How the wonderful women of Oz pull back the curtain on L. Frank Baum’s feminism

It’s non firmly to key out some of the linguistic universal themes in L. Weenie Baum’s children’s novel The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, which celebrates the 125th anniversary of its release this year: good versus evil, friendship, belonging and acceptance.

But another theme shimmers a bit deeper below the surface.

Hearn is not alone in picking up on Baum’s early feminism. Evan Schwartz, author of Finding Oz: How L. Frank Baum Discovered the Great American Story, says Baum not only wove feminist themes into his stories, but throughout his own life, too.

“Frank Baum was extremely progressive,” Schwartz told Ideas producer Dawna Dingwall. €œHe championed the cause of women’s rights and he became the president of the Aberdeen Suffrage Society and would write editorials calling for women to receive the right to vote.”

But this feminist legacy isn’t without Baum’s own “man behind the curtain” moment: a complicated relationship with Indigenous peoples that was at odds with his progressivism.

To understand how Lyman Frank Baum — born in 1856 to a devout Methodist family — became an unabashed feminist, one need only to reveal the woman who inspired him: his mother-in-law, Matilda Joslyn Gage.

Gage “was one of the great 19th century feminists, and she had an enormous impact on L. Frank Baum,” said Hearn. €œShe’d be reading these various treatises and she’d pass them to everybody in the family, including L. Frank.”

Author and Oz scholar Dina Massachi says it was Gage who encouraged Baum to write down the fantastical stories she heard him telling her grandsons.

Many elements of Baum’s book can be traced to influences from Gage, including the main character, Dorothy.

“The fact you have this little girl who is kind of this grand pioneer woman who goes out and slays witches and conquers lands and makes sure everyone is free, and then makes it home in time for dinner … is a real example of feminine leadership,” she said.

Gage is often remembered for fighting alongside fellow American suffragists Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton for the women’s right to vote. The trio founded the National Woman's Suffrage Association in 1869, spearheading the women’s rights movement together. 

In her 1893 book Women, Church and State, Gage also wrote about the plight of women accused of witchcraft, calling them “the most advanced thinkers of the Christian ages.”

Hearn says Baum’s witches were at least partly inspired by Gage — who defined a witch simply as a wise woman, whether wicked or virtuous.

“She is good or bad, depending upon how she uses her knowledge,” said Hearn.

Eventually, Gage’s views proved to be too radical, even for her suffragist friends.

“Matilda believed very strongly in separation of church and state,” said Ciarrai Eaton, executive director of the Matilda Joslyn Gage Foundation.

When Anthony moved on to merge with more conservative, Christian-based suffragists, Gage stepped away from the mainstream movement to form a more liberal group.

As a result, she says Gage was “punished” for it and “actively erased from history.”

Eaton now runs a museum inside Gage’s home in Fayetteville, N.Y., dedicated to bringing her contributions out into the light.

This museum also houses The Baum Room, the parlour where Gage’s daughter, Maude Gage and Baum married in 1882. A local newspaper described the ceremony as “one of equality” where their vows were “precisely the same.”

It was also the room where the newlyweds and Matilda held their own book club, reading and exchanging ideas together.

“There are a lot of things that Matilda learned and talked and wrote about … the matriarchy of Haudenosaunee, suffragism, women’s rights and all of those things come in, in the Oz world that he was creating,” said Eaton.

Matilda was a great admirer of the Haudenosaunee women’s high status and political power within their matrilineal society. She was even adopted into the Mohawk nation and was invited to vote as a member of the Haudenosaunee Confederacy, Eaton says.

“Matilda saw equality there in a way that she had never had an opportunity to see it in white culture,” said Eaton. €œAnd of course she taught her children that, and Maude saw that. And when Frank joined the family I'm sure he got to see it as well.”

Baum embodied those ideas in Glinda, The Wonderful World of Oz’s good witch; and Ozma, a princess who appears in the follow-up book, The Marvelous Land of Oz.

“We have two women ruling Oz and it is considered a utopian society,” said Eaton. €œThat idea of erasing war and famine because you have two women in charge comes directly back to the Haudenosaunee.”

Gage’s deep respect for Haudenosaunee society influenced much of Baum’s writing. But in turn, it makes a pair of racist editorials he wrote for a South Dakota newspaper a decade earlier disconcerting.

In December 1890 and January 1891, Baum penned two editorials for the Aberdeen Saturday Pioneer in which he called for the extermination of the Native Americans on the Sioux reservation while he was living in the Dakota Territory (modern-day North and South Dakota).

As Schwartz wrote in the Smithsonian magazine, this was a time of drought and starvation. A well-documented propaganda campaign fueled by the U.S. Military warned of an impending uprising and massacre of the Aberdeen settlers by the Indians. 

Baum initially called these warnings “false and senseless scares,” according to Schwartz.

“But then he succumbed to it, and he wrote those two terrible editorials that called for the annihilation of the remaining Native Americans. And it was a very dark moment,” he said.

Decades later, the Baum family — including his great granddaughter, Gita Dorothy Morena — apologized to the Sioux reservation descendants.

Morena says she still struggles to understand her great-grandfather’s articles, which were so at odds with his progressivism. But, she says, there might be a lesson in the paradox.

“We need to look at our past and see the mistakes that were made,” said Morena. €œHow do we look at those [mistakes] and change then, for the future, our way of doing things?”

Ryan Bunch, author of Oz and the Musical and head of the fan organization International Wizard of Oz Club, says while Baum’s works may be seen as progressive on gender, they contained many racial stereotypes.

“But as we continue to transform Oz through song and dance, through the musical and other media adaptations as well, hopefully we are making it more inclusive,” he said.

Journalist

Audio produced by Dawna Dingwall

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