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© Franchesca Castano
The Wonderful Wizard of Oz: A Vision of feminism and American culture during turn-of-
the-century America
Senior Thesis
Spring 2009
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L. Frank Baum wrote The Wonderful Wizard of Oz during times of great change
in American society. In 1900, the year the book was published, not only was the country
expanding from East to West, but feminism was also becoming a powerful movement.
These two events, with the addition of a feminist mother-in-law, had a great deal of
influence on Baum while he was writing The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, and in its simple
and playful language there are more complex and thought provoking ideas. Through
Dorothy’s journey to the Emerald City, we are being shown the true power and independence of women and the emptiness of men, an image of American life that would make The Wonderful Wizard of Oz one of the most important works of children’s literature in American culture.
Through the character of Dorothy, Baum wanted to show that women can be strong on their own, and not just any women, but specifically women of the West. As
Baum wrote in the Aberdeen Saturday Pioneer, he admired Western women over those of the east because they “have more energy and vitality than those of the east, and … there is no nonsense or self pride in their constitutions and they cannot brook idleness when they see before them work to be done which is eminently fitted to their hands” (in
Baum 13). Western women displayed not only self reliance, but they also did not shy away from or avoid any type of work to be done. This is the type of woman who broke the norms of what a woman was supposed to be like. They were not the typical housewives who were concerned with the simple tasks of cleaning and caring for the Castano 3 children, but rather they worked the land in the way that a man would have done it. Their duties extended beyond the boundaries of the home.
Dorothy’s story is different from most because she is not like the traditional female protagonist who, according to Nina Baym, “has no ego, or a damaged one, and looks to the world to coddle and protect her ... She expects nothing from herself because she recognizes no inner capacities” (quoted in McReynolds). Dorothy is the complete opposite of this description. She does not look for the world to protect her because she is stranded in a foreign land with strangers, and even in that situation she is able to keep her head above water and do what she has to do on her own to get back to Kansas. And not only does she have to take care of and watch out for herself, but she has also taken on the task to get her three male companions safely to the Emerald City to get what they are looking for. Dorothy maintains her composure and instead of crawling into a corner, she confronts her problem with the confidence that she will get herself back home no matter what it takes. The description given by Baym would better fit Dorothy’s three companions, who obviously lacked any type of sense of self and were truly bewildered about any of their inner capacities.
The Tin Woodman searching for his heart, the Scarecrow searching for his brains, and the Cowardly Lion searching for courage all display lack of self-esteem and in fact are empty and useless men. In his monograph about the MGM film version of The
Wizard of Oz, Salman Rushdie is correct in comparing the Tin Woodman, the Scarecrow, and the Cowardly Lion to the “hollow men” in T.S. Eliot’s poem (Rushdie 48). It is these men “who find existence, and literal consciousness, only in relation to the female hero.
She makes caricatures of men into real ones, and does it without losing her own identity Castano 4
in theirs; surely this is a girl to be emulated” (McReynolds). Dorothy’s companions are only able to find out what they’re truly capable of through her. She provides for them not only the sensation that they are truly alive, but also a feeling of being needed and wanted.
Dorothy gives her companions a purpose in life which was completely void in them before they met her. Dorothy makes these men into the real men they have always strived to be. Once they gain the qualities which they search for, but in reality have always had, they feel as if they are complete men and are now fully content with themselves. Of course Dorothy does not provide the men with their missing qualities, but she is able to guide them on the journey to fulfilling their desires and at the same time she remains the same girl from Kansas who is simply trying to find her way back home.
The Tin Woodman, the Cowardly Lion, and the Scarecrow sharply contrast the usual ideas that men are confident, strong, and in other aspects superior to women. It is as if Baum is silencing these characters, as T.S. Eliot’s hollow men best describe it: “Our dried voices, when / We whisper together / Are quiet and meaningless” (Eliot). This would especially ring true with the Cowardly Lion, who had more of a bark than a bite.
His strong, fierce appearance was only a façade for the true wimp which hid behind it.
He can have the loudest roar, but it is truly quiet and meaningless because although his roar may be intimidating, this lion wouldn’t hurt a fly, as he himself states: “I learned that if I roared very loudly every living thing was frightened and got out of my way…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” (Baum 111). The Tin Woodman, the Cowardly Lion, and the
Scarecrow in fact had no voices and quite frankly their main voice was really Dorothy.
