Gone with the Wind
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- For other uses, see Gone with the Wind (disambiguation).
| Author | Margaret Mitchell |
|---|---|
| Publisher | Macmillan Publishers |
| Released | June 30, 1936 |
Gone With the Wind, an American novel by Margaret Mitchell, was published in 1936 and won the Pulitzer Prize in 1937.
Contents |
[edit] Title
The title is taken from the first line of the third stanza of the poem Non sum qualís eram bonae sub regno Cynarae by Ernest Dowson: "I have forgot much, Cynara! gone with the wind." The title phrase also appears in the novel: When Scarlett escapes Atlanta's bombing by the forces of the North, she flees back to her family's plantation, Tara. At one point, she wonders, "Was Tara still standing? Or was Tara also gone with the wind which had swept through Georgia?" [page 390].
[edit] Plot summary
Mitchell's work relates the story of a rebellious Georgia woman named Scarlett O'Hara and her travels with friends, family and lovers in the midst of the antebellum South, the American Civil War, and the Reconstruction period. It also tells the story of the love that blossoms between Scarlett O'Hara and Rhett Butler.
[edit] Part One
Chapters I to VII
The novel opens at Tara, the O'Hara plantation, with Scarlett O'Hara flirting wildly with Brent and Stuart Tarleton, twin brothers who live on a nearby plantation. In the chatter, the pair tell Scarlett that Ashley Wilkes, the man Scarlett loves, and Melanie Hamilton, a plain and gentle lady from Atlanta, are to be married. Shocked, Scarlett sits in silence until the two leave without inviting them to dinner. Ignoring her mammy's cautions against the cold, Scarlett goes to meet her father to confirm the news.
After discovering the truth of the engagement, Scarlett plans to make Ashley jealous by surrounding herself with boys in love with her at the barbecue at Twelve Oaks, the Wilkes plantation, the next day. Included in the list of fawning gentlemen is shy Charles Hamilton. However, things do not go to plan, and when she finds Ashley later, he tells her that, though he loves Scarlett, he will still marry Melanie. The unreceived blockade runner Rhett Butler, hidden behind a couch, sees Scarlett throw a vase at Ashley in her anger. He also insults all of the gentlemen around him by saying that the South will lose the coming Civil War. Later that afternoon, Lincoln's calling up of troops is announced. Charles Hamilton, believing himself in love with Scarlett, proposes before war begins, and in her upset state at Ashley's rejection, she accepts.
Both engaged pairs get married. After going to war, Charles Hamilton dies of measles, and Scarlett gives birth to his son Wade Hampton, leaving her a widow with a child. Once a girl who loved balls and dances and boys, Scarlett was relegated to black dress and veils. In her distress at this, and not at Charles' death, her mother sends her to Atlanta, with her Aunt Pittypat and Melanie Hamilton, to raise her spirits.
[edit] Part Two
Chapters VIII to XVI
In Atlanta, Scarlett fits right into the hustle and bustle of the city. Melanie, whom Scarlett despises for having married Ashley, treats Scarlett like a sister. However, at a ball, she sulks; her widow status prevents her from dancing, which she loves to do. She is relegated to selling things for the Confederate cause, which she realizes she does not care about. When a donation basket goes around for jewelry to sell for the Confederacy, Scarlett gives her wedding ring, which prompts Melanie to see Scarlett's deed as marvelous and to do the same with her beloved wedding ring for her beloved Ashley. Rhett Butler sees both do so. He also sees her agitation at not dancing. Later, a bid for the first dance, with the girl of the gentleman's choice, is announced. After several rounds of bidding, Rhett Butler bids 150 dollars in gold for Mrs. Charles Hamilton, and against popular support, Scarlett accepts. She gleefully dances all night with Rhett.
The next day, Melanie receives her ring back from Rhett, who redeemed it for far more than its value, along with a note. However, he does not return Scarlett's ring to her. Scarlett believes that he did so only to be allowed into Aunt Pittypat's house. Another letter for Scarlett, from her mother Ellen O'Hara, arrives. Shocked at her behavior at the reel, her father, Gerald O'Hara, has been sent to Atlanta to upbraid her and take her back to Atlanta. However, threatening to tell her mother of her father's loss of $500 at gambling, Scarlett manipulates her father into allowing her to stay.
