Gone With the Wind
MARGARET MITCHELL
1936

INTRODUCTION

Margaret Mitchell's 1936 novel Gone with the Wind is an epic tale of the American Civil War. It is the story of Scarlett O'Hara, the daughter of wealthy Georgian plantation owners, who must overcome incredible adversity during and after the war. As she transforms from a selfish teenage girl into a confident woman, the United States undergoes a similar transformation, changing from a divided nation at war with itself into a unified country striving to heal from the wounds of a protracted battle. This novel has been translated into dozens of languages; it offers a tale that continues to resonate for contemporary readers, describing lovers and would-be lovers caught between Confederate slave-owners and Union abolitionists.

Gone with the Wind focuses on an array of white male characters. These range from enthusiastic young men like the Tarleton twins, who are eager for battle, and the philosophical Ashley who speaks of honor, to the cynical, profiteering Rhett, who insists on confronting others with his contrary and controversial opinions. Along the way, Mitchell also reveals a diverse array of characters including pompous bureaucrats who stay out of the war to give political speeches, veterans who straggle home with psychological wounds from witnessing the unspeakable horrors of war, and entrepreneurs known as "carpetbaggers" who sweep down upon the South to reap huge profits from the land that has been ripped apart.

Gone with the Wind simultaneously demonstrates the ways that women can be caught in the crossfire of war, just as Scarlett and Melanie are caught between the retreating Confederate Army and the victorious Union soldiers of General Sherman as the two women flee from Atlanta to Scarlett's home, Tara. On the home front, Mitchell's female characters face tremendous sacrifices and challenges in supporting the troops and surviving without male protection: they share food and medicine, donate jewelry and other valuables, nurse the wounded, and perform hard labor on plantations and farms.

Like many wartime epics written before and after, Gone with the Wind follows the literary tradition of the Bildungsroman, a novel in which the main character is initiated into maturity. Scarlett, Rhett, Ashley, and Melanie—along with many minor characters—find ways to cope with these challenges and grow in self-understanding, self-reliance, and compassion as the Civil War progresses and the South begins to rebuild. However, the characters' maturation and growth is not all that drives this story; it also follows the development of a nation. Although Scarlett is famous for putting off uncomfortable thoughts until "tomorrow," her remarkable ability to make the immediate choices required for survival becomes a symbol of the nation's radical transformation after the Civil War.

BIOGRAPHY
Margaret Mitchell

Margaret Mitchell was born November 8, 1900, in Atlanta. By age sixteen, she had already written a historical romance set in the South Pacific, Lost Laysen, but the Civil War was a natural topic for her first epic. Living in the South, Mitchell was surrounded by Civil War lore and history. Many Southerners were nostalgic for the days before the war and romanticized the fighting that occurred. Mitchell loved Georgia's land and history, although, like Scarlett O'Hara, she scorned the pretensions of polite society. After her mother died in the 1918 flu epidemic, Mitchell left Smith College to assume the responsibilities of managing the family mansion. As a reporter for the Atlanta Journal, Mitchell became the first woman in her family to earn a living outside the home.

Writing Gone with the Wind during the Great Depression and the rise of the Nazis, Mitchell drew upon her personal experience as a prosperous fifth-generation Georgian to create the world of Scarlett and her plantation, Tara. She was very concerned about the historical accuracy of her novel, dedicating four years to its writing and an additional five years to editing the manuscript as she checked historical records in the Atlanta Public Library. In 1937, Gone with the Wind won the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award for the Most Distinguished Novel of the Year.

Mitchell was hit by a taxi while crossing the street on August 11, 1949. She died on August 16.

PLOT SUMMARY

Part One: Chapters 1-7

Gone with the Wind begins with flirtatious dialogue between sixteen-year-old Scarlett O'Hara and the nineteen-year-old Tarleton twins. Their exchange illustrates the contrasting experiences of Southern men and women, plantation owners, and slaves at the start of the Civil War. Scarlett is sitting on the porch at Tara, the O'Hara plantation in north Georgia, ignoring the field slaves returning for daily rations doled out by her mother. Tired of listening to the twins talk about the impending war and their desire to join the Confederate Army, she tells them, "If you say 'war' just once more, I'll go in the house and shut the door. I've never gotten so tired of any one word in my life as 'war,' unless it's 'secession.'"

Conversely, Scarlett enjoys their gossip about the Wilkes and Hamilton families. She declares "silly" Charles Hamilton to be "an awful sissy." Her mood changes abruptly when the twins divulge Ashley Wilkes's engagement to his cousin Melanie Hamilton, to be announced the following day at the Wilkes's plantation, Twelve Oaks. Ashley and Melanie are rushing to marry because the impending war and Melanie's frail health. Scarlett struggles to hide her intense disappointment. Although she is the most popular belle in the county, Ashley treats Scarlett like a sister, ignoring her seductive manner.

After the twins depart, Scarlett avoids ever-watchful Mammy, the family's nanny and servant, and rushes to meet Gerald (her father) as he returns from a visit to Twelve Oaks. As Scarlett watches, Gerald recklessly jumps a fence on his horse. Scarlett—his favorite daughter—promises to keep his jump a secret from Ellen, Scarlett's mother, who worries that her sixty-year-old husband might fall. Gerald is suspicious of Scarlett's questions about Ashley and warns her against pursuing him. A hardworking Irish immigrant, Gerald sees little value in the Ashley's intellectual abilities and his aristocratic family. Gerald tells Scarlett that land is more important than anything, including romance.

Ellen returns from attending their neighbor, Emmie Slattery, whose illegitimate baby died at birth. Mammy criticizes the Slattery's behavior and their unwillingness to rise above poverty. Ellen leads the nightly rosary recital, while Scarlett works on a plot to elope with Ashley. She also considers the differences between her parents. Although Scarlett has inherited Gerald's ferocious independence, she admires her mother's aristocratic gentility. Gerald and Ellen share a charitable nature. To please Pork, Gerald's first slave, he has just purchased Pork's wife, Dilcey, and daughter, Prissy, from Mr. Wilkes. Ellen insists upon firing Jonas Wilkerson, Tara's landless overseer, because he denied responsibility for fathering Emmie's baby. Gerald reluctantly accepts Ellen's decision, considering himself fortunate to have found such a superior young wife.

