The Wicked Witch of the West is a character in the classic children's novel The Wonderful Wizard of Oz (1900) by the American author L. Frank Baum, who is the evil ruler of the Winkie Country, the western region in the Land of Oz. She is inadvertently killed by the child Dorothy Gale with a bucket of water. In Baum's subsequent Oz novels, the Wicked Witch of the West is referred to occasionally. Margaret Hamilton played the role of the witch in the classic 1939 film based on Baum's novel. Hamilton's characterization introduced green skin, a feature repeated in later literary and dramatic representations, including Gregory Maguire's 1995 revisionist novel Wicked (as well as the novel's 2003 stage musical adaptation and subsequent two-part film adaptation), the 2013 film Oz the Great and Powerful, and the television series Once Upon a Time.
In Baum's books The Wicked Witch of the West is the malevolent ruler of the Winkie Country. Her castle is described as beautiful instead of being the sinister fortress shown in the 1939 film. In all versions, she is aquaphobic. The Wicked Witch of the West was not related to the Wicked Witch of the East, but leagued together with her, the Wicked Witch of the South, and the Wicked Witch of the North to conquer the Land of Oz and divide it amongst themselves, as recounted in L. Frank Baum's Dorothy and the Wizard in Oz. She shows no interest in the death of the Eastern Witch and all she cares about is obtaining the Silver Shoes which will increase her power. W. W. Denslow's illustrations for The Wonderful Wizard of Oz depict her as a paunched old hag with three pigtails and an eyepatch. Baum himself specified that she only had one eye, but that it "was as powerful as a telescope", enabling the witch to see what was happening in her kingdom from her castle windows. Other illustrators, such as Paul Granger, placed her eye in the center of her forehead, as a cyclops. Usually, she is shown wearing an eyepatch; however, some illustrations show her with two eyes. Most of her power resides in the creatures she controls. She has a pack of 40 great wolves, a flock of 40 crows, a swarm of black bees, and an army of Winkies. She possesses the enchanted Golden Cap, which compels the winged monkeys to obey her on three occasions. First, the witch commanded the creatures to help her enslave the Winkies and to seize control of the western part of the Land of Oz. Second, she made the winged monkeys drive the Wizard of Oz's army out of the Winkie Country, when he attempted to overthrow her. When Dorothy Gale and her companions Scarecrow, Tin Woodman, and Cowardly Lion were sent by the Wizard to destroy her, the Witch attacked them with her various creatures. Each of these attempts was thwarted with the Tin Woodman killing the 40 great wolves, Scarecrow killing the 40 crows, the black bees dying upon trying to sting the Tin Woodman, and the armed Winkie slaves being scared off by the Cowardly Lion. The protagonists are eventually subdued by the Witch's third and final permitted use of the winged monkeys. Nevertheless, the old witch cannot kill Dorothy because the girl is protected by the Good Witch of the North's kiss. She settles for enslaving Dorothy and tries to force the Cowardly Lion into submission by starving him, though Dorothy sneaks him food. Upon seeing the Silver Shoes on the girl's feet, the Wicked Witch decides to steal them, and thereby acquire even more power. When she succeeds in acquiring one silver shoe by making Dorothy trip over an invisible bar, the little girl angrily throws a bucket of water onto the Wicked Witch. This causes the old witch to melt away. The Wicked Witch's dryness was enumerated in some clues before this. Furthermore, when Toto had bitten her, she had not bled; her wickedness had dried her up long ago. L. Frank Baum did not explain precisely why water had this effect on her, nor did he ever imply that all evil witches could be likewise destroyed. However, the wicked witch Mombi is similarly disposed of in The Lost King of Oz and the wicked witch Singra is clearly afraid of the same fate in the early chapters of The Wicked Witch of Oz.
Personality and characterization
In the 1939 film, the Witch is iconic for her green skin, pointed hat, broom, boisterous, dramatic (yet nasty) personality, and cackle; in the books, her personality is somewhat more subtle: she is not as overtly sadistic, she is not as antagonistic to Dorothy and only becomes so once she sees Dorothy has intruded on her land, and her appearance is described very differently. In the novel, she also does not carry a broom, but rather an umbrella, which she uses on one occasion to strike Dorothy's dog Toto. Her nature is a volatile and yet somewhat cowardly one when compared to the film version. Despite her immense power, she avoids face-to-face contact with her enemies, and is frightened of Dorothy at first when she sees the girl wearing the Silver Shoes. She is also afraid of the dark in Baum's original story for reasons unknown. For that reason, the Witch never tried to steal the Silver Shoes while Dorothy was sleeping. Despite her fear of water and the dark, the Wicked Witch of the West was one of the most powerful witches in all of Oz. In ensuing Oz books, her power is described as having been so great that even Glinda the Good Witch of the South feared her. She was described as being so cruel that the blood in her body dried up and that when she was struck, she did not bleed. In the novel, she also owns slaves to do her bidding, a characterization which is kept in "The Wiz", in which she is much more dramatic than in the original film and forces her slaves to refer to her as beautiful.
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