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This article describes a work or element of fiction in a primarily in-universe style. (March 2010) |
Lucy van Pelt | |
---|---|
Peanuts character | |
First appearance | March 3, 1952 |
Last appearance | Present |
Voiced by | Rerun van Pelt , Blanket Hating Grandmother, and unnamed parents |
Lucille "Lucy" van Pelt is a fictional character in the syndicated
History
Lucy was introduced into the strip on March 3, 1952[1], as a wide-eyed baby who constantly tormented her parents. She soon grew into her familiar persona of a bossy, crabby, manipulative and selfish girl.
Very early on, Schulz eliminated the circles around her eyes and allowed her to mature to the age of the other characters; she does have tiny half circles around her eyes (as do the other van Pelt siblings).
Lucy wears a blue dress with white and black
Perhaps Lucy's most famous gimmick in her long existence as a character is the one in which she pulls the
For all her crabbiness and bad temper, Lucy does have a vulnerable side: she is in love (and sometimes infatuated) with Schroeder, but he did not return her affections. In this Lucy is seen as vulnerable, as she shows a need for assurance from either Schroeder or Charlie Brown that she is indeed pretty (often asking them their opinion of her appearance), and is known to react harshly whenever their reaction is unfavorable, or even hesitant.[6] Indeed, for all her callousness, Lucy seems to be rather thin-skinned when she is on the receiving end of an insult. For example, when Linus countered her statement that he was a terrible brother by saying that she was not such a great sister either, Lucy burst into tears. Another time, her reaction to Charlie Brown's telling her she was not perfect was to wordlessly storm off in anger, leaving Charlie to comment, "I've never seen anyone so insulted!"
Lucy is named after a former neighbor of Charles Schultz in Colorado Springs, Louann van Pelt and modeled after Schultz's first wife, Joyce.[10]
Relationships with other characters
Lucy and Linus
Lucy is frequently irked by her younger and more passive brother, Linus. In particular, she wants Linus to stop his attachment to his
She was also notorious for destroying any aspect of Linus' creativity. Whether it be sand castles, which she has destroyed by kicking them over or running them over with her tricycle (once when she did this, he went home and got a pair of pliers and used them to dismantle the tricycle); his house of cards, which she blew over (once when she did this when he was a baby, he picked up the card deck and threw the deck at her after blowing over his house of cards, and laughing about it); a pile of blocks, which she kicked over; or his drawings, which she crumpled up, tore up, and/or threw in the trash burner, she never passed up a chance of stifling his creativity out of sheer meanness or perhaps she thought it was funny.
Whenever Linus offered to help her out on projects, such as making snow bunnies, Lucy outright rejects his help and screams at him to leave her alone and not to bother her. This usually angers Linus to the point where he would build something (a dinosaur or a cannon) which would frighten his bullying sister.
Lucy is known for being incredibly selfish. She won't allow Linus to read any of her comic books, or use her crayons; and would hit or slug him without provocation. She sees no problem in hitting her brother for whatever reason, mainly when he has insulted her; or has called her (or implied that she has) a big mouth.
On one occasion in 1965, Linus' blanket took revenge on Lucy for her campaign against it by "jumping" her and physically attacking her. The attacks scared Lucy so badly that she was afraid to go home at night. Eventually she and the blanket made a "truce" whereby the blanket would refrain from attacking Lucy if she promised not to try to throw it into the trash burner anymore. Lucy did in fact try to throw the blanket into the trash burner a few years later (as part of a storyline in which Linus made a deal to give up his blanket if his grandmother would quit smoking, and Lucy rationalized that after two weeks without the blanket, Linus no longer needed it), but an unusually strong-willed Linus intervened at the last second, rescued his blanket from the trash burner and screamed at Lucy to mind her own business when it came to the blanket; he told her that if their mother wanted him to get rid of the blanket, then he would do it; until then, it was no one else's business but his.
Lucy thinks that she is completely perfect, or at least acts like it, and that Linus and practically everyone else (except her friends of the same gender) is anything but. She outright told Linus that he was a terrible younger brother, but in a rare instance, where he turns something his sister said back at her, when he demanded that if she thought he was such a horrible brother, what made her to be such a terrific older sister, Lucy, realizing that he struck a nerve, erupted quietly into tears.