At the party at Twelve Oaks, Scarlett finds Rhett Butler staring at her and is intrigued to learn that he recently killed a man in a duel after refusing to marry the man's sister. Scarlett flirts outrageously, attempting to make Ashley jealous. Charles, Melanie's brother, who is promised to Ashley's sister, India, proposes marriage to Scarlett, but she dismisses him. The women retire for an afternoon nap while the men discuss war. Rhett warns that the South is not prepared to win, an opinion that is unpopular with the Confederate patriots in the room, and then excuses himself.

Catching Ashley alone, Scarlett declares her love, which he gently rejects. Scarlett slaps him and he leaves the room. Rhett, who has been hiding in the room, reveals his presence, laughing at Scarlett's behavior. Doubly humiliated, Scarlett returns to the party, which has been interrupted by news of the President's declaration of war. Panicked about the coming war and Ashley's rejection, Scarlett decides to accept Charles's marriage proposal.

Two months after he and Ashley join their troops, Charles dies of measles, an ignoble death that disappoints the pregnant Scarlett. Following tradition, she names her son Wade, in honor of Charles's commanding officer. Scarlett detests the responsibilities of motherhood and widowhood; she leaves Tara to stay with Melanie and Melanie's Aunt Pittypat in Atlanta, secretly hoping to be closer to Ashley.

Part Two: Chapters 8-16

Scarlett and Wade arrive in Atlanta, attended by Prissy. Scarlett is pleased with the fast pace of life in Atlanta and enjoys having inherited Charles's fortune. She abhors working as a hospital volunteer, tending men with gangrene, but cannot refuse this duty, as she is expected to make sacrifices for the Southern cause. She prefers her pleasant work at a fund-raising bazaar. Widows are not allowed to dance, but Scarlett uses the event to rid herself of her unwanted wedding ring by donating it to the hospital fund. Impressed, Melanie donates her own cherished wedding ring. Though she is still angry at Rhett, Scarlett enjoys his teasing and gratefully accepts when he bids one hundred and fifty dollars in gold to dance with her. Disapproving matrons gossip while the couple dances.

The following morning, Pittypat condemns their scandalous breach of decorum until Prissy enters with Melanie's wedding ring (but not Scarlett's). Rhett redeemed it "at ten times its value." This generous act causes Pittypat to change her opinion of Rhett. Gerald arrives to bring his disgraced daughter home, but is sidetracked by a drunken poker game from which Rhett retrieves him. Gerald agrees to let Scarlett stay in Atlanta in return for her promise to conceal this escapade from Ellen. Scarlett secretly reads Ashley's letters to Melanie, relieved that his messages focus upon disillusionment with war rather than passion for Melanie.

The South suffers from shortages of food and supplies, and Rhett profits from blockade-running (i.e., procuring goods like salt that were unavailable in the wartime South). Scarlett wonders if she loves Rhett, who is now a frequent visitor. Despite her sacrifices for the war, Scarlett is happily surrounded by suitors on their way to battlefields. Society matrons lament the "complete moral collapse" of the South as young people forget their manners and rush into marriage. After Rhett offends the Old Guard (the older, more traditional generation) by claiming that the war has more to do with capitalism than glory, Melanie reveals that Ashley shares these views. Amazed, Scarlett concludes, "They both see the same unpleasant truth, but Rhett likes to look it in the face and enrage people by talking about it—and Ashley can hardly bear to face it."

Rhett continues to visit Scarlett, who accepts his gift of a Parisian hat to replace her mourning veil. Melanie accepts a cash donation for the hospital, wrapped in Rhett's handkerchief, donated by the prostitute Belle Watling. Recognizing Rhett's initials, Scarlett angrily tosses the handkerchief into the fire.

Ashley returns for Christmas after the Battle of Gettysburg, at which the Tarleton twins were killed. Finally alone with her beloved, Scarlett listens as Ashley describes the war's brutal realities, which he hides from Melanie. Promising to care for Melanie if Ashley should die, Scarlett kisses him before he rushes away. A few months later, Scarlett hears shocking news: Melanie is pregnant and Ashley has been captured. Rhett confides that Ashley refused to save himself by taking an oath of allegiance and enlisting for Indian service.

Part Three: Chapters 17-30

Sherman marches upon Atlanta in May of 1864. Overwhelmed by wounded soldiers, Scarlett flees the hospital. Rhett escorts her home while Scarlett expresses her terror and worry about her sisters (Suellen and Carreen) and mother, all three sick with typhoid. Nevertheless, Scarlett keeps her promise to Ashley and stays with the pregnant Melanie, who cannot travel. She promises to take Melanie's baby if Melanie dies. The sisters-in-law remain together during a month-long siege. Rhett asks Scarlett to become his mistress and she angrily refuses.

As the Confederate soldiers retreat, Scarlett deliversMelanie's son, Beau. She sends her slave Prissy to obtain Rhett's help in their escape from Atlanta. Rhett steals a horse and wagon and delivers the terrified women and children from the burning city, warning Scarlett that Yankee troops make it too dangerous for her to reach Tara. Proclaiming his love, Rhett kisses Scarlett and then abandons the wagon to join the Confederate army.

Fleeing to Tara with a newborn baby and Melanie weak and close to death, Scarlett "had never felt more acutely tired and sore in all her life," but her relief at reaching home quickly changes to shock. Her mother is dead, her sisters are sick, and her father is senile. Union soldiers have pillaged the plantation, taking everything. Dilcey breastfeeds Beau along with her own baby while Scarlett digs for vegetables in the abandoned slave garden on the ruined Twelve Oaks plantation. Scarlett bullies everyone at Tara into working, frightening Wade, who turns to Melanie for comfort. Scarlett thus manages to control the chaos. She is determined to succeed because

There was no going back and she was going forward. Throughout the South for fifty years there would be bitter-eyed women who looked backward, to dead times, to dead men, evoking memories that hurt and were futile, bearing poverty with bitter pride because they had those memories. But Scarlett was never to look back.

