Dorothy Gale is a character created by the American author L. Frank Baum as the protagonist in many of his Oz novels. She first appears in Baum's classic 1900 children's novel The Wonderful Wizard of Oz and reappears in most of its sequels. She is also the main character in various adaptations, notably the 1939 film adaptation of the novel, The Wizard of Oz.
In later novels, the Land of Oz steadily becomes more familiar to her than her homeland of Kansas.Jack Zipes, When Dreams Came True: Classical Fairy Tales and Their Tradition, p 159 Dorothy eventually goes to live in an apartment in the Emerald City's palace but only after her Aunt Em and Uncle Henry have settled in a farmhouse on its outskirts. Dorothy's best friend Princess Ozma, leader of Oz, officially makes her a princess of Oz later in the novels.
Appearances In literature
In the Oz books, Dorothy is raised by her aunt and uncle in the bleak landscape of a Kansas farm. Whether Aunt Em or Uncle Henry is Dorothy's blood relative remains unclear. Uncle Henry makes reference to Dorothy's mother in The Emerald City of Oz, possibly an indication that 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, although Zeb in Dorothy and the Wizard in Oz claims to be Dorothy's second cousin, related through Aunt Em.As specified in "Dorothy and the Wizard in Oz" (1908), Zeb says: "Uncle Bill Hugson married your Uncle Henry's wife's sister; so we must be second cousins,". "second cousins" is actually incorrect in this scenario. A second cousin is the child of a cousin of your parents. Zeb is Dorothy's mother's brother's wife's sister's husband's brother's son and no blood-related relative at all. Little mention is made of what happened to Dorothy's birth parents, other than a passing reference to her mother being dead.)
Along with her small black dog, Toto, Dorothy is swept away by a tornado to the Land of Oz and, much like Alice from Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, they enter an alternative world filled with talking creatures. In many of the Oz books, Dorothy is the heroine of the story. She is often seen with her best friend and the ruler of Oz, Princess Ozma. Her trademark blue and white gingham dress is admired 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 has several other pets, including her white/pink/purple kitten Eureka, and Billina, a feisty talking hen. Her cow, Imogene, appears in the 1902 stage version; while unnamed, this cow is implied in the 1910 film. Eric Shanower's novel, The Giant Garden of Oz, also features a cow named Imogene.
Dorothy's last name is never mentioned in The Wonderful Wizard of Oz or The Marvelous Land of Oz, the first two Oz books. It is disclosed in the third book, Ozma of Oz (1907). The last name of Gale was originally mentioned in Baum's script for the 1902 Broadway stage version of The Wizard of Oz, in which it was originally a setup for a punning joke. (Dorothy: "I am Dorothy, and I am one of the Kansas Gales." Scarecrow: "That accounts for your breezy manner.")
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 plot features a tour of Oz as a marvelous, utopian land in which they have escaped the troubles of Kansas. She becomes the princess of Oz.
Dorothy is an Oz celebrity, having at least a cameo role in thirteen of the fourteen Oz books written by L. Frank Baum; while she did not appear at all in The Marvelous Land of Oz, she is mentioned several times in that story. In the subsequent nineteen Oz books by Ruth Plumly Thompson, Dorothy gets at least a cameo in all except Captain Salt in Oz and The Silver Princess in Oz (in which neither Oz nor any of its inhabitants appear, though they are mentioned). Most of the other books focus on different child protagonists, some Ozites, 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. In Jack Snow's The Magical Mimics in Oz (1946), Ozma places Dorothy on the throne of Oz while she is away visiting Queen Lurline's fairy band.
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 write 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, putting her at age 11 by the time she comes to live in Oz.
Dorothy has 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. She is not afraid of angering the Wicked Witch of the West, as shown when the Witch stole one of Dorothy's slippers, and in retaliation, Dorothy hurled a bucket of water over her, not knowing water was fatal to the witch. She brazenly rebuffs Princess Langwidere's threat to take her head for her collection — "Well, I b'lieve you won't." (Following Anna Laughlin's portrayal of the character in the popular 1903 Broadway version of The Wizard of Oz, Baum scripts Dorothy to speak in childlike contractions with Ozma of Oz, which she continues to do throughout the series). This aspect of her character was somewhat lessened by her 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.
Thompson's Oz books show 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 Dorothy immediately starts dumping buckets of water on him without provocation (although she reacted this way on the assumption that the "witch" Notta was an evil witch like her old enemy, the Wicked Witch of the West). In The Wishing Horse of Oz, she makes 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 black Tottenhots to rescue the Scarecrow, whom they are tossing around, but this is more an example of her gumption than any sort of prejudice, as she is otherwise kind and polite to the Tottenhots, and accepts 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 the child characters Dori and Em, who live with their Aunt Susan. All three are indirect descendants of Dorothy, though their specific relationship to her is unclear.
Philip José Farmer's 1982 science-fiction novel A Barnstormer in Oz tells the story of aviator Henry "Hank" Stover — who is not surprised one beautiful spring day in 1923 when he flies his Curtiss Jenny biplane through a strange green cloud and finds himself in Oz. Hank knows that he is in Oz because his mother, Dorothy Gale-Stover, had been there back in 1890 and later told him of her experiences. Farmer's premise is that Dorothy only visited Oz once and told her story to a journalist named Frank Baum. This journalist would later create a series of books from Dorothy's only adventure in Oz. Farmer's Oz is on the brink of both a civil war and an invasion by the United States Army.
Conception An influence on the creation of Dorothy appears to be the Alice books of Lewis Carroll. Although Baum reportedly found these plots incoherent, he identified their source of popularity as Alice herself, a character with whom child readers could identify; this influenced his choice of a protagonist for his own books.
Dorothy's character was probably named after Baum's own niece, Dorothy Louise Gage, who died in infancy. Baum's wife was very attached to her and was deeply grieved by her death, so there is speculation that Baum inserted her name into his stories as a memorial. Elements of Dorothy Gale's character are possibly derived from Matilda Joslyn Gage, Dorothy Gage's grandmother. Dorothy Gage is buried in Evergreen Cemetery in Bloomington, Illinois.Internet Movie Database, "The Wizard of Oz" (1939): Trivia.
Lee Sandlin writes that L. Frank Baum read a disaster report of a tornado in Irving, Kansas, in May 1879 which included the name of a victim, Dorothy Gale, who was "found buried face down in a mud puddle."
In film Silent films In Baum's 1902 stage musical adaptation, Dorothy was played by Anna Laughlin. 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 1910 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 character, is, in fact, eliminated from the film version, although she has a fairly large role in the novel.
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 Wonderful Wizard of Oz. The film also introduced the idea of the farmhands also being the Scarecrow, Tin Woodsman and Cowardly Lion, albeit as costumes they don in order to conceal themselves in Oz.
The Wizard of Oz (1939)
In the 1939 movie The Wizard of Oz, Dorothy was played by Judy Garland, who received an Academy Juvenile Award for her performance. Since she was sixteen years old at the time of filming, Garland's maturing figure was bound into a figure-hiding corset. Although Dorothy's age is not stated in the film, the shooting script describes her as twelve years old. As fantasy films generally were unsuccessful at that time, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer portrayed Oz as a head-trauma-induced delirium, instead of a real place. Dorothy's characterization in the 1939 film is more of a damsel in distress, somewhat unlike the adventurous, forthright and bold Dorothy of the books.