Being a Happy Medium: An Oracle's Importance

Upon seeing the 2003 film adaptation of A Wrinkle in Time for the first time, perhaps a decade earlier than the year this paper was written, I witnessed the Happy Medium maintain many of the characteristics she was given in the book. She was happy, and (left to her own devices) sought after only happy things; she was a medium; she lived in a cave; she was oddly dressed. These things appeased me enough to distract me from the fact that the actor who plays the Happy Medium, Seán Cullen, was a man. I realized, even then, that the Happy Medium presented on screen was not (physically) the most feminine woman I had ever seen, but I felt that she carried herself as many women I had seen carried themselves, and thus was, by the nature of things, played by a woman. Fourteen years and a few moments of research have widened my eyes entirely, and, whilst I give kudos to Mr. Cullen for his ability to portray the Happy Medium in a convincing way, I sense a fundamental misunderstanding of the Happy Medium’s character, as evidenced by casting the light-hearted Canadian comic in the role.

It is not the diehard fans I am concerned for in regards to this particular film rendition; considering various flawed book-to-film conversions, John Kent Harrison’s work was mostly faithful to Madeleine L’Engle’s novel. The plot remains largely unchanged, as do some characterisations. In the case of the Happy Medium, there are minor discrepancies. In the novel, the Happy Medium is referred to exclusively as a woman; in the film, this is also the case. L’Engle’s Happy Medium wears “a turban of beautiful pale mauve silk, and a long, flowing, purple satin gown” (L’Engle 85). Harrison’s Happy Medium, on the other hand, wears a white turban and a gown with more earthly tones. This difference makes Harrison’s Happy Medium appear more earthbound cave-dweller than aethereal majesty; her clothes are more like a desert mystic in the film than the courtly soothsayer she appears to be in the novel. Additionally, the Happy Medium of the novel is more than mere comic relief, as she is presented in the film. One of Cullen’s stock characters in his shows is a 145-year-old dame, and it seems that he drew upon similar inspiration for his role in Harrison’s film. By doing so, Cullen inadvertently undermined the authenticity of the Happy Medium; while a desert fortune-teller is a trope many modern children may identify with, it flattens the Happy Medium, particularly by rendering her more light-hearted than she actually is. A desert-dwelling fortune-teller is something one might see at a carnival or a circus. They are not meant to be taken seriously, unlike the oracle L’Engle makes the Happy Medium out to be, the regal and well-respected cave-dwelling woman of the novel. It appears that Harrison, with his directorial decisions, pushed for the adaptation to follow a more fantastical route than L’Engle’s novel intended.

L’Engle herself refused to regard her work as strictly fantasy, instead declaring A Wrinkle in Time to be “science fantasy,” a blend of science fiction and fantasy (Scholastic 2). Working solely with fantasy allows an author to boundlessly manipulate reality, to the extent that the work is no longer within the confines of our own reality. Science fiction applies scientific laws and theories to fantasy, giving bounds to a genre that otherwise could abandon reality entirely. L’Engle’s comment that her novel is an amalgamation of the two displays a deep understanding of both genres. There are the fantastical elements of Wrinkle, certainly, but they are justified by the rational laws of a scientific universe. Magical events are not merely left to be explained by the imagination of the reader; they are explicated and thus enhanced by elements of quantum mechanics and physics. L’Engle, then, by using the toolkit afforded her genre, affixes to her story, and the characters within, a complexity that mirrors that of the real world.

