The Radical Feminist Behind the Curtain--Matilda Joslyn Gage and Her Influence on Frank L. Baum

[niyad]

(I came across this fascinating information in another book, "Waking the Witch" by Pam Grossman. More on that later)


The Radical Feminist Behind the Curtain
3/29/2021 by Jamie Jordan

There’s something magical about The Wizard of Oz; it isn’t the witchcraft or the wizardry, but that the story revolves around a girl who realizes her inner strength. For this, you can thank radical feminist Matilda Joslyn Gage.



Matilda Joslyn GageThe Wizard of Oz film, and the novels that inspired it, were deeply influenced by the ideology of radical feminist Matilda Joslyn Gage. (Mraz Center for the Performing Arts / Flickr)

During an iconic moment in The Wizard of Oz, actor Frank Morgan tells Judy Garland and gang to pay no attention to the man behind the curtain. Morgan’s charlatan character is just one of Oz’s hidden figures. This Women’s History Month, it’s time to finally pay attention to the woman behind the curtain.

The Wizard of Oz film, and the novels that inspired it, were deeply influenced by the ideology of radical feminist Matilda Joslyn Gage. Gage may be best known as the mother-in-law of Oz novelist L. Frank Baum, but more importantly, she was an activist, who would be considered as radical in our day as she was in hers. “[Gage was] the woman who was ahead of the women who were ahead of their time,” Gloria Steinem said in Ms.

. . . .

Baum took inspiration from Gage’s politics, and in turn, she encouraged him to write down the spellbinding stories he told her grandchildren. In one instance, as Schwartz noted, Gage sent her son-in-law a newspaper ad for a story contest, writing on the enclosure, “Now you are a good writer and I advise you to try. Of course, you have but a little time, but ideas may flow.” In time, Baum would write The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, but in 1893, seven years before his book, Gage published Women, Church and State, a 500-page treatise which detailed why the church’s hierarchies were inherently oppressive to women.

In a lengthy chapter titled “Witchcraft,” Gage argued the church affixed the label “witch” to any “wise, or learned woman,” a practice she traced from the middle ages to puritan Massachusetts. “What was termed magic, among men, was called witchcraft in woman. The one was rarely, the other invariably, punished,” she wrote.

. . . .

There’s something magical about The Wizard of Oz; it isn’t the witchcraft or the wizardry, but that the story revolves around a girl who realizes her inner strength. We owe Gage a debt of gratitude for giving us a dynamic heroine to emulate on Halloweens and in our everyday lives.

https://msmagazine.com/2021/03/29/wizard-of-oz-matilda-joslyn-gage-suffrage-feminist/




. . . .

Matilda Joslyn Gage’s ideas also entered American culture in an unexpected way. In 1882, her daughter Maud married a struggling artist named L. Frank Baum. He would go on to achieve fame as the author of The Wonderful Wizard of Oz and its many sequels. Baum was most likely influenced by Gage’s ideas about female power and matriarchy when creating a world ruled by women. His ideas about witches nod to Gage’s research on the history of the stereotype from her 1893 book Woman, Church and State.

. . . . .

https://www.nps.gov/people/matilda-joslyn-gage.htm

[MagickMuffin]

1. Hats off to Matilda Joslyn Gage

What a wonderful discovery!


Thanks for sharing, niyad

[niyad]

8. You are most welcome. I learned this amazing fact in a discussion about how

witches have been/are perceived in art and literature.

[SheltieLover]

2. Ty for sharing!

[niyad]

9. You are most welcome.

[Biophilic]

3. I didn't not know about her. Thank you.

[niyad]

10. You are most welcome.

[IbogaProject]

4. Also a critique of private banking money creation

Clearly he was a progressive or at least a reformer. I never knew Mr Baum was a Journalist.

Here is a academic blog post about it, many that came up on the first page of my search may have been conservative or gold bugs so I went until I found something to at least be neutral.

For many years, the Wizard of Oz retained its status as purely a modern classic of the children literature. More recently, however, a number of authors have argued that the Wizard of Oz is not a children book at all, but rather a populist allegory about the US monetary debates of the last quarter of the 19th century. During this period, the successive Republican administrations, concerned about the potential inflationary effects of the excessive monetary expansion during the American civil war of the early 1860s, gradually returned the US monetary system to the gold standard. Under this system, banks could only print new dollar bills when purchasing gold, as opposed to earlier times when they could also print money by purchasing US government bonds. This return to gold, under the conditions of severe gold shortage, resulted in a tighter money supply and, hence, the economic depression of the late 19th century. To combat the depression, a number of Democrats began the free silver movement which favored giving banks the permission to also print money by purchasing silver, a metal found in abundance in the western American states. The free silver coinage, many Democrats asserted, would end the dearth of money and, thus, initiate the process of American economic recovery. Indeed, during the 1896 presidential election, the Democrats led by their nominee, William Jennings Bryan, called for an end to “crucifying mankind upon a cross of gold.”

Baum, a journalist at the time in Chicago, is supposed to have composed the Wizard of Oz as an allegory depicting these events. Thus, according to this interpretation, Dorothy (representing America and her honest values) wearing silver shoes (representing the free silver coinage) recruits the Scarecrow (representing the American farmer), the Tin Man (representing the American worker), and the Cowardly Lion (William Jennings Bryan), to accompany her on the yellow brick road (representing the gold standard) to the Emerald City (Washington, D.C.) to plead with the Great Wizard (the Democratic president Grover Cleveland) of Oz (an ounce of gold) for free silver coinage. In the process, Dorothy and her companions also battle the Wicked Witch of the West (William McKinley, the Republican presidential nominee in 1896). Unlike the Democrats, McKinley was against abandoning the gold standard in favor of a more expansionary bimetallist (gold and silver) system. As it turned out, however, the issue of the silver coinage became moot with the new gold discoveries in Alaska in the 1890s, which served to undermine the Democratic platform and, thus, to cost the Democrats the US presidency both in 1896 and 1900.

Source https://blogs.stthom.edu/cameron/the-wizard-of-oz-as-a-monetary-allegory/

[niyad]

11. That is a truly fascinating take on the book. Thank you!

[Celerity]

16. +1

My parents taught me that. Thank you so much for posting.

[crickets]

5. Neat! Thanks for sharing this. K&R

[niyad]

12. You are most welcome.

[Hekate]

6. Kick!

[niyad]

13. Thank you!

[lindysalsagal]

7. Link to theGage Center. My Mom used to volunteer there.

https://matildajoslyngage.org/

Run by Sally Wagner.

[niyad]

14. Oh my. What was it like being there?

[lindysalsagal]

15. Very well curated displays by events

Sally sparkles and listens so everyone sees and takes their own personal path through the house. Lovely place.

[niyad]

19. I would love to see it. I have had a copy of "Woman, Church, and State" for

decades.

[Solly Mack]

17. K&R

Thank you.

[niyad]

18. You are most welcome.