Dorothy Gale
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Dorothy Gale is a fictional character, the protagonist of many of the Oz novels by American author L. Frank Baum, and the best friend of Oz’s ruler Princess Ozma. Dorothy first appears in Baum’s classic children’s novel The Wonderful Wizard of Oz and reappears in most of its sequels. She also is the main character in the classic 1939 movie adaptation of the book.
Dorothy’s adventures continue. In later books Oz steadily becomes more familiar to her than her homeland of Kansas. Indeed, Dorothy eventually goes to live in an apartment in the Emerald City Palace, but only once Aunt Em and Uncle Henry have settled in a farmhouse on the outskirts of the Emerald City, unable to pay the mortgage on their house in Kansas.
Book series
In the Oz books, Dorothy is an orphan raised by her aunt and uncle in the bleak landscape of a Kansas farm. It is never clarified in the books whether Aunt Em or Uncle Henry is Dorothy’s blood relative. (It is also possible that “Aunt” and “Uncle” are affectionate terms of a foster family and that Dorothy is not related to either of them.) She has a little black dog named Toto. Dorothy and Toto are swept away by a cyclone to the Land of Oz and, much like Alice of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, they enter a lively alternative world filled with talking creatures. In many of the Oz books, Dorothy is the main hero of the stories. She is often seen with her best friend and the ruler of Oz, Princess Ozma. Dorothy’s surname, Gale, is first mentioned in Ozma of Oz. It appeared previously in the 1902 play, where it was merely the setup for a joke, the punchline being “that accounts for your breezy manner.” Her blue and white gingham dress is well-appreciated by the Munchkins because blue is their favorite color and white is worn only by good witches and sorceresses, which indicates to them that Dorothy is a good witch.
Dorothy is a forthright and take-charge character, exhibiting no fear when she slaps the Cowardly Lion, and organizing the Winkies’ rescue mission of her friends who have been dismembered by the Winged Monkeys, and more than willing to brazenly talk back to Princess Langwidere’s threat to take her head for her collection–”Well, I b’lieve you won’t.” (Baum began to indicate that Dorothy speaks in a strong prairie accent with Ozma of Oz, and continued to do so throughout the series). This aspect of her character was somewhat lessened with the companionship of Ozma, in whom Baum placed the greater level of wisdom and dignity. Yet even this is complicated by her associations with her cousin, Zeb of Hugson’s Ranch, a rugged, manly boy who does not take well to Oz and cannot think of anything much more interesting than defeating the Munchkins’ wrestling champion, which he proves unable to do.
In The Emerald City of Oz, Uncle Henry describes Dorothy as, “a dreamer, as her dead mother had been.” In The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, Dorothy’s desire to return home is primarily motivated by compassion and economics. As she tells Glinda, “My greatest wish now is to get back to Kansas, for Aunt Em will surely think something dreadful has happened to me, and that will make her put on mourning; and unless the crops are better this year than they were last, I am sure Uncle Henry cannot afford it.”[4] In Ozma of Oz, Dorothy’s desire to return home is not as desperate as in the first book, and again it is her uncle’s need for her rather than hers for him that makes her return.[5] Oz is no longer quite the dangerous land that it was in The Wonderful Wizard of Oz.[6] Princess Ozma and Dorothy quickly become best friends, and before Dorothy leaves, Ozma crowns her a princess.
Dorothy has several other pets, including her yellow hen, Billina, and her white/pink/purple kitten, Eureka. Popular in crossword puzzles is Dorothy’s cow, Imogene, from the 1902 stage version, and implicitly, though unnamed, in the 1910 film. Eric Shanower’s novel, The Giant Garden of Oz, features a cow named Imogene, but she is of Ozite origin, but otherwise Imogene appears strictly in adaptations.
In the sixth Oz book by Baum, The Emerald City of Oz (1910), when Uncle Henry and Aunt Em are unable to pay the mortgage on the new farmhouse built at the end of The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, Dorothy brings them to live in Oz; the bulk of their appearance in the book dealing with her and her aunt and uncle is their tour of Oz, showing them the marvelous, Utopian land in which they have escaped the troubles of Kansas.[7]
Dorothy is a standard character, having at least a cameo role in thirteen of the fourteen Oz books written by L. Frank Baum and is at least a frequent figure in the nineteen that followed by author Ruth Plumly Thompson, getting at least a cameo in all her books except Captain Salt in Oz (in which neither Oz nor any of its inhabitants appear, though they are mentioned). Major subsequent appearances by Dorothy in the “Famous Forty” are in The Lost Princess of Oz, Glinda of Oz, The Royal Book of Oz, Grampa in Oz, The Lost King of Oz, The Wishing Horse of Oz, Ozoplaning with the Wizard of Oz, and The Magical Mimics in Oz. Most of the other books focus on different child protagonists, some Ozite, some from other Nonestican realms, and some from the United States, and as such, her appearances in the main series become more and more limited as it progresses. In Jack Snow’s The Magical Mimics in Oz (1946), Ozma places her on the throne of Oz while she is away visiting Queen Lurline’s fairy band, demonstrating that she is Ozma’s second-in-command.
