Mitchell, Margaret. Gone with the Wind. Pocket, 1966.
Reason read: the Civil War started in April. The war is probably the best character in the book.
Who does not know the story of Scarlett O’Hara and her life at Tara plantation? Every person over the age of forty-five must have seen the movie at some point. My husband says it was a favorite of his grandmother’s. Mine preferred the Wizard of Oz and the Sound of Music.
Gone with the Wind stands as one of the greatest American Civil War sagas from the point of view of the Confederates. Southern belle Scarlett O’Hara is the protagonist readers just love to hate (or at least be annoyed by). We first meet Scarlett as a scrappy sixteen year old teenager, manipulative and naïve. She enjoys causing other people pain and thrives on their jealousies. Even at this tender age, she is beyond selfish and spoiled. Scarlett is not beneath marrying the first boy she could, just to make the true love of her young life jealous. Of course it backfires when her beloved Ashley marries Melanie Hamilton instead.
Even after losing her teenage husband to illness during the American Civil War, Scarlett continues to live a lie. At seventeen and a new mother, she is not in mourning for poor lost Charles. He did not even die a heroic death that she could brag about! Scarlett does not swell with patriotic pride for the Confederate cause, nor is she grateful for Melanie and her family’s generosity and friendship. Instead, she hold a steadfast and unrequited love for Ashley. Enter Rhett Butler, the dashing and controversial blockade runner. Scarlett’s life gets a whole lot more complicated and emotionally confusing when he shows up. They are bound together in unconventional ways. He knows her secret. Together, they share the same sarcastic opinion of the war; one they cannot voice. They both use people (even family) for the betterment of themselves. They both do not give a damn what others say.
While I (obviously) did not care for Scarlett, Mitchell’s writing is spectacular. She was the master of stylized descriptions. Take Melanie’s brown eyes, for a simple example. Mitchell describes them as “a forest pool of water in winter when brown leaves shine up through quiet water” (p 102). A word of warning. While Mitchell has a way with words, she is also an author true to the times. Some language may not be suitable for the easily offended.
Confessional: I have never been to the deep south. I’m talking about the real south. Not Baltimore touristy Harbor or a music festival in the middle of Atlanta, Georgia. I’m talking about Spanish moss dangling from every tree, accents so thick you need subtitles, and bowls of steaming greens, ham hocks, and grits. Are the manners still so painstakingly polite and proper? Does a woman still mourn in black with a veil down to her knees?
As an aside, we were watching a show about abandoned places and Butler Island in Georgia was featured. Rhett Island is just next door. Was it any wonder that Margaret Mitchell visited the area and wrote Gone with the Wind there?
Is it any wonder Gone with the Wind has been banned or challenged a couple of times? Derogatory language, incest, downplaying the atrocities of slavery, romanticizing deep southern culture.
Playlist: “Go Down, Moses”, “Peg in a Low-backed Car”, “The Wearin’ of the Green”, “If You Want a Good Time, Jine the Calvary”, “Jacket of Gray”, “Bonny Blue Flag”, “Lorena”, “My Old Kentucky Home”, “Dixie”, “When This Cruel War is Over”, “Lament for Robert Emmet”, “When the Dew is On the Blossom”,
BookLust Twist: from Book Lust in the chapter called “Civil War Fiction” (p 57).
~*LunaSea*~ 