Character Analysis
Poor Little Rich Girl
Although there's no denying that she's a spoiled brat when It Happened One Night first begins, Ellie Andrews wins our hearts with her wit, her openness, her good humor, and her taste for adventure.
Speaking of tastes for things, that's a key part of Ellie's character. When the film starts, she's on a "hunger strike," according to the jailers her father employs. And even though these hired hands can't keep her down—come on, she jumps off the cruise ship and swims to shore in the film's first scene—she remains hungry for much of the rest of the film. Over and over again in It Happened One Night, we hear her complain of hunger.
When we do see Ellie eat, then, it's significant: She shares an unforgettable breakfast with Peter, during which he teaches her how best to dunk a donut—and suggests that rich people don't know the first thing about dunking techniques. Later, Peter will complain that Ellie's spoiled when she won't eat the carrots he has managed to scrounge up. She hates them, she complains like a picky eater. But a few scenes later, we see her reluctantly chowing down, raw carrot in hand. If you're hungry enough, you'll eat anything: that seems to be the moral of this particular story.
Well, okay, but what's the big picture here? You may be surprised to learn that some famous smartypants philosophers have taken it upon themselves to talk all about It Happened One Night. Take Stanley Cavell, for instance. Calling that raw carrot the "food of humility" (humility is the very quality that Peter says Ellie lacks early on), Cavell wants you to know that "[e]ating the carrot is [Ellie's] acceptance of her humanity, of her true need—call it the creation of herself as a human being."
Not Just a Lot of Hooey
That may sound like what Peter would call "a lot of hooey" to you. But if so, think again, and then try watching the scene in question one more time. What Cavell wants to emphasize is Ellie's transformation, the metamorphosis at the center of It Happened One Night: A poor little rich girl when the film begins, Ellie becomes a full-fledged human and an independent woman by the time the film ends.
Ellie chooses Peter, then, not simply in order to escape from her father's constraints. This was what King Westley represented for her: freedom, but only from her father, not freedom for herself. By contrast, Peter accepts and loves her for who she is. He sees her flaws—well, let's be real: He can't not see them, given the situations they're thrown into together. But he falls for her not despite but because of the very qualities that, he says, would drive any "normal person" crazy:
PETER: A normal human being couldn't live under the same roof with her, without going nuts.
That's Ellie, all right, but as Peter admits in the same breath, he's "a little screwy" himself. They're crazy together, and that's why they're made for each other, as scene after scene in It Happened One Night keeps showing us. This is a match made not in heaven, though, but very much on earth. The love that Capra's film is all about can only take root in humble places like campsites, bus seats, and roadsides.
In other words, it's not the moolah and high society that the heiress Ellie is used to that makes true love possible. That kind of thing only happens in Sex and the City. Instead it's in the dirt—the dirt where carrots are grown—that we discover our common humanity. Air is King Westley's element—he's a pilot, after all—and it used to be Ellie's, but it's earth that Ellie needs. It's only here that Ellie finds the love that feeds her.
Ellie Andrews's Timeline