Within this reflection of the world in which we live, L’Engle presents a multitude of powerful women. There are the warriors of light, Mrs. Whatsit, Mrs. Who, and Mrs. Which; there is Mrs. Curry; there is the Happy Medium. And though the Happy Medium may exist in the span of one and a half chapters, her presence is not insignificant, as some might infer. In “Finding a Happy Medium: The Design for Womanhood in A Wrinkle in Time,” Katherine Schneebaum misunderstands the Happy Medium to be a “creature of… ‘feminine extremes,’” little more than “a housewife, sitting in front of her television/crystal ball, living vicariously through others, snoozing… her life away” (32). By describing the Happy Medium as such, Schneebaum entirely avoids or misses the fact that it is only through the Happy Medium that the children are capable of perceiving the scope of the Darkness, and the scale of the sacrifice necessary to stop it. The Happy Medium shows Mrs. Whatsit giving up her life as a star to obliterate the Darkness. She reveals to the children the Darkness that looms over Earth. And though the children have seen the Darkness on another planet, it is not until they visit the Happy Medium that they are able to comprehend that its reach extends even to their own home. The Happy Medium, then, not only galvanizes the children, but empowers a woman ally by validating the magnitude of Mrs. Whatsit’s sacrifice.

The Happy Medium, too, reveals to Meg the ability to balance out one’s emotions with one’s talents. Though the Happy Medium prefers to watch good and merry things, rather than observe the Darkness and its evils, she is able to, albeit with great trepidation, overcome her apprehension and show the children that which they are going to fight. It is not, as Schneebaum posits, that the Happy Medium lounges and passively watches the crystal ball all day; having so much knowledge and showing the children terrible things requires so much energy that even the three Mrs. respect the Happy Medium, and attempt to draw the children away so that she might get some rest (L’Engle 94).

And it is with the Happy Medium that Meg learns sympathy. Meg does not know beforehand that Mrs. O’Keefe, Calvin’s mother, is as frightening and terrible as she seems in the crystal ball, with her “unkempt” appearance, her “gray hair” and “toothless gums,” and fury that she unleashes in the form of physical abuse (L’Engle 96). Mrs. Murry does not act this way, despite the depth of her emotions. She is seen writing a letter to her absent husband, unleashing her sorrow upon the paper rather than her children (L’Engle 97). Meg is able to appreciate her mother more after this point, rather than merely envy and perhaps despise her, a catharsis ushered by the Happy Medium. With this catharsis comes the impetus for Meg’s shift in temperament. She knows now where to target her fury. Rather than have anger towards her mother, her father, and the situation her family is in, Meg now feels the need to protect those she loves from the Darkness. Her anger is something she can use now that it is not left to fester into resentment towards her mother. In other words, now that Meg no longer harbours a grudge against another woman, particularly one who only seeks to help her, Meg can experience her own empowerment, and thus join the host of powerful women L’Engle has built the story around. The Happy Medium cleanses from Meg the animosity that prevented Meg from becoming a powerful woman herself.

L’Engle did not design the Happy Medium to be a minor character. In the twenty-eight pages in which the Happy Medium interacts with Meg and her triplicate guide, the Happy Medium transforms Meg from uncertain, overwhelmed child to a young initiate in the ways of celestial warfare. The Happy Medium enables Meg to truly begin her heroic journey, cleansing Meg of her animosity towards her mother and showing by example how to temper her feelings with her duty. Without visiting the Happy Medium, Meg would have encountered IT with much more unrestrained anger and frustration, which, as Meg herself later realizes, would only help IT and thus confound her efforts to break IT’s hold of Charles Wallace and Camazotz (L’Engle 207). Harrison, however, perhaps failing to understand the nuances of the Happy Medium, downgrades her to a minor character whose meaning in the film is more for comic relief than as the solemn, loving woman she is in the novel. This lessening of the Happy Medium forms tension between the image of ‘loving, powerful women in all forms’ L’Engle presents in her novel, and Harrison’s directorial choices.

Casting, too, provides tension between Harrison’s film and L’Engle’s novel. The Happy Medium is, in the novel, referred to as a woman. There are no indications in the text of gender ambiguity. However, in the 2003 film, Seán Cullen, a Canadian comedian, was cast in the role. Admittedly, I, as a child, had no idea that there was a male actor playing the role. I figured that the Happy Medium in the film was more or less a woman, or someone who wished to be presented as a woman; it did not occur to me that the actor was a man. Cullen’s presentation of the Happy Medium is largely faithful to the text, albeit with infiltrations of comedic touch; it is not entirely the acting, nor that a man played the role, that undermines L’Engle’s work. It is that the Happy Medium is of the many powerful women Meg, Calvin, and Charles Wallace meet on their journey. Giving the role to a man undercuts the presentation of a world protected by and primarily saved by women.

