The abomination known as Wicked is came out November 22, hoping to draw Thanksgivings Break crowds no doubt. And yes, I did just call one of the most popular musicals in history an abomination. In the continuing effort of the contemporary world to call evil good, and good evil, Wicked, the book and musical, are one of many contemporary efforts to dismember better known stories and reassemble their plot points in a Frankenstein’s Monster of a story that recasts the villain as the protagonist (if not outright hero) and make the actual hero(es) into deranged villains. The Wonderful Wizard of Oz is cast as being “a cute little children’s book…full of whimsy and nonsense,” while Wicked is much more “grown-up” because it “has coarse language and graphic scenes of sex and violence.” But one example of this supposedly more adult fare: The character the Wizard of Oz in Wicked is a mad tyrant who wants to exert totalitarian control over Oz while the Wicked Witch is really a freedom fighter against his dictatorial regime.
The sad thing about this is that the very opposite is true. Wicked is the kind of juvenile story you expect from a teenager who thinks he is more mature because he can totally swear now when his parents aren’t around. Wicked bases its story around two girlboss besties taking on the world who, like all people in their teens and early 20s, naturally lack wisdom and maturity, see their society as bewilderingly stupid and all elders as tyrants. It is, in other words, just like every other teen dystopia novel, just with a thin veneer of Oz painted over it. Wicked is Divergent painted green.
In contrast, Frank L. Baum’s The Wonderful Wizard of Oz is a deeply meaningful story about what it means for a young girl to grow up and become a strong and successful woman while preserving the hope, strength, and purity of youth. The way that it layers the types of womanhood available to Dorothy (really the reader as he/she follows along with Dorothy), the dangers or blessings therein, and the outcomes of her choices, along with the dangers women face in the world, and how to overcome those fears, is frankly magnificent. The Wonderful Wizard of Oz actually tells a story with a message deeply meaningful to the lives of those reading it, especially the young girls drawn to it by the fact that the main character is a young girl like themselves.
In this article, I will explore the message of The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, what exactly it has to say to young women about femininity, womanhood, growing up, how to confront the dangers of life, and why this story is so superior to the imitator who has stolen its name.
What Is Womanhood?
Aunt Em, the Modern Feminist
The Wonderful Wizard of Oz has a great deal to say about womanhood and it starts doing so at the very beginning of the tale. Dorothy, we are told, is a young orphan who is growing up in austere poverty. From the artwork in the first edition of the book, she looks about ten years old. (See pgs. 12-13 for examples.) Dorothy lives with her Aunt and Uncle in their one room farmhouse with a “little bed” in one corner of the room and her aunt and uncle have a bed in the other corner. (pg. 12) Everything – the fields, the home, and the people – is old, worn down, and gray. All except young Dorothy, whose youth and vitality are in direct contrast to her aunt’s demeanor:
When Aunt Em came there to live she was a young, pretty wife. The sun and wind had changed her, too. They had taken the sparkle from her eyes and left them a sober gray; they had taken the red from her cheeks and lips, and they were gray also. She was thin and gaunt and never smiled, now. …Aunt Em had been so startled by the child’s laughter that she would scream and press her hand upon her heart whenever Dorothy’s merry voice reached her ears; and she still looked at the little girl with wonder that she could find anything to laugh at.
The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, pgs. 12-13
Thus, our first example of womanhood, and the one that Dorothy is most exposed to, is one worn out by life. Em, has forgotten how to be happy or how to smile. Her entire life is absorbed in the fight for survival on a dying farm in the middle of nowhere, a place where it seems as if the whole world has dried up and move on, leaving her behind. And, truly, some women are just such people. We imagine these women who lose themselves in their labors as being most among the poor, as Baum certainly does here. The image of the miserable woman trapped in poverty is almost archetypal in nature. But it isn’t true.
In fact, as women have entered the workplace at near parity with men (48% of employees are women), the problem that Em represents has only grown worse. Because it isn’t poverty that has ground her away. Studies have shown that the amount of money has no relationship with the amount of money you make and even suggests that rich people may be slightly more likely to report high levels of unhappiness. In other words, rich people aren’t happier and poor people aren’t more miserable.