Despite her weakness, Melanie helps hide the murder of a Yankee intruder whom Scarlett kills in self-defense. Melanie's cool self-control as she takes the dead soldier's money earns Scarlett's grudging respect. After she buries the Yankee, Scarlett uses his horse to visit the three generations of Fontaine widows living together without male protection. Grandma Fontaine suggests that Scarlett pick the cotton in Tara's fields for money, to which Scarlett answers, "Me? Pick cotton?… Like a field hand? Like white trash? Like the Slattery women?" Returning home, Scarlett picks cotton throughout the summer; Dilcey is her only helper because the other women are too ill, and, as house slaves, Mammy and Pork refuse to work in the fields. Still, "There was hope now. The war couldn't last forever. She had her little cotton, she had food, she had a horse, she had her small but treasured hoard of money. Yes, the worst was over!"

Melanie earns Scarlett's admiration again by saving Scarlett from a fire lit by Yankees, while the rest of the household hides in the swamp with the animals and food. Although the Yankees pillage Tara, Scarlett convinces them to leave Wade's birthright—his grandfather's sword.

A ravenous troop of Confederate soldiers appears at Christmas. Scarlett provides dinner for them, but conceals her limited supply of food and livestock, acquired during Pork's nightly foraging. Frank Kennedy shares war news, but like Ashley, he hides hideous truths, focusing instead on rebuilding Atlanta and asking Scarlett's permission to marry her sister Suellen. More soldiers straggle home as the war ends and Southerners try to rebuild their lives. Despite her worries about supplies for her own family, Scarlett offers veterans room and board while Mammy provides de-lousing and remedies for their dysentery. Will Benteen, an uneducated farmer whose leg has been amputated, stays behind to rebuild Tara. He falls in love with pious Carreen, who obsessively mourns Brent Tarleton. Will soon becomes a source of consolation to everyone on the plantation, including Scarlett. Pitying Scarlett's love for Ashley, he prevents her from rushing past Melanie to greet Ashley when he arrives at their gate. With Twelve Oaks destroyed, Ashley and Melanie now live at Tara.

Part Four: Chapters 31-47

Unable to pay the exorbitant property taxes on Tara, Scarlett turns to Ashley, who confesses his helplessness, despair, and cowardice. Scarlett begs Ashley to run away with her. Again, Ashley stands on his honor, replying that he can never leave Melanie, "the gentlest of dreams and a part of my dreaming," but will move his family elsewhere. Handing Scarlett a handful of red clay, he reminds her that she still has Tara. Scarlett responds, "You need not go…. I won't have you all starve, simply because I've thrown myself at your head. It will never happen again."

Jonas Wilkerson arrives in a new carriage with Emmie Slattery, the "dirty tow-headed slut whose illegitimate baby Ellen had baptized, Emmie who had given typhoid to Ellen and killed her." Now married and enjoying the rewards of Wilkerson's work for the Freedmen's Bureau, they are eager to buy Tara. Furious at the realization that Wilkerson has schemed to raise her taxes, Scarlett sends them away. Desperate to save Tara, Scarlett plots to seduce Rhett. Lacking suitable dresses, Scarlett and Mammy sew one from her mother's velvet curtains, hoping Rhett will not notice how work has hardened Scarlett's face. Tormented by his awareness of Scarlett's intentions and sacrifices, Ashley says nothing.

Scarlett and Mammy hardly recognize Atlanta when they step from the train. Burnt buildings, freed slaves, and crowds of Yankees overwhelm them as they walk towards Pittypat's house. Scarlett learns that Rhett is in jail "and they may hang him!" However, he has a hidden cache of Confederate dollars. "She had very little feeling about Rhett being hanged. Her need of money was too pressing, too desperate, for her to bother about his ultimate fate."

Scarlett uses her most seductive charms while visiting Rhett, but her calloused hands betray her. Realizing Scarlett's ulterior motives, Rhett refuses her and suggests strategies to get what she wants from another man. Leaving Rhett, Scarlett runs into Frank Kennedy, and listens eagerly as he describes his prosperous new store and potential sawmill. Deciding to steal Frank from Suellen, who would not try to save Tara herself, Scarlett tells him that Suellen has broken their engagement. Frank marries Scarlett within two weeks and pays the taxes. Frank falls ill and Scarlett uses his illness as an opportunity to manage his business and collect debts owed to him. She soon proves to be a shrewd, merciless businesswoman. Embarrassed and confused by her business abilities, Frank wishes that Scarlett would have his child, like a proper wife. She does become pregnant, but persists in running Frank's store and planning to buy a sawmill.

Visiting Scarlett upon his release from jail, Rhett agrees to loan her money to buy the sawmill in her own name, provided that she does not share it with Ashley. Once again, Scarlett scandalizes Atlanta, this time by being the only woman in business, appearing in public while pregnant, and negotiating with the hated Yankees. Ignoring the dangers of racial violence, Scarlett insists on driving alone to the sawmill each day.

Scarlett returns to Tara for her father's funeral. Her sorrow turns to embarrassment when she sees Ashley: "Even in her heartbreak, she shrank from the thought of facing him when she was carrying another man's child." The cause of Gerald's death horrifies her: Suellen had tricked him into signing a Union loyalty oath in exchange for one hundred and fifty thousand dollars. The senile old man came to his senses before signing, rode away in a fury, and died when his horse threw him as he tried to jump a fence. Will asks Scarlett to forgive Suellen and allow them to be married. Once married, Will and Suellen can live at Tara without disgrace after Carreen enters a convent and Ashley makes plans to move to New York. Scarlett manipulates Ashley and Melanie into moving to Atlanta instead, begging for Ashley's help with the sawmill during her pregnancy. Before returning to Atlanta, Scarlett gives Pork her father's gold watch to thank him for his devotion.

