Wendy, Wendy is able to defend herself and she hides in the bathroom of her quarters. She passes out when Jack goes to find Danny but comes to. However, her injuries are serious and she is weak. Dick, Danny and Wendy escape the hotel just as it explodes, killing Jack.

In the summer, Wendy and Danny are at a cabin in a campground in Maine called Red Arrow Lodge, where Dick now works at. Wendy is now in braces but just fine and has shorter hair. She is reading her book and smoking when Dick appears and they chat about Danny and his bad dreams, how she and Danny will move to Maryland, Al Shockley getting her a new job, and getting on a boat. Later after Dick talks to Danny, she joins them fishing.

### The Shining (film)

#### Personality & Appearance

Unlike the novel, the movie version of Wendy is shown to be weak, more afraid, and having lack of intelligence or common sense. She also has black hair and brown eyes.

#### Background

She is always unconsciously competing with her mother, who resented Wendy sense the age of 10 for the death of her younger sister, Aileen, who died at age 6 by getting ran over by a car. Her mother starts to get jealous of her relationship with her father and when her parents get divorced, her mother blames her for the incident. When she was in college, she met her future husband, Jack, and lived with him when her mother kicked her out. When she and Jack get married, her mother doesn’t even attend the wedding because she didn’t like her taste of men. The first year of Jack and Wendy’s marriage was the happiest, until Jack started drinking heavily after Danny was born (her mother criticized the way her daughter rearing Danny). She tries to be patient and understanding but Jack’s drinking was a constant source of anger and embarrassment for Wendy and has little pity or forgiveness for Jack (in this way, she is her mother’s daughter), forever reminding him of his failures. She also doesn’t trust her husband to be alone with Danny and competes with him for Danny’s affection. She considered divorcing him six months before he broke Danny’s arm while drunk. After Jack abused Danny—an event that created a major rift in their marriage—Wendy couldn’t bring herself to trust Jack, and when he was fired from Stovington, their relationship suffered more.

#### Main Events

She is 29. Jack Torrance's son, Danny, has ESP and has had a terrifying premonition about the hotel. Jack's wife, Wendy tells a visiting doctor that Danny has an imaginary friend named Tony and that Jack has given up drinking because he had broke Danny's arm following a binge.

The family arrives at the hotel on closing day and is given a tour. The chef Dick Hallorann surprises Danny by telepathically offering him ice cream. Danny and Dick then has a chat allowed by Wendy. Unbeknownst to Wendy, He explains to Danny that he and his grandmother shared this telepathic ability, which he calls "shining".

A month passes; while Jack's writing project goes nowhere, Danny and Wendy explore the hotel's hedge maze. Wendy becomes concerned about the phone lines being out due to the heavy snowfall and Danny has more frightening visions. Jack, increasingly frustrated, starts acting strangely and becomes prone to violent outbursts. Danny's curiosity about Room 237 gets the better of him when he sees the room's door open.

Later when she is checking the boiler, Wendy finds Jack, asleep at his typewriter, screaming while in the midst of a horrifying nightmare. After she awakens him, he says that he dreamed that he had killed her and Danny, she is confused and tries to cheer him up. Danny then shows up with a bruise on his neck and visibly traumatized, causing Wendy to accuse Jack of abusing Danny. Jack wanders into the hotel's Gold Room where he meets a ghostly bartender named Lloyd. Lloyd serves him bourbon on the rocks while Jack complains to him about his marriage. Wendy later tells Jack that Danny told her that a "crazy woman in one of the rooms" tried to strangle him. Jack investigates Room 237, where he encounters the ghost of a dead woman, but tells Wendy he saw nothing. Wendy and Jack argue about whether Danny should be removed from the hotel and a furious Jack returns to the Gold Room, now filled with ghosts having a costume party.

While searching for Jack, Wendy discovers his typewriter; he has been typing endless pages of manuscript repeating "all work and no play makes Jack a dull boy" in different layouts. She was confronted by Jack who threatens her before she knocks him unconscious with a baseball bat. She manages to drag him into the kitchen and lock him in the pantry, but this does not solve her larger problem. She and Danny are trapped at the hotel since Jack has sabotaged the hotel's two-way radio and snowcat.

Later, Danny writes "REDRUM" in lipstick on the bathroom door. When Wendy sees this in the bedroom mirror, the letters spell out "MURDER".

Then, Jack (who Grady let him out of the pantry) begins to chop through the door leading to his family's living quarters with a fire axe. Wendy frantically sends Danny out through the bathroom window, but it will not open sufficiently for her to fit through it herself. Jack then starts chopping through the bathroom door as Wendy screams in horror. He leers through the hole he has made, shouting "Here's Johnny!", but backs off after Wendy slashes his hand with a razor blade. Hearing the engine of the snowcat Hallorann has borrowed to get up the mountain, Jack leaves the room and head down into the main lobby. She is relieved. He later kills Hallorann in the lobby with his axe. This act in turn cause Danny (Who was hiding in one of the kitchen shelves) to scream which alerts Jack to his presence. Jack spots Danny from a distance and proceeds to chase him into the hedge maze. Danny, in the mist of the chase, proceeds to walk backwards and cover up his show prints in order to mislead Jack. Meanwhile, Wendy, on the run from Jack, encounters the dead body of Dick Hallorann as well as many frighting visions of ghosts in the hotel. This ends with her witnessing a river of blood gushing from the lobby elevators. After Danny successfully flees from Jack in the maze, he was reunited with Wendy by the Snowcat used by Hallorann which they use to flee the hotel.

### Doctor Sleep (book)

#### Background

After surviving the incident at the Overlook, the board of directors of the Overlook gave Wendy and Danny a settlement that gave her money for the three years she couldn’t work. Her lawyer said if she played tough, she could get more but she said she could recover. They ended up moving into an apartment in Maryland and then Tampa Florida, she would develop a snore.

On March of 1981, she calls Dick to come after Danny falls into silence after seeing Miss Massey in their bathub and wakes her up. She then checks the bathroom but sees nothing. At noon, she wakes up Danny and makes breakfast. After, she waits at the window for Dick. He eventually comes and they talk about Danny. Wendy takes Dick to the bathroom and shows him the mess. Dick reawakens Danny while she watches. She cleans the bathroom while Dick and Danny leave and eventually come back. A week later, as Danny goes to the bathroom, she gets worried. She walks to the bathroom and makes sure he is okay. She doesn’t know that Danny trapped Mrs. Massey in his lockbox.

Wendy would passed away in 1999 at the age of 53 from lung cancer, possibly caused from the explosion of The Overlook Hotel many years ago.

## Appearances

* The Shining (book)
* The Shining (film)
* The Shining (miniseries)
* Doctor Sleep (book)
* Doctor Sleep (film)

## Trivia

* Stephen King hated the depiction of Wendy in the 1980 film, because she was very weak compared what she was in the book.
* Her favorite colors are pink and gold.

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