Whilst reading Gregory Maguire’s revisionist Wizard of Oz novel, the thing that shocked me was peoples’ surprise at the novel’s existence. The glitzy, well-known musical has a larger following than the novel, despite the latter’s critical and commercial success. As a revisionist text, the novel seeks to give some background to The Wicked Witch of the West, or Elphaba to her peers. The novel details the events that led to her acquisition of the infamous title and documents her tumultuous friendship with Glinda. The two together stand at the opposite ends of the spectrum of good and evil, and everything else in between. The problem of evil, and its root, is a prevalent theme in the novel. However, and maybe this is because I am reading the novel in 2024, or because I am a person of colour, to me the novel was clearly about racism.
Before the novel shifts to the emerald tones of Elphaba’s skin, it opens in familiar territory, on the yellow brick road. Elphaba seethes as Dorothy and her companions march to the Emerald City and discuss the Wicked Witch that pursues them. Elphaba is described by the group as ‘castrated’ and ‘hermaphroditic.’ Elphaba appears to be a walking inversion throughout the novel, but in this specific instance she is a physical inversion of a man and woman. By describing Elphaba this way, the Lion, Tin Man and Scarecrow note her difference. This makes her a threat to their very existence. She is consistently ‘othered’ by everyone else in the novel, and a key source of this is the colouring of her skin.
Elphaba’s colouring also presents contradiction, as the colour of her skin is a curse, yet integral to the land of Oz. When first mentioned, Elphaba is not described as green, but as ‘pale emerald.’ Elphaba is immediately tied to a precious, rare jewel, and even though her nurses debate drowning her at birth, it is this shade that does gets her noticed, negatively and positively. In other contexts, the colour is coveted, but in Elphaba’s hands it is spurned. It is almost like a poisoned chalice in her hands. The green ties her to the earth itself, and to nature, but also to the industry of the Emerald City. Perhaps Elphaba’s overt link to the Emerald city references the fact that the Wizard is her father.
It is Elphaba’s skin colour that immediately distances her from her parents. On the day of her birth, her fanatically religious father Frex fears that the ‘devil’ is in the air. When his green baby arrives, you can guess the conclusion that he jumps too. Elphaba’s very presence drives a wedge between her mother and father, as Frex immediately accuses Melena of infidelity. He of course, is not wrong, but both parents’ denial of Elphaba only serves to intensify her isolation and means that she grows up devoid of love. Childhood trauma pending.
While Elphaba’s feral nature in her childhood is well documented, the racial abuse she experiences becomes clearer when she enrols at Shiz university. It is the arrival of Galinda, Elphaba’s obvious foil, that highlights Elphaba’s difference in skin colour and class. It is Galinda’s beauty that makes her ‘significant,’ a note that foreshadows her materialistic nature. Galinda has an air of celebrity about her, she is beautiful, something that she uses as currency, and has connections and high social status through her birth. She hails from an old ‘Gillikinese’ aristocratic family, and while she is accepted into Shiz for her intellect, it is not inconceivable to think that her heritage also makes it her birthright. Elphaba is of noble birth too, but Galinda’s emphasis on her old aristocratic connections appears to set her above everyone else.
Galinda’s presence offers up a significant slice of racial discourse: she is white privilege. Her appearance is almost Aryan, she is white and blonde. She knows that her ‘flaxen hair’ grants her ‘natural advantages.’ This is why she ensures that it is always on show. Her hair is frequently loose, and she is depicted as constantly playing with it. Elphaba’s lack of these physical qualities immediately makes her inferior. Elphaba’s hair is described as ‘foreign-looking,’ and those around her believe she hails from ‘exotic climbs.’ She is only described this way due to her difference in colouring, and despite people’s interest in looking at her, they are not interested in befriending her.
Nowadays, words such as ‘exotic’ are recognised as racially loaded lexis. This ties together with the idea of otherness, as people immediately assume that Elphaba’s difference in hair and skin tone must mean that she hails from a different land. These judgements are cast upon her before she has even spoken, and shows that Galinda and her peers are exercising explicit racial prejudice. The irony of this is of course the fact that Galinda and Elphaba are not of different races. However, due to the judgements made about Elphaba based purely on her skin tone, to me, racism seems like the best word to describe the discrimination that she experiences. The casting of Cynthia Erivo, a black woman, as Elphaba acutely reflects this shift in culture, something that Maguire would recognise considering his American heritage and the countries’ history of racial unrest.
