Tags
1900, America 1900s, Book Review, Children's Book Review, Frank L. Baum, The Wonderful Wizard of Oz
Somewhere Over The Rainbow……………….
I have never read The Wizard of Oz. Not as far as I remember. My childhood books were very much the classics of English literature for children. I remember of course, A.A. Milne, Lewis Carroll, Wind In The Willows (very strongly), the marvels of the Andrew Lang coloured fairy story books, which I was forever borrowing from the library, Dodie Smith, the marvellous Moomins, a few Blytons – the Faraway Tree stood out. The famous five appealed less than Swallows and Amazons – I wanted to be Pirate Nancy Amazon, the Swallows were too tame! , Noel Streatfield, and, most of all, The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett – a marvellous central character, a cross, imperious, bad-tempered girl who discovers a real love of the natural world (clearly, lots to identify with!) My guess is that what lay over the Atlantic did not really enter my mother’s mind. I don’t think I even saw the film till I was an adult, probably on one of the perennial TV showings.
W.W.Denslow, Illustrator
So, having discovered that Baum wrote it – it never even occurred to me that it had had a literary beginning way before Judy Garland developed an obsession with rainbows – and that it first saw the light of day in 1900, it seemed time to see what a 1900 child was getting, particularly as the version I got on Kindle came with the original drawings (albeit in black and white). I gather that one very original feature of the book was that it had colour illustrations, which of course is something we absolutely expect in a children’s book these days. Thinking about those illustrations it was interesting to see that Dorothy is quite a stocky, solid, normal looking little girl, not stylised into extreme pulchritude in the Barbied or Disneyfied fashion of today
I was intrigued by Baum’s reasons for writing this . In the foreword, he states he wanted to write a book full of magic and wonders but without the moralising aspect of children’s books of the time – fair dos to that – but, curiously he was troubled by the nightmares and the horrors in children’s books – as in traditional fairy stories, for example, Brothers Grimm style. However, I was less impressed by that idea. Children do tend to rather love a degree of grisly, and I think it’s adults who then forget that as children there was a kind of terrified delight in the grimness of those dark tales. Things always came right in the end, despite the horridness.
I do have to say I rather missed the scary in this. There are of course baddies – the two Wicked Witches, though the first one is killed by Dorothy’s house landing on her before we even know she exists, and the second one, though not the nicest of lassies by any means, certainly is no where near as chilling as witches generally are in fairy tales. Besides, Dorothy is such a sensible and grown-up little body that though we are told she is frightened, homesick and the rest, Baum doesn’t really go in for the kind of description which really gets you into identifying with the feelings of the central character. And, perhaps this was an unusual aspect in the book. It is the little girl, Dorothy, not to mention the good and beautiful witch Glinda who are the most sensible and grounded, as well as psychologically balanced. Dorothy might almost be said to be too good to be true. I liked very much that the driver of resolutions (with a little help from her friends whom she, of course, had enormously helped in their own psychological development) was a female child. Dorothy is rescuer as much as she is ever rescued.
It was also interesting to see that her heart’s desire was always practical and pragmatic – to get back to Kansas. In large part because the kindly girl does not want to leave her aunt worrying about her. Her companions, the brainy scarecrow who believes he has no brains, the highly empathetic and feeling tin man who feels he lacks heart, and the cowardly lion who constantly behaves bravely but not does not realise that feeling fearful doesn’t mean cowardice, have problems in being unable to positively see themselves as they really are. Likewise, the wonderful wizard of Oz himself is a fake, who is afraid of being seen for himself. It’s only Dorothy who doesn’t really have time for all this neurosis which, in their different ways, the over-imaginative chaps of straw, tin, lion and wizardry are expressing.
Difficult to completely cast myself back into the mindset of the child I was, and try to see this through that child’s eye, but I suspect Dorothy would have been far too sensible and perfect for me to identify with, though I would have liked the fact that she’s the one who solves the problems rather than just waiting feebly for the prince to come and rescue her.