The thing that makes Em miserable isn’t being poor. It is that she does nothing but work. And you may think that is tied to poverty, that poor people work more, but it isn’t true. In the US, rich people work, “an average of 4.4 hours more each week,” and in other countries the difference between rich and poor work time is just a single hour. The issue isn’t working more or less, it is allowing yourself to be consumed by your work. We see this in our contemporary era were contemporary feminists are those women who are most likely to make their work a core part of their identity and are the most miserable of all people. This is true especially among those who seek some kind of parity with men in work and career just as Aunt Em and Uncle Henry have achieved on the farm.
These career women are the most depressed and resentful women of all. They’ve spent decades of their lives chasing lies and trading their birthrights as women for a mess of porridge and get shocked when that mush is gray and unpalatable. The warning for Dorothy here is clear: When you allow your work to be the defining trait and meaning of your life – to the exclusion of family, friends, and children of your own – the result is that you become a bitter, miserable woman.
The Good Witch of the North and the Munchkins
We aren’t told a great deal about the Good Witch of the North (simply “Good Witch” hereafter.) So little, in fact, that the famous 1939 movie combined her and Glinda into one character without losing anything of her character or the story. But there are some things we can glean about the Good Witch from the text that provides us with some traits of womanhood for Dorothy to emulate, many of which are directly in contrast to Aunt Em.
Both Aunt Em and the Good Witch are old, with the Good Witch being described as having nearly white hair and walking more stiffly than the Munchkins around her. (pg. 21) But where Aunt Em is a miserable woman who has forgotten even what laughter sounds like, the Good Witch is noted for her kindness (pg. 22), friendly to the people around her (pg. 23), and accepts the young Dorothy almost immediately as an equal, a powerful Sorceress who has liberated Munchkin Land by slaying the Wicked Witch of the East. (pg. 21) The Good Witch is attentive, patient in explaining the social, geographical, and political situation of Oz to Dorothy. (pgs. 23-26) Though she cannot go with Dorothy to the Emerald City, the Good Witch does use her powers to find out what Dorothy must do return home and gives Dorothy a benedictory kiss to magically bless her with safety in the face of her forthcoming trials.
Importantly, this all takes place within the context of a farming community as Dorothy soon learns that the Munchkins are “good farmers and able to raise large crops” during her travels along the yellow brick road. (pg. 33) This fact should not be overlooked. Whereas the example of Aunt Em might have you believe that poverty and misery are the lot of poor farmers, the example of the Munchkins proves otherwise. At night she is invited to stay and eat with the Munchkin Boq and his family. They are kind to her before they know who she is and give her supper and night and breakfast in the morning. Notably, Boq has a “wee Munchkin baby” who crows with laughter while playing with the dog Toto. (pg. 35) In marked contrast to Aunt Em, who has a panic attack anytime Dorothy laughs, the homes of poor Munchkin farmers are full of laugher, vitality, and joy.
Not only are the Good Witch and the Munchkins kind, respectful, helpful, and joyful, they manage to be so while also being poor farmers living under a tyrannical and oppressive regime. Through their examples, the reader is taught both about the qualities of noble womanhood and decent humanity, but the reader also learns that these things are something a person chooses as surely as he or she can choose misery. The Munchkins before Dorothy’s whirlwind arrival are objectively worse off, but they are also objectively better people. The truth that how you live and who you choose to be has a massive impact on how happy you are is an important and empowering one for anyone to understand, especially youths like Dorothy. Misery is not something thrust upon you, it is something you create and accept by how you live.
The Companions
The companions that Dorothy discovers on her journey to the Emerald City are legendary by this point. First she comes across the Scarecrow, an enchanted man made of straw in a Munchkin cornfield. Having been made just the day before yesterday he is ignorant of the entire world and everything in it. Consequently, his central character concern is the need for intelligence and wisdom -“brains” as he puts it – in order to have a meaningful and successful life:
I don’t mind my legs and arms and body being stuffed, because I cannot get hurt. If anyone treads on my toes or sticks a pin into me, it doesn’t matter, for I can’t feel it. But I do not want people to call me a fool, and if my head stays stuffed with straw instead of with brains, as yours is, how am I ever to know anything?