Another habit of Linus that drives Lucy crazy is his patting Woodstock and Woodstock's fellow birds on the head. This seems to be a form of emotional therapy for both Linus and the birds, but Lucy is vehemently against it, mainly because she fears that she and her family will be "the laughing stock of the neighborhood" if word gets out that Linus pats birds on the head. In a Sunday strip in 1999 she was even more mortified to discover that her youngest brother, Rerun, had also picked up this habit.
Lucy annoys Linus in other ways: stealing all the crayons (except black, white, and gray), changing the channel or turning the TV off while Linus is watching it, outright taking over the TV and ordering Linus to leave, so she can watch her shows, and forcing him to shower her with lavish words of praise before she will even consider sharing anything with him ("Thank you, dear sister, greatest of all sisters, without whom I'd never survive!" is what Linus was once forced to say before receiving a piece of toast. Then, he said, "How can I eat when I feel nauseated?"). Lucy also forces Linus to bring her snacks or something to drink while she watches TV. (To quote Linus in one of these examples, "She has all the patience of a boiling teakettle", after she screams, "WHERE'S MY ICE CREAM?!") Lucy once bragged that she played Linus "like a pianist plays a concert grand." and that is no idle boast. Lucy has made no secret of the fact that she wishes she were an only child, and has actually tried to throw Linus out of the house a few times; in one such incident, when Lucy got the news of
Yet another example of Lucy's high-handedness with Linus was that she would often volunteer him to perform in holiday programs put on by the
By contrast, Linus' attempts to stand up to his sister typically result in a verbal or physical beat-down. However, he sometimes gets his revenge on Lucy in more subtle ways. In one strip, he suddenly responds to a rude remark from her by ceremoniously awarding her with a printed scroll and congratulates her on being "crabby" for 1,000 days in a row—to which she, completely blindsided at the sheer audacity of this creative insult, could only respond weakly, "One rarely gets a chance to see such carefully planned sarcasm." In another instance, Linus created an effigy out of snow that looked like Lucy. Lucy commented, "You're going to get great satisfaction out of building a snowman that looks just like me just so you can stand there and kick it!" To this, Linus replied, "On the contrary, that would be crude. I'm just going to stand here and watch it slowly melt away", while Lucy stood stunned at the philosophical contempt behind that statement.
On one occasion, however, Lucy was seen to acknowledge Linus' genuine affection for her. When Lucy demands to know what she has to feel thankful for, Linus replies, "Well, for one thing, you have a little brother who loves you..." Lucy immediately bursts into tears and hugs Linus, causing him to say, "Every now and then, I say the right thing."[2]
Another occasion that showed Lucy's care and concern for her brother Linus occurred in It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown. When Linus does not return home from the pumpkin patch by 4:00 am, Lucy gets out of bed, puts her coat on, walks out to the pumpkin patch, leads her sleeping brother home, takes his shoes off, and puts him to bed, all quite wordlessly and even angrily walking out of his room once he is asleep. Also, while Linus was waiting for the Great Pumpkin in the pumpkin patch with Sally and the others were trick or treating, she requested an extra piece of candy for her brother exclaiming, "It's so embarrassing to have to ask for something extra for that blockhead Linus." In a comic published the previous year, Lucy asks for an extra piece of gum, candy bar, apple, and cupcake, which she angrily throws at Linus in the pumpkin patch.[3]
Lucy and Charlie Brown
Her treatment of Charlie Brown is just as bad, although in the very early days of the strip, such as 1952, she seemed to look up to him, probably because he was older. Aside from her infamous football trick, she gives 5-cent "psychiatric help" by insulting and belittling him, but on rare occasions, she does try sincerely to help Charlie Brown, such as in A Charlie Brown Christmas, by getting him involved in directing the Christmas play. She also sometimes tries to give him what she thinks is good advice, but such advice is usually of little practical value.
In the earlier years, Lucy came up with odd theories (e.g. "Snow comes up out of the ground") and laughed at Charlie Brown's efforts to tell her otherwise. When Charlie Brown finally proves that Lucy's theory is false, Lucy makes an insensitive remark about the way he looks. A similar thing happens when Lucy laughs at Charlie Brown's assertion that birds fly south for the winter; upon learning the truth from her teacher, she wonders if she can change to a different teacher.