The Old Guard flocks to Ashley and Melanie's humble parlor in their dilapidated Atlanta home. Ashley is a generous but incompetent businessman, and Scarlett must take months away from work because of her pregnancy. Constantly worried about financial security, she uses convict labor, hiring a foreman who lacks Ashley's scruples regarding the mill worker's conditions. Scarlett gives birth to her daughter, Ella Lorena, then returns to work as soon as possible.

Rhett visits Scarlett, complaining that she broke her agreement not to share his business loan with Ashley and hinting that Frank should spend more evenings at home. Unaware of Frank's involvement in the Ku Klux Klan, Scarlett misinterprets Rhett's comments. After Scarlett is attacked while riding through Shantytown, Frank and Ashley join a retaliatory Klan raid in which Frank is killed. With Belle's help, Rhett saves Ashley from being imprisonmened by the Yankees. Melanie thanks Belle, disregarding social rules against speaking with a prostitute. Scarlett stays in her bedroom, blaming herself for Frank's death. Rhett interrupts her drunken remorse and proposes marriage. Disregarding society lady Mrs. Merriwether's rude warnings, Melanie's diplomatic suggestions, and Mammy's loud criticism, Scarlett marries Rhett.

Part Five: Chapters 48-63

On their New Orleans honeymoon, "Rhett kept her too busy to think of Ashley often." Yet, Rhett painfully acknowledges Scarlett's longing for Ashley. Despite Rhett's frustration at Scarlett's "cheating little soul," he comforts her after her nightmares about losing Tara. Rhett promises to build a grand house and give her anything she desires, except support for Ashley.

Former friends snub the couple upon their return to Atlanta, especially after Scarlett invites Republicans to their new mansion. Melanie gently reminds Scarlett of outrages committed by the Yankees. Although Rhett pays the bills for Scarlett's extravagant house and parties, he "jeer[s] at her pretenses" and insults her new friends.

Pregnant again, Scarlett wants an abortion. Rhett threatens to "handcuff [her] to [his] wrist for the next nine months" to prevent it because he does not want to risk Scarlett's life. Suddenly, she realizes the depth of his love. Scarlett gives birth to a girl, Bonnie Blue, adored by both parents. However, Scarlett is so distressed by losing her thin waist that she decides against further pregnancies. At the mill, Scarlett discusses business with Ashley, who admits that he is jealous of Rhett. Returning home, Scarlett tells Rhett that she no longer wants to sleep with him, but immediately regrets her decision after Rhett angrily agrees to stay away from her.

For Bonnie's sake, Rhett embarks on a campaign to win the favor of "every female dragon of the Old Guard." Although Rhett's name had always been linked with "Yankee officers, Scallawags and Republicans," he now contributes to and "ostentatiously vote[s] the Democratic ticket." Still scornful of Scarlett, the Old Guard gradually accepts Rhett, equally impressed by his politics and fatherly devotion to Bonnie and his stepchildren. When Bonnie becomes afraid of the dark, Rhett lets her sleep in his room; when she complains of his whiskey-scented breath, Rhett gives up alcohol.

Melanie asks Scarlett to delay Ashley at work while she prepares his birthday party. Reminiscing about pre-war days, Scarlett cries and Ashley embraces her. As they hug, she realizes, "Ah, it was good to be in his arms, without passion, without tenseness, to be there as a loved friend."

Just then, India and others witness and misinterpret their embrace. Knowing that spiteful India cannot wait to tell Melanie and their friends, Scarlett dreads facing anyone. Archie informs Rhett, who insists that Scarlett attend the party. At first frightened, Scarlett realizes that she does not care about the self-righteous "howling, clawing cats who were jealous of her." She cares only about protecting Melanie. As soon as Scarlett enters, Melanie embraces her warmly, asking Scarlett to help her greet their other guests as a co-hostess.

At home, Scarlett is ashamed that she and Ashley "had both been saved by the indignant squaring of Melanie's thin shoulders and [her] love and outspoken trust." Rhett, drunk and angry, declares his love to Scarlett and carries her to bed. The next morning, she wakes filled with longing for Rhett, who has disappeared. Days later, Rhett tells Scarlett that he has been sleeping at Belle's and plans to take Bonnie on an extended trip.

When Rhett returns three months later, Scarlett eagerly announces her pregnancy. Still jealous, Rhett mocks her, they argue, and she falls down their staircase, losing the baby. Rhett confesses his jealousy and remorse to Melanie. Wanting Rhett's comfort, but afraid to ask, Scarlett goes to Tara with Wade and Ella to recuperate. Rhett convinces Melanie to accept his secret gift of money so that Ashley can buy the mill, and then turns his attention to politics, helping restore the Democrats to power and ending Reconstruction. He indulges Bonnie's every whim, including her love of ponies. Bonnie falls and dies when she misses a jump, dying in the same way that Scarlett remembers her father dying. Rhett locks himself in his room with Bonnie's corpse until Melanie convinces him to allow Bonnie's funeral. Scarlett is lonely, but unable to tell Rhett that she does not blame him for her favorite child's death. She longs for his comfort, but he has turned into a "swarthy sodden stranger disintegrating under her eyes."

Melanie is on her deathbed after a miscarriage, and she asks Scarlett to look after Ashley, but never to let him know that she is doing so. Melanie asks her to be kind to Rhett, who loves her. Speaking with Ashley, Scarlett realizes his innate weakness and inability to love her. Scarlett runs home to Rhett, reliving her old nightmares. Telling Rhett of her true love for him, Scarlett is devastated when he replies that he no longer cares and is leaving her. Heartbroken, Scarlett decides to return to Tara, where she will think about a solution "tomorrow."

THEMES

Romance of War

Many cultures have a tradition of romanticizing war. Battlefields have long been considered arenas for men (and sometimes women) to showcase their bravery, valor, and strength. In the early days of the Civil War, many men in Gone with the Wind thought of battle with the North as an exciting adventure. The war is rarely mentioned without the words "honor" and "insult" accompanying it. The South saw the North's aggression as an insult to the legitimacy of the Confederacy, and Southerners were willing to fight for their honor and reputation. At the picnic at Twelve Oaks, Ashley says he hopes that there will be no war, even though "we've been insulted and lied to." Elderly Mr. McRae, a veteran of previous wars, tries to convince the men that war is not a romantic adventure but a horrible experience: "You all don't know what war is. You think it's riding a pretty horse and having the girls throw flowers at you and coming home a hero. Well, it ain't." No one wants to listen. They try to quiet him and then usher him out of the room because he is ruining their visions of glory on the battlefield.

