Intro
April 2024, I’d just finished working on my tour guide for the city of Atlanta ( Live Like a Local: Atlanta, Georgia USA). During my research for the tour guide I learned so much about the history of Atlanta: her rise from a train depot into a prosperous city, her fall during the siege of Sherman and all the landmarks that left behind, and eventual rise again giving the city it’s iconic motto “Rise Up!” And its symbol of the phenix flying from fire.
And of course, I came across The Margret Mitchell House, a historical landmark in Midtown where the journalist Margret Mitchell lived, cooped up recovering from a leg injury in 1926 and began, out of boredom, to pen her one and only novel.
After the book was published in 1936 it captured the hearts, minds, and imaginations of millions around the world and Margret found herself to be a legend.
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What I liked
The History
Gone with the Wind is a beautifully written work of historical literary romance. It paints a lovely picture of the Old South. Southern Belle’s in beautiful dresses take walks among the magnolias, verandas, pines and oaks. Where handsome Southern gentlemen ride well-bred horses. Beautiful Southern women are courted by well-bred men. The story is at times satirical and other times grandiose - it swells, and ebbs like symphony leaving you rooted to the spot at times, and furious at other times.
As the plot kicks off every detail of the movement of the armies echoes the courses followed in my research of Atlanta’s
Civil War history. It was fascinating to hear the names of places I recognized in the novel and having a literary interpretation of the same facts and scenes I’d read about in researching the tour guide. Kennesaw, Fayetteville, Jonesboro, Decatur, and Five Points are major locations mentioned multiple times in the novel – places I also happen to have history in but probably looked worlds different back then. It was also amazing to have a real visuals of just why Atlanta architecture is so mixed with buildings both modern and historical. The novel also an explanations for the hundreds of dilapidated shacks that are dotted all over The South.
What I Loved
The Unreliable Narrator
Scarlett O’Hera/Hamilton/Kennedy/Butler is almost a perfect metaphor for the City of Atlanta. She is born at the same year the city was named. The story starts with Scarlet and Atlanta both as young sexy ladies with green hills and verdant trees, and lovely dresses, bonnets, and hats looking to get up in the world. Scarlet as the luxury and privilege to be ignorant, spoiled, and selfish. She ignores the strugglers of her mother, the plight of neighbors, and the unpleasant business of slavery. To her the “darkies” singing their songs on the way home from the fields at night are part of the pleasant background or Tara, her home.
She ignores the ugly things - as she should. She’s a lady. It is within her character and the times, that no one should tell her about the causes leading up to the war. She’s proudly uneducated. She doesn’t want to read books or listen to war talk. Her attitude towards everything to do with wars, state’s rights, and men’s talking is dismissive at best.
Scarlett believes that it will not affect her. Atlanta seems untroubled too. They are both too pretty, too popular, and too protected to ever be hurt. The nasty old North is too far away. No one believes that the Yankees will ever reach them. So, Scarlett ignores the war until it’s literally happening right in front of her
Margret Mitchell used this unique perspective to describes the Civil War in such a way that prevents it from becoming too violent, too graphic, or too real. Wealthy women did not pay attention to politics or the war. Their jobs were to stay loyal and empty headed. They were fiercely loyal to their men, their god,
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| Image borrowed from https://gwtwscrapbook.blogspot.com /2011/05 /school-days-of-scarlett-ohara.html |
and The Southern Culture in that order. These southern white women in Scarlet’s life didn’t believe in women’s suffrage or women’s rights. They believed thinking too much or hard will cause them to develop a fever. Their way of life, as fundamentalist Christians, self-sacrificing mothers, and weak-minded wives make them endearing allies to their strong protective husbands. And they will do anything, anything at all, to spare their husbands and sons any shame or embarrassment.
Thankfully this is not how Scarlett sees things. She doesn’t care one lick about traditional feminine weakness except where it can used to get her what she wants. Throughout the books she present-minded, determined, and doggedly pursues her own self-interests. This makes her an intriguing and endearing character, even when what’s she’s willing to do comes off evil at times. She’s different than the women she was raised with, and she doesn’t care.
To her eventual detriment, she behaves as a man – she buys a business, she rides alone, she handles money and she doesn’t share with her husband. She’s unladylike in every way except one. As a wealth white southern woman, she doesn’t care about “the cause”, she doesn’t even know what it is. Therefore “the cause” is barely mentioned in any detail. Whenever someone tries to explain the war in any real way Scarlet loses interest and so the story moves on.
