Frank L. Baum – The Wonderful Wizard of Oz

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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

Theodore Dreiser – Sister Carrie

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1900, America 1900s, Book Review, Sister Carrie, Theodore Dreiser

Championing a fairer deal for women and the working class in early twentieth century America

Theodore Dreiser’s 1900 published novel, primarily set in Chicago, is a wonderful way to start my sequential reading the twentieth century challenge.

Many of the concerns which are likely to be centre stage in my reading of the century, which film-maker Adam Curtis (I’m sure, amongst others) dubbed ‘The Century of The Self’ are markedly to the fore in Dreiser’s novel. Indeed, I find connections with the non-fiction biggie from that year, which I’m slowly working through – Freud’s The Interpretation of Dreams

Dreiser, in this written in the third person, narrator also as philosopher, interpreter, adviser, teacher, which was a common stance in writing at that time, as well as telling his story, also reminds us about the unconsciousness of many of our choices, and shows a lot of understanding of much which was being written about, discussed, debated, in a century which began to look at mind itself. The novelist has absorbed and thought about what is being addressed by the great psychotherapy pioneer and his colleagues and predecessors in this field

Sister Carrie was Dreiser’s first novel, and what a deep novel it is. It follows a clear narrative journey, has completely believable characters, the central ones of whom are particularly complex, nuanced and perfectly credible as recognisable individuals – but we also absolutely see the history and culture of time and place acting on them, moulding them, influencing and shaping them. Choices may be made, which seem individual, but the freedom of expression may be more circumscribed than some characters – or some readers, particularly at that time – may believe.

Carrie is a young rural girl, who comes to Chicago in 1889, to stay with her sister and her brother-in-law. Carrie has ambition, she is a young woman of beauty and some delicacy, wanting to improve her status and opportunities. She aspires to some kind of clerical office job, or perhaps as a sales assistant in one of the burgeoning glossy department stores. Unfortunately, her poverty and lack of experience are against her. It is an employer’s market, and all she can get is dirty, badly paid, unskilled factory work, exploited and working in impossibly harsh conditions.

Dreiser, writing with irony, looks back on the 1889 working conditions and compares them to the more enlightened thinking of ‘now’ (1900):

The place smelled of the oil of the machines and the new leather – a combination which added to by the stale odours of the building, was not pleasant, even in cold weather. The floor, though regularly swept each evening, presented a littered surface. Not the slightest provision had been made for the comfort of the employees, the idea being that something was gained by giving them as little and making the work as hard and unremunerative as possible. What we know of footrests, swivel-back chairs, dining rooms for the girls, clean aprons and curling irons supplied free, and a decent cloak room, were unthought of. The wash rooms and lavatories were disagreeable, crude, if not foul places, and the whole atmosphere of hard contract

Another writer with a socialist, humane ideology, Upton Sinclair, in his famous book The Jungle, set also in Chicago, in the meat processing industry, and published in 1906, rather shows the ‘atmosphere of hard contract’ had not changed in the intervening years, so Dreiser was writing at a time when, practically, those footrests, dining rooms, clean lavatories and the rest, were still unthought of in factories.

Dreiser’s particular focus in this book though, is on women, on the circumscribed choices available to women, and how poverty and want may drive a woman to make a living by selling herself. He explores the different power dynamic between men and women, and also the different morality expected of the sexes.

I discovered with interest that though Sister Carrie found a publisher, the book was considered too hot – or even too offensive – to handle. It was poorly promoted, and in fact published expurgated. And this is not because of any salacious content. Dreiser never describes the bedroom content, we only are told she has been set up by a protector, and it’s perfectly obvious what choices she had to make to get protection.

“Chicago-Loop-1900” source: David Kennedy, et al. American Pageant (13th ed. 2006) p 503. Licensed under PD-US via Wikipedia

What 1900 society found so offensive in Dreiser’s writing was his refusal to act the moralist, thundering down abuse on this fallen woman – instead, he reminds the reader how society itself creates the world in which the Carries must make this choice.

There are three major figures in this book, Carrie herself, the travelling salesman Charles Drouet and the sophisticated bar manager G.W. Hurstwood, looked up to by both Carrie and Drouet. Hurstwood is a man beginning to move in circles near the people of greater power, celebrity and wealth. In fact, the adulation of celebrity, and its shallowness, so symptomatic of our age, is also laid out here. The two men, like Carrie herself, aren’t presented as consciously wicked, rather with the normal human failings of weak will, easy desire, not to mention the ability to delude themselves. And the way society, and its political and economic systems are structured, offer false values as aspirations,  so encouraging those failings.