The notion that the war would be won and over by Christmas is replaced by the harsh realities of a long, bloody conflict. The romance of fighting is replaced with soldiers and civilians in a grim struggle for survival. As General Sherman marches ever closer to Atlanta, the citizens hold on to their belief in the "invincibility of the troops," but they lose faith in the Confederate general and despair over the increasing number of dead soldiers. Wounded soldiers were not heroes, but "tense, white faces of mangled men waiting for the doctor to get to them." After Ashley returns from the war, he says, "It's a curse—this not wanting to look on naked realities."While he is speaking of himself, he could very well be speaking of the entire South. His willingness to fight for the honor of their cause was not as glorious as he—and millions of Southerners—had imagined it would be: "Fighting is like champagne. It goes to the heads of cowards as quickly as of heroes. Any fool can be brave on a battle field when it's be brave or else be killed."

Most of the characters in Gone with the Wind romanticize the war in some way or another, and each is forced to face his or her romanticized ideal. Ashley and Rhett do so on the battlefields, though Rhett's vision of war is substantially different from Ashley's. Melanie is steadfast in her support of the South, but this is mostly because it is tied to Ashley's well-being as a soldier. When he returns safely, the cause becomes less important than her husband. Scarlett longs for the time before the war, but accepts the reality of postwar Atlanta more quickly than anyone else when she realizes she cannot go back. As the characters let go of their romantic view of war and battle, they are able to move forward in their postwar lives.

War's Effect on Individuals

The Civil War brought many shocking realities to the people who lived through it. Regardless of their antebellum—or pre-Civil War—social status, the war demanded relentless sacrifices from every Southerner. Gone with the Wind illustrates war's power radically transform society and individual lives to such a degree that the previously unimaginable suddenly becomes commonplace.

As the former realities of life in the South shatter violently in the face of war, the characters in Gone with the Wind must adapt to survive. Their experiences change their personalities, beliefs, and resolve. Some unexpectedly become strong, courageous, or determined. Others become cowardly, violent, or weak.

Mitchell presents the once-pampered Scarlett scraping the ground to dig radishes, picking cotton like one of her former field slaves, and swallowing her Confederate pride to negotiate with Yankees. Ashley consistently speaks of honor, but he is not above leaving behind his helpless troops, who are marching barefoot through the snow, to visit his wife for Christmas. Despite his devotion to truth, Ashley admits to Scarlett that he has presented an overly optimistic view of war to prevent Melanie from worrying.

Rhett risks his life to serve as a spy for the same Southerners who had ostracized him. Another character ostracized by Southern society, Belle Watling, does her part for the Confederates by donating the money she has earned as a prostitute. Ashley and Melanie are considered socially acceptable, yet they gratefully accept Rhett and Belle's help to save Ashley's life after his involvement in a Ku Klux Klan raid. Before long, many of the Old Guard also begin to accept Rhett's charity.

Several minor characters undergo similar transformations. For example, Suellen betrays her senile father and his Confederate loyalties by trying to persuade him to sign an oath of Union allegiance in exchange for money. Unable to find a rich husband after the war, Suellen marries Will Benteen, a lowly, disabled farmer she never would have considered years earlier.

Women and War

The women in Gone with the Wind are profoundly affected by the war. Scarlett and Melanie find themselves virtually on the battlefield as they attempt to flee Atlanta ahead of Sherman's army and later as they must contend with Yankees at Tara. However, far from being helpless or weak, the women in this novel are active participants in the cause of Southern independence. They leave behind antebellum expectations of women and forge new definitions of what is feminine in order to survive.

In the beginning of the novel, Scarlett enchants the Tarleton twins with her complaint, "If you say 'war' just once more, I'll go into the house and shut the door." This ploy impresses them because, "War was men's business, not ladies', and they took her attitude as evidence of her femininity." However, after the war and after Scarlett has had to fight to save herself and Tara, she recognizes that the old definition of "lady" has no place in the New South.

During Scarlett's engagement to Frank, she asks "many foolish questions" about his new store, "'just like a woman,' he told himself approvingly." However, these are not just idle questions. Neither the twins nor Frank recognize Scarlett's deliberate strategies to get whatever she wants, whether it be a suitor's rapt attention at a party, a marriage proposal, or an equal share in her husband's business ventures. Later Frank notes that Scarlett "talked and acted like a man. Her voice was brisk and decisive and she made up her mind instantly and with no girlish shilly-shallying."

Before the war, worried mothers like Ellen indulged their daughters' flirtations and shared lessons about feminine wiles: "You must be more gentle, dear, more sedate…. You must not interrupt gentlemen when they are speaking, even if you do think you know more about matters than they do." They did not condone stepping outside the bounds of propriety. After marriage, "No respectable white woman and few negroes ever went outside their homes from the moment they first suspected that they were with child." Once war comes, the social rules that governed women no longer apply and even seem impractical: "This is war time. We can't think of the proprieties now."

In the postwar South, women necessarily assumed new roles: regardless of their prior experience, women were suddenly required to work on farms and plantations, raise funds to support troops, nurse wounded soldiers, and serve as midwives in the absence of male physicians. Wives and daughters could no longer rely on male protection from marauders. Women like the Hamiltons and the O'Hara sisters had to band together whether they liked it or not. After the war, the women were filled with a strength and resolution that was new to them. At Gerald's funeral, an attendee observes that "all that pretty, sweet softness had gone from [Scarlett's] face and that flattering way of looking up at a man, like he knew more than God Almighty, has utterly vanished."

Through her many transformations, Scarlett represents the collapse of tradition and the emergence of the New South. The changes in her life presage the changes in women's roles during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.