…[Scarecrow later recounts a crow telling him:] If you only had brains in your head you would be as good a man as any of them, and a better man than some of them. Brains are the only things worth having in this world, no matter whether one is a crow or a man.
…[While discussing the frailties of the human body, Scarecrow says:] However, you have brains, and it is worth a lot of bother to be able to think properly.
The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, pg. 35, 47, 54
Her next companion is the Tin Woodsman. Dorothy comes across him while walking through the forest, they oil his rusted joints so that he can move again, and he joins them on their journey hoping that the Wizard of Oz can give him a heart. He tells them the tale of how he became a steampunk cyborg. He loved a Munchkin woman who loved him and worked as a servant for an old woman. The old wamn didn’t want to lose her servant so she paid the Wicked Witch of the East to curse the Woodsman’s axe so that it would slip and cut off parts of his body. When the cursed axe cut off a body part, he would have it replaced with a tin replica and go back to work. Eventually everything was replaced with a metal body which seized up with rust after a rainstorm, leaving him frozen in place for a year before Dorothy came along. Having lost his heart, he found he had lost the ability to love:
I had now no heart, so that I lost all my love for the Munchkin girl, and did not care whether I married her or not. I suppose she is still living with the old woman, waiting for me to come after her. …It was a terrible thing to undergo [being rusted into immobility for a year], but during the year I stood there I had time to think that the greatest loss I had known was the loss of my heart. While I was in love I was the happiest man on earth; but no one can love who has not a heart, and so I am resolved to ask Oz to give me one. If he does, I will go back to the Munchkin maiden and marry her.
The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, pgs. 60-61
Dorothy’s final companion is my favorite, the Cowardly Lion. He starts out as nothing more than a big bully, knocking over the Scarecrow and the Tin Woodsman with a quick surprise attack to each of them. Then he seemingly threatens to eat Toto and Dorothy runs right up and slaps the Lion in the nose, telling him that he should be ashamed of himself for picking on someone so much smaller than him. She calls him a coward and he readily agrees, now as demur as a trained housecat after being stood up to be a little girl. Dorothy asks the Lion how he became a coward and he explains:
“It’s a mystery,” replied the Lion. “I suppose I was born that way. All the other animals in the forest naturally expect me to be brave, for the Lion is everywhere thought to be the King of Beasts. I learned that if I roared very loudly every living thing was frightened and got out of my way. Whenever I’ve met a man I’ve been awfully scared; but I just roared at him, and he has always run away as fast as he could go. If the elephants and the tigers and the bears had ever tried to fight me, I should have run myself—I’m such a coward; but just as soon as they hear me roar they all try to get away from me, and of course I let them go.”
[They then tell the Lion about their mission to go to the Wizard.]
“Then, if you don’t mind, I’ll go with you,” said the Lion, “for my life is simply unbearable without a bit of courage.”
“You will be very welcome,” answered Dorothy, “for you will help to keep away the other wild beasts. It seems to me they must be more cowardly than you are if they allow you to scare them so easily.”
“They really are,” said the Lion, “but that doesn’t make me any braver, and as long as I know myself to be a coward I shall be unhappy.”
The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, pgs. 68-70
You might ponder what these male companions have to teach a young woman about being a grown woman. The answer is a great deal. The Scarecrow cares a great deal about wisdom, education, knowledge, and intelligence. Without these things, without brains, you are nothing more than a fool. And fools are good for nothing to themselves or society. They can’t even do the simplest tasks, like frighten a crow away. The Tin Woodsman tempers that overwhelming drive to logic and cold rationality with empathy, kindness, protectiveness, service, and love. He is self-sufficient, working in the woods to get what he needs. But that also leaves him isolated when in times of need and suffering when tribulations come. The drive to make oneself safe by having a tough exterior will only lead to callousness, loneliness, and depression. All other things may disappoint, but a life spent in love of and service to others, does not disappoint. Charity never faileth.
The Cowardly Lion is a bully. He likes to use his immense size, reputation, and roar to terrorize people he encounters, to beat them up in order to make himself feel good. But deep beneath it all, he is miserable. Having no courage makes life unbearable. It means that all the wonderful things in life that require you to take risks – whether that be learning new hobbies, getting ever better jobs, meeting new people, going on dates, getting married, having children, being a parent, etc. – are all lost to you because you don’t have the courage to take the chances required by them. You end up in a life of self-loathing and you take that loathing out on others. If you want a life of satisfaction and meaning then you must have courage.
