by H. H. Stein
For those who have not seen the film, this article includes a spoiler.
In the coming months, we are likely to be hit with advertisements luring us back to the 1939 classic, The Wizard of Oz. 2014 is the 75th anniversary of the film and we will be offered multiple versions of DVD’s as well as commercial screenings in IMAX and 3-D. I wonder that an audience can be created for something so often seen, but I’m sure they have a better sense of it than I do.
My own recent interest in the film started with a question raised by someone about L. Frank Baum’s book, The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, from which the film was made. She had read the book, and wondered why Baum had chosen to make Dorothy an adopted child. The book describes Dorothy as an orphan whose laughter surprised a worn out Aunt Em, beaten down by life on the lifeless prairie. It does not explain how Dorothy came to Aunt Em and Uncle Henry. The film tells us even less. We only know that Dorothy lives with a couple whom she calls Aunt Em and Uncle Henry. Harvey Greenberg in his book, The Movies on Your Mind (1975), says that Dorothy is “desper- ately trying to come to terms with her orphanhood” as she enters the turbulence of adolescence. He accepts her orphanhood as a given and perhaps implies that its purpose is to accentuate the problems of adolescence and the need to cling to an idealized parental image while breaking free of the parent child relationship.
My own immediate reaction to the question was that placing Dorothy with an “aunt and uncle” planted a hint in our minds of a “family romance fantasy” by which a child imagines him or herself to secretly have parents who are noble or exalted in contrast to the actual parents. Family romance fantasies are used frequently in literature and film. Star Wars comes to mind. Like Dorothy, Luke lives with his worn down, pedestrian aunt and uncle, but, we come to learn, is the son of a princess and the powerful Darth Vader of “I am your father” fame. Putting Dorothy with an aunt and uncle makes it easier for us to question the parental bond and to imagine “idealized” parents, in this case in the form of good and bad witches and a powerful, but not so powerful wizard.
Although Dorothy is a young adolescent in the film, her age is unstated in the book with hints (particularly from the accompanying pic- tures) that she is younger. I think that Baum’s target audience was latency or pre-adolescent children. The film’s opening prologue suggests a somewhat different audience when it says, in letters across a cloud-filled sky,
“For nearly forty years this story has given faithful service to the Young in Heart; and Time has been powerless to put its kindly philosophy out of fashion.
“To those of you who have been faithful to it in return
“…and to the Young in Heart … we dedicate this picture.”
It suggests an adult audience with a nostalgia for childhood. In fact, that shift in audience helps explain an important difference between the book and the film. Baum’s book begins with a very short commentary on the dreariness of Kansas and the deadening effect it had had through the years on Auntie Em and Uncle Henry, then brings on the cyclone that takes Dorothy and Toto to Oz. There are no charac- ters in the Kansas part of the book that correspond to the characters that Dorothy will meet in Oz. In the film, we see Dorothy with the three farm workers, Hunk, Zeke and Hickory who presage the scarecrow, the cowardly lion and the tin man. Ray Bolger’s “Hunk” tells Dorothy that she should use her brains dealing with Miss Gulch and that her head’s not filled with straw. Bert Lahr’s “Zeke” is first very bold, telling her she has to have courage to deal with Miss Gulch then sinks into a panic attack after going into the pig pen to save Dorothy who had fallen in. Margaret Hamilton’s Miss Gulch is called a wicked old witch by Dorothy when she comes to take Toto. Auntie Em says of her that she owns half the county, much as the wicked witch of the East controls Munchkinland before Dorothy’s house falls on her.
This sets up the famous final sequence in which Dorothy wakes from a dream and says, “I had a dream and some of it was terrible, but most of it was beautiful. And you were there, and you and you and you were there, too,” pointing to the three farm hands who were matched with the scarecrow, tin man and lion and the traveling showman who was reprised as the wizard as well as some smaller roles in Oz. We have seen that “you were there, and you and you and you were there too” most famously in “Angels in America.”