In this way the reader is spared all the nasty politics of “the war” and “the cause” and “state’s rights”. We are spared the dark side of plantation ownership because our guide is a pretty young female whose only job is to marry rich and make wealthy babies.
The Romance
And what does Scarlet want? A husband of course, but not just any husband. The plot is driven by her incorrigible pursuit of the distinguished Ashley Wilkes, a man who is happily married to his cousin Melony Hamilton. When Ashley goes off to fight in the Civil War, Scarlet finds her self living with and taking care of Melony. It is this conflict, and the dogged pursuit of Rhett Butler to win Scarlet’s icy heart away from Ashley. This drives the A plot. The cat and mouse games
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| Image from the 1939 Film |
between these four characters festers and flowers, booms and bursts as Atlanta is destroyed by war and built up again.
At the end of the novel, Scarlet has ruined her whole life, burned every bridge she ever had and is left with children doesn’t want, a weak coward to take care of, and a husband that no longer loves her. And she’s only 28 years old.
But she is Atlanta. So I’m sure she didn’t stay down for long.
The Dangerous Part
The book is so thorough in its depictions of southern culture, southern traditions, and southern hospitality. In several places the writer describes the cast system of the slaves. House Negroes are selected when they are young among the dark children who show apitude and willingness to learn a skill such as driving, cobbling, and tending to the animals. All who are "not willing to work" as Scarlet puts it are put to the fields and made to earn their keep. They are the lowest rung of the Negro class and house servants give him hell.
So, as I read Scarlet bemoaning her fear of large, lazy former-fieldhands that in ACT 3 are lurking the woods, robbing homes and pestering white women, I caught myself, for the barest moment, feeling proud that at least I’m not descended from those "free-issue niggas" as Mami calls them.
And that right there is what makes this book, and others like it, so dangerous. You’ve been through so much with Scarlet, seen so much through her eyes, heard her voice in your head so long that when she starts talking this racist non-since it’s easy, for some, to think she’s justified. Why won’t these free-darkies work? She can’t even hire them to work the lumber meal because they are useless without drivers and whips.
And to make it worse not Scarlet, nor anyone else, reasons that the darkies have less than nothing by way of education, home, or skills. In Scarlet's veiw they had been given a chance to learn a trade, because on her plantation only the darkies that wouldn’t learn a skill quickly enough were turned into field hands. And on Tara, Gerald O’Hara was always nice to them, never beat them even when it was good for them. Gerald even bought the useless Prissy when Pork asked him to buy is wife so that she wouldn’t miss her daughter.
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| Image owned by the Library of Congress |
Though this book features a lot of history it is not a history book. This novel was written by white woman who grew up sitting on the knees of former Confederates and listening to stories about “when America was great” for them. This is fictious novel is written in such a way that makes the dark, hatefulness of slavers pretty, palpable and easy to swallow. And once you’ve swallowed it you may believe the re-write of history that this fictional novel is telling you – that blacks were happy and well taken care of until the Yankees showed up and told them what to think. That the plantation owners were good people who took care of black children, and nursed black elderly when they were too old to work. And that all the horror stories black Americans have been raised up hearing from our parents, and grandparents, were all propaganda and lies told to the newly freed blacks in order to get them to vote against their own interests during the reconstruction elections.
Scarlet never blames the “darkies” for turning on the their owners. She blames Yankee carpetbaggers, scallywags, crackers, and poor whites – ergo Democrats – for turning their blacks against their former masters. Again, Scarlet herself had no idea what most of these former slaves were experiencing. Or at least she’s not saying so.
This is the same re-write of history that the Daughters of the Confederacy have used in our textbooks for decades. I for one was taught that Sherman was a villain in school, and that the Civil War was fought over “states rights” and not slavery. Though I always knew to fill in the blank, “state’s rights to have slavery” thanks to my parents.
I’ve grown up right alongside white peers who swore that slaves were treated well on plantations and that slavery would have ended on its own as soon as the cotton gin was invented. This is the cause for the rift between southern blacks and southern whites that still has not healed. And there are people to this day who will read Gone With the Wind for the romance and walk away feeling that their view of the Civil War and lazy blacks who won’t work is justified and accurate.