Lucy delivers mean remarks with the greatest of ease, usually showing no emotion whatsoever, then moving on with whatever she was doing. She has a tendency to go off on loud and rambling tangents when she is with Charlie Brown, such as a strip where he asked if she ever regretted anything she said. Her reply is that she always says what she means, but she becomes repetitive and progressively louder, which gives Charlie Brown a headache. The first time she pulled this on him was when he asked her if she was going to make any New Years resolutions. She completely went off on him screaming that she was all right the way she was: this loud rant so sickened Charlie Brown that he walked off holding his stomach.
When Charlie Brown fails at something, Lucy is quick to point it out, as illustrated by the series of strips in early 1964 (later adapted into the script of
Lucy is sometimes a victim of Charlie Brown's wit or sarcasm. In one strip when Charlie Brown is at the psychiatric booth, she tells him that the insecurities people have can lead to colds and other illnesses, to which Charlie Brown responds by sarcastically sneezing loudly, knocking Lucy to the floor. Also, in an early strip, she pestered Charlie Brown for a glass of water and when asking what took so long, he dumped the water over her head. Similar incidents have occurred, but they are very rare.
It could be suggested that Lucy has some kind of hidden 'longing', or soft spot for Charlie Brown. First in an April 2, 1965 strip, then in the film
Also while she will point out his shortcomings, unlike the other girls,
Lucy and Rerun
By contrast, Lucy's relationship with her youngest brother, Rerun, who entered the strip as a baby in the early 1970s but did not become a major character until the late 1990s, is much less turbulent. Despite her initial dismay over his birth (lamenting that she was experiencing a "rerun" with another baby brother, thus giving him his name), Lucy in fact took on something of a mentor role for Rerun, teaching him important things he needs to survive in life, such as how to tie his shoes—in contrast to the outrageous misinformation she has been known to tell Linus (e.g. telling him that leaves falling off trees in autumn were "flying south for the winter"). As a result, Lucy's personality seemed to mellow a bit in the final years of the strip, though she never did become totally "nice." Rerun often shows a knack for getting around Lucy and weakening her defenses, whereas Linus is apt to give up and just let Lucy dominate him.(e.g. Charlie Brown tells Linus he should stand up to his sister. He mentions this to Lucy, who gives no reply. He then says, "I have stupid friends.") In one strip, Lucy walked up to Rerun building a sand castle in a sandbox, and asked him what he would do if she kicked it down. Rerun responded; "Oh, nothing I guess. But years from now, when You and Your Husband come over to My house, and ask Me to co-sign for a loan for You, I might remember it". Lucy appeared to think this over for a moment, and then walked away grinding her teeth in frustration, while Rerun smugly continued building his sand castle. There is an almost identical strip with Linus where he is building a tower with wooden bricks. Lucy asks him what he would do if she knocked it over. Linus says "Probably nothing at the moment....But years from now when you and your husband want me to co-sign a note so you can buy a new house, I'll refuse!" Lucy walks away, frustrated, and Linus remarks "Younger brothers learn to think fast."
Lucy and Snoopy
Lucy is terrified of being licked or kissed by Charlie Brown's dog Snoopy, and usually runs off screaming whenever he does kiss her. Snoopy is naturally infatuated with her and likes to tease her about it. On several occasions, her flirting with Schroeder has inadvertently resulted in a kiss from Snoopy—Schroeder walks away as soon as Lucy begins flirting, but then Snoopy appears, hears Lucy talking about a kiss, and kisses her, which inevitably results in Lucy running off in hysterics. Schroeder also once had Snoopy kiss Lucy to get out of kissing her himself, by having Snoopy act as his "representative" to deliver a kiss on Beethoven's birthday. In fact, in a strip from 1994 Schroeder actually kissed Lucy on the cheek for giving him a cupcake for Beethoven's birthday. Her eyes were closed during the kiss because when she opened them, Snoopy was standing where Schroeder was and she assumed Snoopy was the one that kissed her.
Lucy and Snoopy have also occasionally found themselves in not-so-friendly competition—the two faced off in an arm-wrestling tournament once (the competition ended abruptly after Snoopy kissed Lucy on the nose and she recoiled in horror), and more than once in the course of the strip have actually come to fighting (again, Snoopy often wins by default by trying to kiss or lick Lucy's face).