The commentary that came with the DVD version I used quoted sources as saying that the dream concept was added because they feared an audience would not accept the fanta- sy world of Oz without it. Clearly they meant the adult audience. It was done extremely well, utilizing the concept of “day residue” with good effect. I doubt that this was the first time a dream was used in this way, but it clearly was a most effective early application of a trope that has become a standard in film, the use of allu- sions to dreaming that casts ambiguity on the reality of a fantasy. It appears to add rather than detract from the effect of the fantasy, allowing it to exist in the intermediate space between real and unreal where it tends to reside in our minds. The book’s very brief preamble to the cyclone emphasizes the emptiness and grayness of the landscape. Aunt Em and Uncle Henry are described as worn out, joyless and “gray.” The film captures this by showing the Kansas sequences in black and white, actually sepia tones, in contrast to the lush Technicolor of Oz. Technicolor was a relatively new process and it’s clear that the film makers wanted to emphasize its power. But in addition to showing the grayness of Dorothy’s real world and demonstrating this powerful new technique, the contrast captures the emotional intensity of dreams and fantasy.
The opening sequence in Kansas opens up nearly all the central themes and conflicts of the film. For those who do not recall, the film opens with Dorothy running home with Toto to tell Uncle Henry and Aunt Em that Miss Gulch had attacked Toto. The issue of parenting is present from the beginning. Dorothy is protective of Toto as she hopes Aunt Em and Uncle Henry will be of her and Toto. We hear, incidentally, that Miss Gulch attacked Toto because he had attacked her cat. The cat obviously links her with witches, but here, too, is the reaction of a protective parent. Following the same theme, Dorothy can’t get Aunt Em or Uncle Henry’s attention because they are busy caring for a large group of chicks taken from an incubator that had broken, much like an older child who must cede parental attention to a baby.
The issue of adequate parenting and protection is brought home more dramatically when Miss Gulch arrives with a sheriff’s warrant authorizing her to take Toto. Dorothy pleads with her uncle and aunt to no avail. They are helpless to counter the power of the wealthy Miss Gulch. Aunt Em does confront her verbally when Dorothy has left the scene.
“Elvira Gulch, just because you own half the county doesn’t mean you have the power to run the rest of us. For 23 years I’ve been dying to tell you what I thought of you and now, well, being a Christian woman I can’t say it.”
This brings us to a second theme. This is a world, both in Kansas and Oz, in which the women hold power and the men, well meaning on the whole, are powerless to confront them. The workmen, Zeke, Hunk and Hickory, want to help Dorothy, offering advice and support, but they are scolded by Aunt Em to get back to their work. When Miss Gulch comes to take Toto, Dorothy turns to Uncle Henry, who has appeared kinder and more accessible than Aunt Em. When Miss Gulch confronts Aunt Em and Uncle Henry with the sheriff’s warrant to have Toto destroyed, Dorothy approaches Henry.
“Uncle Henry, you won’t let her, will you?”
He answers, “Of course we won’t.” He looks doubtful and turns to his wife. “Will we, Em?”
In that subtle but obvious gesture, we are told where the power lies.
It is Aunt Em who tells Dorothy that they can’t go against the law and instructs Uncle Henry to take Toto from Dorothy. He does her bidding, much as male characters in Oz will do the bidding of the fearful witch. This is a matriarchal world, one in which Dorothy, as a budding woman, must exert her own power.
In Oz, the seemingly powerful wizard has no power to confront the wicked witch himself, but sends Dorothy and her friends on a quest to get her broom. We see it again when the witch’s fearsome male guards become benign once the witch is dead, revealing that they had been forced to do her bidding. In the straw man and the tin man, we see the vulnerable physical integrity of the male. Interestingly, Baum, who was very sympathetic to the femi- nism of his day, wrote another book in the Oz sequence in which the central character, a boy named Tip who is initially under the spell of a witch is revealed to be Princess Ozma, the rightful ruler of Oz. This film is a good vehicle for expounding the rights and power of women except, perhaps, for the portrayal of the powerful witches as either evil hags or silly, frilly fairy tale princesses.
