Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West by: Gregory Maguire

 

Most people who experience Wicked are most familiar with the hit Broadway musical, indeed it was my first exposure to the material and the theater as a whole.  There is this inherent assumption that the musical is at least semi-faithful to Gregory Maguire’s Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West, but outside of the subject matter and most of the characters, it’s quite a different beast entirely.  This is mainly down to the perspective of the two works, the musical following Glinda after the death of Elphaba, the Wicked Witch of the West, while the novel is all on the other side, following Elphaba and essentially her family before her birth.  The first fifth of the novel chronicles Elphaba’s conception and birth, as well as her early childhood where the reader can get an insight into what her family was like.  The book, through rambling sections and diversions becomes a treatise on morality and what being wicked actually means, but while the musical gives a more definitive answer Maguire makes the critical decision to leave it ambiguous to if Elphaba was good in the end.  There’s also ambiguity if she survived her accidental melting, ending with lines which have appeared previously asking: “And there the wicked old witch stayed for a good long time.  And did she ever come out? Not yet.”.  This little call and response implies that Elphaba might be alive in the end, but still broken as the final section of the book is one which sees her distraught and broken about losing everyone she ever loved.  The final section faces her a situation which is what it seems on face value, not some grand conspiracy of genocide or murders, but a little girl accidentally killed her sister and wishes to make amends, and that is her downfall.

 

Maguire’s text is perhaps just as witty as the musical’s script, delving into philosophy, psychology, and politics, examining the nature of wickedness at the core and shifting the perspective off what the reader may expect.  The source is not the 1939 film The Wizard of Oz, only definitively taking Elphaba’s green skin from that film, but L. Frank Baum’s original novel The Wonderful Wizard of Oz which is already a darker children’s novel and some of the sequels which get even darker.  This makes the adult leap to Wicked, which includes sex, several affairs, sexual assault, and an implied polyamorous relationship, all not intended to be read by children which is perhaps why people struggle with this novel.  Underneath it all the wit is there, the most interesting things coming where the musical neglected to go, such as Madame Morrible’s continual stalking of Elphaba, Elphaba’s estranged son, the fact that Elphaba and her sister were both from different fathers and not her father, and the musings on the nature of religion.  Elphaba’s father instead of being governor of Munchkinland as in the musical, is a religious official and throughout Elphaba’s disbelief in the soul becomes a driving factor, turning her to righteous causes against the bigotry and frankly outdated ways of Oz.  Doctor Dillamond, in the musical made mute and the representation of Elphaba’s anger, serves the same purpose in the novel but is murdered halfway through and that is what sets Elphaba, as well as Galinda off.  Galinda changes her name not in a spur of the moment decision, but a genuine act of reverence to a Goat she cared for.  Glinda is still flighty and never goes against being a socialite, but there is a depth to her (again the musical is from her perspective), and there isn’t that final meeting between the two.

 

There is something so different about the book is that the rest of the characters are intentionally awful, Nessarose being the spoiled child that she is and ruling with an iron fist, loving the idea that she is the Wicked Witch of the East, a third sibling who follows the religious nature of the parents.  Fiyero being an actual prince and less flighty (there’s another male character who ends up being not important) and his affair and son by Elphaba, Liir, is perhaps some of the most emotional points of the novel.  Overall, Wicked is one of those books that perhaps meanders and isn’t for everybody, but it is something of an experience.  It needs to be read as a biography with not a definitive end with resolution because like many lives, it’s one left unfinished.  8/10.