One classic example was where Snoopy climbed on his doghouse roof to evade an angry Lucy, but she climbed it herself and had him trapped, where he could not go to the end of the roof. He kissed her on the nose yet again, and forgetting that she was on top of the doghouse roof, Lucy ran off screaming and fell to the ground. Another situation saw Lucy and Snoopy having a fight under the mistletoe one Christmas. Lucy was waiting for Schroeder under the mistletoe, so he could kiss her; but Snoopy wanted to kiss her. Lucy kicked Snoopy, he kicked her, and the two were fighting yet again. Eventually, Schroeder walked by, completely unruffled and nonchalant, saying that fighting under the mistletoe was unfeminine, unromantic, and gauche. Snoopy won that fight by kissing her on the cheek anyway, while Lucy sat on the ground, depressed.
On several occasions, Charlie Brown has had Snoopy stay at Lucy's house while he and his family went on vacation, and Lucy usually treats her canine house guest inhospitably (i.e. forcing him to sleep outside in one of her old doll beds). Still, as it turns out, Snoopy is perhaps one of the few characters in the strip who sometimes winds up successfully irking Lucy.
However, one of the most famous Peanuts strips of all time shows a rare moment of Lucy showing affection towards Snoopy by hugging him and then saying one of the most famous quotes in the strip's history, "Happiness is a warm puppy." Lucy herself acknowledged in another strip that although there were times when Snoopy drove her crazy, there were also times when she felt like hugging him, which she then proceeded to do.
At the end of the animated film It's the Easter Beagle, Charlie Brown, Lucy ends up being kissed by Snoopy (after she originally wanted to fight him for taking her eggs to give to the neighborhood kids) and responds "Aah, the Easter Beagle!" with a dreamy look in her eyes. Most of the time she would just call him a stupid beagle.
Lucy and Schroeder
Lucy is in love with the toy-piano-playing, Beethoven-obsessed blond boy Schroeder, who constantly rejects her advances. Her love of Schroeder begins in the Peanuts strip from January 27, 1953. When she asks Schroeder what song he is playing, he responds saying the Nutcracker Suite, which Lucy erroneously interprets as "Nutcracker, Sweet". She spends much of her time leaning against his toy piano as he plays, striving to gain the attention Schroeder gives to his music. Schroeder often responds to her flirting with a sarcastic quote. Lucy and Schroeder seem to be very good friends when they're little, but Schroeder became cold after Lucy showed her interest. In an early strip, Schroeder told Charlie Brown that Lucy has pretty eyes.
Lucy constantly sees herself as being in competition with the piano, which she has even tried to steal and destroy, and sometimes succeeding, earning her none of Schroeder's love or affection, but instead more of his wrath. To an extent, she also believes she is competing with Schroeder's favorite composer, Beethoven, and often makes a point to make rude comments about Beethoven to Schroeder's face (which angers Schroeder immensely). At various points, she would also remove the bust of Beethoven to replace it with her picture; or to the extreme, she took a ball bat and smashed it; only to be horrified to see that he had a closet full of extra busts of Beethoven, one of which he replaced the broken one with. Her response to this is, "I'll probably never get married!" In one strip, Lucy tossed Schroeder's piano up into the Kite-Eating Tree which always eats Charlie Brown's kites, and in another strip, she threw his piano down a sewer. Schroeder, for his part, has on occasion exacted revenge by yanking his piano out from under Lucy, causing her head to strike the floor. Schroeder is also annoyed by Lucy's repeated hinting about gifts, such as when she says that Beethoven's birthday is an ideal day to buy girls gifts.
On occasion during the 1960s and 1970s, Lucy and naturally-curly-haired Frieda were shown as rivals for Schroeder's affections; Lucy once spotted Frieda taking her (Lucy's) place at Schroeder's piano, and Snoopy taught her how to jump up into the air and look vicious. Frieda was then beaten up. Another time both Frieda and Lucy are leaning on Schroeder's piano, when Lucy informed her that "you need to like Beethoven to hang around here," to which Frieda ignorantly replied, "Sure, but I'll just have a small glass," prompting Schroeder to yank the piano out from beneath both of them. In another instance in the strip, Frieda wondered what would happen if she gave Schroeder a kiss. Lucy says "Why don't you find out?" By then Schroeder had walked away for a minute, but Snoopy came in and, what usually happens to Lucy, kisses Frieda, with her saying "Bleah!"
