Aunt Em - Oz Books

Oz Books

Em spends most of her life working on farms. In The Emerald City of Oz, she states that she has raised chickens for "nearly forty years." After confessing to Dorothy that their farm was facing imminent foreclosure, Em, Henry and Dorothy all move to the land of Oz to live for good in the Emerald City. Princess Ozma appoints Em "Royal Mender of the Stockings of the Ruler of Oz" in order to keep her busy.

Her sister is married to Bill Hugson. It is never clarified in the books whether it is she or Uncle Henry who is Dorothy's blood relative. (It is also possible that "Aunt" and "Uncle" are affectionate terms of a foster family and that Dorothy is not related to either of them.)

She is featured slightly less than Uncle Henry in the Oz books, despite having a bigger role in the 1939 film The Wizard of Oz. Ruth Plumly Thompson gave her only two brief mentions in The Royal Book of Oz and Grampa in Oz. She had somewhat larger roles in John R. Neill's The Wonder City of Oz and The Scalawagons of Oz and Jack Snow's The Magical Mimics in Oz.

In The Emerald City of Oz, she shows herself particularly unamenable to Oz, asking for a back attic room, simpler clothing, and is gauche enough to tell Billina that chickens are for broiling and eating without realizing that such a conversation would be deeply offensive. Uncle Henry has seen more of the world than she has, and is much more prepared to accept Oz as it is. In this book, unlike in The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, her speech patterns and accent indicators are very similar to Sairy Ann Bilkins, the title character of Baum's Our Landlady, who, too, was quite set in her ways. Ultimately, though, she comes to the epiphany that she "ha been a slave all life," and is ready for her life to change.

Aunt Em appears occasionally in the works of Baum's successors in Oz literature; one notable example is Eric Shanower's The Giant Garden of Oz.