From BONNIE FRIEDMAN, “RELINQUISHING OZ: EVERY GIRL'S ANTI-ADVENTURE STORY,” Michigan Quarterly Review 35 (1996): 1-28

The storm expresses Dorothy's own tempestuousness, the cyclone within her that she cannot allow herself to admit. She must be furious at having to give up the world for Aunt Em! Yet how guilty she would feel if she allowed herself to know this! Now it's Dorothy's own projected fury that threatens to wipe out the farm. Doesn't she wish it were wiped out? Then she would be released. Em's spell would be broken. But no—she mustn't, can't, shall not think that.

Quite a squall is brewing. A twister is coming in which everything—all objects, all meanings--will get twisted. It whirls across the horizon, a dark ascending coil like the probing mouth of a vacuum cleaner. The horizon itself is inhaled. Aunt Em, Uncle Henry, and the farmhands vanish into the storm cellar. Dorothy finds a deserted house. She stamps on the door of the cellar; they do not open up. It is as if she has projected her own abandoning behavior on them or as if they are punishing her for her anger by withholding their presence. They have walked down into the underworld, marched into a grave in the earth. In fact, this may be exactly what Dorothy unconsciously wishes: if they abandoned her, she would not have to feel guilty about abandoning them. (18)

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Like the dour Em who descends on Dorothy and the farmhands the moment they are all laughing,

an incarnation of guilt, the Wicked Witch always appears at the height of Dorothy's festivities. And

what are the festivities? In this case it's that Dorothy is being celebrated as the national heroine of a

land peopled by adults the size of children, adults who sing songs (in Kansas, Dorothy was the only

one who sang), adults who hang on Dorothy's every word and then repeat them to another as she

recounts the story of the ride that made her a sort of Abraham Lincoln to this race of people who will

henceforth regard the day she fell (How liberating it is to fall!) as "A day of independence for all the

munchkins and their descendants."

In this dream all her wishes have been fulfilled. Here they understand her. Here they appreciate

her (And how!). Here are her other lands, her big cities. In the background rise giant mountains. And

in the foreground--oh, the colors! (20)

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From the outset, from the outset, she wants to go home. As a child this baffled me. What was the matter

with that girl? Why was she so pathetically homesick? Couldn’t she have any fun? Even now it seems

sad. Oz is a place for her. It is sensually delicious; it is full of magic, play and song. Dorothy never

names the witch as a reason she wants home. As Dorothy weeps outside the shut gates to the Wizard

(and these are the words that make the locked doors swing wide, this is her liberating "Open Sesame!"):

"Auntie Em was so good to me and I never appreciated it. ... She may be dying, and it's all my fault. I'll

never forgive myself--never, never, never, never."

The quest is about reversal. Dorothy must reverse herself. Instead of satisfying her own need for appreciation, she needs

to appreciate Em. Em didn't really fall on the bed, clutching her heart. Dorothy fell; her frame of mind attacked her. Health

will return when Dorothy relinquishes her fury at Em. She must get angry at own selfish self. Aunt Em has run away: she

into the earth, flinging Dorothy into the sky. How to restore the balance? Through empathy with Em. (21)

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Oz sets a test like the type set for a knight. The reward, traditionally, is the hand of the king's daughter. Here the romantic object is

Em…. He gives her reason to accomplish what she may have secretly wished to do all along (she rehearsed this death from the instant

she arrived; in fact arriving was synonymous with killing). She will be worthy of home when she destroys the Wicked Witch.

The Witch of the West is a woman who wants. …This depiction of an autonomous woman is of course a nightmare vision of feminine power, a grotesque of female appetite-as if to say that to be a woman who wants is to be a woman who can only want, whose wants are by definition out of control, oceanic, threatening to swamp the world like nature gone awry, or liable to suck back spitefully into herself on a salty tide all that she has engendered, a birthing in reverse. The suppressed has surfaced, and, volcanic, might blot out the world. 'What is it that woman wants?" How strongly Freud resisted knowing, although all day long women told him their secrets. The fear of what women would want if they could want runs through literature like an underground river. (23-24)

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The drama of the daughter's journey is: who will control her. Will she capitulate to the Wicked Witch or will she make it home? Will she celebrate her own stubborn, lonely will, or will she become a selfless woman, freed from isolation? Locked in the witch's keep, she calls out to Aunt Em like Jonah crying from the whale where, as he put it, "the earth with her bars closed upon me."

"I'm frightened, Aunt Em! I'm frightened!" She sounds as if she is making atonement or admitting something at long last.

In response, Em emerges in the crystal, calling "Dorothy! It's me! It's Aunt Em. Where are you? We're trying to find you!"

"I'm here in Oz, Aunt Em," cries Dorothy. "I'm trying to get home to you. Oh, don't go away!" for already Em is clouding and darkening and twisting until she reveals herself to be-what a shock!-the gloating Wicked Witch.

"I'll give you Auntie Em, my pretty!" she sneers.

And doesn't she? In the crystal of the mind, the two are merged. The deathly witch is the other face of the nurturant Em; M is W from another angle.

How does it clarify matters to see Em as the witch of the West? When I thought about Em, I always remembered a kind, loving woman. Yet viewing the movie as an adult, I noticed how grim Em is, and how forcefully nasty she can be.

'What's all this jabberwocking about when there's work to be done?" Em demands, descending on Dorothy and the farmhands, implying that the sort of daydreaming Alice was partial to through the looking-glass will not be countenanced here. …"I know three shiftless farmhands who'll be out of a job before they know it," she continues. (24-25)

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From the start of the movie, Aunt Em is angry. She is furious. Is she envious of Dorothy's ability to daydream and sing while she herself is shackled to the farm? Is she jealous of the girl's latent fecundity (why doesn't Em have children)? Is she afraid of becoming old and lonely? Perhaps she is angry that she has so much to protect Dorothy from. Dorothy's unbridled growth ruptures the old unity with Em. ''Who killed my sister?" Em demands in her witch incarnation. The dead sister is the childhood Dorothy, the female who disappeared and who the new Dorothy has the most vital part of. In Dorothy's nightmare vision, Em stretches long fingers toward her. She is an ugly starveling who wants to make Dorothy like her. She can pursue Dorothy anywhere. Why, she even appeared when Dorothy ran clear across the county and into the carnie man's tent.

Em imprisons Dorothy. The terrifying hourglass the witch overturns resembles a voluptuous scarlet woman draining red dust. If only Em could remove Dorothy's womanliness, the old joy would be restored! If only Dorothy could give Em back some years and return her femininity, she wouldn't need to feel so guilty! (The ashen menopausal farm can't sustain its eggs. "This old incubator's gone bad," Uncle Henry reports. Em's badness is threatening). "Give them back to mel" cries the Wicked Witch when she sees the ruby shoes on Dorothy's feet. They were hers once, apparently. "Give them back!" she insists. (26)

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Odysseus is valued for his rich experience. Experience in a girl means just one thing, and it's no good. Leave home and you lose it, girls learn. Leave home, and home leaves you. The photo in your basket will transform: the woman who had smiled will die. The world is an alien, forsaken place; go into it and you will be alien and forsaken. Leave home, and you murder it. Only if you stay, can it, and you, be safe. (27-28)