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

[aikaterini]

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.

In many fairytales, magical transformations are used to indicate a person’s hidden character. In Beauty and the Beast, the Beast’s transformation from an animal to a human at the end indicates his inner virtue. Correspondingly, the reverse – a beautiful or handsome character transforming into a hideous beast or person by the end – is meant to indicate that character’s inner corruption and deceit. However, neither of these is true for the Phanfasms.

When Guph, the Nome King’s general, sets out to their kingdom, he is confronted by hairy men with the heads of beasts who live in crumbling stone huts in a desolate hilltop. However, the Phanfasms’ leader, the First and Foremost, proves that all may not be as it appears when he transforms into a beautiful woman and then transforms into a gigantic butterfly before reassuming the shape of a beast-man. These transformations are, of course, performed in order to showcase the power of the Phanfasms to Guph while he’s trying to persuade them to become allies to the Nome King. However, by the end of the chapter, and notably after Guph leaves, the narrator informs the reader that everything that Guph has seen is an illusion and that the desolate wasteland of a hilltop is actually a huge and shining city. The Phanfasms’ true forms are never explicitly stated, but it is noted that they are “gaily dressed” and that the First and Foremost is “beautifully arrayed” (Baum, 126). In other words, the hideous forms of beast-men are merely illusions and their true forms are beautiful.

But they’re still evil. The revelation of the Phanfasms’ true forms, vague though it is, doesn’t indicate anything about their moral worth. Their hidden beauty doesn’t reveal their hidden virtue. Their ugly facades don’t say anything about their wickedness. No matter what shape they assume, they are evil. Out of all of Oz’s enemies in The Emerald City of Oz, they are feared as the most powerful and the most malevolent. After all, the only reason why they eventually agree to help the Nomes is because they see his invasion as an opportunity to ruin the happiness of good people, which gives them pleasure. That is the only thing that Guph can offer them that they will accept: the chance to bring misery to others.

However, this inversion led me to question just why Baum set up their transformations this way. I wondered why, if the Phanfasms are supposed to be evil, they chose to hide their true forms rather than use them to entice their victims. At no point in the book do the Phantasms assume their real and beautiful forms in front of outsiders. They remain beast-men for the rest of the story. True, their beast-forms are obviously meant to ward off trespassers, given their hostile attitude to Guph when he enters their kingdom. But if the “chief joy of the race of Phanfasms is to destroy happiness” (126), then why have they remained secluded in their city? Why have they not gone out into the world already and spread mayhem and deception?

In fact, the Phanfasms’ shapeshifting and isolation from the outside world reminds me of another Oz character, Reera the Red. She appears in Glinda of Oz and, like the Phanfasms, she doesn’t like intruders and her first form is a beast – in her case, as an overgrown ape. Unlike the Phanfasms, she does eventually reveal her true form to others, that of a beautiful woman. However, her reveal seems to be set up more along the lines of the Beauty and the Beast arc. Reera may be prickly, eccentric, and aloof, but she ends up helping the heroes save the day. Hence, her transformation into a beautiful woman could be interpreted as the reveal of her true virtue.

Whatever their reasons are and whatever Baum’s reasons for having them maintain their beastly forms instead of having them shapeshift while in front of their allies and enemies, there is another ambiguous element to the Phanfasms' shapeshifting and that is the true gender of the First and Foremost. As a beast-man, the First and Foremost is referred to as "he," but when shifting into a woman, is referred to as "she." In fact, I find it interesting that when showcasing the power and might of the Phanfasms, Baum chose to transform the First and Foremost into a beautiful woman instead of a beautiful man, as the reader would expect. What's also interesting is that at the end of the chapter, when the illusions are lifted and the Phanfasms and their city are revealed, the First and Foremost's gender is not stated. All that is said is that the First and Foremost is "beautifully arrayed." The reader doesn't know if the First and Foremost is really male or female.

So, I thought the Phanfasms as a whole were an interesting twist on the transformation of beauty pattern. Are there any other works of fiction that also subvert this trope?