HISTORICAL OVERVIEW

The Civil War: 1861–65

The Civil War resulted from years of festering animosity between the states, largely for economic reasons. The North depended on wage labor to run its economy, while the South employed slave labor. The northern states were opposed to slavery and sought to outlaw it, a change that the South believed would cripple its economy. In the 1860 election, the anti-slavery Republican party won a majority of seats in the Senate and abolitionist Abraham Lincoln was named president. Afterward, seven southern states seceded, or broke away, from the Union: Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, South Carolina, and Texas. By mid-1861, four more states had left the Union: Arkansas, North Carolina, Tennessee, and Virginia. The states that had seceded formed the Confederate States of America and established a capital in Montgomery, Alabama (later in Richmond, Virginia) under the leadership of Jefferson Davis.

The Civil War began at Fort Sumter, South Carolina. Lincoln had left troops at federally owned sites, which included forts. The Confederacy refused to tolerate the presence of Federal troops in their territory and subsequently fired on them in Fort Sumter on April 12, 1861. Though both sides fired shots, there were no casualties in this battle. It was, however, the instigating event for an all-out war that would last four years.

Attitudes expressed at the Twelve Oaks picnic in Gone with the Wind reflects the South's confidence in its combat skills and resources, and its conviction that the war would be brief. Many linked the war to matters of honor just as Scarlett's father did. At the beginning of the war Gerald says that, "The South should show by arms that she cannot be insulted and that she is not leaving the Union by the Union's kindness but by her own strength!" Many of the men in the novel—including Ashley—share this view, and many men at Twelve Oaks that day agree with Gerald, crying, "'We could lick them in a month'…'Why, one Southerner can lick twenty Yankee's …'They want war; we'll make them sick of war."' Only Rhett seems able to see the reality behind this talk of honor and pride. He points out that the North has all of "the factories, the foundries, the shipyards, the iron and coal mines—all the things we haven't got. Why, all we have is cotton and slaves and arrogance. They'd lick us in a month." Rhett was branded a traitor for daring to speak out against the war.

Four bloody years of fightinng followed Fort Sumter, as Lincoln ordered Federal troops to recapture all the forts in the Confederacy. The war escalated, and battles were fought across the country, including the two Battles of Bull Run (Manassas, Virginia); Antietam (Maryland); Chancellorsville (Virginia); Gettysburg (Pennsylvania); Vicksburg (Mississippi); and Shiloh (Tennessee). Though each side won some battles, the Union ultimately began to gain the upper hand as a result of its access to more resources and supplies. General Sherman's decisive yet brutal march on Atlanta, which captured the city for the Union in September 1864, is depicted in Gone with the Wind.

The war resulted in more than a half million casualties, including many deaths from infectious diseases such as typhoid, tuberculosis, measles, and dysentery. Twenty-three thousand soldiers died in one day at the Battle of Antietam, forty thousand died in the three-day Battle of Gettysburg, and another thirty-four thousand at the two-day Battle of Chickamauga, Georgia.

Confederate General Robert E. Lee surrendered to Union General Ulysses S. Grant at the Appomattox Court House in Virginia on April 9, 1865. Less than one week later, President Lincoln was assassinated at Ford's Theater by John Wilkes Booth on April 15, 1865. Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation, which freed the slaves, became law when it was ratified as the Thirteenth Amendment of the Constitution on December 6, 1865.

The Reconstruction

After the Civil War, much of the South was decimated. Cities, towns, and farms were left in ruins, morale was low, and the economy had all but collapsed from bearing the costs of the long war and the loss of slave labor. The period of time after the war when the Confederacy was reintegrated into the United States is known as the Reconstruction.

The Reconstruction Act of March 2, 1867, divided the former Confederacy into five military districts, which were governed by U.S. military personnel. Many Northerners went south to participate in governing and rebuilding the South. Southerners, who were not pleased to be under Republican rule, resented these "carpetbaggers," as they were called. People who aligned themselves with the Republicans—or who became Republicans themselves—were known as "scallawags." There is considerable tension and controversy in Gone with the Wind when Scarlett openly makes deals and associates with Republicans. In addition to the Republicans, many Southerners were also resentful of freed slaves who became active in government and commerce. This animosity gave rise to racial tension and the beginnings of the Ku Klux Klan.

As a condition of rejoining the Union, Southern states were required to ratify the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments. The Fourteenth Amendment granted civil rights to blacks. The Fifteenth Amendment gave the right to vote to all men, regardless of race. By 1870, all of the states had accepted these amendments and rejoined the Union.

Reconstruction officially ended in 1877, when the South agreed to acknowledge the contested presidency of Rutherford B. Hayes in exchange for the North withdrawing troops from the South. The end of Reconstruction is often seen as the end of social and political strides for the freed slaves and African Americans, who were granted many of the same rights as whites during Reconstruction. After the Northern withdrawal, segregation was legally institutionalized, and civil rights were repealed. Blacks were treated as second-class citizens in many places in the South until well into the twentieth century.

MEDIA ADAPTATIONS

David O. Selznick's film adaptation of Gone with the Wind (1939), produced by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, stars Vivian Leigh as Scarlett O'Hara and Clark Gable as Rhett Butler. Nominated for fourteen Academy Awards, it won nine, including Best Picture and Best Actress. It is available on a restored DVD version through Warner Home Video.

An unabridged audio cassette edition of "Gone with the Wind" was released in October 2001 by Recorded Books.

The Margaret Mitchell House and Museum maintains a website at www.gwtw.org with links to a biography of Margaret Mitchell and the Center for Southern Literature.

CRITICAL OVERVIEW

Within six months of being published on June 30, 1936, Gone with the Wind sold over one million copies, a staggering feat for a first novel by an unknown writer. New York Times reviewer J. Donald Adams, writing a week after its publication, said that the novel "is beyond a doubt one of the most remarkable first novels produced by an American writer. It is also one of the best." Fellow New York Times reviewer Ralph Thompson agreed in "Books of the Times" that the book was a significant achievement, but argued that the characters speak anachronistically and that it could have benefited from substantial editing. However, he believed that despite the "somewhat absurd plot," the "historical background is the chief virtue of the book … it is the story of the times … that gives Miss Mitchell's work whatever importance may be attached to it."

