Violet Beauregarde

Violet Beauregarde is a fictional character from the Roald Dahl novel "Charlie and the Chocolate Factory" and the subsequent film adaptations.

Background

Violet Beauregarde is the third of the five children to find one of Willy Wonka's elusive Golden Tickets, but is the second to be kicked off the tour. She is a tomboy who exhibits a more competitive spirit than the four other ticket winners, especially in the 2005 movie, where her emulous behavior is greatly expanded to include her participation in sports and martial arts. Violet is also a notoriously-relentless champion gum chewer, though she temporarily curbed her habit in order to focus on Wonka Bars and search for the ticket.

Violet in the novel

Violet is described in the novel as having a "great big mop of curly hair" and as someone who talks "very fast and very loudly." Like Augustus Gloop and Veruca Salt, her nationality is never touched upon in the book, but she is depicted as American in both films. Both her parents wind up accompanying her to the factory, though her mother disapproves of Violet's gum-chewing habit. Violet boasts about how she enjoyed sticking chewed gum on elevator buttons so that whoever presses the button next will have gum stuck on their finger.

Violet in the films

In the 1971 film "Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory," Violet was depicted as a preteen girl from Miles City, Montana, and was played by Denise Nickerson. She dressed in contemporary blue bell-bottom pants, and her brown hair is styled in a sort of ponytail embellished with a giant hair clip. Her father, Sam Beauregarde, is a used car salesman who never misses an opportunity to compete with other car dealers. There is no interaction between Violet and Veruca Salt in the novel, but in the film, the girls are seen pushing and shoving each other when walking down the Chocolate Room stairs. In contrast, Violet gets along fairly well with Charlie.

In the 2005 film adaption, Violet (played by AnnaSophia Robb) is a preteen like in the previous film, but her hometown has been changed to Atlanta, Georgia. She also has a short, blonde pageboy hairstyle along with a fervent competitive streak, having won 263 trophies and medals in various events ranging from martial arts competitions to gum-chewing contests; she is a junior champion and world-record holder in the latter, and had been working on the same piece for three months straight at the time that she had found her Golden Ticket. During the ticket search, she temporarily laid off gum and switched to Wonka Bars, keeping the aforementioned wad stored behind her ear in the meantime.

Violet's mother, Scarlett Beauregarde, is her primary parental figure and factory tour chaperone in the 2005 film. She herself is an award-winning baton twirler who also serves as Violet's personal coach, having strong confidence that her daughter is going to win the special prize at the end of the factory tour. She encourages her daughter's bad manners and cocky attitude until they leave the factory.

Violet's Endgame

Violet's punishment for dissent during the tour is the same in all incarnations of the story. She tries a prototype "three-course-meal" chewing gum (consisting of tomato soup, roast beef, baked potato and blueberry pie flavors) against Wonka's wishes, due to unsolved problems with the blueberry pie flavor. This causes her to turn blue, fill with juice, and swell into a giant, balloonish blueberry. The 1971 film version added a twist in that she would explode if the blueberry juice inside her was not immediately extracted.

She began by turning a deep blue that gradually envelops her entire body, including her clothes (in the first movie, only her face turns blue) before transforming into a blueberry. Wonka calmly remarks in the midst of Violet's predicament that for some reason the gum always goes wrong when it comes to the blueberry pie, and while he sits and wonders what could be wrong with the formula, Violet and her mother panic as she quickly becomes too round to even move. Wonka then summons the Oompa Loompas to roll Violet away to the juicing room. The magnitude of Violet's transformation differs between incarnations: in both the novel and the first film, she grows merely in width, whereas in the 2005 edition, she grows in height as well, eventually becoming almost elephantine in size.

Violet's fate is not visualized in the first film, in which Wonka simply assures Charlie that all the other children will be their normal selves. In the 2005 version, she is seen exiting the factory with her mother after the tour. She has been deflated back to normal size, but rather than walking, she is somersaulting and backflipping down the stairs and the front walk, and her skin and clothes are both a permanent shade of blue. Violet is actually pleased with her new form and pliability, proudly announcing, "I'm much more flexible now." Her mother replies disapprovingly, "Yes, but you're blue." In the novel, Violet retains purple skin but there is no mention of increased dexterity.

The filmmakers of the 1971 adaptation simulated the blueberry scene by inflating Nickerson in a rubber suit and made her outline in two halves of a Styrofoam ball. It took 45 minutes for her to get into her costume. Nickerson was unable to go to lunch during rehearsals; instead she was rolled every 5 minutes to keep blood circulating. In the 2005 version, at the request of director Tim Burton, the filmmakers combined real pictures of the actress and computer effects, in order to increase the overall size of the blueberry rather than just the width.

Violet Beauregarde Song

This song takes place in the Inventing Room, where the multicourse gum was created. It is sung by the Oompa Loompas while Violet is lolling around in blueberry form, and the lyrics contain 42 repetitions of the word "chewing." The track uses the same pitch in voice, accompanied by a '70s funk-style sound. The original song in the novel featured a "Miss Bigelow" who chewed gum day in and day out for years before her jaws bit her tongue in two, and how the Oompa Loompas wanted to prevent the same thing happening to Violet. In the 1971 version, the song merely talks about how chewing gum for long periods of time is repulsive.

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