BONNIE FRIEDMAN
RELINQUISHING OZ:
EVERY GIRL'S ANTI-ADVENTURE STORY
I was always stricken, as a child, at the moment when the Wicked Witch
in The Wizard of Oz cried, "I'm mellllting!" The shocked anguish on her
face, the way she crumpled to the floor-guilt overcame me. As much as
I'd hated her before (and I had: she was cruel and she was voracious. She
wanted everything for herself), suddenly, to my surprise, remorse washed
over me, and painful sympathy: She was my own mother, dissolving!
Quick, she mustn't be let die! Prop her up! A terrible mistake must
have been made! And the moment I had expected to feel thrilled triumph (as we would have if this were a boy's story: we're glad the knight
slays the dragon) turned out to be in fact spiked with a baffling sense of
betrayal.
But wasn't the girl supposed to win? Wasn't the wicked witch evil?
And how had my mother snuck into it all?
The boy's coming-of-age story is about leaving home to save the
world. The girl's coming-of-age story is about relinquishing the world
beyond home. It is about finding a way to sacrifice one's yearning for the
big world, the world of experience, and to be happy about it. At its center is the image of the hungry woman, the desirous, commanding, grasping woman who shows herself with a blow to our heart-her ultimate
weapon-to be the woman we love most.
Or is she?
As a child, I wasn't sure. Watching the witch suddenly dissolve, I knew
I'd glimpsed something. I was snagged. Distracted. The story stopped for
me right there. I was no longer immersed. Because maybe one wasn't
meant to vanquish the dragon. Maybe one shouldn't have hated that
witch so much. Maybe, maybe... and a sort of unraveling happenedone had misunderstood, one had got one's signals crossed, one was too
impulsive, eager, girlish. Precisely because it never got looked at-in
girls' stories, in my own life, the plot rushed on-this unease remained:
