Surrendering Oz. Bonnie Friedman

      In Dorothy’s delicious dream her house sails high. It is a doll’s house, a toy house, although when it comes down to earth its landing is real enough: It kills. Dorothy’s first act in this new sublimity is to crush a faceless woman. “She’s gone where the gardens grow. Below, below, below,” just like Aunt Em. Of course, it’s an accident. But, as the Wicked Witch drolly observes: “I can cause accidents too, you know.” (Ironically, this is precisely what finishes her off: She incites an accident that dissolves her. Dorothy is capable of violence, apparently, only under the guise of an accident.) The murder implement of this first act? It’s death by house, as if the incarnated burden of housework could be hurled like a thunderbolt.

      Yet, ring the bell! This is cause for celebration. The wicked old witch at last is dead! Who is this witch? Well, we can’t quite see yet; nothing is visible but her feet on which gleam the scarlet power slippers.