Episode Six: Metamorphosis (and Conclusion)
Glinda hauls old Mombi back to her army's encampment, and after some polite grilling (with only aa few death threats) the old witch comes clean. Yes, the Wizard did steal away the infant heir to the throne of Oz, Princess Ozma. He brought her to Mombi to conceal, which Mombi accomplished by transforming her -- into a boy!
Everyone looks at Tip.
Tip isn't very keen on being turned back into a girl. Being a boy is all he remembers, and it's what he's used to. But Glinda is very persuasive, and Tip finally agrees. Mombi does her magic (for the last time, because after this Glinda is going to remove her magical ability) and when it's done Tip is transformed to Ozma, the lovely Girl Ruler of Oz.
Jinjur declines to give up the Emerald City, sends a message reading "Nuts!" and buttons up for a seige. For a time it seems as if Glinda's going to have to go all Stalingrad on the place, but then Ozma reminds her that they've still got air superiority, in the form of the Gump. It flies a crack team of elite commandos to the Palace, they capture Jinjur as she's lying in a hammock reading a novel, and the war is over.
Ozma marches into her capital city at the head of a liberating army, and (presumably after a few show trials) the Army of Revolt are "sent home to their mothers." Everyone lives happily ever after, except perhaps for the Gump. It hates being a flying machine and begs to be dismantled, and the reanimated Gump head goes back on the wall in the Palace where it occasionally makes snide remarks in future books.
The Big Reveal that Tip is actually Ozma is what makes this book. Up until that climax it's mostly just random adventures in Oz and a few bits of rather forced whimsy. But when Mombi tells Tip that his entire identity is a sham, we suddenly carom off into Philip K. Dick territory.
Tip never really existed. The boy who created Jack Pumpkinhead and lazed about in Mombi's cornfield instead of working was a sham, a fake overlaid on Ozma's mind. When the enchantment is broken, Tip vanishes and Ozma doesn't miss him.
Baum insists to the reader that she's "the same person" -- but as we shall see that simply isn't true. Ozma, the lovely Girl Ruler of Oz, isn't Tip at all. On paper (so to speak) she's a better person -- nobler, sweeter, kinder. Plus she has nifty magic powers as a fairy queen. But let's be candid here: Ozma isn't nearly as interesting as Tip. She would never spend the day creating a Pumpkinhead just to annoy Mombi. About the closest Ozma comes to her old behavior is the way she jerks Dorothy around in The Road to Oz.
Unfortunately, Ozma is a victim of Baum's turn-of-the-century feminism. She's an idealized female ruler, all virtues and no flaws. This is the same Progressive idealism which hoped giving women the vote would end war. We all know that the 20th Century after 1919 was entirely free of conflict as a result.
And -- how shall I put this delicately? -- Ozma's femininity makes her sexless. Compare her with Jinjur, who dresses in finery which is "almost barbaric," likes to loll about and eat candy, and bosses Tip around without hesitation. Even through the viewpoint of a book written for children in the Edwardian Era, Jinjur comes across as a person capable of passion. Indeed, in later books we see her married.
By contrast, Ozma seems to regress. Tip is a boy, and if he isn't exactly on the verge of manhood he can at least see it in the distance. (He admires the good looks of Jinjur and her Army.) Ozma is a child, immortal, powerful -- but static.
Has anyone examined the Oz books for alchemical symbolism? The Marvelous Land of Oz has some intriguing elements. Tip's adventures can be seen as an allegory for the process of creating the Philosopher's Stone, with Tip as the Stone itself. Interestingly, Tip leaves home specifically to avoid becoming a stone statue. Is that a hint? He gets sealed up in crucible of the Emerald City, visits a metal man, goes back into the crucible a second time, flies into the air (distillation?) lands in a heap of gold and jewels, and goes through a final purification to become an imperishable androgyne with tremendous power.
Was L. Frank Baum encoding alchemical wisdom in his books? I leave the suggestion to some ambitious crackpot or Am. Lit. grad student looking for a thesis.
The Marvelous Land of Oz was successful, but it wasn't the massive hit that Wizard had been. Most critics attribute this to the absence of Dorothy. Perhaps that's the case; she's forty pounds of awesomeness in a sunbonnet. Certainly Baum seems to have decided not to do without her again. The next three books in the series focus on Dorothy, and (interestingly) take place outside of Oz. The magical kingdom stops being the Place of Adventure for her and instead becomes a paradise to be achieved. Apparently Baum reasoned as follows: Land of Oz, a book about Oz without Dorothy, didn't do as well as he hoped. Therefore he began writing books about Dorothy without Oz. And they were successful, so I guess he was right. We'll pick up next time with one of my absolute favorites, Ozma of Oz.
The Crying Game-like discovery that Tip is really a girl was a searing experience in my young reading life. Because Tip really was a boy, a male, from a writer whose male characters were typically old, ineffectual, partially to entirely mechanical, or all three. And this boy whose life I was vicariously inhabiting was really...a girl? The book was just sitting there innocently on a shelf, not signaling anything about its cruel content. How fluid is your identity, anyway?
Jinjur, on the other hand, was a babe: pretty, a snappy dresser, decisive, high maintenance, and easily bored. Particularly due to the Gibson-Girlish way Neill drew her, I had a crush on her. Of course, having her chained up by Glinda's Rockette Stormtoopers at the end was as good as it gets in Oz.
Neither Tip nor Jinjur were part of the future, as far as the books were concerned. If I were to do Oz fanfic, I'd start with them.
Posted by: Alexander Jablokov | 12/11/2010 at 12:37 PM