The Wizard of Oz is clearly focused on the mother-daughter relationship, but not in an Oedipal setting. There is no romance, no hint of sexual attraction. Baum, writing for a latency and pre-adolescent audience, believed that children were bored by romance. The film makers stayed true to that. We see a more dyadic mother-child relationship marked by hatred and rivalry as well as idealization, but not sexual rivalry.
This also pulls towards the earlier dyadic relationship and the wish that goes with it. The opening sequence in Kansas gives us only the faintest hint of the fantasy that encapsulates that wish. It is a line that we all know by heart.
“Somewhere over the rainbow, way up high, there’s a land that I heard of once in a lullaby.” It’s hard to pin too much on a single lyric, written by a lyricist, E.Y. Harburg, not the director or a screen writer, and barely noticed by the audience. Nevertheless, for the audience, the word lullaby has a clear association to a parent, in this case a mother, and a baby child. We will soon see Toto taken from Dorothy and Aunt Em helpless to stop it. We know that she is liv- ing not with her “mother,” but with her aunt. In that context “a land that I heard of once in a lullaby” draws us to an image of a gentle, protecting mother at some earlier time in our lives. Remember the film’s dedication to the “Young in Heart.”
There is only one major character in Oz who does not have a counterpart in Kansas, Glinda, the Good Witch. Billy Burke, who plays her looking and sounding like an over-age debutante, does not appear in the Kansas sequences. Conversely, Aunt Em and Uncle Henry are the only characters in Kansas who have no counterpart in Oz.
When Dorothy’s house lands in Oz and she opens the door to a beautiful scene, a land that she heard of once in a lullaby, the first person she encounters there comes from a bubble- like, shiny orb that materializes into the form of what looks like a fairy princess, dressed in white, wearing a crown and carrying a wand. She is Dorothy’s benevolent good witch, Glinda. She is calming and positive and protects her from the Gulch-like wicked witch. If Dorothy is looking for her mother in her fantasies, is this not the embodiment of such an idealized mother?
There is also only one actual character from Kansas who is penetrated into the dream world and Oz, Auntie Em, who is seen in the witch’s crystal ball. This, too, is a part of the “day residue.” After Toto escapes from Miss Gulch, Dorothy runs away from home to protect her dog. She runs into Professor Marvel, a traveling showman, who looks into a crystal ball and says he sees Auntie Em. He’d sneaked a look at a picture of her among Dorothy’s things. He kindly encourages her to go home, telling her that Aunt Em is worried about her. Whether in Oz or Kansas, home is associated with Aunt Em. In effect, she is torn between the idealized mother, the one who sang that lullaby, and her actual mother, Aunt Em.
It is not difficult for us to see the split maternal image in the wicked witch and the good witch, Glinda. The film makers actually had to cut out parts of the wicked witch’s scenes because in trial runs children were too fright- ened. It should come as no surprise that Dorothy in her fantasy kills the wicked witch, not once, but twice, both “accidentally.” It is almost trite to explain it in terms of a longing for an ideal mother and rage at the mother who has left her. In Baum’s original book, the good witch appears as an old witch. The film makers decided to change that, implicitly encouraging that fantasy and merging it with what was beautiful in the land of Oz, the land of fantasy.
The witches allow Dorothy—and the audience with her—to indulge her fantasies about Aunt Em. These are fantasies embodied in Glinda about what she would like Aunt Em to be, a true protector. More importantly, Miss Gulch and the wicked witch give her a vehicle to legitimately express her rage at Aunt Em. Aunt Em has failed Dorothy, failed to listen to her about what had happened with Ms. Gulch (as she takes care of her chicks), failed to protect Dorothy and Toto from the wicked witch, Miss Gulch and her sheriff’s warrant. This is the ultimate conflict that the film resolves as we hear it in Dorothy’s final soliloquy.
“But it wasn’t a dream. It was a place. And you and you and you and you were there.” She is momentarily interrupted and Aunt Em tells her we dream a lot of silly things. Dorothy goes on, “No, Aunt Em, this is a truly live place, and I remember that some of it wasn’t very nice, but most of it was beautiful, but just the same all I kept saying to everybody was ‘I want to go home,’ and they sent me home. Doesn’t anybody believe me? But anyway, Toto we’re home, home, and this is my room and you’re all here and I’m not gonna leave here ever again because I love you all. Oh, Auntie Em, there’s no place like home!”
