At first glance L. Frank Baum’s Dot and Tot of Merryland
is the equivalent of that episode in a rewatch of a series that is rewatched
for the sake of completeness but otherwise is reserved no spot in conscious
memory. It is that bottle episode which justifies the argument for a shorter
season – not quite organized enough to offset its blandness, nor whimsical
enough to offset its lack of organization, nor clever enough to breathe life
into its half-hearted mystery. It is a fifth magnitude star in the sky wherein
shines the brilliant constellation of the Famous Fourteen. Nonetheless, Dot
and Tot of Merryland contains structural features worth examining, if only
as comparanda. Dot and Tot of Merryland is the work that follows the
Wonderful Wizard of Oz, although its realm would not be incorporated into
the Continent of Imagination for many years. Dot’s real name is not Dorothy, but
she is a Little Princess, even before her adventure. Tot’s name is not Tot, but
the resemblance of the name of the lead and her mascot to Dorothy and Toto is
hardly accidental. Dot is the leader, in both age and social standing; her
mother has perished from some delicacy in her nature, and her father has left
her in the care of a governess in the Secret Garden of his estate, while Tot’s
father is the head gardener, much like the Gaffer at Bag End. It is water
rather than air that bears the duo to the land of adventure, the Merryland of
the title, a method which Dorothy would not use until Ozma of Oz. The
entrance to adventure is narrow and almost prohibitive to adults who are
children at heart, a natural category of humanity in Baum’s perception.
There is a guardian, human despite his designation as the
Watch-Dog of Merryland, but he is a Baumian guardian, comic and ineffective. He
is bought off by a sweet cake, suggesting Cerberus and a descent into Hell, which
completely fails to deliver. Yet, as will be revealed, the presence of a
Watch-Dog in a location before the Seven Valleys is a potential misdirect,
encouraging the reader (or read-to, depending on age) to remember a more
Classical or Medieval katabasis than Baum’s actual intent. After an exchange
between Dot and the Watch-Dog which is the typical watered-down logic of which
Caroll’s Wonderland is the adult version, the duo sail into the First
Valley.
The First Valley is the Valley of Clowns, and it may be well
to remember that Dot and Tot’s adventures, such as they are, take place in that
sweet intermediate period between the apotropaic clowns of archaic religion and
the demonic clowns of contemporary horror. The Seven Valleys of Merryland are isolated
and infrequently visited, even by their own Queen. There is more contact
between some of the Valleys and our world than between the Valleys themselves. Dot
and Tot’s inability to steer their boat effectively renders this journey more
of a fairground ride than the deliberate travel of their silver-shod
predecessor. Flippityflop, the Prince of Clowns, but not the Clown Prince,
welcomes the children and tells them that Clowns are indigenous – and endemic –
to this Valley. The most skilled Clowns are set upon the peak of the mountain
that separates this Valley of Merryland and the mundane world. From there they
tumble into the world. Descent from the mountain is a favorite method of travel
in Baum’s works, although this may be the only instance of a non-evil character
using it; the Cast-Iron Man of The Monarch of Mo and the Roly-Rogues of Queen
Zixi of Ix are not friends to the protagonists of their tales. Once a Clown
is in our world, he seeks a circus, the telos of a true Clown. For there are
false Clowns in this fallen world, who can be identified because they do not
make children laugh. The idea of Clowns as an ethnicity could be seen as
an othering tactic, and maybe even a mockery of indigenous peoples, but it
could also provide positive messages. The first of these messages is that a
true Clown is true to his nature, as all people should be; this message is
consonant with Baum’s valorization of Dorothy and condemnation (however slight)
of the Wizard. The second message, which is more mature than the first but not
nearly as dark as othering, is a warning to children that people – and Clowns –
are not always who they say they are, but the results of their actions will
reveal their true nature. In the Valley of the Clowns, Dot and Tot encounter no
women, despite Flippityflop’s mention of his father and grandfather before him.
In addition to displaying Baum’s preference for Princes to Kings, even when
they are King or Queens in truth, the lack of women references the
traditionally male-only profession of clowning. Fortunately for the true
Clowns, Merryland has a mechanism in the Third Valley whereby new Clowns might
be born.
The Second Valley is the Valley of Bonbons. The inhabitants
of this Valley, unlike those of the Beautiful Valley of Mo, are entirely made
of candy, as is their environment. Even before the mandatory color palette of
the Quadrants of Oz, the theme of each land is overwriting its original
complexity. The Candy Man, the leader of the Valley and considerably less
menacing than Tony Todd, welcomes the children. Candy People, unlike Clowns,
have both sexes as well as children, and as a society closer to that of the
familiar world, the Candy People have black servants, licorice dolls who take
care of the children of other colors; no prize will be given for guessing what
the licorice children are called. The primary difference between Candy society and
our world is the lack of non-candy-based sustenance, which Dot recognizes as a
potential problem for permanent residency, but Tot is too hungry to care. The
Candy People have no teeth and therefore have no cavities. Tot’s consumption of
several fingers belonging to their host does not result in arrest, as might be
anticipated, because replacement parts are easy to find. They grow in the
marshmallow fields, where the licorice folk collect them for the Candy families.
