Galinda
From BookJive
Galinda | |
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| Description: | The most powerful sorceress |
| Book List: | Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West |
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[edit] Character
Glinda (or Glinda the Good Witch) is a fictional character in the Land of Oz created by American author L. Frank Baum. She is the most powerful sorceress of Oz, ruler of the Quadling Country south of the Emerald City, and protector of Princess Ozma.
In Wicked, a novel by Gregory Maguire which reimagines Baum's Oz, the witch is initially known as Galinda.
[edit] The classic books
Baum's beloved 1900 novel The Wonderful Wizard of Oz refers to Glinda as the Good Witch of the South. Later books call her a "sorceress" rather than a "witch". Baum's writings make clear that he did not view witches as inherently wicked or in league with the Devil, so this change was probably meant to signal that Glinda was even more powerful than a witch.
Another explanation may be that he decided to avoid the negative connotations of "witch"; in Queen Zixi of Ix, he had made Zixi a witch, for which she is shunned by fairies. Again, at the end of The Marvelous Land of Oz, Glinda distinguishes between "respectable sorceresses" who do not perform shapeshifting magic because it is not honest, and "unscrupulous witches" such as Mombi who will do it; this is why Mombi, rather than Glinda, turns Tip back into the form of Ozma.
Glinda is usually described as the most powerful magician in Oz. In The Patchwork Girl of Oz, neither Ozma nor the Wizard can break a spell, but later it is revealed that Glinda can do so.
In the books, Glinda is depicted as a tall young woman with red hair in a clinging white dress.
Besides a vast knowledge of magic, Glinda employs various tools, charms, and instruments in her workshop. The Emerald City of Oz reveals that she owns a Great Book of Records that allows her to track everything that goes on in the world from the instant it happens. Starting with The Road to Oz she trains the formerly humbug Wizard in magic; he becomes a formidable practitioner, but acknowledges that she is more powerful yet. Glinda's magic is most apparent in Glinda of Oz, Baum's last book. In that book, she undoes Queen Coo-ee-oh's transformation of Queen Rora of the Flatheads, in contrast to her statement in The Marvelous Land of Oz.
Glinda lives in a palace near the southern border of the Quadling Country, attended by one hundred beautiful maidens (twenty-five from each country of Oz). She also employs a large army of female soldiers, with which she placed Ozma on the throne of Oz at the end of The Marvelous Land of Oz. Men are not much in evidence in Glinda's society.
As a ruler, Glinda is strongly protective of her subjects. She creates gated communities for the rabbits of Bunnybury and the paper dolls of Miss Cuttenclip, and later in The Emerald City of Oz seals off all of Oz from the Great Outside World for its security. However, unlike Ozma, Glinda is willing to ignore strife and oppression in remote corners of Oz like Jinxland and the Skeezer territory as long as it does not threaten the Emerald City or innocent outsiders.