However, Schroeder is sometimes open with the possibly that he and Lucy might get married someday. For instance, once Lucy told him after they get married, he can do all the cooking, he replied,' What would you do?" She said," I'll fold the napkins."
Other personality traits
Psychiatric booth
Lucy is also the manager of a
Baseball
On Charlie Brown's baseball team Lucy plays right field (or occasionally center field), and is characterized as a bad player, who, when temporarily kicked off the team, turns to heckling the games. Lucy has a knack for coming up with a novel excuse for every fly ball she misses (for example: "The moons of Saturn got in my eyes", or "I think there were toxic substances coming from my glove, and they made me dizzy", or "I was having my quiet time"). Other times, she finds an excuse to have one-sided conversations with Charlie Brown at the pitcher's mound, often over some trivial thing she noticed, which usually result in Charlie Brown blowing his top and yelling at her to "Get back in center field where you belong!" Once, Charlie Brown berated her for letting fly balls drop, and telling her he would not brook any more excuses such as the grass getting in her eyes; Lucy caught the ball cleanly, and tossed it back to him on the mound silently, after which he admitted he was actually looking forward to her next excuse.
In many strips, and probably her most famous baseball habit, she gets hit on the head with the fly ball, and shows her getting "Bonked." Once, in a 1983 Sunday strip, the ball hits every outfielder's head and most of the infield, and Schroeder says to Charlie Brown, "You're right, I think six bonks is a new record." In a series of strips that later became part of the 2003 TV special Lucy Must Be Traded, Charlie Brown, Charlie Brown traded Lucy to Peppermint Patty's baseball team for Marcie (and a pizza), but once Patty discovered what a terrible player Lucy really was, she traded her back. Even on the diamond, Lucy flirts with Schroeder, who plays catcher on Charlie Brown's team: once she called for a "squeeze play...I'll squeeze the catcher!" and walks away happily while Schroeder and Charlie Brown look on.
Only once has Lucy ever produced on the baseball diamond: in one game, Lucy (using a bat signed not by a ballplayer, but by actress
Portrayals
1960s child actress Tracy Stratford first voiced Lucy in 1965 and since then many actresses including sisters Robin (from 1972 to 1973) and Melanie Kohn (from 1974 to 1977) have voiced her. Actress Sally Dryer provided Lucy's voice from 1966–1968. Pamelyn Ferdin also provided a voice to Lucy in Play It Again, Charlie Brown. Sydney Penny voiced her in It's Magic, Charlie Brown. 1980s child actress Angela Lee voiced her in 1982 and 1983. Heather Stoneman voiced her in 1984 and 1985. Jessica Lee Smith voiced her in the animated version, of You're a Good Man, Charlie Brown. Erica Gayle and Punky Brewster's Ami Foster both voiced her in "This Is America, Charlie Brown (1988–1989).
In the stage musical You're a Good Man, Charlie Brown, Lucy was portrayed by Reva Rose in the original off-Broadway cast in 1967, and by Ilana Levine in the 1999 Broadway revival.
She was portrayed by Lucille Ball on a 1971 Christmas episode of The Flip Wilson Show in which Charlie Brown was portrayed by Wilson and Linus was portrayed by Donny Osmond.
She was impersonated by
References
- ISBN 1-4130-0892-5.
- ISBN 0-8386-4080-X.
- ISBN 0-7407-5118-2.
- ISBN 0-486-43639-X.
- Houghton Mifflin. p. 374.
- ^ ISBN 1-55862-404-X.
- ISBN 1-57806-305-1.
- ISBN 0-7382-1090-0.
- ISBN 0-415-26337-9.
- ^ "Holiday TV: Mariemont woman inspired Lucy Van Pelt". December 18, 2012. Retrieved December 18, 2012.
External links
Category:Peanuts characters
Category:Fictional psychiatrists
Category:Fictional baseball players
Category:Comics characters introduced in 1952
Category:Fictional players of American football