My review of Gone with the Wind, by Margaret Mitchell

Gone with the Wind

by Margaret Mitchell

My rating: 4 out of 5 stars

Margaret Mitchell received 38 publishing rejections before the lucky Macmillan publishers accepted Gone with the Wind. Her only novel published in her lifetime, it sold 30 million copies (with two sequels authorised by Mitchell's estate published more than a half century later). Mitchell won the 1937 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction for this epic of the highest order, of more than a thousand pages.

Set in the American Civil War and Reconstruction, this tracks the cunning antics of wealthy Southern plantation owner Gerald O'Hara's daughter, Scarlett, who must do what she must to survive sudden destitution.

There's a touch of the Scarlett O'Hara in the best of us. Tainted more with her father's forthright Irish blood than her gracious mother Ellen's French ancestry, she's strong-willed, self-centred, at times petulant, but ultimately practical and ever true to her own heart. This complexity makes her the great literary heroine she is and not simply a spoilt Southern princess who deserves a good slapping down. No wonder Hollywood interviewed 1400 actresses before settling on the extraordinary Vivien Leigh to capture her fabulous persona for the 1939 film, which won eight Academy Awards.

Written from the slaveholder's perspective, Gone with the Wind is Southern plantation historical fiction. Though often placed in the historical romance sub-genre, it arguably lacks all the romance genre elements and contains other elements not found in romance novels. It also fits the coming-of-age, or Bildungsroman structure, chronicling archetypal southern belle Scarlett from adolescence to adulthood.  

Mitchell's working title had been the novel's last line, Tomorrow is Another Day. Also considered were Bugles Sang True, Not in Our Stars and Tote the Weary Load. A metaphor for the end of the South's way of life before the Civil War, the eventual title comes from Ernest Dowson's poem Non Sum Qualis Eram Bonae sub Regno Cynarae:

'I have forgot much, Cynara! gone with the wind,

Flung roses, roses riotously with the throng,

Dancing, to put thy pale, lost lilies out of mind...'

Scarlett uses the phrase when pondering whether her home-plantation, 'Tara', is still standing or if it is 'gone with the wind which had swept through Georgia'.

Pampered Scarlett survives an extreme reversal of fortune, rebuilding Tara cotton plantation and her own self-esteem, in the post-war South. Starkly contrasting with her gentler sister-in-law Melanie Hamilton's qualities of trustworthiness, selflessness and loyalty, Scarlett displays shrewd, manipulative, deceitful, even superficial traits, her first priority being money.

Similarly contrasting are Scarlett's two main men: her sensitive, gentlemanly, almost effeminate love interest, Ashley Wilkes (played onscreen perfection by Leslie Howard). He is Melanie's cousin who marries her as promised, devastating Scarlett who wants him for herself. Too passive and earnestly principled for Scarlett, he is perfectly matched with the softer, altruistic Melanie. A planter by inheritance, Ashley represents Confederate defeat, foreseeing and too readily accepting that cause's end after the Civil War. His very name signifies blandness, invoking the colourless vision of ash. His limpid gesture at 'real men's' activities is purely tokenistic. His entire family, according to Scarlett's father, was 'born queer'. Yet Ashley is 'the Perfect Knight' in Scarlett's mind, even throughout her three marriages.

Scarlett first begrudgingly marries the shy and loving Charles Hamilton. Soon after, he dies of pneumonia, never reaching any battlefield or even seeing their son, Wade. She then callously steals her sister Suellen's fiancé, Frank Kennedy, an older, unattractive man whose money Scarlett has in mind to pay Tara plantation's taxes. This middle husband is a remote figure, never understanding Scarlett's ruthless business tenacity. After not so long he is shot through the head attempting to defend Scarlett's honour after she is attacked. He leaves Scarlett with a daughter, the homely, simple Ella Lorena.

But then comes Scarlett's third husband and other main man, the hard-drinking 'black beast' Rhett Butler (personified on celluloid by Clarke Gable). When not idling away his hours wheeling and dealing, gambling or dallying with prostitutes in Belle Watling's brothel, dandyish Rhett shows Scarlett his 'large brown hands', growls 'I could tear you to pieces with them' and even brutishly rapes her in their marital bed. Accused of being a 'damned Scallawag', Rhett is one of those Southerners who willingly accept the Republican reforms or, who Mitchell writes, 'had turned Republican very profitably'. For this injustice he is written as having a 'swarthy face, flashing teeth and dark alert eyes' and labelled a 'scamp, blackguard, without scruple or honour'. Even in the war's earlier years, Rhett is tagged a 'scoundrel' for his 'selfish gains' profiteering as a blockade-runner. Scarlett meets her match with this straight talker, who puts her firmly in her place and gives her a daughter, the strong-willed Eugenie Victoria 'Bonnie Blue' Butler.