Dorothy was like their spokesperson, she was their guide and muse, and without her they Castano 5
would have remained silent forever. This female was the only one who took the time to
listen and help these poor, defenseless men when they needed it most. By making these
men so weak and fragile, and making Dorothy so strong and intelligent, Baum is showing
a clear approval towards feminism and the ideals that it encompassed.
Dorothy’s kindness and inherent innocence are the true driving force behind her
ability to help herself and her friends. She is very unselfish and does not request
anything in return for help; she is just grateful to have their company. Dorothy “makes
men whole by sharing with them her female self--her hopes, her dreams, her fears--not by
offering them her body. Her essential woman-ness, incompletely developed though it is,
still is enough to complete both the indecisive scarecrow and the robotic tin man”
(McReynolds). Although taking into consideration that this is a children’s novel, it must
be pointed out that Dorothy does not have to in any way sexually satisfy these men in order for them to feel complete or as if they are truly men. It goes beyond the physical.
Dorothy simply offers her mind, her thoughts, and her intellect to these men. Although
she is only a young girl, not anywhere close to adulthood, Dorothy’s mind is able to fill
these men with this wholeness that they are searching for. It takes a woman’s mind to
make these men feel as though they have gained a part of themselves that they never
encountered before.
It has already been established that Dorothy’s friends were not the most confident
people in the world, but at least they were aware of the emptiness which they felt within
themselves. There was one man who knew that he was void of any type of power but for
reasons of his own refused to accept it and chose to rather fool all the people who
surrounded him; this man of course is the “great” Wizard of Oz. A man feared by many, Castano 6
he was referred to as “terrible” and was feared by many far and wide. This came more as
a result of the fear of the unknown by the people than by an actual fear of the wizards’ actual physical presence, this being for the simple fact that no one knew what the wizard looked like. He had landed in Oz in a balloon and the people believed that this was a definite sign that he should be the ruler of the people of Emerald City. Believed to be the greatest wizard of the lands, Dorothy is told that he is her only ticket back to Kansas and her family, thus causing her to embark on her fabulous journey on the Yellow Brick
Road. Once she arrives there, the demand from the wizard for her getting back to Kansas was that she murder the Wicked Witch of the West. One would think that a man as powerful as he was supposed to be could accomplish such a task with no help, but instead he places this burden on the young Dorothy, knowing fully well that he would not be able to go through with his part of the deal.
When the task is accomplished and when the wizard’s true identity is finally revealed, there is much disappointment on the part of the travelers and perhaps on the part of the reader too. One comes to the realization that the Wizard of Oz is an emptier being than Dorothy’s companions on the journey. The Wizard may be suffering from an extreme case of an identity crisis, and the psychologist R.D. Laing believes that he actually “suffers from the psychological conflict between the Role, determined by society, and the Self, by the individual” (in Baum 271). His Role in society is that of a wizard, a man with superior magical powers that give him the ability to create and destroy anything and everything. His mysterious nature is intimidating to everyone and he feels the need to live up to this image which has been created for him by the citizens of Emerald City. His Self is the simple human being that he is, straight out of Kansas Castano 7
like Dorothy. By becoming this wizard and secluding himself from his own people he
has in a sense lost his own identity; he is no longer the man who floated into Emerald
City in his balloon. And so, this man has given up the life which he had before in Kansas
and seems in no rush to get back there because he is so entrapped by his newly found
“powers” and fame. He only remembers his home once he has been seen as a fraud in
Emerald City and all of a sudden finds the need to seek the comfort of his old hometown.