I also very much enjoyed the warm humour. Much of this may have resonated more for the adults reading the book to their children, though I’m not really convinced that those adults would have been thinking ‘here is an allegory about economic theory’ (see below):
Something I enjoyed almost more than the story was the inclusion, in the interesting after material of a fabulously, barkingly hot air academic analysis of this which tied itself in ever more ridiculous knots to find political, economic and sociological analysis of the text, indeed, going so far as to claim that Baum clearly wrote the book to engage with a major strand in economic theory thinking at the time – bimetallism. Oscar Wilde makes satiric reference to this theory in An Ideal Husband, as Mabel Chiltern deflects the often proposing Tommy from yet another proposal :
At luncheon I saw by the glare in his eye that he was going to propose again, and I just managed to check him in time by assuring him that I was a bimetallist. Fortunately I don’t know what bimetallism means. And I don’t believe anybody else does either. But the observation crushed Tommy for ten minutes. He looked quite shocked.
Bimetallism referred to a monetary standard which gave a fixed rate to both gold and silver – a fixed rate of exchange between them. Both gold and silver can then be exchanged into fixed rates of legal tender
Henry Littlefield, an historian, produced a highly complex analysis of the Wizard of Oz in the 60’s (irreverently I wondered under what influence!) claiming that the Yellow Brick Road which led to the Emerald City represented the Gold Standard. Which led to the fakery of The Emerald City with its fake wizard and the green glasses which deceived wearers into only seeing green: the fraudulence and fakery of ‘greenbacks’ – paper money. The silver slippers which finally will get Dorothy back to Kansas represent the stability which ‘Bimetallism’ would bring (according to its adherents) to the economy, compared to only using the Gold Standard.
Frank L. Baum
You’re quite right, I went cross-eyed trying to work out the theory of this, as reported in the afterword which reported on Littlefield’s theories, and others.
I think I’m with Mabel Chiltern.
I enjoyed my reading of Baum, and the inevitable inclusion of that iconic rainbow moment from the 1936 film.
I shall be looking forward to including some more books written for children, in due course, as I progress, increasingly slowly, through the century. It seems harder to move on from a year than I anticipated
The Wonderful Wizard of Oz Amazon UK
The Wonderful Wizard of Oz Amazon USA
This Kindle version has the original illustrations, but in black and white, and with the addition of a lot of extra background material
I have since found another version, also on Kindle, with those original illustrations by W.W. Denslow, but as colour illustrations. Heaven. I’m not sure whether it has all the interesting postscripts that the copy I had contains – I suspect not, from the big difference in numbers of pages. I suspect the first version is perhaps of more interest for adults, with all the background. Me, I’m greedy, one version with both please!
Original illustrations in colour Amazon UK
Original illustrations in colour Amazon USA
A READING THE TWENTIETH POST – 1900 : FICTION (CHILDREN’S)– NON UK
Finally – I’m told by the Site Admin that this is my 500th post. It seems more than fitting that a blog called ‘Lady Fancifull’ should have a distinctly fantasy/fairy tale book review for such a momentous number
I can sort of see the economic theory underneath it, but like all great stories, it lends itself to more interpretations than just the one.
Sounds like the film stuck pretty closely to the book then. This was never one of my favourite films, though I’ve never really been able to put my finger on why. You may have got it – perhaps the baddies just aren’t scary enough to build the proper amount of tension. Haha! I love the lit-crit economic theory stuff – any time I’m reading lit-crit where they tell me what the author probably meant my disbelief indicator tends to go off the scale – sometimes a cigar is just a cigar…
I think particularly as this was a book for children, rather than for the children of economists, or even child economists, that selection of theories was weird. Of course, it could have been a spoof but it seems that all sorts of academics got in on it and debated and counter-debated it.
The phrase that kept occurring to me as I read was ‘wholesome as apple pie’ : as said earlier, I preferred children with a bit of bite about them, in fiction when I was a child. Secret Garden’s Mary must have been my role model
Ahh as much as I never liked the book or the movie much…congratulations on the 500th!
