The Wonderful Wizard of Oz (Signet Classics) - L. Frank Baum [2]
Dorothy is an innocent, and because—not in spite—of her innocence, she is powerful. She doesn’t know that there are any choices, so she can’t make any bad ones. She does not whine; she does not whimper. The phrases “Why me?” or “Poor me!” are nowhere in the book; there is only one thing Dorothy wants to know: “What do we do now?”
After all, Dorothy is the orphan child emerging out of an unyielding, cracked, infertile land. She is entrusted to one relative who is “thin and gaunt” who “never smiled,” a woman 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 another who “worked from morning till night and did not know what joy was. He was gray also, from his long beard to his rough boots, and he looked stern and solemn, and rarely spoke” (p. 3). Dorothy’s short and brutal existence is relieved only by the delight she takes in her steadfast companion, Toto: “It was Toto that made Dorothy laugh, and saved her from growing as gray as her other surroundings” (p. 3).
(Toto’s impact on the novel cannot be overestimated. Gita Dorothy Morena, Baum’s great-granddaughter, declares as much in a piece she wrote for The Wisdom of Oz (1998): “Without Toto, Dorothy would never have discovered the way home. Her rush to save him from the storm initiates her journey to Oz. Later, chasing Toto rather than accepting the balloon ride home protects her from becoming caught forever in the Wizard’s illusion of power. It is Toto who discovers the humbug hiding behind a screen, and Toto prevents Dorothy from flying off in his repaired balloon. Well-intentioned witches and wizards must not interfere with Dorothy. She must find the means within for saving herself. The impetus and guidance for her success in Oz is sparked by her devotion to Toto and her strong instinctive responses to life’s circumstances.”)
Despite her hardships, Dorothy continues to expect a good deal from the world—quite literally. She expects people to honor their promises. And even though she does not expect life to be fair, and this paradoxical set of expectations is what makes her a remarkable character.
When the cyclone sweeps her up into the air, for example, Dorothy doesn’t find it particularly frightening: “The house whirled around two or three times and rose slowly through the air. Dorothy felt as if she were going up in a balloon.... Dorothy sat quite still on the floor and waited to see what would happen” (pp. 4-5). The tornado gently rocks Dorothy to sleep as if she and Toto are on a long flight seated in business class: “as the hours passed and nothing terrible happened, she stopped worrying and resolved to wait calmly and see what the future would bring” (p. 7).
Understanding that panic, misery, and self-pity will do her no good whatsoever, Dorothy settles down and goes to sleep. When she thinks that Toto might be swept into the maelstrom, she doesn’t panic, but instead grabs his ear, drags him inside, and firmly closes the trapdoor so that no future accidents can occur. There is no self-pity at all in Dorothy’s character; unlike a hand-wringing maiden, she does not sit around waiting for rescue. Instead she remains focused on her desire to return home even when there are myriad temptations for her to start a new home elsewhere (which she actually does in a later Baum book, The Emerald City of Oz, published in 1910: Dorothy packs up her aunt and uncle and moves them to Oz. Apparently the garden looks good to Eve after all).
Baum reassures us that, when she lands in Oz, the cyclone having “set the house down, very gently—for a cyclone—in the midst of country of marvelous beauty” (p. 10), “the sun shone bright and the birds sang sweet and Dorothy did not feel nearly as bad as you might think a little girl would who had been suddenly whisked away from her own country and set down in the midst of a strange land” (p. 21). Although Dorothy can’t control