Elphaba Arrives at Crage Hall

Elphaba arrives at Crage Hall, a women's college at Shiz University, and is immediately assigned as the roommate of the wealthy and socially ambitious Galinda, a pairing that forces both young women into an uneasy intimacy and sets the stage for their complex, transformative friendship.

Identity and First Impressions

When Madame Morrible, the fish-faced Headmistress of Crage Hall, calls out "the Thropp Third Descending, of Nest Hardings, Elphaba?" from her list of unassigned students, a girl emerges from the back of the room who seems to Galinda a trick of the light. Elphaba is a hatchet-faced girl with putrescent green skin and long, foreign-looking black hair, dressed in a pauper's red dress with gaudy fretwork and clumpy, old-people's boots. She is a Munchkinlander by birth, though she has spent many childhood years in Quadling Country. Galinda, who has just arrived from the market town of Frottica in her green traveling gown with ochre panels and an academic black shawl, is horrified. She had expected a private room with a suitable chaperone, but her Ama Clutch has been delayed by a rusty nail in her foot. Madame Morrible, with a broad smile, intones "Travel is so broadening" as she hands the keys to the mismatched pair, assigning them room twenty-two on the second floor.

The Uneasy Roommates

Elphaba's few belongings—thin, shapeless shifts—hang raglike on hooks in the cupboard, shamed into a corner by the fulsome hoops, starched bustles, and padded shoulders of Galinda's wardrobe. Galinda is stuck with her roomie; her brief interview with Madame Morrible provides no escape route. She had arrived promptly in a dotted morpheline skirt with lace bodice, a vision in nocturnal purples and midnight blues, but the Headmistress, standing by the mantelpiece like a big game hunter, is not swayed by Galinda's fabricated story about Ama Clutch's amnesia and addled behavior. Madame Morrible binds Galinda into a campaign against Elphaba, saying, "I suppose if Miss Elphaba cannot live with what we give her, she will leave Crage Hall on her own accord." Galinda, only seventeen, feels caught on a most clever hook.

Elphaba's Solitude and Reading Sulks

Elphaba has a bad case of what Galinda calls the reading sulks. She does not curl up—she is too bony to curl—but jackknifes herself nearer to herself, her funny pointed green nose poking into the moldy leaves of a book. She plays with her hair while she reads, coiling it up and down around fingers so thin and twiglike as to seem almost exoskeletal. Her hair never curls no matter how often she twines it around her hands; it is beautiful hair, with a shine like the pelt of a healthy giltebeast, black silk, coffee spun into threads, night rain. Galinda, not given to metaphor on the whole, finds Elphaba's hair entrancing, the more so because the girl is otherwise so ugly. They do not talk much. Galinda is too busy forging alliances with the better girls—Milla, Pfannee, Shenshen—each new friend wealthier than the one before. She leaves Elphaba alone, and Elphaba shows no sign of expecting Galinda's company, which is a relief.

The First Conversation and a Hat

One Saturday evening, after a squabble with Pfannee and Shenshen, Galinda retires early to find Elphaba sitting up in bed, hunched over a book, munching on apple pips. Galinda challenges her, and for the first time in three months, they speak. Elphaba is reading speeches of the early unionist fathers, thinking about whether evil really exists. Galinda, to have something to laugh at, insists Elphaba try on a hat—a lovely roundel with orangey swags and a yellow lace net. But when Elphaba drops the sugary plate onto her strange pointed head, she looks like a rare flower, her skin stemlike in its soft pearlescent sheen. Galinda is forced to admit, "You terrible mean thing, you're pretty." A maplefruit leaf, shaped like a star with blunted points, suddenly whirls out of the night and plasters itself on the reflection in the glass, gleaming red and reflecting the firelight just where the heart would be. Galinda finds it entrancing, and Elphaba nearly blushes, if darker green constitutes a blush. The moment marks the beginning of a grudging, complicated bond between the two young women.