THE WONDERFUL WIZARD OF OZ by L Frank Baum (1900)

★ ★ ★ .5

Dec 04, 2024

∙ Paid

“Which road leads to the Wicked Witch of the West?” asked Dorothy.
“There is no road,” answered the Guardian of the Gates; “no one ever wishes to go that way.”
“How, then, are we to find her?” inquired the girl.
“That will be easy,” replied the man; “for when she knows you are in the Country of the Winkies she will find you, and make you all her slaves.”
“Perhaps not,” said the Scarecrow, “for we mean to destroy her.”
“Oh, that is different,” said the Guardian of the Gates. “No one has ever destroyed her before, so I naturally thought she would make slaves of you, as she has of all the rest. But take care; for she is wicked and fierce, and may not allow you to destroy her. Keep to the West, where the sun sets, and you cannot fail to find her.”

title: The Wonderful Wizard of Oz

author: L Frank Baum

illustrator: WW Denslow

introduction: Jack Zipes

published: 1900

publisher: George M Hill Company

genre: classic children’s literature

setting: Kansas & Oz

main themes/subjects: there’s no place like home, not realizing that what you want most is what you already have, friendship, goodness vs wickedness, mutual aid & community care, humbugs & con-men, knowing your own heart

tropes: rag-tag band of friends on a quest, magical voyage to a fantasy land, talking animals, wicked witch, magical objects

representation: Baum was disabled (heart condition)

“Hour after hour passed away, and slowly Dorothy got over her fright; but she felt quite lonely, and the wind shrieked so loudly all about her that she nearly became deaf. At first she had wondered if she would be dashed to pieces when the house fell again; but as the hours passed and nothing terrible happened, she stopped worrying and resolved to wait calmly and see what the future would bring.”

page 1 in the facsimile copy of *The Wonderful Wizard of Oz*

my thoughts: I grew up with the 1939 screen adaptation but I don’t think I ever read or was read the book, at least, not that I can remember, so this was my first time reading it. I read the penguin classics edition with the Introduction by Jack Zipes on ebook while following along with this facsimile edition of the original 1900-published first edition of the book. I loved being able to see the originally intended layout for the story with Denslow’s amazing illustrations in the facsimile but the quality of the book itself was a bit lacking (a bit sloppy—off-center/crooked scans, the top & bottom photo-copy-looking bars, some wavy image resolution, & some duplicate pages…) just fyi.

I was much more interested in Zipes’s Introduction & Explanatory Notes from the penguin classics edition than I was in the story itself. In fact, my only real motivation for reading the story in the first place was because I was planning on reading Gregory Maguire’s Wicked and wanted to read the original first. The first paragraph in Zipes’s Introduction immediately drew me in:

“Home Sweet Home. When Dorothy Gale returns to Kansas at the end of her adventures in the Land of Oz, she declares that there is no place like home, and she appears content to be back on the farm with her Aunt Em and Uncle Henry. The MGM film based on The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, with which most people are nowadays more familiar than the novel, reiterates this message about home sweet home. But it is all a lie. Dorothy does not yet know what home is, and only those readers familiar with L. Frank Baum’s fourteen fairy-tale novels about Oz know that home cannot be found in America. Home is Oz, a transcendent utopian paradise, that must be protected from America.”

I went into this book not knowing what to expect from a work of “classic” children’s literature written by a white male settler from the mid-west (who I later found out actually came from a wealthy family back east) but this opening paragraph to Zipes’s Introduction immediately got my attention.

Throughout both the Introduction & the story itself I picked up on quite a few similarities between Baum & Tolkien particularly re: their views on fairy stories & their conceptualization of their respective worlds. It made me wonder if Tolkien had read any of Baum’s works?

In many ways TWWOO felt a bit like the american version of Tolkien’s fairy stories. There was apparently some speculation among early readers of Baum’s story as to whether Oz is the moon, or a different planet, or a hidden continent on earth somewhere… but according to Zipes we learn in The Tin Woodman of Oz (1918) that Oz was once an ordinary country & became a fairyland when it was enchanted by Queen Lurline … Only “chosen” people are allowed to visit and stay in this country. Which 1) sounds very much like a Fairy Land according to Tolkien’s conceptualization of the place & 2) even has some though not all parallels with Tol Eressea / Númenor / Valinor… Although there are multiple situations in Baum’s story (such as the destruction of trees, even evil ones) that you would never find in a Tolkien book—that’s orc work for sure. In fact there were a couple moments of philosophical dissonance in Baum’s story (that I’ll discuss later) along these lines…

I also thought the China Country had strong Alice in Wonderland & Nutcracker vibes & apparently the parallels between Dorothy & Alice were intentional on Baum’s part.

But something else I thought was interesting was LFB’s alleged claim that he wanted to leave all the “terrible stuff” out of his fairy tales but then he writes a story about a woodsman who is cursed to chop off his own arms & legs & even his head which feels very much like your classic terrible Grimm fairy tale.

“This is one of the few incidents of violence in Baum’s Oz books. Whenever he could, he avoided horror and cruelty. But his tales would have been boring without dangerous and evil creatures seeking to undermine the utopian principles of democracy in Oz. Therefore, at times, wicked and sadistic characters are graphically destroyed.” (Explanatory notes)

I think my argument here is also that I didn’t really buy the “wicked” & “sadistic” characters—especially the animal ones—so their deaths felt worse than merited imo (i.e. the Tinman killing the yellow wild-cat & the wolves by chopping their heads off, the Scarecrow wringing / breaking the necks of the crows, &c.). Also the scene where the monkeys drop the Tinman on the rocks was pretty graphic. So I’m critical of LFB’s claimed intention to leave out all the “bad bits.”

