12 Classics: Gone with the Wind

After rereading some old favorites, I ordered a bunch of stuff from a book club online to fulfill my membership, and found Gone with the Wind by Margaret Mitchell in my lap. Things had evened out a little bit in my life, and I was ready to tackle another classic! 


#2: Gone with the Wind by Margaret Mitchell

For being like, the longest book ever, it was ABSOLUTELY AMAZING. I can't say that I liked Scarlett at all, but I couldn't put the book down. I stayed up late every night after Gunnar was snoring, fascinated by the fortitude of the characters and the devastation that was the civil war. I mean, I studied the civil war in AP US History in high school, but that was nothing compared to shivering under the covers while Scarlett drove a nearly dead mule out of Atlanta, hiding from the retreating confederate army, with her best enemy, a newborn, and a slave girl all depending on her while Atlanda burned around them. Talk about doing whatever you have to do to survive! 

As shallow and greedy as Scarlett was, I had to admire her. She had fortitude and determination within herself that even she didn't know about. There was amazing incongruity between her selfish proclamations against caring for anyone but herself and her actions and sacrifices for the sake of those around her. When she honed in on something she wanted, she wasn't going to let war, or morals, or conventions get in the way of attaining her goal. She was an exciting heroine, and I found myself shocked by her behavior over and over throughout the entire book! She was a very human, flawed character, and I could identify with both her strengths and her weaknesses. My favorite Scarlett moment was when she stole her sister Suellen's fiance. My jaw dropped open and I burst into surprised laughter. What a backstabbing bitch! Sure her sister was one of the most unforgivably annoying characters in the entire book, and sure Scarlett was desperate for the money in order to save Tara, but it still seemed extreme and underhanded.

In a stark contrast to Scarlett was Melanie. I didn't really like her as a character until they go back to Tara and she comes down the stairs to face the Yankee intruder, lugging the too-heavy saber of her dead brother and wearing only her nightgown, ready to do what she had to do, even if it killed her. She was an honest and true friend to Scarlett, practically glowing with kindness and love. But on the other hand, her meekness, her willingness to follow conventions, her pathetic helplessness...all of it got on my nerves. I wanted her to realize how stupid she was being about for trusting Scarlett unconditionally, to call Ashely out on the near adultery between him and Scarlett, and to just outright hate someone in her life! I probably had a hard time relating to Melanie because I'm more of a Scarlett myself. 

Vivien Leigh as Scarlett in the 1939 film.

As for the men in the story, I didn't particularly like any of them. Rhett was a rough and rude scalawag, who I might have liked if he had admitted to loving Scarlett in the beginning, and I started to admire when he showed affection for his daughter Bonnie, but the vision of him at the end, broken-hearted and weary of Scarlett, is what resounded in my mind. Ashely was too sad and pathetic--he described himself, accurately, as a defeated man and a relic of the past who must somehow try and survive in a world he didn't belong to. I also couldn't forgive him for not just telling Scarlett from the beginning that he didn't love and and would never be with her.  

The plot moved fairly quickly for such a long book, and was a good close look at the South before, during, and after the Civil War. It presented multiple points of view about the war, from the fervent nationalism and optimism of the Tarleton boys to the logical skepticism of Ashley Wilkes to the outright disdain of Rhett Butler. It showed the economic hardships faced by the soldiers and those left behind, and the utter horror in the number of men who died horribly in the battle. Numbers and statistics in history books are one thing, but hearing the names of all Scarlett's old suiters listed among the dead--characters who were funny and interesting and handsome--drove it home. Scarlett's search for a doctor when Melanie was in labor graphically demonstrated the number of dead and dying soldiers, laying out in the sun with no medicine, no doctors, and no water, while the entire city evacuated around them. Scarlett notices that they don't care about the war or the Confederacy. They only care about the pain, their imminent deaths. 


I was aware of the controversy regarding Mitchell's portrayal of slavery in the book, and took everything written with a grain of historically biased salt. I felt that Mitchell at least accurately portrayed the attitudes of the people at the time, even if those attitudes were ridiculous and outright wrong.  It was interesting to me that the northerners were just as racist as the southerners in the book, in different ways. Though they freed the slaves in the south, they didn't actually want anything to do with them. The Union failed to offer jobs and support for these men and women who had lived most of their lives being told what to do and when to do it. Like prisoners who serve long sentences in penitentiaries, they were uneducated and many were unskilled except as hard laborors or servants. There was no labor for the laborers since the plantations were burned up and the plantation owners were broke, and no servant openings since the northerners found black servants distasteful and the former slave owners, again, were mostly homeless and broke during the Restoration. One scene that really struck me was when Scarlett was riding with Uncle Peter in the carriage during the reconstruction, and a white lady splutters her dismay at the idea of letting a black person touch her baby, insulting Uncle Peter, Scarlett, and her beloved Mammy ( the slave woman who was Scarlett's nurse) all in one go. Of course, it's also telling that Scarlett didn't step up and defend Uncle Peter. I really want to read The Wind Done Gone and other slave-centric works about the same era for some perspective.

Despite it's length and other snags, I loved Gone with the Wind. It was captivating, romantic, and inspiring. The characters were real and flawed, and that my love of American History (Little House on the Prairie anyone?) made it all the better. I highly recommend it as a classic piece of American literature, and a must-read for anyone interested in the Civil War or historical romance! 


Pictures are from the Wikipedia commons.