And as if Dorothy alone does not claim the crown here for the cause of
independent, powerful women, there are also the witches of the Land of Oz who cannot
be forgotten. There are two wicked witches, ruling the east and west respectively, and
two good witches, ruling over the lands of the north and the south. What is the
importance of these women witches? The fact that they have real magical powers in
comparison to the phony powers which were supposedly possessed by the Wizard says a
lot. A man had to fake his greatness in order to instill fear in the hearts of the inhabitants
of his country while these women are real and do not need to turn to such measures in
order to gain the authority over the lands they rule. This is another way in which Baum
makes the women the superior ones. The witches with all of their powers combined, or
even each alone, could easily destroy the Wizard, but because of his anonymity and
mysteriousness, they believe that he is in fact more powerful than them. It seems very
cowardly for the Wizard to have to protect himself from these women in this manner. He
is only making it more evident that the women here really run the show. He fears these
four women more than anything else and knows that if they ever discover the truth about
him they can destroy him faster than he became the Wizard of Oz. Once again, in this
situation, the women win the battle against the men. Castano 8
After all is said and done, “the Wizard of Oz demonstrates that the experiencing
of America is as much a girl's adventure as it is a boy's, and it suggests that a girl is
perhaps better suited intuitively to understand the significance of the experience, and to
learn from it and apply its lessons, than is a boy” (McReynolds). Females are entitled to
the same right of exploration as any man. As noted above, Dorothy was able to make her
journey just as well as if the story would have in contrast been characterized by a male
protagonist. The difference is that women are mentally more capable of making a
learning experience out of it. For a boy perhaps it would have simply been a fun journey,
another adventure with the boys, but the female experience is a much different one.
Dorothy’s experience was significant for all of us because she is the representation of
women being able to care for themselves, but at the same time she displays the sensitivity
of women upon yearning to return back home because she misses Aunt Em and Uncle
Henry. Her sensibility and ability to maintain her composure, innate female traits, help
her get herself and her companions to Emerald City to see the Wizard. For Dorothy it is
more than just a journey for brains, a heart, or courage; it is about her ability as a woman
to overcome the obstacles placed in her path to reach the ultimate goal she wishes to
accomplish: going back to Kansas.
To better understand Dorothy’s character and her significance perhaps it would be
useful to compare her to another female protagonist during the times in which Dorothy
was introduced into American culture. Four years before The Wonderful Wizard of Oz
was published, children had been introduced to the character of Alice in the book Alice’s
Adventures in Wonderland written by Lewis Carroll. Just like Dorothy, Alice finds
herself in a magical world not her own after she falls into a rabbit hole. Alice’s Castano 9
Adventures in Wonderland may have played a role in Baum’s choosing a female
protagonist for his story, and his reasoning for this may be in a passage he wrote in his
article “Modern Fairy Tales”:
Singularly enough, we have no recognized author of fairy literature
between Andersen and that of Lewis Carroll, the quaint and clever
clergyman who recorded Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. Carroll’s
method of handling fairies was as whimsical as Andersen’s was
reverential, yet it is but fair to state that children loved Alice better than
any prince or princess that Andersen ever created. The secret of Alice’s
success lay in the fact that she was a real child, and any normal child could
sympathize with her all through her adventures. The story may often
bewilder the little one ― for it is bound to bewilder us, having neither plot
nor motive in its relation ― but Alice is doing something every moment,
and doing something strange and marvelous, too; so the child follows her
with rapturous delight. (quoted in Baum 12)
Dorothy and Alice are both trying to use their basic instincts to decipher a way out of the world which they have both been transported to, but there are inherent differences between these two girls and these differences might point to why Dorothy has become more of a prominent figure not only for feminism, but also in American culture in general. As novelist Alison Laurie notes in “The Fate of the Munchkins,” these differences come down to the fact that Alice is “an upper-middle-class Victorian child,
[who] is far more concerned with manners and social status … glad she doesn’t have to
live in a pokey little house like Mabel. Dorothy already lives in this pokey little house” Castano 10
(quoted in Hearn 12-13). Dorothy is a true example of the struggle. She is not born with
a silver spoon in her mouth or even in the most comfortable of economic situations, and
she lives in a simple little house on the Kansas prairie. She is a farm girl, while Alice, on
the other hand, lives the middle class life and is English, not American. Dorothy’s
“American-ness” and the fact that her real life outside of Oz is a daily struggle make her
a stronger female protagonist than her counterpart Alice.
As G. Stanley Hall explains the situation of women in Baum’s society, “An ideal or typical male is hard to define, but there is a standard ideal woman,” and these women
“were trying to escape this destiny and [were] starting to desire just as men did” (quoted
in Culver 615). Just like Dorothy, women in American society were seeking to be
independent and free to discover many aspects of their lives on their own. This was unacceptable because there was already a set notion about how women had to be. Men could play any role in any society; they were not expected to act in any certain manner, for example as women were expected to be mothers and housewives. This freedom to be whoever they wanted to be is what women sought more than anything; they no longer
wished to have their desires suppressed because of the simple fact that there were not
born male.