I think the main hang-up I faced in delving into Baum’s story were the allegations of his anti-Indigenous sentiments which tbh I was equal parts concerned & confused by because from all angles he seemed to be modeling his utopian fantasy off of Indigenous social structure & gift-economy—also / especially the matriarchal power-structure, the emphasis on the sanctity of nature, mutual aid, community-first ideologies (i.e. the Stork stopped to help them just because he likes to help when he can & doesn’t ask for or accept repayment of any kind) &c.

So I looked up more about his anti-Indigenous comments—cited in two articles he wrote for a newspaper in North Dakota—& apparently they may have been satirical à la Jonathan Swift because Baum’s mother-in-law was actually apparently adopted into the Wolf Clan of the Mohawk Nation in South Dakota, was a fierce advocate for Indigenous rights, & was living with her daughter & Baum at the time too, & in countless other places there is a lot about Baum admiring, following, & being inspired by his mother-in-law in a lot of her values, beliefs, & activities.

Basically in his satirical letters to the newspapers he says (though perhaps too vaguely since it seems like academics overwhelming take the “we can’t be sure” interpretation) that the settlers had treated the Native Nations so fucking bad that the settlers better either “finish the job” or expect to be annihilated themselves—which if you take it as satirical would suggest that Baum is really saying that the settlers deserve whatever happens to them in response to the murder of Sitting Bull / the Wounded Knee massacre, etc. And if you look at this footnote for Ch. 11, Footnote #11 - “Civilized America always loses in the end” - it does seem like he fully expected that to be the (just & deserved) outcome.

Perhaps. But he could have been a lot more explicit, right? (See my expanded annotations for more themes academics claim he could have gone harder on re: anti-capitalism.) Although while Swift’s suggestion of eating babies might (might!) be more “obviously” satirical, perhaps folks didn’t clock Baum’s satire due to their own deeply internalized anti-Indigenous racism? (I could definitely buy that based on the things I’ve seen even 100 years later…) Of course, there could be more evidence for his opinions elsewhere, & which I haven’t found yet, that could shed more light on this.

However if his letters/articles were satirical then that would track with why his books lean so far into alignment with Indigenous ideology—especially re: the gift economy, social structure, tradition of matriarchal power & leadership, &c.—& also the fact that he was on excellent terms with his mother-in-law who was “adopted” (whatever that actually means idk) by the Wolf Clan of the Mohawk Nation.

If he was genuine in his anti-Indigenous sentiment, however, & was channeling more of that Marxist / socialist ideological bent etc. then I would voice my issue with such modes of thought in that they so often feel like they are just trying to re-invent Indigenous models of life & community, modes of thought, particularly re: economic practices & social structures but without the important cultural & spiritual elements that allow Indigenous systems to work for everyone & why socialist / communist systems—particularly in western or western colonial/imperial countries—do not.

Still the treatment of & view towards animals in his book was kind of weird… I mean the violence against nature in this book categorically contradicts LFB’s premise / stated intention re: respect for the land & the personhood of natural elements. I think that’s why Maguire delves into that a bit in Wicked with the Animals & animals… it definitely seemed like Baum had some unexamined feelings re: that… Anyway. LOTS to think critically about with this book!

A quick note re: Denslow’s illustrations (of which I’ve shared a few of my favorites in my expanded quotes & annotations below): I thought they were absolutely beautiful. I love pen & ink style illustrations & the way they overlapped & were interwoven with the text made the whole book such a lovely work of art.

i would recommend this book to readers who are curious about the origins of this popular american fairy tale. this book is best read with Denslow’s original illustrations to hand. & I still recommend the facsimile edition even if it could have been a bit more carefully put together.

final note: I am actually really curious about the rest of the books in this series now (at least the 14 that Baum wrote himself). We’ll see if I get get around to them but, this is one of the few examples of classic american children’s literature that I have found interesting enough to explore.

“I cannot understand why you should wish to leave this beautiful country and go back to the dry, gray place you call Kansas.”
“That is because you have no brains,” answered the girl. “No matter how dreary and gray our homes are, we people of flesh and blood would rather live there than in any other country, be it ever so beautiful. There is no place like home.”

CW // tornado, animal cruelty & death

season: summer

music pairing:

Keep reading with a 7-day free trial

Subscribe to Stop and Smell the Books to keep reading this post and get 7 days of free access to the full post archives.

THE WONDERFUL WIZARD OF OZ by L Frank Baum (1900)

★ ★ ★ .5

title: The Wonderful Wizard of Oz

genre: classic children’s literature

further reading:

By Baum:

Retellings, spin-offs, & adaptations:

Adjacent readings:

Click on the star ratings beside the titles I’ve read to read my reviews/thoughts about the book.

I earn commissions from the sponsored links to my shop on bookshop.org which allow me to keep my content like Book Reviews & Reading Lists free to all subscribers. <3

All graphics, images, & photography © Stop and Smell the Books unless otherwise indicated.

If you haven’t already, consider upgrading to a paid subscription to see more of my expanded annotations & favorite quotes from this book below. . .

Keep reading with a 7-day free trial