The war continues with Scarlett in Atlanta, and she occasionally spends time with Rhett when he calls on the house, though he infuriates her. Ashley visits for Christmas, and Scarlett jealously watches Melanie give him a beautiful coat of precious grey wool, while all she has for him is a scarf.
[edit] Part Three
Chapters XVII to XXX
Slowly, the tide of war turns against the South. Atlanta is bombarded constantly. The women nurse the injured in overfull hospitals. Finally, the Yankees begin their march on Atlanta, and the city evacuates. However, Melanie is pregnant, and because she promised Ashley that she would protect Melanie, Scarlett is forced to stay with her through her labor as the Yankees begin their siege. Eventually, Rhett Butler digs up a broken-down horse and carriage and carts the weakened Melanie, her baby, their slave Prissy, and Scarlett out of Atlanta. He abandons them on the road back to Tara to fight for the South just before its collapse, but not before giving her a kiss.
Arriving home at Tara, Scarlett finds the house in ruins, the food gone, the crops burned, most of the slaves run off, her mother dead, her father addled, and her two sisters sick. She grasps the reins of authority and tries to turn the place around. A Yankee arrives looking to steal, and she kills him and takes his money. Several Yankee soldiers sweep through again to take what they can. She forces the people to tend fields, which her sister Suellen complains about and her sister Carreen does obligingly. A soldier named Will arrives sick and Careen nurses him back to health, and he slowly takes on more responsibility. Suellen's Frank Kennedy, who is expected to marry her, asks Scarlett for her opinion on engagement. Finally, Ashley is seen walking on the path up to Tara.
[edit] Part Four
Chapters XXXI to XLVII
Post-bellum, carpetbagger taxes force Scarlett to return to Atlanta where she ends up married to Frank.
[edit] Part Five
Chapters XLVIII to LXIII
Her marriage to Rhett Butler and realization that she never could love Ashley. Unfortunately this realization comes too late, because Rhett abandons her and loves her no more.
[edit] Characters
- Scarlett O'Hara – main protagonist, a willful daughter of the South
- Rhett Butler – Scarlett's admirer and third husband, seen as an indecent and somewhat shocking gentleman
- Ashley Wilkes – the man Scarlett desires, married to Melanie
- Melanie Hamilton Wilkes – Ashley's wife, a gentle woman; Scarlett's sister-in-law and friend/unknowing rival for Ashley's affections
- Mammy – Scarlett's nurse, a slave woman who chaperones her
- Gerald O'Hara – Scarlett's father, an Irishman; owner of the plantation Tara
- Ellen O'Hara – Scarlett's mother
- Suellen & Carreen O'Hara – Scarlett's younger sisters
- Charles Hamilton – Melanie's brother, Scarlett's first husband, originally the beau, and all-but-betrothed, of Ashley's sister Honey. In the film version, Charles was the beau of Ashley's sister India.
- Frank Kennedy – originally the beau of Scarlett's sister Suellen, Scarlett's second husband
- Aunt Pittypat (Pitty) – Melanie and Charles' aunt, with whom Scarlett lives in Atlanta during the war
- Belle Watling – a courtesan; as such, she is wealthy but proper women will not have anything to do with her; a friend of Rhett's
- Will Benteen – a poor, one-legged Confederate soldier who appears at Tara with pneumonia during Part Three and eventually marries Suellen, although he loves Careen.
- Beau Wilkes – Melanie's and Ashley's son, delivered by Scarlett
- Wade Hamilton – Scarlett and Charles's son
- Ella Kennedy – Scarlett and Frank's daughter
- Eugenie Victoria "Bonnie" Butler – Scarlett and Rhett's daughter
[edit] Important places
- Tara – The O'Hara home and plantation for which Scarlett fights.
- Twelve Oaks – The Wilkes plantation; Ashley's birthday barbecue is held here in Part One
- Peachtree Street – a major street in Atlanta; Aunt Pittypat lives here, and most of the book takes place here.
[edit] Politics
Critics and historians regard the book as having a strong ideological commitment to the cause of the Confederacy and a romanticized view of the culture of the antebellum South.
