As I read the Oz books with my son, I of course am thinking about the continuity issues, of which there are many. (Terrance Dicks, script editor of Doctor Who from 1969 to 1974, once said continuity was whatever he "could remember about [his] predecessors' shows"; I think for L. Frank Baum, continuity was just what he could remember of his own.) One issue that has stuck out to me on this readthrough is the Good Witch of the North.
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| as illustrated by W. W. Denslow |
"There were only four witches in all the Land of Oz, and two of them, those who live in the North and the South, are good witches. I know this is true, for I am one of them myself, and cannot be mistaken. Those who dwelt in the East and the West were, indeed, wicked witches; but now that you have killed one of them, there is but one Wicked Witch in all the Land of Oz—the one who lives in the West."
She explains she's not as powerful as the Wicked Witch of the East was, but she does seem to be pretty powerful. Later, the Wizard tells us that when he first arrived in Oz, that the set-up the Good Witch of the North described was already in place:
"There were four of them [witches] in this country, and they ruled the people who live in the North and South and East and West. Fortunately, the Witches of the North and South were good, and I knew they would do me no harm; but the Witches of the East and West were terribly wicked, and had they not thought I was more powerful than they themselves, they would surely have destroyed me."
We don't see her again after that early chapter, though; it's Glinda, the Good Witch of the South, who ultimately provides Dorothy with the information she needs to go home. (Baum, by the way, never gave her a name in the books. She was called "Locasta" in his 1902 stage adaptation of Wonderful Wizard, but unlike other character names from the musical, such as "Nick Chopper" for the Tin Woodman, hers was never imported back into the novels.)
She doesn't appear in the next three books, but two of them provide information about her. Book two, Marvelous Land, actually opens in the North quadrant of the Land of Oz, and provides it with a name for the first time, but the Good Witch of the North gets just a single mention:
Mombi was not exactly a Witch, because the Good Witch who ruled that part of the Land of Oz had forbidden any other Witch to exist in her dominions.
We learn more about the relationship between her and Mombi in Dorothy and the Wizard, book four. Ozma reveals that at one point, the Land of Oz was actually divided between four wicked witches, but by the time the Wizard had arrived, things had changed:
"[A] good Witch had conquered Mombi in the North and Glinda the Good had conquered the evil Witch in the South."
So now we know that Mombi actually used to rule the Gillikin Country, and that the Good Witch of the North did some kind of battle with her to take it over.
Then, in book five, The Road to Oz, she puts in her only other appearance in Baum's original fourteen novels, when she attends Ozma's birthday party. She's mentioned as being in the birthday procession, and then later, she does some magic at the birthday banquet:
The Good Witch of the North amused the people by transforming ten stones into ten birds, the ten birds into ten lambs, and the ten lambs into ten little girls, who gave a pretty dance and were then transformed into ten stones again, just as they were in the beginning.
On the other hand, this book introduces a wrinkle into our understanding of the political geography of Oz, because also in the same procession are the rulers of the four countries of Oz:
Then came the Rulers of the four Kingdoms of Oz; the Emperor of the Winkies, the Monarch of the Munchkins, the King of the Quadlings and the Sovereign of the Gillikins, each wearing a long chain of emeralds around his neck to show that he was a vassal of the Ruler of the Emerald City.
So there is some kind of (male) Sovereign of the Gillikins, who is distinct from the Good Witch of the North. And, for that matter, a male King of the Quadlings distinct from Glinda the Good. A similar passage in Ozma of Oz mentions "the King of the Munchkins, the King of the Winkies, the King of the Quadlings and the King of the Gillikins." The Munchkin king even appears, but like here, he went unnamed and undescribed. The Emperor of the Winkies is the Tin Woodman, but none of these three other rulers will ever be mentioned again. In fact, later on, Patchwork Girl indicates that there is no ruler of the Munchkins: "Unc Nunkie... might have been King of the Munchkins, had not his people united with all the other countries of Oz in acknowledging Ozma as their sole ruler..."
And then the Good Witch of the North never appears in any other Baum novel. So what happened to her?
Now, I know she reappears in at least one Ruth Plumly Thompson novel, but I want to focus here on what Baum was implying about her. As for what Baum intended, I would guess that at best, he decided to ignore her as part of the streamlining and alterations in Oz history that happen across the post–Emerald City Oz novels, and at worst, he just forgot about her!
She never appears again, not even in circumstances where you might expect her to. For example, in Lost Princess, an evil magician kidnaps Ozma and steals the magic of both Glinda and the Wizard of Oz. No one ever brings up the Good Witch of the North. On top of that, Patchwork Girl is the first book to mention that Ozma has largely banned the practice of magic in her country, and the only exemptions carved out are for Glinda and the Wizard, and this is reiterated many times across Baum's final eight Oz novels.
There's one other piece of indirect evidence. Several of the later Oz novels are set in the Gillikin Country, I assume because the early ones had mapped out most of the rest of the Land of Oz. Specifically, Tin Woodman of Oz, Magic of Oz, and Glinda of Oz all have significant amounts of action set in the Gillikin Country. Again, the Good Witch of the North is never mentioned, but on top of that, the Gillikin Country is often depicted as uncontrolled wilderness. For example, Woot in Tin Woodman, who is a native of the country, says, "in this northland country are many people whom it is not pleasant to meet." The narrator later says, the Gillikin Country is "where strange peoples dwelt in places that were quite unknown to the other inhabitants of Oz." In fact, at the end of the book, Ozma dispatches the Tin Soldier into the Gillikin Country to help bring it under control! It is similarly depicted as a largely wild, lawless place in the next two books as well.
So, if we ignore what post-Baum authors tell us, I would infer that actually, the Good Witch of the North is no longer active. She certainly doesn't practice magic any more, and might not even be capable of it, otherwise wouldn't the characters have gone to her for help in Lost Princess, Tin Woodman, or Magic?
It seems probable that she doesn't rule the Gillikin Country any more, either, as the country doesn't seem to have any kind of ruler in the later books. So presuming she didn't, say, die (as people in Oz generally don't), I would guess that she retired, turning the Gillikin Country over to the direct rule of Ozma, and in doing so she gave up her magic powers, or perhaps she left the Land of Oz altogether.
Eventually, my son and I will get to Thompson's The Giant Horse of Oz, which gives a backstory and a name ("Tattypoo"!) to her, and I'll be curious to see what that is. But Thompson aside, I think there's an interesting story to be told, probably set in the gap between Emerald City and Patchwork Girl, about Ozma consolidating her power over the Land of Oz, where the Good Witch of the North steps down and leaves. (Presumably, at the same time, whoever had been operating as King of the Munchkins since the death of the Wicked Witch of the East also abdicates.)
You can make a story out of this discontinuity, as you can so many in Baum's Oz novels, but it is somewhat surprising that a character who starts out so powerful and important fades away so much. The very first witch Dorothy ever met becomes a forgotten nonentity.
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