Dorothy Gita Morena never met her great grandfather, L. Frank Baum. He died decades before she was born, but he has been a presence in her life from the beginning. She bears the first name of his best known protagonist, although she was named for a grandmother who married into the family, not the one who followed the Yellow Brick Road.
When she was two or three, the Oz books were Morena’s favorite bedtime stories. She also watched the movie version of the first Oz book, “The Wonderful Wizard of Oz,” on television many times. “We often saw it during the holidays, like everyone else in those days,” she said.
Frank Baum remains among Coronado’s most famous and most beloved visitors. For six years he escaped Chicago’s frigid winters to bask in sunny Southern California.
While he spent most of his time at the Hotel del Coronado, he did rent a house on Star Circle for two winters, Morena said. A “Wizard of Oz Ave” street sign hangs near the front door. Conventional Coronado lore has it that the Crown City was the prototype for the Emerald City.
This is very likely an urban legend, since many scholars cite the 1893 Chicago World’s Fair as the inspiration, but Baum did write three of the Oz books while wintering here: “The Road to Oz,” Dorothy and the Wizard of Oz,” and “The Emerald City.”
Morena will be in Coronado on Saturday, October 17, as part of the city’s Oz Festival to read from her book, “The Wisdom of Oz,” and discuss the impact of her great grandfather‘s stories.
While Morena knew the books, the man behind them was a bit of a mystery. “No one in the family talked about him,” Morena said. For most of their lives they simply enjoyed the stories. Experiencing a divorce and a deepening interest in spirituality propelled her on a quest to discover the man behind the tales.
Morena combed Baum‘s writing and the remembrances of his contemporaries to sketch out who he was. She traveled to the places he had lived, including the city that dubs itself the “Land of Oz,” Aberdeen, South Dakota, where Baum edited and wrote a column for the local newspaper.
One of the first things Morena discovered was that Baum was a fierce feminist. His mother-in-law was Matilda Joslyn Gage, a radical feminist who fought for women‘s suffrage beside Elizabeth Cady Stanton. Baum himself was a member of the Aberdeen Women‘s Suffrage Club in South Dakota.
His feminist leanings appear in all 14 books, but were erased in popular culture by the MGM version of “The Wonderful Wizard of Oz.”
Judy Garland‘s Dorothy is a proper Depression-era young lady, not the feisty Progressive Era feminist Baum created.
Morena points out that in In the book, Dorothy intentionally trips the Wicked Witch with an invisible metal bar when she tries to steal the ruby slippers and then tosses water on her. In the movie, Dorothy accidentally throws a bucket of water on the Wicked Witch while trying to save the Scarecrow who’s been set ablaze.
As she learned more of her family’s history and read more deeply into her great-grandfather’s books, she envisaged Oz as “a metaphor for the journey from birth to death, with Dorothy as an archetypal orphan on a heroic journey.”
Dorothy’s traveling companions also represent aspects of self-transformation: The Scarecrow gains “self-acceptance and insight” that leads to compassion.” The Woodsman, who wants a heart “represents emotions that are denied and suppressed.” The Cowardly Lion’s “courage leads to love, trust and truthfulness.”
Morena stresses these are her interpretations; others can and have had different insights. There are more than a dozen books that use Oz as a metaphor to be more successful in business and life. Her “orientation is more psychological,” she said.
Morena is a certified transpersonal psychotherapist and licensed marriage, family and child therapist who specializes in healing emotional trauma and expanding awareness into personal lives and relationships.
In her practice she uses familiar Oz characters as archetypes to help her clients restructure their psyches through sand play, an adjunct to talk therapy where clients create scenes by silently placing miniature objects in a tray of sand.
“By using visual images for self expression, unconscious feelings and attitudes emerge, [allowing] the conscious mind to become aware of what is hidden in the unconscious,” Morena explains on her website.
In her talk she will touch on some of these concepts as well as her life and the twists and turns it has taken along her own Yellow Brick Road.
Morena will be in the Coronado Library’s Winn Room at 4pm on Saturday, October 17. The event is free to attend.
Related:
“Celebrate Oz!” Event
Morena’s Website.
