The Wonderful Wizard of Oz (Signet Classics) - L. Frank Baum [4]
Where Alice grows and then shrinks throughout Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, Dorothy remains physically consistent. But because the world around Dorothy is populated by creatures large and small, her perspective on herself changes.
Unlike her upper-class English counterpart, Alice, Dorothy always knows who she is—she doesn’t have an existential crisis, wondering whether she can be forced to turn into someone else by the pressure of external forces. Although she might be surprised when encountering the Munchkins, or the Winkles, or the land of small China figurines, the only thing that really changes about Dorothy is her footwear—altering her soles, not her soul. (N.B.: Baum was enamored of puns, so I should not be blamed for this arch observation.) And, unlike her European fairy-tale predecessor Cinderella, Dorothy doesn’t desire the silver slippers (not ruby—that was MGM’s colorful alteration) because they effect a change in the wearer’s status. The most important thing about the shoes as far as Dorothy is concerned is that they fit properly.
The simple reason Dorothy decides to swap her own shoes for the silver slippers is not because she is enthralled by their beauty or seduced by their worth, but because she thinks that being made of metal, and therefore not needing to be reheeled so often, “they would be just the thing to take a long walk in, for they would not wear out” (p. 20). And with their previous owner now flattened under the floorboards of Dorothy’s house, the slippers would have remained unused. This working-class Kansas girl’s sense of economic expedience triumphs. And it is this very expedience that will, finally, allow Dorothy’s wishes to be granted.
When we compare this to Cinderella’s glass slippers, we have an obvious illustration of yet another difference between Dorothy and traditional female heroines: Dorothy is not looking for beauty, daintiness, or fragility associated with traditional femininity. Too busy observing and being caught up in the world around her, she has very little time to be unduly self-indulgent. Indeed, Dorothy seems to be more mature, self-reliant, and in control of her feelings than the other creatures she encounters. Self-sufficient and yet able to ask for help as well as to be taken care of when she needs it, Dorothy is quite simply attempting to solve her problems and stick up for her rights (and those of her friends) in her quest for home. Not self-absorbed but instead self-possessed, the little girl in Baum’s novel happily lacks the sense of morbid dependency we have for too long associated with depictions of conventional femininity.
Not that Dorothy is incapable of performing the usual domestic tasks equated with femininity, however. When the Wicked Witch of the West (“I can still make her my slave, for she does not know how to use her power” [p. 125]) forces Dorothy into the most terrifying of all situations—housework—Dorothy makes the best of it. A basically tidy and efficient girl, she scrubs the “pots and kettles” and washes the floors. Only when she is infuriated by the Witch’s theft of one of her silver shoes does Dorothy throw the bucket of water on her (“You are a wicked creature! ... You have no right to take my shoe from me.”) The Witch, for whom Dorothy cleans, ends up becoming dust herself, melting down into a kind of evil goo. Dorothy, being the meticulous and orderly child she is, merely throws more water over the mess and sweeps the Wicked Witch out of the door (“Seeing that she really had melted away to nothing, Dorothy drew another bucket of water and threw it over the mess. She then swept it all out the door” [p. 129]).
Throughout the novel, Dorothy is determined to explore, to discover, and even to enjoy the extraordinary. The primary reason she wants to go home in The Wizard of Oz is because she doesn’t want to cause her family economic hardship: “Aunt Em will surely think something dreadful has happened to me, and that will make her put on mourning; and unless