Gone With The Wind by Margaret Mitchell
A Classic Historical Novel, America's War and Peace
Dec 5, 2008
Margaret Mitchell wrote Gone With the Wind over the course of ten years. Published in 1936 by Macmillan, it won the Pulitzer Prize in 1937. It is a detailed, painstakingly researched account of the American Civil War, and a collection of beautifully drawn and convincing character studies, and a famous love story.
More Than a Mills and Boon
The best-known aspect of the story is Rhett Butler and and Scarlett o’Hara’s relationship, but in fact although the social outcast Butler is introduced early in the novel, he and the heroine Scarlett have very little to do with each other for the first part of the book.
It is Scarlett's love for her childhood friend, Ashley, which is the emotional focus for the most part of the novel, made more poignant by the fact that Ashley's wife, Melanie Hamilton, is Scarlett's staunchest and often only friend. The tragedy of Rhett and Scarlett's love is heightened by the fact that it is revealed so late that Rhett has always loved Scarlett. By the time Scarlett herself realises, it is too late.
Moving as the romantic elements are, the novel is driven by the events of the war and the lead characters' reactions to them. In fact Scarlett, a born survivor, marries three men in succession despite her love for Ashley, one of them only because of a desperate need for money to pay the taxes on her home.
The events of the war bring out sides of personalities which would otherwise never have seen the light. Scarlett has little insight into people but turns out to be remarkably clear-sighted when it comes to running a business and feeding her family. Sweet, weak, ladylike Melanie reveals a backbone of steel, courage in the face of physical danger, and loyalty and generosity to a degree that shocks society. Ashley, however, when faced with the aftermath of war, becomes useless and melancholy, unable to adapt.
Marching Gone With the Wind along at a cracking pace is the Civil War itself, and the brutal reconstruction which followed, in which the South, as the loser, was largely disenfranchised and exploited. The tension as the war moves closer and closer to Atlanta, where Scarlett and Melanie are living, is nail-biting, and the fifty pages or so describing the day Atlanta falls - the same day that Melanie spends in labour, unable to be moved despite the danger - are one of the finest passages of sustained suspense to be found in any literature.
A Classic Novel, or a Racist Work?
It is sometimes said that Gone With the Wind cannot be regarded as a classic because of the racist attitudes, not only of the characters (which would be in keeping with the time) but of the author. While it is undeniable that the novel is generally pro-slavery, and does display racist attitudes, this aspect of the novel is wrongly over-emphasised. There are mixtures of admirable and less admirable black characters, as there are white characters. Scarlett’s nanny, Mammy, in particular is a strong character and important to the story.
Dismissing Gone With the Wind as racist also ignores the examination Mitchell makes of the racism of the Yankees, who fought a war to free the slaves but (at least in the book) personally wanted little to do with the unfamiliar blacks once they were free. In one telling scene Scarlett, who was raised by a black nanny, suggests to some Yankee ladies that they employ a black girl as their nanny, only to be met with horrified reactions.
Gone With the Wind transports the reader to a lost world, in which many nice people did support slavery, and it was possible to regard a person both as a beloved member of the family and a possession who would not respond well to freedom. Aspects of our history have been sanitised so that these things seem shocking, but that is one of the most valuable aspects of Gone With the Wind – it truly conjures up, in all its glory and ugliness, a civilisation that has “gone with the wind that had swept through Georgia.”
Gone With the Wind was last published in 2008 by Pan Books, ISBN 978-0330458047.
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