Much of this hint of feminism may have found its way into the story with the
influence of Matilda Joslyn Gage, Baum’s mother-in-law. Matilda Gage helped draft the
Women’s Bill of Rights and together with Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton
she co-authored The History of Women's Suffrage (1881-1886) (Barrera). Gage’s
“influence as an activist suffragist and dedicated freedom fighter played an important role
in the development of the heroine who would come to be known worldwide as Dorothy," Castano 11
and the effect of her influence on Baum “clearly influenced his decision to create an
American icon in the form of a little girl, and not another boy in the tradition of Tom
Sawyer or Huckleberry Finn” (Barrera). To have such a strong personality in one’s life
must definitely have some type of an effect on a person. Matilda Gage was someone of strong character who stuck to her ideals concerning the fight for women’s rights and their quest for equality. Perhaps little Dorothy in some way, shape, or form somehow resembles Gage herself, not in physical characteristics, but in Dorothy’s unrelenting spirit
and her strength of mind as a female.
This strong-minded, no nonsense woman is just the type who would make
Elizabeth Cady Stanton proud. Stanton was a power in the feminist movement during the
years in which Baum was writing his novel and was taking in the American experience.
Throughout her life Stanton constantly struggled for equality between men and women,
with the belief that “man’s intellectual superiority cannot be a question until woman has
had a fair trial” (Stanton 29). During these times women were considered to be inferior
to men both mentally and physically. Stanton fully believed that women could think and
perform tasks in just the same manner as men. Women had not been given the chance to
prove themselves; as a matter of fact, they were never really given the opportunity
because things such as education were only offered to the men in society, therefore it is
obviously unfair to simply accept the superiority of men without having given women the
chance to show that they too can be valuable members of society.
Stanton believed that women are such valuable members of society that “the
world has never yet seen a truly great and virtuous nation, because in the degradation of
woman the very fountains of life poisoned at their source” (Stanton 35). Men are the Castano 12
poison of society. Their injustices against women are creating a society that is not honorable and at its foundation proves to be very toxic. Until women are given their equal rights and are given the treatment and opportunities which are afforded to men, there will be no worthy or honest nations to be found in this world. This strong
degradation of women is only one form of evidence that women during these times had
no voice, and were only silent observers of the happenings in society, thus displaying the
significance of Dorothy as the main figure and leader of men in Baum’s novel. With
Elizabeth Cady Stanton came the change from viewing women’s education on the basis
of “special domestic responsibilities and unique moral position” (Stanton 3) to pushing
for the all out intellectual and overall equality of the sexes. Women were not just
housewives who did the cooking and cleaning, but they were called upon to become
involved in the politics and decision making processes that affected their societies.
Let me speak now of the setting chosen for this book, the prairies of Kansas. In
the beginning of the story Baum gives us this description of the land:
When Dorothy stood in the doorway and looked around, she could see
nothing but the great gray prairie on every side. Not a tree or a house
broke the broad sweep of flat country that reached the edge of the sky in
all directions. The sun had baked the plowed land into a gray mass, with
little cracks running through it. Even the grass was not green, for the sun
had burned the tops of the long blades until they were the same gray color
to be seen everywhere. Once the house had been painted, but the sun
blistered the paint and the rains washed it away, and now the house was as
dull and gray as everything else. (Baum 18) Castano 13
Apparently Kansas was not a very fun place to live and it seems void of any life at all
with the exception of Dorothy, Toto, Aunt Em, and Uncle Henry. The most exciting
thing to have happened in this town was the cyclone that swept Dorothy off to the Land
of Oz, and even this was not a source of joy but a force which caused destruction and
fear. So dreary was this place that it even changed Aunt Em’s physical appearance; when
she first got there she was young and pretty but then sun and wind had taken the sparkle
from her eyes, the red from her cheeks and lips, she was thin and gaunt and never smiled.
(Baum 18). It must have been tough to live in such a place that slowly sucks the life out
of you, but was the real Kansas just as dull and grey?