There is, however, a potentially redeeming quality to the casting choice. Whilst the actor himself may be a man, in the role of the Happy Medium, he is presented as a woman, and referred to as a ‘she’ rather than a ‘he.’ This adds a gender ambiguity to the character that previously did not exist, and complicates the Happy Medium in a way beneficial to our twenty-first century, in which gender and sex has been expanded to include not only those born male or female, but those who extend across both and those who exhibit neither. Gender fluidity is discussed now in a way that it was not previously, and those who do not fit on the binary cis-gender scale are still fighting for acceptance. The implication of an androgynous Happy Medium, then, does not detract from the assortment of powerful women L’Engle strove to display in her work, but expands it to include those who may not biologically be a woman yet select to be, whether that means they are transgendered or otherwise.

Schneebaum and Harrison both cast the Happy Medium as a passive character in A Wrinkle in Time. Schneebaum argues that the Happy Medium is essentially a housewife, and goes on to imply that housewives are inherently without power or agency. She also posits that, as Meg is pushed multiple times in the novel to find her happy medium, Meg is being pushed to take the maternal role she, as a girl, was expected to assume. Schneebaum’s argument is contingent upon two misunderstandings. The first is her claim that housewives in themselves are incapable of wielding power, and thus the Happy Medium herself is without agency. Such an argument is fundamentally errant, as it argues that women who choose to be housewives are in no way able to push back against patriarchy. The same line of thinking discounts the power of single mothers and those who refuse to attend marches. Merely because one does not accord with another’s way of protest does not mean that one is not protesting. A housewife, contrary to Schneebaum’s opinion, can have and, in this case, does have power. The second misunderstanding Schneebaum exhibits is the stature of the Happy Medium. The most powerful women in the book, Mrs. Whatsit, Mrs. Who, and Mrs. Which, all know the Happy Medium intimately. They themselves are respectful and kind towards the Happy Medium, and consider her an ally worthy enough to introduce to the children. The Happy Medium dutifully displays to the celestial warriors and their initiates (the children) the horrors the world can offer, even though it hurts and tires her to do so.

Harrison’s rendition of the Happy Medium flattens her, costing her the depth of her agency as witnessed in the novel. Reducing the Happy Medium to comic relief strips the Happy Medium of her more pithy moments. She offers hope in the form of visions, exclaiming cheerily that “[the Darkness] can be overcome! It is being overcome all the time!” (L’Engle 92). Through her visions, Meg comes to understand situations as they are, such as the presence of the Darkness on Earth (L’Engle 87), the magnitude of Mrs. Whatsit’s – and thus that of the triumvirate as a whole – existence (93), and the potential for her own mother to be malicious, and Mrs. Murry’s decision to be otherwise (96-97). And whilst L’Engle does not paint the Happy Medium in a sombre light, Harrison’s portrait of the Happy Medium comes across as too bright. There is a lack of exhaustion and subtlety in Harrison’s film portrayal of the Happy Medium that silences the nuances of L’Engle’s work. Where Schneebaum may have felt Harrison’s adaptation to have been faithful in this regard, the close reader and cognizant audience knows otherwise.

Works Cited

"Madeleine L'Engle Interview Transcript." Scholastic. Scholastic, n.d. Web.

Hale, Jonathan. "Living like a 145-year-old Dame." UWO Gazette. University of Western Ontario, 16 Jan. 1997. Web.

L'Engle, Madeleine. A Wrinkle in Time. N.p.: Bantam Doubleday Dell for Young Readers, 1973. Print.

Paul, Pamela. "‘A Wrinkle in Time’ and Its Sci-Fi Heroine." The New York Times. The New York Times, 28 Jan. 2012. Web.

Schneebaum, Katherine. "Finding a Happy Medium: The Design for Womanhood in A Wrinkle in Time." The Lion and the Unicorn 14.2 (1990): 30-36. Web.