Is Glinda the Real Wicked Witch in Oz? Timothy Sexton College

Like the gun that Scarecrow brings to a witch fight, one of the things that usually goes unnoticed about The Wizard of Oz is that out of all the major characters whom Dorothy encounters in the Technicolor dream world the only one without a counterpart back home in drab black and white Kansas is Glinda. This anomaly is all the stranger since it is Glinda who plays the central role in Dorothy returning home. Even the Wicked Witch has a doppelganger in Kansas, but not the Good Witch? Or is it the very reason there is no Glinda-esque character in Kansas because it wasn’t just all just a dream, that the tornado did transport Dorothy to Oz, and that the reason there is no one who reminds her of the Good Witch is because Glinda was really the wicked witch all along?

Glinda is no idiot, for sure. She lets us know right away she is a Good Witch and with what we’ve been taught about witches, who would disagree? A blonde bombshell in an elegant formal wicked-shames the very stereotype of a witch: she’s green, she’s ugly and she’s wearing a pointy hat. Who’s going to argue? Right from the get-go Glinda should become the epicenter of suspicion for Dorothy: hidden with her derisive dismissal that “only bad witches are ugly” is the...