The story told in The Wonderful Wizard of Oz by L. Frank Baum became widely popularized through the 1939 film adaptation. A children’s classic, Baum says in the preface that he tried to offer a modernized fairy tale. Though now old-fashioned, the book does still present a relatively progressive view, portraying gender in an unconventional and curious way. The gender roles and character relationships throughout the novel differ from the typical gender stereotypes seen in traditional children’s stories and can be viewed by the reader in different ways. The story surrounds the primary protagonist Dorothy, a female. Previously, stories about adventure centered around male characters (for example, Mark Twain’s Huckleberry Finn and