By seeing these men as they are, Dorothy learns what kind of men to avoid later in her life. When grown up she can avoid dating idiots and fools, cold and distant “tough men” (as opposed to true grit and endurance), and the blustering conmen who are really just bullies and cowards trying to manipulate those weaker and more ignorant than them. At the same time, she gets a crash course in the necessity of these traits in her life. If she wants to be a fully functional and successful woman then she must learn these traits. She must be intelligent and wise, independent and loving, brave and courageous. Dorothy gets to see her companions develop these traits in real time because one of the points of the story is that all three already have the nascent seeds of their desired traits which develop as each companion uses skills associated with those traits in order to overcome the trials they will all face together. By watching these skills develop in them, Dorothy is able to see how they are transformed by those traits and how she herself can develop those traits within her mind, heart, and body.
The Stork
On their way to the Emerald City, the company is forced to cross a river using a raft being poled by the Scarecrow. The river current gets to fierce and the pole gets stuck in the mud with the Scarecrow on it, leaving him behind. The rest of the company holds onto the ion’s tail as he swims to shore and pulls the raft behind him. But they have no ability to raft upstream to retrieve the Scarecrow, trapped on top of a pole in the middle of the river, nor the strength to haul the raft upstream on land and set it off to try and grab the Scarecrow from the current. The Scarecrow is stuck in the middle of a river he cannot swim because, as a creature of straw, he would be torn apart by the currents. Everyone is desperate to help him, but no one knows what to do.
Enter the Stork.
The Stork is one of the characters that never makes it into the movies. The Stork just happens to be flying by and alights on the banks beside them to take a drink. Seeing the company, the Stork asks them what is happening and Dorothy explains about the Scarecrow’s predicament. The Stork remarks that she wishes she could help, but mistaking the Scarecrow for a human, she thinks he is too heavy to lift. Dorothy reassures the Stork that the Scarecrow is actually very light because he is made of straw and the Stork agrees to try and carry him to shore. It is at this point that we find out the Stork’s gender for the first time as the story explains, “Then the Stork with her great claws grabbed the Scarecrow by the arm and carried him up into the air and back to the bank, where Dorothy and the Lion and the Tin Woodman and Toto were sitting.” (pg. 92, emphasis mine.) Upon safely landing, the Scarecrow promises that he will one day find her and do some great good in return to her for her aid here. She says he doesn’t need to do so because, “I always like to help anyone in trouble. But I must go now, for my babies are waiting in the nest for me. I hope you will find the Emerald City and that Oz will help you.” (ibid)
Then she flew away and never again enters any of the Oz tales.
There are a couple of genius things going on here.
One is an allusion to the idea that storks bring babies. Scarecrow may have the size of a man, but her has the intelligence and weight of a child. He is a newborn, not a week old yet. And he is delivered safely from the water to Dorothy and the rest of the company by a stork as a child is delivered after a mother’s “water” breaks. Secondly, the Stork serves as an example of noble motherhood to Dorothy, who herself is an orphan with no mother as an example to follow. Because storks nest in trees very close to water, it is likely that she had just come down from the nest for a drink and had not been traveling far from it.
Notice, this suggests then that one of her main duties, if not her main duty, is to stay at the nest and care for her children. But she sees a chance where she can help someone else, so she does so with little hesitation when she knows she can help. This shows Dorothy what little girls should do when they grow up, be mothers, and that they should be kind to strangers and be willing to serve and aid those in need even when she doesn’t know the people being served.
(A similar point is made with the Queen of the Field Mice in Chapter 10. After being rescued from danger by the Tin Woodsman, she helps him save Dorothy and the Lion from the poppy field because the Queen owed a life debt to the Woodsman. A person of good and noble character always pays her debts, even to those she sees as being beneath her in station.)
Motherhood, kindness, and service are the characteristics of a mature, noble female adult – stork or mouse or human.
