On Elphie: A Guest Post by Gregory Maguire

We’ve seen the musical, watched the movie, and re-read the original novel dozens of times. Finally, this is the origin story we’ve all been waiting for. Get to know the girl behind the witch in this dazzling coming-of-age tale. Read on for an exclusive essay from author Gregory Maguire on writing Elphie.

By now Elphaba, the green-skinned witch, inspired by a character invented by L. Frank Baum and immortalized by actress Margaret Hamilton, has become a legal citizen of the world of the imagination. Nothing could make me happier. I always identified with the Witch, even as she terrified me.

My novel called WICKED—and the subsequent play and movies—brought Elphaba into high relief for me and for the world.

The character of the green witch emerged slowly. I wanted her life story to be complete with patches of joy and accomplishment, of mission and of failure, of grief and fear, and most of all, most, most of all: of longing. Longing, which powers all our days.

ELPHIE revisits the childhood of Elphaba to highlight aspects of her character and her soul. At least some of what you find in ELPHIE was part of her origin story in the draft of WICKED that I submitted for publication more than thirty years ago. But as the novel needed trimming, I jettisoned several episodes in her childhood. Reluctantly.

Writing ELPHIE, I found other subtleties and curiosities presented themselves to me. I was able to examine a richer sense of sisterhood between Elphie and Nessa, for instance. After all, any sibling relationship that is only friction doesn’t last. However prickly those two were with each other, it’s clear that they had much in common in terms of surviving their childhoods together. In ELPHIE you’ll discover that the very young green toddler suffers the usual sense of sibling rivalry found in families learning to live with a newborn. Elphie herself is not above such a common plight.

In ELPHIE I was also able to determine how the curious green girl first became aware of talking Animals, and how sudden was her understanding almost at once of their status as a population at risk. I tried not to overplay this sympathy, but it shows itself in young childhood.

So much does reveal itself early on, doesn’t it? As I type these recollections of writing ELPHIE, and how her childhood life predicted some of what she would become as an adult, I am grinning to remember my own childhood. There is one murky photo of me about the age of five, drawing and writing something on a piece of paper at our family coffee table, my little knees folded under the tabletop. There is a very sound memory of a first or second grade school nun (in her long black skirts!) giving me allowance to draw when I had finished my classwork early, because I always finished early and drawing kept me quiet. I remember preparing pictures from the Wizard of Oz as the rest of the class completed their work sheets. The nun passed by my desk and examined my work. Her murmur of appreciation at my industry and my apparent talent was like a Kiss from Glinda that starred my forehead with glory. So, as Elphie began to be the Witch even in her earliest years, I began to be a writer, the writer eventually of WICKED and of ELPHIE, decades before the moment arrived to fly with the idea.