With that distasteful acknowledgement done, this dismemberment and replacement is
yet another theme found both in The Magical Monarch of Mo and The
Wonderful Wizard of Oz. Candy People do not die of old age, but they do
eventually break into pieces that cannot be repaired. This is reminiscent of
the China Country in the south of Oz, although the Merryland method of disposal
is not recommended for divided china. The good and beautiful people of the
Valley of Bonbons honor their deceased not with broken hearts but respectful
edification in an act of what might be called “candy-balism.” Our protagonist
and her charge, as visitors from what Baum called “civilized” lands, are
horrified, but the Candy Man points out that there is no other sustenance in
the Valley and that it is an honor among his people. The child-like logic wins
over the children. Whether Baum intends this cannibalism to serve as an
indictment of barbarous habits or a plea for tolerance of differences greater
than that of the class distinction between the families of Dot and Tot is
difficult to determine. Perhaps this consumption of the dead is a reference to
Theosophist interest in Tibetan burial customs. The children’s horror at this
custom is particularly hypocritical given the near-universal habit of biting
off the heads of gingerbread men, leaving each as a body for a John Dough
mystery. At least the inhabitants of the Valley of Bonbons do not send forth their
own to be eaten – the licorice laborers in the fields of white are in poor
taste already! The children must move on, Dot because she recognizes that they
need actual food, and Tot because his hunger is a clear and present danger to
the local population.
Unfortunately for Tot, the Third Valley is the Valley of
Babies, and babies are not food, as we learn in Ozma of Oz. The babies
in question are human babies, although some of the boys might be Clowns and
resolve the absence of women in that coulrophilic land. The “adults” in the
Third Valley are Storks, all female and all white, but servants nonetheless to
the eponymous babies. The Storks collect the baby blossoms that fall in storms
from the sky and no doubt disqualify Storks with allergies. This focus on the
babies rather than the Storks is understandable from the perspective of two
small children, but it also reveals a gender divide between men and women – the
all-male Clowns who qualify leave their Valley, but the Storks send forth
others. The tone of Dot and Tot’s journey is becoming slightly darker, since
the Storks are always exporting babies to forestall some sort of infantile
apocalypse should there be no more room in the Valley. Is Baum, a pioneer of
modern media and franchising, also a predecessor of the sordid tale of the
commercialization of Cabbage Patch Kids? Are the Storks some sort of nursery
rhyme Amazons? At least Dot and Tot finally receive some nourishment from the
milk fountains in the Valley.
The Fourth Valley is the Valley of the Dolls, where Dot and
Tot are arrested by the wooden soldier despite his gun lacking ammunition; for
the Queen of Merryland is not fond of strangers. That she has never met a
non-resident of Merryland indicates that this stance is one of ignorance rather
than experience. Her instructions to keep out foreigners are comical and
ineffective, as the inaction of the Watch-Dog of Merryland attests, as well as
her Baumian fairytale army. The wall of the city is reminiscent of China
Country, and the average age of the fairyland juvenile arrest record is
dropping precipitously. When Dot and Tot are brought before the Queen of
Merryland, she is almost as tall as Dot. This detail is more important meta-textually
than one might expect, because Dot and Tot of Merryland was the last
Baum book illustrated by W. W. Denslow before his falling out with Baum over
the rights to the characters of The Wonderful Wizard of Oz and Baum’s
prominence overshadowing him like Lee over Kirby. Denslow’s illustrations in
the original show the inhabitants of Oz as possessing a similar height to
Dorothy, and thus the Queen of Merryland should match the height of the
protagonist. Had Dot and Tot of Merryland been a critical success,
perhaps a similar dispute to that of the newspaper strips would have arisen.
The Queen of Merryland, like other rulers of Baumian
wonderlands, is isolationist, but she accepts Dot and Tot’s explanations of the
Watch-Dog’s dereliction of duty; nonetheless, she intends to block up the
entrance from which Dot and Tot entered – Narnia rules apply to her portals,
but the Queen of Merryland is no Aslan. Since she cannot allow the children to
leave and she cannot dispose of them, she adopts them as her heirs – even though
she does not need any. This is the reason why the title is Dot and Tot of
Merryland rather than Dot and Tot in Merryland. The adoption
can seem abrupt, even for such an episodic text, until it is recalled that is
an American fairytale. Naturalization is not only an American
phenomenon, but it is also the explicit intention of Baum’s fairytale output,
most prominently accomplished in The Wonderful Wizard of Oz and its
sequels. Dorothy, after all, becomes, a Princess of Oz, and several other
humans from our world become citizens of Oz.