And if you can believe that these Yankees were telling black people that they were equal to white men, and giving them permission to marry white women; if you can believe that black men were pushing white women off of sidewalks, and grabbing them through kitchen windows … especially so soon after slavery ended… then you can believe that the rise of the Ku Klux Klan was necessary in order to put darkies, and “Nigga-loving/ cracker/poor whites back in their places, to uphold the status of the Old South, and protect the virtue of white women. And I'm not sure why you're still here.
The “N” Word
Now that I’ve read both books, I find it interesting how Mark Twain’s “Huckleberry Finn” was up for discussion about the removal of the “N” from its pages, while there has been no discussion of editing it out of Gone with the Wind. In both novels, I find its presence jarring but vital to the understanding to character, culture, and relationships – but in Gone with the Wind the word is whipped in far more harsh ways, than in Huckleberry. Mark Twain’s novel discusses the unfairness of owning people, while Mitchell’s novel explains the situation from the point of view of planters and plantation owners. While it doesn’t glorify slavery, her characters see no problem with it. Even in the passive benign, innocent, anti-violent gentleman Ashley Wilks joins the Klan. And our beloved Rhett shoots a black man for speaking unkindly to a white woman.
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is set in Missouri during the 1830s or 1840s when Missouri was a slave state. Everyone person refers to the blacks by the “n” word in various ways with different endings to denote children, women, and ages. The words is as slippery as though as mister or misses but it is always nasty, belittling, and serves to separate the slaves from any sort human respect. The ugly word is even used by the children to refer to adults and never doesn’t sting. So separated are the slaves from any empathy or respect that Huck is surprised to discover that Jim has run away from home at the same time he has because Huck has had no idea what Jim’s life is like even though they live in the same house. Huck is disappointed to find that Jim is bad, and a law breaker just as he is, and Huck honestly thinks they are both going to hell. This becomes an emotional conflict that he struggles with for most of the book.
Gone with the Wind is set in Georgia during the American Civil War (1861–1865) – twenty years after Hucklberry’s adventure. We get more of how the world began to change between the transition of southern culture. At the beginning of the novel the “N” word is rarely uttered. White people with any class or status are restricted from using such ugly language. They prefer to call black people “darkies”, bucks, pickaninnies, nigglets – anything but human. Only poor whites, trash, and other Negros use the “N” word.
Scarlet doesn’t even utter the word until after war and then it’s for shock value. The moment is used to show how much Scarlet has changed. After this the word becomes more prevalent and is mostly spoken by Yankees, poor whites, and other blacks talking to or about each other in nasty ways.
I feel it when Uncle Peter gets mad at white woman from Main for calling him a “nigger” or when Mami shoots that word at unfamiliar black man on her porch - because among older blacks (my grandparents for example) that word with the hard R is only used to refer to dumb, feckless Negros with no dignity or shame.
Conclusion
This is honestly a great, well written book. Margrett Mitchell wrote only this one novel and managed to rewrite the history of the south to something more palpable for certain people and for that she has been championed. Even at the beginning of the Audiobook this introduction of the story calls it the best book written since the Bible!
It is very well written. It tells a mostly accurate history of siege of Atlanta and provides some color to real historical events and locations. However, it is a fictional story. Most of the fiction is fun romantic drama. But some of the fiction this book chooses to tell that has kept the south divided for generations.
Using Scarlet as an unreliable narrator to tell the history of the Civil War as she saw it – Margret Mitchell managed to avoid talking about the ugly business of slavery, and why the states went to war in the first place. Though it’s hard to tell whose side Mitchell was ultimately on, as parts of the book read as the darkest satire, and her description of the main character is heroic at times, and laughably stupid at others – Mitchell was in real life celebrated by the Daughters of the Confederacy and raised by former Confederate soldiers.
I recommend this book but only to certain readers. Anyone inclined to believe this fictious novel is fact, or who was raised seeing these “alternative facts” as accurate should avoid it as they find it difficult to see it through the critical eye it calls for. The romance and the drama make this story easy to be swept up in. And the accurate bits makes the misconceptions easy to swallow. I recommend this book to African American studies scholars with a more critical eye for American history. This book pairs well with a reading of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain and "Uncle Tom’s Cabin" by Harriet Beecher Stowe.
ONE MORE THING:
As a sidenote I need to state that I would never advocate for the banning of this classic historical romance novel. I would never ask for the removal of literature that shows the world from a different POV than my own. In fact, I read this novel to look through this perspective and try to understand the people who disagree with me politically. I would not ban Gone with the Wind any more than I would a Huckleberry Finn novel or Uncle Tom's Cabin
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