Tea at Trianon: The Socialists and Suffragettes of Oz

John Wilson Croker on Marie-Antoinette

"We have followed the history of Marie Antoinette with the greatest diligence and scrupulosity. We have lived in those times. We have talked with some of her friends and some of her enemies; we have read, certainly not all, but hundreds of the libels written against her; and we have, in short, examined her life with– if we may be allowed to say so of ourselves– something of the accuracy of contemporaries, the diligence of inquirers, and the impartiality of historians, all combined; and we feel it our duty to declare, in as a solemn a manner as literature admits of, our well-matured opinion that every reproach against the morals of the queen was a gross calumny– that she was, as we have said, one of the purest of human beings."

~from History of the Guillotine by John Wilson Croker, 1844

Edmund Burke on Marie-Antoinette

"It is now sixteen or seventeen years since I saw the queen of France, then dauphiness, at Versailles; and surely there never lighted on this orb, which she hardly seemed to touch, a more delightful vision. I saw her just above the horizon, decorating and cheering the elevated sphere she had just begun to move in, glittering like a morning star full of life and splendor and joy. Oh, what a revolution....Little did I dream that I should have lived to see such disasters fall upon her, in a nation of gallant men, in a nation of men of honor and of cavaliers! I thought ten thousand swords must have leaped from their scabbards, to avenge even a look which threatened her with insult. But the age of chivalry is gone; that of sophisters, economists, and calculators has succeeded...."

~Edmund Burke, October 1790

Friday, January 10, 2025

The Socialists and Suffragettes of Oz

From Reason:

Two years after that, Baum wrote a second Oz novel, The Marvelous Land of Oz, that spoofs the suffrage movement: When an all-girl "Army of Revolt" seizes the Emerald City, its members seem chiefly interested in matters like acquiring jewels and gowns—and when they are ultimately defeated, they're happy that they no longer have to eat their husbands' cooking. Baum gave the story a feminist ending, though: Once the rightful political order has reestablished itself, Oz's most powerful figures are two benevolent women, making the place a sort of matriarchy.

By the sixth book in the series, The Emerald City of Oz (1910), Baum was presenting the fairyland as a socialist utopia:

There were no poor people in the Land of Oz, because there was no such thing as money, and all property of every sort belonged to the Ruler. The people were her children, and she cared for them. Each person was given freely by his neighbors whatever he required for his use, which is as much as any one may reasonably desire. Some tilled the lands and raised great crops of grain, which was divided equally among the entire population, so that all had enough….If by chance the supply ever ran short, more was taken from the great storehouses of the Ruler, which were afterward filled up again when there was more of any article than the people needed.

Every one worked half the time and played half the time, and the people enjoyed the work as much as they did the play, because it is good to be occupied and to have something to do. There were no cruel overseers set to watch them, and no one to rebuke them or to find fault with them. So each one was proud to do all he could for his friends and neighbors, and was glad when they would accept the things he produced.

"I do not suppose such an arrangement would be practical with us," Baum added, "but Dorothy assures me that it works finely with the Oz people."

Another Baum book, The Sea Fairies (1911)—not officially an Oz novel, but the protagonists would later cross over to the Oz series—includes a scene where an octopus is offended that anyone would think he resembles Standard Oil. "Just because we have several long arms and take whatever we can reach," he says, "they accuse us of being like— like— oh, I cannot say it! It is too shameful, too humiliating." (Read more.)