Years ago I visited the Design Museum’s exhibition on Stanley Kubrick. The event was stunning–film scripts, props used in his films, memorabilia from a long and influential career–but one exhibit stayed with me longer than the others.

In a darkened side room, a clip of this scene from The Shining, was playing. Wielding a baseball bat, Wendy Torrance, played by Shelly Duvall, ineffectually defends herself and her son from her violent, deranged husband Jack. She’s humiliated, goaded, demeaned by Jack’s words and actions, until finally, reluctantly, she lets him have it.

I was watching the scene with a few others. The tension was unbearable, and when Wendy finally gives Jack a much-deserved whack on the head, everyone around me cheered. Finally, Wendy had taken action. Too timidly, perhaps, too weakly, but it was a pivotal moment for her character and the film.

Also, in this section of the exhibit were stills like the one above, that seem to show Jack being supported in his bullying by the director and crew, leaving Wendy/Shelly to seem even more helpless and isolated. Knowing that there were rumours about Duvall’s poor treatment by Stanley Kubrick during the filming, and reading some of the generally derisive comments that were made about her performance at the time of the film’s release, I’ve come to think of the actress and character as powerful symbols of the way women behave and are treated in other gothic films and books.

In my book, The Perfect Couple, the gothic heroine, Jacey, is uncertain of herself in a new country and environment. She is left on her own to cope with a situation that’s challenging for her, but that her husband seems to thrive in. She is prodded and goaded by terrifying elements she doesn’t understand, and that she is too frightened of to openly share with her partner. She seems, perhaps, a bit weak. But eventually, like Shelly/Wendy, she gains her equilibrium enough to take action, to become active in her search for the truth, to gain courage and take bold action.

What’s interesting in the film The Shining is that Wendy, though initially presenting as being unable or unwilling to stand up to her domineering husband, actually assumes both masculine and feminine roles. She’s a nurturing mother and a supportive wife, but she’s also taking on the responsibilities that were meant to be Jack’s–checking the communications systems, learning how to run the boiler and make repairs. So, although the film character Wendy, as played by Duvall, was derided (by Stephen King, among others) for being less active than the original character in the book, her journey from sweet and passive to heroic is more dramatic than if she had arrived at the Overlook Hotel fully formed, with power and agency. 

Wendy’s journey from hapless victim to bad-ass monster slayer is a great story arc. Thinking about that staircase scene still gives me chills; knowing what they suffered (both Wendy and Shelly) makes their ultimate triumph over Jack and his ilk even more satisfying.