Rural life in the real Kansas was similar to that Baum described in the book.
People did not live comfortably at all and in fact,
sod houses and dugouts were the first residences for many homesteaders.
Credited with being warm in the winter and cool in the summer, soddies
also had their share of discomforts. Dirt, bugs, mice, and snakes
frequented the roof, often sending a shower of debris upon the inhabitants.
One woman remembered a dinner during which a snake fell from the
ceiling onto the meat platter. This unpleasant event, unfortunately, was not
an isolated incident. (Kansas State Historical Society)
The living conditions described here are similar to the conditions in which Dorothy lived as she lived in a very small house on the farm. Women also suffered greatly due to these conditions and the fact that they lived very lonely lives considering they had to travel miles in order to find someone who they could talk to and keep them company. This is attributed to the fact that “many were left alone for days and weeks while their husbands Castano 14
made business trips to town or took on other jobs, such as hauling freight or breaking sod,
to supplement the family income” (Kansas State Historical Society). Many times these
women were left to remain on the farm and take care of the household chores and also
watch over their children. This lonely life must have been extremely boring and cumbersome and in that way it is comparable to the grey and dull Kansas described by
Baum.
But this rural life was not all that existed in Kansas, or any of the West for that
matter. There were areas of these territories that were beginning to become urbanized.
“The period from 1870 to 1920 witnessed a rapid expansion of rail transportation that spurred additional urban growth and development in the Midwest” (Sisson 155).
Technology such as the rail systems enabled farmers to transport their crops to other parts of the country and make a living from that. Also, people were now better able to travel across the country, therefore in a sense making the country smaller and more accessible to everyone. Now there was more transportation and ability for people to get off of the farms once in a while and visit a town or some relatives in another part of the country.
This perhaps made life much less lonely and monotonous for everyone living in the
Western United States.
While many Kansans were upset with Baum’s portrayal of their state, Thomas
Fox Averill argues that “they should at least appreciate that Baum also gave them
Dorothy, a person strong enough, with enough brains, heart, and courage to endure the bleak and forbidding Kansas he created. Ha also gave us a big portion of Kansas folklore, and a genuine part of the Kansas and American mind” (quoted in Baum 16). I agree with Averill. If I were from Kansas I would be mighty proud that the place that Castano 15
I’m from has become immortalized in one of the most important works of literature in
American culture. Although Baum painted a dark picture of Kansas in the context of the story I’m pretty sure that it was for his own artistic and creative purposes. I do not think that Baum meant his description in a downgrading manner as much as it was used for a more vivid view of Dorothy’s life at the beginning of the story. Kansas is an integral part of Dorothy’s life and therefore it should be portrayed in the most detailed manner possible. Baum could have chosen any other place in the world, not even just in the
United States, as the place Dorothy would yearn to return to, and that would have made me an extremely proud Kansan.
We get another portrait of Kansas from Oz the Great and Terrible as he too was once a native of Kansas before landing in the Emerald City in his balloon. The Kansas he describes is more vivid and lively than the Kansas that Dorothy is from. He speaks of a place where with the training of a master he became a ventriloquist and also a balloonist,
“a man who goes up in a balloon on circus day to draw a crowd of people together and get them to pay to see the circus” (Baum 266). The inhabitants of this Kansas are more abundant than the place that is described at the beginning of the book. There are forms of entertainment such as the circus that encourage the gathering of many people. In this description the loneliness and emptiness of the place where Dorothy is from are omitted and replaced with images of happiness and enjoyment in varied activities. I believe that
Baum uses Dorothy to represent the life of farmers in Kansas and the Wizard represents what it was like for people who lived in the more urbanized areas of Kansas.
During this era in the United States there was also an influx of European immigrants coming into the country and some of these Europeans were beginning to Castano 16
settle the lands in the West. When these Europeans arrived in the West, there were
already Native Americans inhabiting these areas, and as a result of this “a new reservation policy emerged in the 1860s and 1870s … it involved attempts to transform
indigenous peoples into Christianized farmers and housewives, who possessed a concept
of private property according to a European pattern” (Morin 313). The Europeans were
so adamant about taking the indigenous people’s land that they slowly began to drive
them off of it by placing them into these reservations.
