Jinjur or General Jinjur

Genreal Jinjur illustration

Jinjur or General Jinjur is a character in the Oz books by L. Frank Baum. She first appears in The Marvelous Land of Oz as a self-appointed general leading an "Army of Revolt"—an all-woman force seeking to end the reign of the Scarecrow and take over Emerald City.

The revolt is a parody of the contemporaneous movement for women's suffrage, which Baum supported. (His mother-in-law was prominent suffragist Matilda Joslyn Gage.) General Jinjur's followers use both violence (sharp knitting needles) and their feminine privileges to gain advantage: no man will hit a pretty girl, and Jinjur boasts "there is not an ugly face in my entire Army." Yet those same young women are temporarily routed by an incursion of mice. Jinjur's regime assigns Emerald City husbands to domestic tasks thought to be women's work, such as cooking and cleaning; the men quickly get worn out and the women are happy to take back those tasks and do them competently again.