The Wicked Witch of the West
After being told by the Wizard of Oz that he would only help them if they first helped him and all of Oz by killing the last remaining Wicked Witch of the West, a very hard but true lesson about the quid pro quo nature of the world and the truth that you do not have a right to demand that others help you no matter how pathetic your plight, the company sets off to find the Wicked Witch.
The Wicked Witch of the West (henceforth just “the Witch”) is a power mad dictator, a monster who enslaves entire races of people to her will, and carries out assassinations and murders without hesitation. Beyond being labelled wicked, her totalitarian nature is hinted at by her one good eye, which the text tells us, “was as powerful as a telescope, and could see everywhere.” (pg. 141) She is a living Panopticon, forcing the Winkies whom she has conquered to be , “aware of the presence of authority at all times, even though they never know exactly when they are being observed [and] discipline themselves [aka obey her edicts] simply because someone might be watching.” The outcome of this is that she, with her few loyal servants are able to dominate a much larger people, just as the structure of a prison allows a few guards to control thousands of prisoners. Upon seeing Dorothy and her Companions, the Witch decides they won’t make good slaves because they’re not “fit to work” and orders her evil wolf servants to tear them to shreds for the crime of being in “her country” without her leave. (pg. 141)
Repeatedly the Witch sends animals to kill Dorothy and her companions – first the wolves, then crows, then bees – and each one fails. She has perverted Nature to her corrupt purposes, but they can not triumph over the Virtue, Intelligence, Love, and Courage that Dorothy and her Companions represent. The Witch even sends a group of her enslaves Winkies to kill Dorothy and her Companions. The Lion frightens them away and when they return defeated they are “beat well with a strap, and sent them back to their work.” (pg. 145) It is at this point that the Witch uses the magical Golden Cap to command the race of the flying monkeys to kill everyone except the Lion, whom she plans to enslave. Compelled by magic, the flying monkeys obey, but they cannot harm Dorothy:
The leader of the Winged Monkeys flew up to her, his long, hairy arms stretched out and his ugly face grinning terribly; but he saw the mark of the Good Witch’s kiss upon her forehead and stopped short, motioning the others not to touch her.
“We dare not harm this little girl,” he said to them, “for she is protected by the Power of Good, and that is greater than the Power of Evil. All we can do is to carry her to the castle of the Wicked Witch and leave her there.”
So, carefully and gently, they lifted Dorothy in their arms and carried her swiftly through the air until they came to the castle, where they set her down upon the front doorstep.
…The Wicked Witch was both surprised and worried when she saw the mark on Dorothy’s forehead, for she knew well that neither the Winged Monkeys nor she, herself, dare hurt the girl in any way.
The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, pgs. 148-149
Unable to kill Dorothy, because Good is more powerful than all her evil, the Witch enslaves Dorothy as a houseslave doing the cooking and cleaning in the Witch’s castle. It is in this case that the Witch meets her death. While in the middle of a scheme to get the Silver Shoes (Ruby Slippers in the movie), the Witch gets one of the shoes after causing Dorothy to fall in the kitchen and a shoe falling off. As the Witch gloats about how she will take the other shoe to no matter how much Dorothy protests that it is her property, Dorothy is so upset that she grabs a nearby bucket of water and pours it on the Witch.
The Witch, exposed to the holy and cleansing power of water, melts like the demon she is and nothing is left but “a brown, melted, shapeless mass.” In one of my favorite bits of the story, seeing, “that she [the Witch] had really melted away to nothing, Dorothy drew another bucket of water and threw it over the mess. She then swept it all out the door. After picking out the silver shoe, which was all that was left of the old woman, she cleaned and dried it with a cloth, and put it on her foot again.” (pgs. 154-155)
The Witch is an archetypical presentation of the Devouring Mother and a perfect metaphor for the State.
The phrase the Devouring Mother is, “an analytical term referring to kind of this shadow side of the mother archetype. It’s somebody who consumes their children psychologically and emotionally instilling guilt in them for leaving or for becoming an independent autonomous human.” The Devouring Mother is a tyrant. She dominates the lives of her children, controlling every aspect of their lives. When the children protest or act to secure their own independence, she tortures them, typically through emotional and mental abuse, though physically abuse is not impossible either. Consequently, the Devouring Mother cripples her children. If by some miracle they reach adulthood capable of self-sufficiency, they will often be so crippled by the emotional and mental consequences of their maternal oppression and torture that they will be incapable of being successful people. That way they can be hers, forever.