A mention of this social condition can be found during Dorothy’s travels into the Dainty
China Country. The land is full of ceramic people who can easily be broken by a simple
touch or a small fall. In this country Dorothy encounters a china princess and expresses to her that she is beautiful and she would love to take the china princess back to Kansas with her and place her on Aunt Em’s mantle-shelf. The china princess tells Dorothy that if she takes her away she would be unhappy because “here in our country we live contentedly, and can talk and move around as we please. But whenever any of us are taken away our joints at once stiffen, and we can only stand straight and look pretty”
(Baum 327). The Native Americans did not wish to be displaced from their lands. This
was their form of living, and they were entitled to it considering that they were there way
before the Europeans. Just like the china people Dorothy encounters, the Native
Americans will no longer be able to “talk and move around” as they please once they are
placed into the reservations. Their area of living becomes so much more restricted than
what it used to be that they can no longer live the normal lives with the freedom they had once enjoyed. Castano 17
The Land of Oz becomes a sharp contrast to the Kansas prairie that was Dorothy’s
beloved home. Upon landing in the Land of Oz, Dorothy encounters a land that is filled with beauty and color:
The cyclone had set the house down, very gently―for a cyclone―in the
midst of a country of marvelous beauty. There were lovely patches of
greensward all about, with stately trees bearing rich and luscious fruits.
Banks of gorgeous flowers were on every hand, and birds with rare and
brilliant plumage sang and fluttered in the trees and bushes. A little way
off was a small brook, rushing and sparkling along between green banks,
and murmuring in a voice very grateful to a little girl who had lived so
long on the dry, gray prairies. (Baum 175)
This is a place where anyone would desire to live, the center of all the glamour and
extravagant amenities of life that could only be dreamt about. And no less spectacular
than this was the Emerald City, the home of the Wizard of Oz. Before entering this city,
Dorothy and her companions are instructed to put on green spectacles in order to protect
their eyes from the brightness of the emerald-filled city. Although everything in this
place is green and monochrome, it is not in a dull manner: the whole city is bright and
shimmering, not like Kansas which is also monochrome but in a boring manner. It is said
that Baum’s Emerald City may have been “inspired by the White City, the ideally
designed metropolis of the 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago” (quoted in
Baum 176).
Baum keeps the idea of a perfect city alive through his representation of the
Emerald City, and the Land of Oz in general may represent “a fond farewell for a time Castano 18
when agrarianism was a cornerstone of American industry but also a pleased recognition
that technology has come to stay and to rule” (Barrett). America was making its shift
towards becoming more of an industrialized country with newer technologies such as
electricity, weapons, and the use of iron and steel. The brightness of the Emerald City
could correlate with the American’s new found use for electricity. The Land of Oz is
very technological in appearance, especially when compared to Kansas, and above all,
the people living in the Land of Oz are happy with the lives they live. This shows not
only acceptance for the technological age that has arrived, but also a sense of conformity
with this new style of living. The inhabitants of the Land of Oz are certainly more joyful
than Aunt Em and Uncle Henry.
One of the interesting facets of this story is how it has become ingrained in
American culture. One of the explanations is that we can all somehow relate to at least
one of the characters in the story. The fact that people would most relate with is that
Dorothy and the Wizard are both from Kansas. They are not from some made-up fairy
land in a place that we have never heard of, but they are American citizens. This must
have definitely struck a chord with all those who identified themselves as being
American, especially those Americans living in the West. And in fact, Baum’s portrayal
of Kansas had such an effect on American culture that Kansas increased money for
advertising in order to “combat the image of Kansas as the dusty, black-and-white
landscape portrayed in The Wizard of Oz” (quoted in Nathanson 302). Dorothy lived the life that would have been lived by many others at that time. She was a simple girl from
Kansas, and this made readers better able to identify with the main character of the story.
As Salman Rushdie points out, the fact that the Scarecrow, the Lion, and the Tin Man are Castano 19 so empty, “makes them our size, or even smaller, so that we can stand amongst them as equals” (Rushdie 49). They too are simple human beings. They are not perfect, as shown by their lack of qualities, and this makes them like any person who does not appreciate the full potential of their true abilities.