Some critics complain of Mitchell's tendency to romanticize her antebellum literary portraits and to stereotype African Americans, writing only from the limited perspective of her ancestors who were plantation owners. African American writer Alice Randall wrote a parody of Gone with the Wind called The Wind Done Gone (2001), which retells the same story from the perspective of a slave. Mitchell's estate sued Randall for copyright infringement; in "Wind on Trial" on the NewsHour with Jim Lehrer, Randall's attorney Joe Beck spoke on Randall's behalf, saying "Margaret Mitchell, in her version of the story, pictured the slaves, the African Americans, as essentially cartoons. They're one-dimensional." In Drew Gilpin Faust's essay, "Clutching the Chains that Bind," he writes that Mitchell's inability to look at the South critically renders her "blind to the most fundamental reality of all: that southern civilization rested on the oppression of four million African Americans." Therefore, he writes, the "realities of slavery remain largely and curiously hidden" in Gone with the Wind.

However, modern reviews of the book continue to classify it as a great achievement in literature. Hubert H. McAlexander, in the Gone with the Wind entry in the New Georgia Encyclopedia, calls it "one of the great novels of survival," chronicling the "moral and emotional price … often paid for survival against great odds." In "Everywoman Her Own Historian," the introduction to Blood and Irony: Southern White Women's Narratives of the Civil War, 1861–1937, Sarah E. Gardner writes that Gone with the Wind had "started out as an attempt to tell a distinctly southern story of the war," but it became, through the character of Scarlett, "a remarkably successful effort to tell the national story of war."

CRITICISM

Dawson Gaillard

In the following excerpt, Gaillard discusses the influence of war upon Scarlett O'Hara and women in general. As Gaillard explains, the characters of Scarlett O'Hara and Melanie Wilkes represent the conflict between female roles in the Old and New South

The end of the war brings Scarlett to a moment of reflection: "Somewhere, on the long road that wound through those four years, the girl with her sachet and dancing slippers had slipped away and there was left a woman with sharp green eyes, who counted pennies and turned her hands to many menial tasks, a woman to whom nothing was left from the wreckage except the indestructible red earth on which she stood."… Besides the red earth, something else was left: her girlhood image of Ashley Wilkes. The memory of him and his fineness offers to Scarlett a view of herself that mitigates the harsh self-portrait of her post-war nature. It is in Ashley that she can imagine herself the lady her mother was and whom Scarlett wants to emulate—when she has world enough and time. By holding onto her girlhood image of Ashley, she holds onto a world of innocence and childhood long past. However, by the end of the novel, Scarlett has faced herself in her completeness—her harsher characteristics and her idealism. She also learns the difference between childish romantic love and finds that she has loved Rhett all along, as an adult loves, not as a girl loves.

Like many epic heroes, Scarlett is tested. She survives trial by fire and hunger. Unlike these same heroes, she loses. Her stature is not ennobled, but is diminished, by the means that she chooses to accomplish her successes. The author seemed to feel that Scarlett must be punished for something—her punishment is losing her man, the patriarchal grail, in spite of her successful rite de passage. To an audience of the book and the movie, Scarlett's losing Rhett is equivalent to watching Oedipus gouge out his eyes. What has her flaw been and what attitude toward it does the author have? The answer to the second question is buried more carefully than is the answer to the first.

I suggest that there are two temporal perspectives in the novel because of the time in which the novel is set and the time in which the novel was written. On the surface story line, set in the 1800's, is Scarlett's maturation within the context of the time and place in which she lived. At this level, Mitchell could seemingly endorse traditional values which Scarlett violates. But woven into the novel is the time perspective of the 1930's. By ferreting out "a small degree of allegory," we can see what the dual time perspective suggests about the author's attitude. We also have explicit comments in the novel which are possibly forgotten in its huge bulk. Margaret Mitchell could endorse traditional values while simultaneously undermining them in the novel …

Margaret Mitchell's choice to dramatize regional conflicts gave her a broad screen on which to include other conflicts: a social conflict between old and new social forms within the Southern region, then within a particular state, and—psychologically—a conflict of old and new social forms within one individual. What she leaves her audience feeling is nostalgia (what a shame social changes occur to disrupt people's lovely lives) and pride (look how strong people can be in the face of these changes); nostalgia and pride—ingredients of popular, romantic fiction. And there is one other feeling left after we complete the novel—virtuousness, signalled by a noise: "tsk, tsk, Scarlett." The audience feels morally purged; we're clean; we know not to imitate Scarlett in all her ways. And Rhett's leaving feels somehow right to us. Scarlett's ways have shaken the surface foundations of traditional society, but they remain firm.

Margaret Mitchell's novel dramatizes the clash between the old form, the Southern Lady, and its antagonist, the New Woman. On both the surface and the allegorical levels the Southern Lady dies; Scarlett slays the dragon within her; Mitchell slays Melanie. My speculation is that Mitchell wanted to criticize the mythic social mode of behavior that had governed her area of the country and national popular literature, but to criticize without offending her audience (and also without completely admitting to herself what she was doing). As most authors are, Mitchell is divided into all of her characters. But I suggest that she identified strongly with both Melanie and Scarlett. It is Melanie who dies, however. The dynamics are set for the survival of Scarlett from the second paragraph of the novel in which the turbulence and lustiness of life are imaged in her green eyes. On the subsurface of the novel, the author can criticize the old forms with impunity by having her heroine, in the surface drama, receive some punishment for working against the old, accepted forms of social behavior.

Melanie Wilkes is the old order. Like Ashley, she is an anachronism as a result of the disruption of the war. In the main story line the Southern Gentleman as an afficacious norm of behavior is more explicitly rendered as passing away than is the Southern Lady. The audience feels (watching Melanie's becoming the magnetic center of the old world remnants) that the Southern Lady at its mythic best will remain to give soulpower to the society, refinement to counteract a seedy invasion from outside the region. Peering through the curtain of the surface drama, do we find nostalgia or necessity manifested by Melanie's death?