Thank you Disha
Thanks Disha. I obviously read it for that ‘reading the 20th’ and it was in some ways of more interest for me to see Baum’s rationale for writing it, and to think about it in comparison to other books for children. In some ways, he maybe hadn’t gone too far from various books in Victorian times setting up impossibly good little suffering martyrs. Dorothy was not a victim in this, and I liked that, but, as said earlier, I think losing the scary elements and toning down the conflicts somehow made this altogether too wholesome and well behaved. I far prefer the imperfect children with a bit of reality about them because they are a bit snippy, as most of us are!
Best wishes for your first 500; I look forward to the next 😉 Yes I agree with you about the Wizard of Oz; I didn’t read the book until adulthood, and it was an interesting rather than engaging read. I read all the titles you mentioned in my young years, except the Moomins which I somehow missed and read with my children. I have always had a very great affection for children’s books and it will be great to read your reviews as they are posted.
Thank you for those kind wishes Underrunner. I adore children’s books too. I discovered Moomintroll as a child, but didn’t know how very many Moomin books she wrote till a few years ago ( thanks, Amazon) so I stocked my shelves. I think Finn Family Moomintroll probably is my favourite because I can simultaneously read it as an adult, and the child I was is also me of course, so I read in a looking back as well as present. I can see feel my bedroom and the book in its bookcase. The Moomins are an unfailing comfort read.
I’m glad you were able to appreciate this book in adulthood. The Oz books and the movie were such an important part of my childhood — looking back I can definitely see their flaws, yet they opened a whole world of imagination and reading to me!
I’ve heard of that study and it sounds completely bizarre, but goes to show how literary critics can always warp what they read to suit their own purposes.
Yes, there is a lot more that books read in childhood can do for us, which maybe, as adults, we aren’t so aware of, how profoundly they can reveal us to ourselves, shape us, inspire us. Opening that ‘whole world of imagination and reading’ is huge.
You are singing my song on this post. Thank you for your careful research and the fine writing of it.
And thank you Susan for those kind words. The more slowly I go on this project the more interesting it seems to become!
Congrats on the 500! The Secret Garden was my favourite childhood book too. I’m not really a fan of Oz but I found the economic theory fascinating.
As a child I read Carroll, Grahame, Burnett, and other authors from British authors. One of my favorites was Robert Louis Stevenson. Their writings, portrayed a world that seemed exotic to me but was still a fairly safe place, and the struggle was always one within one self or one’s status with other people (or anthropomorphic animals).However, as a child growing up in USA I also read American authors and one of the differences I noted in children’s literature was that nature was not as romanticized by them. Survival in the wide open expanse of the American landscape could be dangerous
I read the tales collected by the Grimm’s brothers; their gruesomeness repulsed me even as a young adolescent. Also the the ‘heros’ often won by trickery and most were morally better than the villains, but not all. Wealth and marrying aristocracy seemed to be the real goals. As an adult I concluded they were lessons for adolescents on the edge of adulthood, not entertainment for younger children.
Baum’s story is more based in American’s children’s literature than than European fairy tales. It really was written as a book for children, although no adult can avoid inserting their own style of humor into writings for children. (I didn’t realize how much Lewis Carroll did this until I was older). Dorothy didn’t become a wealthy aristocrat; she survived a journey through a sometimes dangerous fantasy world through the assistance of flawed friends, something like a settler heading west, to realize how much that glitter or terrified was as illusion. In the end it was life with her family on a modest homestead that was most precious.
Thank you for that interesting perspective on a different experience of the natural world in American and British children’s literature.
Although stories from Grimm’s collection were borrowed heavily for Disney cartoons and other story books, these were always cleaned up to be presented to young children. Baum was trying to do something similar while including the American idea of an adventure.
Robert Louis Stevens actually wrote adventure stories including the struggle for survival which may be why I identified with his work and liked it the best of any of the British authors.
Though of course the original folk tales the Grimm’s collected were tales told as stories to children. There were versions of those folk tales which got prettified and cleaned up at some times, and for the tastes of some cultures. I suspect – Perrault’s version of Cinderella, for example, compared to Grimm