And this leads to the simplest message portrayed in the book: “We already possess what we seek most fervently” (Rushdie 49). The Scarecrow had brains because he came up with idea for getting across the ditch in the forest; the Lion had courage because he protected his friends from the Kalidahs in the forest; the Tin Woodman had a heart because he had become rusted on occasion from crying. Just like these characters, we frequently downplay our greatest potentials and do not fully appreciate all of the talents which we possess. Any person reading this story, or after having watched the movie, would look deep inside of themselves and realize that they may already have what they have been long searching for. So in the end we have all once upon a time been
Dorothy. We have wanted to escape the difficulties of home for a place where we are understood and life is not so dark. It is for this reason that The Wonderful Wizard of Oz has left its mark on the hearts of American adults and children alike and its stamp on
American culture for generations to come. Being able to relate to the characters and the setting of the story gives the book its ability to infiltrate so many people’s lives.
As Henry M. Littlefield explains it:
The Wizard has become a genuine piece of American folklore because,
knowing his audience, Baum never allowed the consistency of the allegory
to take precedence over the theme of youthful entertainment. Yet, once
discovered, the author’s allegorical intent seems clear, and it gives depth Castano 20
and lasting interest even to children who only sense something else
beneath the surface of the story. Consider the fun in picturing turn-of-the-
century America, a difficult era at best, using these ready-made symbols
provided by Baum. (58)
Learning is meant to be a fun experience, and often that is how most people learn things best, especially lessons concerning being a better person or taking a journey on the road to self-discovery. The boredom is removed and Baum accomplished his task of writing a novel free of morality and fear, “solely to pleasure the children of today…in which the wonderment and joy are retained and the heart-aches and nightmares are left out” (Baum
4). Children are able to learn their lessons through enjoyable characters who are not trying to instill some type of fear in their hearts. Any child, or even an adult who is a child at heart, would find pleasure in accompanying Dorothy in her journey and meeting such cute characters as the Munchkins and the ceramic figurines of the Dainty China
Country. This fact along with the others mentioned above became the main catapults for
The Wizard of Oz becoming the “modernized fairytale.”
It becomes modernized because its style of teaching and the personalities of the characters differ greatly from other children’s literature of the nineteenth century. The novels of the nineteenth century were very pedagogical in nature and
Rejecting earlier assumptions about the innate perfidy of all creatures born
of woman, late-eighteenth- and early-nineteenth-century children's novels
assumed that the young were both reasonable and docile. With tedious
didacticism, these books portrayed stable and rational parents who, usually
in kindly manner and according to good Lockean principles, established Castano 21
circumstances in which the tractable children could experience lessons
that would serve them in life. The premise of these benign but dull
volumes was that "self-regulated citizens formed the basis of social order."
(Neumeyer)
If a child was to become a proper member of society the education began at the earliest age possible. The purpose of these novels was not to fill their lives with color and joy, but rather to instruct them on how to behave as appropriately as possible and also teach them lessons that would help them make right decisions and lead them on the correct paths in life. The children’s parents also played an integral part in their child’s education, but the novels were used as reinforcement for that teaching. Baum decreases this monotony in the literature of the day and the introduction to The Wonderful Wizard of Oz was a “manifesto for the new century, demanding the liberation of American children's books from the domination of European juvenile literature” (Hearn). He presents a novel full of color and magical cities that could be found in the imagination of any child. The
Wonderful Wizard of Oz does contain valuable lessons just like the other literature of the nineteenth century, but these lessons are presented in a livelier form and with characters that are just as bright, amusing, and joyful as the young children reading the novel.
The Wonderful Wizard of Oz has found its niche among the classic and most timeless pieces of American literature. Although it is a novel written for the enjoyment of children, it transgresses all age barriers and provides a meeting point where young, old, and those in-between can come together as one. Through his novel Baum is able to project the situation being lived by many Americans and the socio-political atmosphere of the nineteenth century, things such as feminism, rural and urban life, and the situation Castano 22
of Native Americans being displaced from their lands. It is in this children’s work of
literature that we get the picture of the American experience and identity of the nineteenth century, an American identity that will resonate for years to come through
Dorothy, the Tin Woodman, the Scarecrow, the Cowardly Lion, and the Wizard of Oz who never really was.
Castano 23
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