This is what the Witch has done to an entire nation, Winkie Country. Her domination and oppression of the Winkies has rendered them useless. They have no courage, no bravery, no hope. When faced with the simple challenge of Dorothy and her Companions, whom the Winkies should have been able to overwhelm through sheer numbers alone, the Winkies run away in terror at a mere roar. Worse, the Winkies run back to the Witch, back to their enslavement to her every whim, back to their chains. She has devoured their future and crippled their independence for her own gain and power.
At a larger level, that is also what the State does to society. The larger, the more powerful, the more ever-seeing and ever-policing the government of a place becomes, the more crippled, weakened, enslaved, and indoctrinated the people become. The Nanny State is not a Mother caring lovingly for her children, a compassionate government caring for the masses. The Nanny State is a Devouring Mother consuming her children for the sake of being important and leaving them incapable of caring for themselves, taking the liberty and the people and making them dependent on the whims of those in power. The end result, in life and in fiction, is a society of willing slaves like the Winkies.
Final Thoughts
Throughout the book, Dorothy is confronted with numerous images of femininity and womanhood. She is shown what it means to be a great woman and mother as a horrific woman and a devourer of hope. Her final encounter is with Glinda the Good, who makes her first appearance in the book at its end. Glinda is described as being beautiful and kind, but her most important feature is the way that she empowers Dorothy to achieve her goals and frees the Winged Monkeys from their slavery. After explaining how she will help the Companions return to their new homes and kingdoms, Dorothy remarks about Glinda:
“You are certainly as good as you are beautiful! But you have not yet told me how to get back to Kansas.”
“Your Silver Shoes will carry you over the desert,” replied Glinda. “If you had known their power you could have gone back to your Aunt Em the very first day you came to this country.
…“The Silver Shoes,” said the Good Witch, “have wonderful powers. And one of the most curious things about them is that they can carry you to any place in the world in three steps, and each step will be made in the wink of an eye. All you have to do is to knock the heels together three times and command the shoes to carry you wherever you wish to go.”
…Glinda the Good stepped down from her ruby throne to give the little girl a good-bye kiss, and Dorothy thanked her for all the kindness she had shown to her friends and herself.
Dorothy now took Toto up solemnly in her arms, and having said one last good-bye she clapped the heels of her shoes together three times, saying:
“Take me home to Aunt Em!”
The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, pgs. 257-258
What makes Glinda a Good Witch? Well, she serves others and she empowers Dorothy to be independent and free. Glinda teaches Dorothy that she has the power in herself to achieve her goals and then, out of love as shown by her benedictory kiss, she steps back and lets Dorothy go to achieve what she has wanted the entire book – a way back home. Our final vision of Womanhood for Dorothy is that of the Mother, a woman who has made herself someone who prepares her children for success in the world as independent adults and, most importantly, as healthy and whole humans. The Mother knows the world is risk and instead of devouring her children and crippling their lives, the Mother enables and emboldens her children to face the dangers and fears of life successfully. The Mother is not tyrannical, she is liberating and her children go freely into the world to confront it and triumph over it. The Mother doesn’t remove risk, she raises children capable of facing risk and conquering it. It is fitting then that Glinda should be first seen sitting on a ruby throne dressed in white like an angel or saint, for the Mother of God is the ultimate symbol of the Mother.
The Wonderful Wizard of Oz has some incredibly important things to say to young girls and young women about who they are and who they may become. It provides warnings about the pitfalls that women face and shows the way towards empowerment, happiness, and success as a woman and helps children to learn to face the risks and dangers of life believing they can succeed. Wicked is just warmed over teen dystopia slathered in green and dressed up in the clothes of a much better property. No matter how catchy its music may be, its story is a plague better avoided. Indeed, catchy music is often just another vector to spread ideology to unsuspecting people.
A classic story has never been better than Wizard is Wicked. Don’t waste your time or money on the latter. Go out and find a beautiful edition of the original and enjoy something powerful, positive, meaningful, and entertaining.
I hadn’t ever thought about Wizard this way before. Really insightful article.
This is a great article! Wicked really does suck!