Wicked Truths and Fallen Princesses

 

I found it quite coincidental (as we find almost everything said in this class to be) that our conversation turned to the Wizard of Oz the other day while discussing the Nicholas being the subject of the God Game.  Dorothy and Nicholas were both turned upside-down and inside-out by external forces in order to discover qualities about themselves that lay dormant long before their adventures started.  "It was in you all along," Glinda explains simply to Dorothy, communicating that her inner power had always existed, she just needed help finding it.  Similarly, the qualities Nicholas discovered about himself  by the end of The Magus had always been there, but were not discovered until Conchis acted as a catalyst for these discoveries.

I find this coincidental because I just finished a novel in which Glinda is revealed as a ditzy snob, Dorothy a naive problem, and the Wicked Witch of the West as a misunderstood heroine. Yes, I read Wicked, and loved every sentence of it.

I enjoyed this work so much because it is a well-known story told from a different perspective, revealing a reality behind the happy ending of Dorothy's adventure that makes us question the entire plot.  Wicked caused me to think a little deeper, and by the end I found myself questioning everything.

Even more coincidental is that I stumbled upon Dina Goldstein's series on "Fallen Princesses" just this morning. Just like Wicked, Goldstein takes what we've always known (and studied in this course) to be the basic fairy tales with happy endings and reveals their reality, but through photographs instead of literature.  I thought I'd share this photographer's modern inquiry with you all as to what happens after the "happily ever after".  I hope it will make you start to question, too.