I found the authorial voice, and the wide ranging evidence of Dreiser’s sophisticated, nuanced thinking, as fascinating and absorbing as the story of, particularly, Carrie and Hurstwood, the trajectory of their entwined histories. The first section of the book has Carrie, starting from a kind of point of lowliness and desperation, and follows her rise (looked at one way) which might also be considered her fall. When she first meets Hurstwood, his star is in the ascendant, and life is rosy, and showing every possibility of getting rosier. From thence, the fortunes of the two, initially linked, begin to travel in different directions. It is Hurstwood who becomes the major focus, and the drift of his story also offers a glimpse into early twentieth century capitalism in America, and the hard fought struggles of labour to achieve fair wages, fair conditions

Dreiser’s philosophical musings in the book were aspects his publishers wanted removed. They were also more interested in Hurstwood’s story, and wanted the book to start with Hurstwood, and his first encountering Carrie, rather than following her story from her arrival in Chicago.

Delmonico’s – already a place to aspire to dine at in 1900 New York

Hurstwood is a far more complex character, and has a different journey from Carrie’s. We meet him first at the zenith of his being. There is one extraordinary chapter, presenting Hurstwood at a place where the choices he makes will be responsible for the rest of his life. As I read that psychologically fascinating story, the scene suggested itself like the playing of an painfully suspenseful Hitchcock movie, – the audience may be ahead of the character, and wanting to cry out ‘don’t do this’, but the protagonist is under the grip of strong instincts, and no realisation that, maybe, one small step too close to the edge of a precipice, will, for him, offer no way to retreat.

Dreiser must have been quite a complex individual. Whilst having understanding of how women, without the means for independence themselves, fell prey to exploitation by men, he was unable in his personal life, to achieve fidelity and constancy. Towards the end of his life, his social consciousness, and his belief in socialism led him to simultaneously join the Communist Party and the Episcopal Church. An interest in both political and ideological systems, and the workings of individual, personal morality, and how systems have their shaping on what might be called individual soul, run strongly through this book. Dreiser shows commitment to body, to mind, to spirit.

He was a foremost writer of the naturalist school : his subjects were working people, not those born to money, property and prestige. Writers of this school (for example Zola) were not just showing how things were, but also showing that the kinds of lives individuals have, and the choices they make, are ‘nature and nurture’ – with the nurture being societal, cultural, not purely individual family upbringing. Dreiser explores this in Sister Carrie.

I must admit his style is not always the most flowing, and he isn’t a writer of what appears to be so well and beautifully crafted prose that the writing seems effortlessly poised, but what at times may be rough-hewn has honesty, and the ‘stuff’ of his writing is powerful, important and necessary. A working ploughshare, fit for a crucial purpose, rather than a Faberge egg which can only be properly appreciated by other fine workers in delicate, expensive substances

The book was made into a film in 1952, ‘Carrie’ directed by William Wyler, and starring Lawrence Olivier and Jennifer Jones. I couldn’t resist this mainly silent montage from the film which the Youtube uploader spliced in with Leonard Cohen’s Take This Waltz. Not of course the film’s soundtrack. Now, I haven’t seen the film, but I would suspect, given the date of making, that Wyler will have focused rather on the film as a simple love story, with powerful characterisations, and that the blistering clarity of Dreiser’s commitment to socialism, and a condemnation of the exploitation of the working classes by the owners of the means of production, would not pass muster in Hollywood, at that time.  HUAC, the House Un-American Activities Committee had turned its attention to the Communist Party in America, and the Blacklist of ‘Reds’, fellow travellers, and indeed even suspected pale shades of pink were well in force within Hollywood. As mentioned previously Dreiser had joined the CP in 1945, and his commitment, in his writing shows shades of full-blooded red, rather more than baby pink, and would surely have made the socio-political background to Sister Carrie, dangerous in those days of naming and shaming those only slightly to the left of liberal views. HUAC was particularly focused on the influence of the movie industry, so Hollywood with its high profile and perceived influence on values both personal and political had become increasingly nervous and circumspect

I found this an absorbing, humane, compassionate and thought provoking read, and may well return to Dreiser in a later year, with the book which brought him fame, An American Tragedy. It will be interesting to see how he developed as a writer. He won the Nobel Prize for literature in 1930, and died in 1945

Sister Carrie Amazon UK
Sister Carrie Amazon USA

However – do be aware that according to Amazon reviewers in the UK some eread digitisation  is extremely poor. I bought the old Penguin version, second hand. Looking at versions on Amazon USA it seems some must be heavily edited and expurgated, according to listings of page numbers. I have linked to a version of over 500 pages, which is what it should be! Some editions are 200 pages shorter. Perhaps its a version produced by the remnants of HUAC!

A Reading The Twentieth Post – 1900 : Fiction – Non UK