Elphaba - Elphaba in The Books

Elphaba in The Books

Elphaba is the illegitimate daughter of Melena Thropp and a traveling salesman (The Wizard of Oz). Elphaba does not discover her true father's identity until later in her life, and grows up believing that her mother's husband Frexspar is her father. Through her mother, she can lay claim to the highest held title of Munchkinland, the Eminent Thropp. Frexspar, the unionist minister and missionary, is her mother’s husband. Nessarose (later the Wicked Witch of the East), and Shell, the Emperor of Oz after the wizard's departure, are her half siblings. Because of her noble ancestry, Elphaba bears the title of "Thropp Third Descending".

Frex favors Nessarose over Elphaba, a source of constant resentment. Nessarose is almost comically pious, the preeminent quality the zealous Frexspar desires in a daughter. While Elphaba is born with green skin, Nessarose is considered beautiful, although she is born without arms. During her visit to Munchkinland near the end of the fourth section of the book, Elphaba discovers that the Quadling Turtle Heart may in fact have fathered Nessarose, it is also implied that Turtle Heart was also her mother's lover.

Elphaba attends Shiz University where she eventually becomes best friends with Galinda (later "Glinda") and Boq. She also meets Fiyero, the Crown Prince of the Vinkus (Winkie Country), who later falls in love with her. Nessarose later joins Elphaba at Shiz. It is also at this time that Elphaba first meets Madame Morrible, the head of Crage Hall (the part of the university open to women) and develops a dislike for her that soon becomes a hatred due to the belief that Madame Morrible's Tik Tok, Grommetik, is responsible for the death of her favourite professor, a Goat by the name of Doctor Dillamond. Later on in life Elphaba attempts to kill Madame Morrible several times, the last time she believes she is successful. Frex sends Nessarose a beautiful pair of jewelled slippers as a gift (these slippers are later enchanted by Galinda to enable Nessarose to walk without assistance). Elphaba pretends not to care that she received no gift from their father, but toward the end of the novel, the shoes become an obsession for her, as she sees them as a symbol of Frex's favoritism.

After meeting the Wizard she becomes increasingly disgusted with the ever-more tyrannical and anti-Animal policies of the Wizard (even more so following the murder of Doctor Dillamond), Elphaba drops out of Shiz and takes up residence in the Emerald City, where she joins a resistance movement.

Elphaba later meets up with Fiyero again and eventually permits him to keep coming back as long as he doesn't disclose her location. The two fall in love with Elphaba constantly asking Fiyero questions about her old friends. They begin an affair, despite the fact that Fiyero is married with three children (Irji, Manek and Nor), but Elphaba refuses to let Fiyero touch her below the waist. When he does catch a glimpse of her, he notices a scar somewhere around the groin. This ties into rumors elsewhere in the book that Elphaba is partially male(later proved false as Elphaba is the confirmed mother of Liir).

Fiyero is eventually murdered by the Gale Force (the Wizard's secret police) after disregarding Elphaba's instructions to stay away from Corn Exchange where she squats while she is taking part in an operation for the resistance. When Elphaba returns she finds the floor covered in blood; though no body is ever found it is implied that no human could survive blood loss of that magnitude. Severely traumatized and covered in Fiyero's blood, Elphaba makes her way to a nearby mauntery (nunnery) where she lapses into a coma for a year. A child, Liir, is apparently carried to term while Elphaba is in this state, and because of this Elphaba is uncertain as to whether or not she actually is the boy's mother, she doesn't even consider the possibility until Liir is about 7 years old as he doesn't seem to resemble her or Fiyero.

Liir's maternity is never explicitly stated in the book, but he later sires a child with green skin, suggesting that Elphaba is indeed his mother; Maguire has also described Liir as "Elphaba's son" in interviews. However, his paternity is stated several times in the fourth section of the book. There is also a genealogy chart in the beginning of the third book that states that Elphaba is his mother and that Fiyero is his father.

Following her emergence from her coma, Elphaba spends another year recuperating and a further seven tending the terminally ill in the mauntery. After this, she visits Fiyero's wife, Sarima, seeking forgiveness for her part in Fiyero's death. Sarima welcomes her and allows her to live at Fiyero's castle of Kiamo Ko. Though Elphaba had only intended to stay at Kiamo Ko a short time, Sarima refuses to even talk about Fiyero and so she resigns herself to living in the castle indefinitely. Sarima also calls Elphaba 'Auntie', although the children end up calling Elphaba 'Auntie Witch' behind her back. Elphaba eventually gives in to this name even though she resented it before.

Though Elphaba had once considered sorcery to be nothing more than "entertainment", and was not interested in studying the art, she is revealed to have taken correspondence courses in magic during her time living in the Emerald City. While living at Kiamo Ko, Elphaba discovers the Grimmerie (a book containing vast magical knowledge) in the attic of the castle. Using the limited amount of information that she can decipher from the cryptic book, she begins to practice sorcery with greater success than ever before. She mainly uses sorcery to aid, enhance and further the scientific investigations initially begun by Doctor Dillamond while she was at Shiz, her main use of sorcery is creating flying monkeys.

The Wizard's Gale Forcers eventually capture Sarima and her family, Nor is later revealed to be the only survivor. Elphaba is left unsatisfied as Sarima can no longer provide the forgiveness she desires and plunges into madness.

After Nessarose is crushed by Dorothy Gale's house, Elphaba attends her sister's funeral, where she meets with Glinda. The two are originally happy to be reunited, but when Elphaba learns that Glinda has given Nessarose's shoes to Dorothy, she is enraged, and this sparks a conflict between the two women which remains unresolved at the time of Elphaba's death.

The possibility of Elphaba coming back to life in a future novel in the series has been widely debated among Maguire's legions of fans for many years. The reason many seem to think that Elphaba will eventually return to Oz is because of the ending of Wicked. The bucket splash that supposedly ends her life connects to the novel's fable of Saint Aelphaba, for whom Elphaba is named, who was said to disappear beyond a waterfall, she returned several hundred years later before once again disappearing behind the waterfall. This in turn connects Elphaba with the stories that Sarima tells her children about a wicked witch who disappears into a cave. At the end of the story it's tradition that the children ask if the witch ever comes out, to which Sarima replies "not yet". At the end of Wicked, that dialogue is repeated and "not yet" are actually the final two words that close out the book, suggesting that Elphaba will eventually rise again. Furthermore, in several interviews, Maguire has stated "a witch may die, but she will always come back- always."

Further evidence of the possible resurrection of Elphaba were brought to light towards the end of the 2008 novel A Lion Among Men (the third book in the series), when the character of Yackle (Yackle was always present in Elphaba's life in various forms, whether Elphaba was aware of it or not) is about to die. Before she does, she seems to have a realization of some sort and says "of course- she's coming back. Don't you understand, she's coming back!" However, the identity of the 'she' to whom Yackle was referring remains ambiguous, as she dies before she can make herself understood. Many fans of the series think that she was talking about Elphaba, while others believe she may have been talking about the long-lost Ozma. This is continued to some extent in Out of Oz; when Rain, Elphaba's granddaughter, returns to Kiamo Ko and finds Nanny still alive under the care of an equally elderly Chistery. It is revealed that Nanny closed and locked the door of the tower room Elphaba died in, disallowing anyone to go in. Rain repeatedly asks her what she saw and she refuses to say. However, it's also implied that Elphaba's return is actually Rain herself, since -once the spell disguising her green skin is removed- she looks exactly like Elphaba.