Oz vs. Narnia

L. Frank Baum's sanitized, all-too-American world is infinitely less compelling than C.S. Lewis' dangerous imaginings.

By Laura Miller

Dec 28, 2000 | This fall marked the centennial of "The Wonderful Wizard of Oz," the quintessential American children's fantasy. It's also the 50th anniversary of C.S. Lewis' "The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe," a book that would rate as the jewel in the crown of the British branch of the genre if the competition weren't so formidable. While W.W. Norton celebrates Oz's milestone with the publication of a new hardcover edition of Baum scholar Michael Patrick Hearn's "The Annotated Wizard of Oz," Lewis' book is getting a desultory commemoration from HarperCollins -- new editions of the seven-book Chronicles of Narnia series with the original illustrations colorized and laminated paperback bindings.

But however much the tribute to Oz exceeds the tribute to Narnia in sumptuousness, it can't disguise the superiority of Lewis' book. As a child, I loved Oz's endless cavalcade of strange creatures and, especially, John R. Neil's trippy art nouveau illustrations and extravagant marginalia; I still like the books today. But the first time I read "The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe" in second grade, I knew that I'd stumbled into a whole new league. That's not surprising, since British children's books, particularly children's fantasy, have long been notably better than their American equivalents -- deeper and richer. The joint anniversary of these two classics offers an irresistible opportunity to ask why, and to see whether the difference says something fundamental and troubling about how Americans understand ourselves and our children.

Hearn's new "Annotated Oz" contains a facsimile version of the original "The Wonderful Wizard of Oz," complete with its innovative single-color textual illustrations (a different color for each chapter) by W.W. Denslow. There's a lengthy introduction describing Baum's life and almost dementedly varied career, Hearn's extensive notes on everything from character names to puns to the possible religious and political interpretations of the book and literary commentary on Baum's prose that's generous to a fault -- well, actually, way beyond a fault.

The model for this volume is Martin Gardner's successful annotated version of Lewis Carroll's "Alice in Wonderland." But while Carroll's children's classic is full of double meanings, mathematical jokes, puzzles, political satire and witty digs at the pomposity of Victorian culture (particularly the poems children were made to memorize), Baum's fairy tale is plainer stuff. Although a man of considerable energy and warmth, Baum was no intellectual and not inclined to subtle allegories, irony or comprehensive systems of hidden meaning -- he wasn't meticulous enough for that, as the many contradictions in the Oz cosmology show. That hasn't stopped his fans from trying, though, and I confess I was a little crestfallen to discover that no one really credits the theory (advanced by one Henry M. Littlefield) that "The Wonderful Wizard of Oz" is an elaborate symbolic commentary on William Jennings Bryan and the gold standard.

Baum no doubt revealed his full intentions in his original introduction to the book. He aspired, he announced, to write a "modernized fairy tale," from which both morality and "all the horrible and blood-curdling incident" found in traditional fairy tales had been removed. This sanitizing could at last be achieved because "modern education includes morality," and the only reason for all that scary stuff in the first place was to back up a story's moral with some serious firepower. Anyone surprised to read that pre-modern education methods omitted morality will nonetheless be comforted to learn that in this book "the wonderment and joy are retained and the heart-aches and nightmares are left out."

"The Wonderful Wizard of Oz" (the book) has become so closely meshed with "The Wizard of Oz" (the movie) that people often forget that the book has nothing scary or even unsettling in it. The filmmakers apparently didn't share Baum's faith in "modern education"; Margaret Hamilton provides plenty of real menace both as a malevolent adult in Dorothy's real life and as an outright terrifying, green-faced Wicked Witch of the West in the dream world of Oz. Her literary forebear is ineffectual by comparison; she can't harm Dorothy because the little girl bears the mark of the kiss of the Good Witch of the North on her forehead, and the villainess would like to steal her prisoner's magic silver shoes but she's too afraid of the dark to sneak into Dorothy's room at night. The worst torment the witch can devise for the girl is to make her do housework.

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