Mayor McMunch’s Musings on the Matter of Goodwives Goody, Gumdrops, and Two-Shoes

Gwendolyn Goody was the most virtuous woman in the village. Beloved in public but loathed behind closed doors, this too-perfect paragon of piety was the most hated person for miles on end.

Not that anyone would say so out loud, of course.

Tabitha Two-Shoes and Georgina Gumdrops were recently widowed, and had taken over the day-to-day operations of their husbands’ cobblery and confectionary respectively. Members of the Faith of the First Mother, a misundertood ministry in those parts, Goodies Gumdrops and Two-Shoes were tolerated because of their husbands’ beloved businesses. But try as they might to tolerate their neighbors in return, Tabitha and Georgina just couldn’t stand the stuck-up so-and-so’s of the village.

The person they liked least of all, of course, was Goody Goody.

Though Goody Goody claimed to be a devout member of the White Mages of Wonderland, Goodies Gumdrops and Two-Shoes had long suspected that Gwendolyn Goody was a liar—and that she was, in fact, a fallen member of their own order. And so, they set out to prove their theory correct.

The circumstances which led to their discovery have been lost to history, as neither Gumdrops nor Two-Shoes would speak about this affair in later years, but we do have the testimony of an anonymous third party who was present at the scene of the crime. According to this party, Goody Goody was caught in flagrante delicto with another woman’s husband. And when Goodies Gumdrops and Two-Shoes caught Goody Goody in the act, the anonymous third-party tells us that their reaction was swift and furious.

After they’d killed Goody Goody in a battle of magicks—“accidentally,” they swore—they told the anonymous third-party that Goody Goody had been manipulating her hapless hump-buddy in violation of the tenets of their faith. And, to make matters worse, she’d been using the power she gained from her dalliances to manipulate the whole town into loving her.

“And the whole town knows it,” Goody Gumdrops tried to say, as the anonymous third party raised the alarm. “Everyone can feel it!”

But her words fell on deaf ears. The third party was already convinced, as everyone else soon would be, that Goody Goody had merely been comforting a man whose wife was about to die. And if she’d gone a little bit further than was strictly proper in her comforting, that was just evidence of her womanly intiution. Goody Goody always knew the right thing to do, and she always did it.

As promised by Mayor McMunch, The Queen of Hearts soon banned The Faith of the First Mother throughout Wonderland. Priestesses of that religion emigrated in large numbers to The Free Cities of Nunya and The Democratic Republic of the Reek, or else went underground and kept their worship private.

Goody Goody was called a martyr throughout Wonderland, and the power of the White Mages grew and grew as a result.

As for Goodies Gumdrops and Two-Shoes, they fled to Oz. There they were taken in by The Wizard, who was in need of two powerful women to become the new Witch of the East and West respectively. There had been a bit of business with a pig-tailed interloper from Kansas, it turned out, and both posts were vacant.

“Would you be interested?” the Wizard wondered, and the Goodies were.

And though they would never be nearly so wicked as their predecessors, Tabitha Two-Shoes and Georgina Gumdrops would be grumpy enough governors for the occupied territories of Winkie Country and Munchkinland that they would go down in history as the third and fourth worst witches in history.