The magic of Oz keeps Dorothy young. In The Lost King of Oz (1925), a Wish Way carries Dorothy to a film set in Hollywood, California. She begins to age very rapidly to her late 20s, making up for at least some of the years that have already passed. The Wish Way carries her back to Oz and restores her to her younger self, but she learns then that it would be unwise for her ever to return to the outside world. Baum never states Dorothy’s age, but he does state in The Lost Princess of Oz that she is a year younger than Betsy Bobbin and a year older than Trot, whose age was specified as 10 in Ruth Plumly Thompson’s The Giant Horse of Oz, a book full of controversial changes. This would make Dorothy eleven years old when she stopped aging. Her actual age would, of course, be much older.
As such, a cottage industry of Oz books by mostly amateur authors and small publishing houses have been made in which Princess Dorothy of Oz lives on even to our present day.
Thompson’s Oz books have shown a certain intolerance in Dorothy. In The Cowardly Lion of Oz, circus clown Notta Bit More arrives in the Emerald City “disguised” as a traditional witch, and she immediately starts dumping bucket after bucket of water on him without provocation (although she reacted this way on the assumption that the “witch” Notta appeared to be, was an evil witch, like her old enemy the Wicked Witch of the West). In The Wishing Horse of Oz, she participates in some unsavory comments about the dark coloration Gloma and her subjects take on as a disguise, making them somewhat resemble black people. This behavior is not characteristic of Dorothy in Baum’s Oz books. In The Patchwork Girl of Oz, she pushes and slaps through crowds of the black Tottenhots to rescue the Scarecrow, whom they are tossing around, but this is more an example of the character’s gumption than any sort of prejudice, as she is otherwise kind and polite to the Tottenhots, and accepting that their ways are different from those who dwell in the Emerald City.
The authorized sequels of Sherwood Smith, The Emerald Wand of Oz and Trouble Under Oz, center on children Dori and Em, who live with their Aunt Susan. All three are indirect descendants of Dorothy, though their specific relationship to her has not been revealed.
1908, 1910, and 1914 film adaptations
In 1908 L. Frank Baum adapted his early Oz novels as The Fairylogue and Radio-Plays, with Romola Remus as Dorothy. This was followed by The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, a motion picture short that Otis Turner, one of the directors of Fairylogue, made without Baum as part of a contract fulfillment. In this film, Dorothy was played by Bebe Daniels. It was followed by two sequels (the same year), Dorothy and the Scarecrow in Oz and The Land of Oz, both of which included Dorothy, but whether Daniels participated is unknown. Baum subsequently loosely adapted The Wonderful Wizard of Oz into a 1914 motion picture directed by J. Farrell MacDonald titled His Majesty, the Scarecrow of Oz with Violet MacMillan as Dorothy.
Dorothy does not appear in The Patchwork Girl of Oz (1914), although some film books claim that Mildred Harris, who had yet to sign her contract with The Oz Film Manufacturing Company, played the role.
The 1925 movie
Dorothy Dwan portrayed Dorothy in the 1925 film Wizard of Oz. In this film, Aunt Em (Mary Carr) informs her on her eighteenth birthday that she was left on their doorstep and is really a princess of Oz destined to marry Prince Kynd (Bryant Washburn), who has currently lost the throne to Prime Minister Kruel (Josef Swickard), in a storyline similar to that of His Majesty the Scarecrow of Oz, only with Dorothy as the love interest. In the end, the story proves to be the dream of a little girl who has fallen asleep listening to the story of Kynd and Kruel, said to be the story of “The Wizard of Oz.”
1939 film adaptation
In the 1939 movie The Wizard of Oz, Dorothy was played by Judy Garland. Garland received an Academy Juvenile Award for her performance. Garland was sixteen years old when she performed the role, with a brace on her chest to make her look more youthful. This Dorothy lacks much of the forthrightness and gumption of Baum’s Dorothy, sometimes becoming a damsel in distress figure. It is not actually specified whether or not Oz is merely Dorothy’s dream; however, it is strongly implied, since Dorothy awakens in bed at the end, with Aunt Em telling her “You’ve just had a bad dream”, and Dorothy insisting the experience was real.