We have come to the spoiler—Dorothy and Toto do return to Kansas. (I won’t tell how.) This is a common theme in children’s books. The books appeal to a child’s wish for escape and adventure, for power and freer expression of passions. But children, at least until they reach adolescence, do not want to simply escape. They must have their adventures and be able to return. To adventure forever is frightening. I remember my own favorite book of early childhood about a toy tugboat that excitedly sailed down a river and out to the ocean, but was rescued at the very end and taken back home to happily sail in the bathtub again. Where the Wild Things Are must end in a happy return home. Even The Nutcracker has such an ending.
The Wonderful Wizard of Oz was aimed at a somewhat older age group, but a latency-aged or pre-adolescent age group nonetheless. The child needs to return home. But this also answers the original question. Dorothy is an orphan, living with her Aunt Em because she must live out our fantasies of escape, our fantasies of leaving the drab parents and surroundings, the sepia tones of a dreary Kansas farm, much drearier, actually, in Baum’s book. Dorothy’s being an orphan quietly encourages us to remember the dissatisfactions and disaffections with our parents, the wish to go off on our own. It encourages vicarious family romance fantasies, a wish for better parents. But its primary effect is to allow us to feel the longing for maternal love and the reunion with the mother of childhood, now glorious in all her drabness and sepia tones. As Dorothy says, most of it was beautiful, “but all I kept saying was I want to go home….I love you all! Oh, Auntie Em, there’s no place like home!” And if our eyes well up with tears at that point, it is because we can identify with her love for Aunt Em, the only real mother she has known, and like Dorothy we can vaguely recall and momentarily accept our own love for our mothers, imperfect but real, and endorse the feeling that there’s no place like home.
There is an irony in this ending. Dorothy, who has made her way successfully through Oz, confronting the great and terrible wizard and killing two wicked witches, the rulers of the land, wishes to return to home to be with Auntie Em. The message is very clear when the wizard grants the scarecrow, tin man and lion their wishes: we must look to ourselves for the strength that we need to overcome difficulties, function independently without relying on an idealization of a parental image to save us. That is hard to reconcile with the film’s other lasting image, “There’s no place like home.”
When Dorothy killed off her bad witches, she paved a road for herself, and us, to a more basic fantasy. In the last scene, she is lying in her bed surrounded by Aunt Em and all the male figures from both Oz and Kansas. The wish to return home is not just a wish to be with mother. It is a wish to be taken care of by mother, in this case by Aunt Em, Dorothy’s true mother. A story whose message is that we have the wherewithal within ourselves to overcome great difficulties and to master the world around us ends with a regression.
Dorothy’s story is not confined to the fictional world of Oz. There are real life Dorothies, people forced by circumstance to leave the comfort of home and childhood—perhaps their homeland—at an early age, who through resilience and talent were successful in the new world, slaying all the necessary witches and standing up to the wizards, but waking in the middle of the night with anxiety and an unconscious wish to return to the comfort of home and family, to be taken under mother’s wing.
In life, this is a serious conflict between the wish to be strong and self-reliant and the wish to be back in the arms of a loving protective mother. But the film allows us to experience both wishes conflict free. It takes us to a once in a lullaby dreamworld, a fantasy that allows us to identify with the strength of a girl who can defeat witches, free Munchkins and help her friends achieve their dreams while also allow- ing us to return to the warmth and safety of mother’s embrace while we close our eyes and say, “There’s no place like home.”
Baum, L. Frank (1900) The Wonderful Wizard of Oz in Oz, The Complete Collection (Kindle Edition) (2013). Maplewood Books.
Greenberg, Harvey (1977) The Movies on Your Mind. New York: Saturday Review Press/E.P. Dutton and Co.
Other sources for background information were the internet “Wikipedia” article on L. Frank Baum and the informational disk that comes with the DVD version of the film.
Original Publication in the PANY Bulletin Fall, 2013 51:3.