On the surface, the author may seem to feel—and may wring from us—nostalgia. However, just as the dynamics for Scarlett's survival are built into the novel, so are the dynamics for Melanie's decease. Within the context of popular sentimental fictional patterns, Mitchell's choice to do Melanie in is a necessity of audience expectation. The frail woman must die; her death is in the ground rules of the genre. There is something else in the novel, however, not superimposed upon it from outside, something that lessens the tinge of nostalgia that can accompany necessity. In Chapter XL, Grandma Fontaine tells Scarlett, "It's the way your mother would have acted if she'd lived. Melly puts me in mind of your mother when she was young." Melanie is typologically Scarlett's mother; allegorically the parent dies so that the child may grow. At this level, Melanie's death, the death of the old order, is a necessity without grief …

To me it seems that Margaret Mitchell wanted to write a success story, a bildungsroman about a woman who was successful in breaking away from the life of self-effacement her mother had lived, in working counter to the existing patriarchal system as she matures from a young, frivolous girl to a twenty-eight-year-old serious-minded woman. The key is in what one defines as "successful." In the literary tradition of the United States, establishing social and psychological independence was usually achieved by acquiring financial independence. But for a woman financial independence carries with it the danger of negative consequences. Scarlett's aunt voices the accepted mores when she writes to complain that Rhett has informed her of Scarlett's daily visits to her store: "Scarlett, this must stop … Think how your little children will feel when they grow older and realize that you were in trade!"…

[Even] on the surface level of the novel's drama Mitchell suggests that to continue the tradition of the Southern Lady is to encourage hypocrisy and to cripple the society, especially the women. The narrator tells us in the first chapter that Scarlett learned "how to conceal from men a sharp intelligence beneath a face as sweet and bland as a baby's." We are also told that Scarlett's "manners had been imposed upon her by her mother's gentle admonitions and the sterner discipline of her mammy; her eyes were her own."… In the man's world that her mother—and Melanie—knew, dissembling was crucial for survival, socially, psychologically, and financially. Scarlett breaks the rules …

In the final chapter of the novel, Rhett tells Scarlett why his feelings for her have changed: "I wanted you to play, like a child—for you were a child, a brave, frightened, bull-headed child. I think you are still a child. No one but a child could be so headstrong and so insensitive … I like to think that Bonnie was you, a little girl again."… Rhett tells Scarlett this after she admits that her image of Ashley has been a little girl's illusion … In discarding the illusion, the image from the past, Scarlett discards completely her girlhood; she becomes an adult, the point toward which the novel has been moving. And by becoming an adult, Scarlett loses Rhett … Rhett wanted, in other words, to be the master …, the father of the child-woman, allowing her the benevolence of his paternity. The picture of Rhett smiling at coy Scarlett visually freezes the relationship that Rhett wanted to freeze socially.

In the final scene between two adults ("This was the first time he had ever talked to her in this manner, as one human being to another, talked as other people talked, without flippancy, mockery or riddles"), in this final scene, Scarlett matures. The Southern Lady as myth is dead; dead too is she as a viable social pattern of behavior. Times have brought changes that call for new modes of behavior. The female parent, the old order has passed away. Scarlett, the woman, is free to exert her own vital self; she is emancipated. And only completely so after Rhett leaves. What Margaret Mitchell implies—and I am not certain that she was fully conscious of doing so—is that when the woman-wife-child created by the Southern Lady myth awakens to her complete selfhood and matures, the parent-man walks out.

Viewing the novel as containing, and even moving towards, this suggestion should cause us to reconsider our feelings that the surface drama and our traditional expectations force from us: that Rhett's leaving is sad. We should, instead, be pleased. He's got to go as long as he feels that Scarlett should have remained a child. His leaving is not a mark of strength, but of weakness and of blindness, the blindness that tradition has produced.

Recently in The American Scholar … an essay entitled "How a Girl Can Be Smart and Still Be Popular" by Clara Clark concluded by saying that "literature which is still overwhelmingly produced by males, has not been very helpful in providing the young girl with the Bildungsroman that would show her how to combine the compassionate virtues with the expansion of ego-strength that is her due as a human being."… The punishment Scarlett must endure because of her violations of social mores exemplifies the failure to which Clara Clark refers. Margaret Mitchell wanted her heroine to break away from traditional behavior patterns, but could not have her do so unconditionally and compassionately. Be different and be damned!

Source: Dawson Gaillard, "Gone With the Wind as Bildingsroman; or Why Did Rhett Butler Really Leave Scarlett O'Hara?" in Georgia Review, Vol. 28, No. 1, Spring 1974, pp. 9-18.

SOURCES

Adams, J. Donald, Review of Gone with the Wind, New York Times, www.nytimes.com (September 2, 2005), originally published in the New York Times, July 5, 1936, p. BR1.

Faust, Drew Gilpin, "Clutching the Chains that Bind," in Southern Cultures, Vol. 5, No. 1, Spring 1999, pp. 6-13.

Gardner, Sarah E., "Everywoman Her Own Historian," in Blood and Irony: Southern White Women's Narratives of the Civil War, 1861–1937, University of North Carolina Press, uncpress.unc.edu (June 2, 2005), originally published by University of North Carolina Press, 2003.

McAlexander, Hubert H., "Gone with the Wind (Novel)," in the New Georgia Encyclopedia, www.georgiaencyclopedia.org (January 20, 2004).

Mitchell, Margaret, Gone with the Wind, The Macmillan Company, 1936; reprint, Warner Books, 1999.

Thompson, Ralph, "Books of the Times," American Studies Department, University of Virginia, xroads.virginia.edu (June 2, 2005); originally published in the New York Times, June 30, 1936.

"Wind on Trial," Online NewsHour with Jim Lehrer, www.pbs.org/newshour (May 25, 2001), originally aired on NewsHour with Jim Lehrer, PBS, May 25, 2001.