From a narrative standpoint, this elevation both places Dot
and Tot as equals in Merryland in contract to the regular world and gives them
responsibility. The Queen of Merryland, as negligent a ruler as many in the
Continent of Imagination, appoints Dot and Tot to be in charge of the Valley of
the Dolls while she heads upstream to instruct the Watch-Dog on what to do if
more potential visitors to Merryland decline to obey him. The Watch-Dog isn’t
very bright, either because he is senile, or because nearly five centuries of
isolation is probably not healthy for anyone’s mental state. Against her better
judgment the Queen allows Dot and Tot to experience the dolls of the Valley of
the Dolls at their most chaotic. One would think that the Valley of the Dolls
would be alive with Doll society, but the Queen found them noisy and disruptive
and therefore leaves them asleep most of the time. This could be commentary on
controlling (but not eliminating) the imagination, but it also reflects, not
entirely favorably, on the controlling nature of queens, princesses, and
sorceresses in Baum’s writing. There are elements of Glinda and Ozma that are
troubling to lovers of liberty.
The awakened Dolls of course do not know who Princess Dot
and Prince Tot are and therefore do not recognize their authority. The wand
which roused the Dolls is an item of Baumian magic, very specific in its
duration and operator. The rebellion of the Dolls does not end until the Return
of the Queen. This brief period of authority offers Dot and Tot some
perspective on what it is like to be an adult who is minding children. The next
rebellion in the Baumian canon will be in the Emerald City and only slightly less
absurd in its weaponry. The Queen of Merryland decides that she should complete
her circuit by sailing downstream with Dot and Tot and perhaps figuring out
what to do with them since the children do not really want to live in Merryland
forever (take that, Peter!) nor can she feed them properly, a matter of great
concern for Tot.
The Fifth Valley is the Valley of the Pussy Cats, whose
taste in what constitutes beautiful music is significantly different from that
of the two children and the Queen. Mr. Felis, the leader of the Pussy Cats,
welcomes the party and explains that the test of adulthood in this Valley is
the ability to jump to the roof of the house where one grew up as a kitten. The
loudest voices are the most beautiful ones and authorize their possessors to
rule the valley. This is not a phenomenon exclusive to the internet. Yet the
cats are still communal and gladly take the kittens of large litters into their
own homes. Dot and Tot are much more enthusiastic about the invitation to the
traditional nocturnal concert than the Queen, who has already experienced such passionate
singing, and therefore the party moves on.
The Sixth Valley is the chronically understaffed Valley of
Wind-Up Toys, where both Mr. Splits, two halves of a man, just barely manages
to keep the animal inhabitants of the Valley fully wound. The Queen is aware of
this problem, but proposes no solution, perhaps because as a Doll she lacks her
own imagination. At the very least, she could allow some of the wind-up animals
to remain temporarily unwound. Mr. Split’s gimmick, other than being bifurcated
like a Mangaboo, is an allegedly amusing vocal tic whereby one half starts words
and the other finishes them; but the two halves are never in the same place at
the same time, creating great difficulty of comprehension. Possibly the frenetic
pace of Mr. Split, never able to complete a thought, represents the
overwhelming busyness of adult life and its deleterious effect on concentration
and community; there is no functional society in the Sixth Valley.
The Seventh Valley, the Valley of Lost Things, is devoid of
life, mundane or fantastical. It is full, however, of lost things, particularly
young children’s jackets, and especially those which belonged to boys. This
rings true to experience. Dot finds a doll she lost, which the Queen allows her
to keep on the grounds that it is no longer lost. Dot and Tot, in contrast, are
lost, because they do not know whether the last arch will take them back to our
world. The Queen consents to them leaving, after which she will seal the exit
from the Seventh Valley. If the Valleys beyond the Fourth represent increasing
adulthood, the Seventh Valley as a particularly sanitary landfill is a stark
condemnation.
Dot and Tot exit the Seventh Valley but fall asleep before
they enter our world. This event parallels the initial nap (at least on Tot’s
part) before encountering the Watch-Dog. This equivalence of fairyland with a
dream state, the first such instance in the Baumian canon, js supported by the
deceptively half-hearted mystery of the Queen of Merryland’s name. The Queen
deflects the question every time it is brought up. Why is knowing her name so
important when her title is clear? For this point the doll which Dot lost and
then found is critical. In the literal manner of young children, Dot had named
her doll Dolly, which she ultimately decided was the name of the Queen of
Merryland. If Dot was worried about her lost doll the entire journey, then the
journey was not a series of episodic adventures, but rather a quest. It is the
nature of a quest that the questor is changed in some way by the end, usually
by being more mature than at the beginning; Dot cannot return to Narnia. It is
no accident that an alternative pet name for Dorothy is Dolly, allowing Dot to
find herself. This analysis is far beyond the capabilities of a small girl such
a Dot. Thus Dot and Tot of Merryland is a quest narrative experienced by
a questor unaware of her quest and not yet capable of the necessary abstract
thinking. Baum insists on the truth of the experience by having Dot and Tot’s
boat appear upstream from where it was originally moored – this should not be
possible. This feature of the narrative cannot be casually dismissed because it
is precisely this “over the rainbow” feature that has endeared the 1939 Wizard
of Oz film to generations of Americans. Dot and Tot of Merryland is
a far more substantial work than it seems at first glance.
Final Version Composed and Performed In A Backyard June 4, 2021
