L. Frank Baum’s Inversion of the Beauty and the Beast Trope in "The Emerald City of Oz"

Ever since that awful “prequel” to The Wizard of Oz came out, I decided to read the rest of the books in the Oz series. Before, I had only read The Wonderful Wizard of Oz and The Emerald City of Oz and I’d enjoyed both. In addition to those books, I have now finished reading The Marvelous Land of Oz, The Lost Princess of Oz, and Glinda of Oz. So far, I have loved all of them.

However, I have also reread The Emerald City of Oz and, in doing so, reencountered what was the most memorable part of the book for me: the Phanfasms. For those who haven’t read The Emerald City of Oz, the Phanfasms are an evil race of magical beings who ally themselves with the villainous Nome King in his quest to invade and destroy Oz. They are one of three allies whom the Nome King’s general recruits, but for me, they were the most fascinating and strange. The Phanfasms are shapeshifters, but it was not merely the fact that they were shapeshifters that intrigued me; it was the nature of their shapeshifting and the way that they subverted typical fairytale usages of shapeshifting.

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