What is interesting throughout the novel is the development of Galinda and Elphaba’s unlikely friendship. This friendship raises Elphaba’s status, a story note that references the white saviour narrative. Galinda’s association has saved Elphaba from being a social outcast. Galinda does display paternalistic tendencies towards Elphaba at first, feeling sorry for her, and feeling the need to coach her in becoming popular, the focus of a whole song in the musical. So, while, the optics of this narrative may not fare well in 2024, it serves Galinda’s character development. While initially she is snobbish and materialistic, her growing acceptance of Elphaba, and diminishing judgement, does reference some form of racial cohesion between the two.
However, their lives and priorities pull them in different directions. Elphaba’s revolutionary calling only others her further from the inhabitants of Oz, and makes her the object of their hatred. In Elphaba’s view though, her main downfall has been the ‘curse’ of her skin colour. This self-awareness is interesting, and does mirror sentiments of people of colour in society. Elphaba argues that this physical feature is what has attracted discrimination and by extension all hardship in her life.
Elphaba’s ultimate downfall is her humanity – and search for love. In ‘The Wizard of Oz,’ Elphaba is obsessed with Dorothy’s ruby slippers. These were of course obtained from The Wicked Witch of the East, Elphaba’s sister, and known in the novel as Nessarose.
The shoes were gifted to Nessarose by her father Frex, the man that Elphaba too believed to be her father. After Nessarose’s death, Glinda gifts Dorothy the shows, not wanting them to fall into the hands of the corrupt Munckinlanders. In response to Elphaba’s fury at not being given the shoes herself, Glinda hits the nail on the head, telling Elphaba that the shoes ‘won’t make [your] father love [you] any better.’ Elphaba’s quest to obtain the shoes results in her watery end, and if there was any plot thread that could humanise Elphaba so far into the novel, it is this one. Her desperation for love and acceptance is her undoing. Elphaba herself knows that this is something she could never have obtained, due to the colour of her skin. Even when Fiyero looks beyond this, their affair does not last because he is murdered. As remarked by the Cowardly Lion at the beginning of the novel, Elphaba is notoriously ‘unlucky in love.’
This leads nicely onto the problem of evil within the novel, and the nature and nurture debate. Had Elphaba received love as a child, perhaps she would not have desperately wanted the shoes, and perhaps she would still be alive. Even Elphaba’s revolutionary ideas may have been spurred on by this lack of love, as had she not been so deprived as a child, she may not have felt so connected to the marginalised animals she fought to give a voice to. Throughout the novel Elphaba is described as animalistic, and so her awareness of their mistreatment is not unsurprising.
Glinda has been given everything, wealth, social status and aristocracy. While she endeavours to do good work, she does not fight for the underdog as Elphaba does. Perhaps this is because Glinda has never been the underdog. It is not something that she can relate to, her white privilege sees to that.
Despite their differences, and how differently they are perceived, Boq does a neat job of summing Elphaba and Glinda up:
‘Glinda used her glitter beads and you used your exotic looks and background but weren’t you just doing the same thing, trying to maximise what you had in order to get what you wanted? People who claim that they’re evil are usually no worse than the rest of us.’ He sighed. ‘It’s people who claim that they’re good, or anyway better than the rest of us, that you have to be wary of.’
In a world where people, especially women, are reduced to stock characteristics, Boq in his little speech tries to add some nuance. As stated earlier, both women are one end of the spectrum, they cannot meet in the middle. Even Dorothy, as soon as she drops down to Oz is labelled in extremity. She is a saint, for bringing the house down on Nessarose. She acquires sainthood status through one accidental act.
In short, Boq opines that Glinda and Elphaba are neither good nor evil, they both have just used what they can to get what they want. Glinda traded on her wealth and looks, and Elphaba embraced the mantel of wickedness placed upon her to further her revolutionary cause. If there is no good and evil, one must ask why both women have been labelled this way. There are bigger political machinations occurring in Oz, and it seems the whole place is a big, propaganda machine. Both gained publicity and harnessed it for their own ends.
In this statement, Boq comments on Elphaba’s skin tone but also does not. He notes that both women really, are not that different. Their intent and aims are, but the way that they operate is not. And if they are not so different, should Elphaba’s skin tone be a factor? In a way no, as it is not relevant to their aims, but also in a way, yes. Boq does say that Elphaba used her emerald hues to get what she wanted. So maybe without her ‘exotic looks’ Elphaba would not have become the famed, notorious revolutionary. It seems Elphaba’s skin colour, albeit at different points of her life, is both a blessing and a curse.
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