Mitchell's cast of thousands has the reader fully absorbed, enthralled, waiting to see what happens next and to whom - and my, those frocks! Mitchell's use of colour symbolism, especially the red and green, were wisely adopted for the movie. Who can forget 'that' red dress Vivien Leigh wore to the party, or her green velvet tasselled DIY 'curtain' frock. Yet whether the inevitable comparison with the movie or not, certain characters remain forever with us. Not only those from Scarlett's household, we also become fondly acquainted with the delightful Melanie Wilkes née Hamilton (given onscreen life by Olivia de Havilland). Unforgettable too is Melanie's deliciously eccentric Aunt Pittypat Hamilton, in Atlanta, with whom Scarlett and Melanie, assisted by Prissy, go to stay at one stage. These are all Mitchell's 'goodies'. Her 'baddies' comprise a cavalcade of scoundrels incorporating Yankees, carpetbaggers, Republicans, prostitutes and overseers. Every smallest character is given immense readability.

Indeed, Tara plantation and its surrounding landscape is a character in itself, raising great speculation around its real-life basis. Of this and her players, Mitchell insisted:

'I made Tara up, just as I made up every character in the book. But nobody will believe me.'

The novel examines the old South's class system, comprising the white planter class, such as Scarlett and Ashley, and the black servants whom Mitchell splits into two types: her first is the loyal, higher-class house servants, such as Mammy, Scarlett's childhood nurse who once belonged to Scarlett's grandmother, raising Scarlett's mother, Ellen. Loyalty and longevity have made Mammy Tara plantation's 'head woman'. Closely aligning Mammy's special status is Gerald O'Hara's valet, Pork, his wife Dilcey and their daughter Prissy, Wade's nurse. These more elite slaves stand by their masters even after being technically freed by the 1863 Emancipation Proclamation and 1865 Thirteenth Amendment. Mammy never considers a life away from Tara, recognising her freedom to come and go as she pleases, declaring: 'Ah is free, Miss Scarlett. You kain sen' me nowhar ah doan wanter go.'

Then there are the field slaves, working under foreman Big Sam. These lower-class slaves are mostly taken away by Confederate soldiers to dig ditches, apparently never returning. Though Mitchell acknowledged there were 'loyalist' field slaves who stayed on the plantations after emancipation, not exercising their new freedom, none are included in her novel. Mitchell's stereotypical 'docile and happy' slave depictions, with none angry or dissatisfied with their lot, were disparaged for over simplification. Critics accused Mitchell's work of fitting a convenient common white denial of the black South's interminable hardship, misery, suffering and injustices. Others, however, argued that, politics aside, Mitchell's contentious characterisations did have a certain authenticity.

Regardless of what has been said about Mitchell's 'ethnic slurs' in her narrative's portrayal of slavery and African Americans, these characters were endearingly immortalised by legends Hattie McDaniel, as stalwart Mammy (earning the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress, the first African American who get one), and Butterfly McQueen as flighty Prissy, whose wondrous portrayals remain etched in all our hearts and minds, e.g.

-Mammy: It ain't fittin'... it ain't fittin'. It jes' ain't fittin'... It ain't fittin'.

-Prissy: Lawzy, we got to have a doctor. I don't know nothin' 'bout birthin' babies. 

On theme, the author said: 'If Gone with the Wind has a theme it is that of survival. What makes some people come through catastrophes and others, apparently just as able, strong, and brave, go under? It happens in every upheaval. Some people survive; others don't. What qualities are in those who fight their way through triumphantly that are lacking in those that go under? I only know that survivors used to call that quality 'gumption.' So, I wrote about people who had gumption and people who didn't.' — Margaret Mitchell, 1936: 

As a non-American I learnt from Mitchell's fine historic detail, gained insight into the American spirit that I had previously scratched my head about. This novel will surely retain longevity for endless generations of readers. 

Fiddle-dee-dee! Everyone should experience it at least once before they die.