The book includes a vivid description of the fall of Atlanta in 1864 and the devastation of war (some of it absent from the 1939 film), and shows a considerable amount of historical research. However, Mitchell's sources were almost exclusively Southern writers and historians. Mitchell's sweeping narrative of war and loss helped the book win the Pulitzer Prize on May 3, 1937.
An episode in the book deals with the early Ku Klux Klan: in the immediate aftermath of the Civil War, Scarlett is assaulted by recently-emancipated Blacks, whereupon her male friends make a retaliatory night-time raid on the Blacks' encampment. This raid is presented sympathetically as being necessary and justified, while the law-enforcement officers trying to catch the perpetrators are depicted as oppressive Northern occupiers.
Although the Klan is not mentioned in that scene, Scarlett later learns that Ashley Wilkes and others who were involved in the raid are members of the Klan. Many such local anti-Black vigilante groups did eventually join the Klan in the late 1860s, as Mitchell must have been aware from her historical research. However, it is mentioned that Scarlett finds the Klan abominable and believes the men should all just stay at home (though this is motivated mostly by a selfish desire to both be petted for her ordeal and to give the hated Yankees no more reason to tighten martial law, which is bad for her businesses). Rhett is also mentioned to be no great lover of the Klan, though he says at one point that if it is necessary he will join in an effort to integrate well into society. The novel never explicitly states whether or not this drastic step was necessary in his view. The local chapter later breaks up under the pressure from Rhett and Ashley.
[edit] Racism and historical inaccuracies
Scarlett expresses views about black people that were common for white slaveholders of that time. Some examples:
- "How stupid negroes were! They never thought of anything unless they were told." — Scarlett thinks to herself, after returning to Tara after the fall of Atlanta
- "How dared they laugh, the black apes!...She'd like to have them all whipped until the blood ran down...What devils the Yankees were to set them free!" — Scarlett again thinking to herself, seeing free blacks after the war.
Whether the author necessarily shared Scarlett's views is open to debate. Scarlett has many spiteful and selfish opinions in the novel, and is callous toward her children, her sisters, and of course Melanie, who has every virtue Scarlett lacks, except Scarlett's survival skills.
[edit] Inspirations
Several components of Gone with the Wind have parallels with Margaret Mitchell's own life, suggesting her experiences provided some inspiration for the story. Mitchell's understanding of life and hardship during the Civil War, for example, came from elderly relatives and neighbors passing war stories to her generation.<ref>Arehart-Treichel, J: "Novel That Brought Fame, Riches Had a Surprising Birth", Psychiatric News, 40(4):20</ref> While Margaret Mitchell used to say that her Gone with the Wind characters were not based on real people, modern researchers have found similarities to some of the people in Mitchell's own life as well as to individuals she knew or she heard of.[citation needed] Mitchell's maternal grandmother, Annie Fitzgerald Stephens, was born in 1845 the daughter of an Irish immigrant who owned a large plantation on Tara Road in Clayton County, south of Atlanta, and who married an American woman named Ellen, and had several children, all daughters. Rhett Butler is thought to be based on Mitchell's first husband, Red Upshaw, whom she married in 1922, but divorced after it was revealed that he was a bootlegger. (It should also be noted here that it is also thought he was modeled after Sir Godfrey Barnsley of Adairsville, Georgia. After a stay at the plantation called The Woodlands, and later Barnsley Gardens, Mitchell may have gotten the inspiration for the dashing miscreant.)
Another at least partial character source for Scarlett O'Hara might have been Martha Bulloch Roosevelt, the mother of US president Theodore Roosevelt. Roosevelt biographer, David McCullough, discovered that Mitchell conducted an interview with one of Martha's closest friends and bridesmaid, Evelyn King Williams, at age 87, while a reporter for The Atlanta Journal. In that interview, Martha's physical appearance, beauty, grace and intelligence were described in great detail. The similarities between Martha, who was also called Mittie, and Scarlett are striking.
[edit] Trivia
- Margaret Mitchell originally planned her main character to be named Pansy O'Hara. Melanie was originally named Permalia.
- Margaret Mitchell originally planned her book title " Tomorrow is Another Day ".
[edit] Sequels
Alexandra Ripley wrote the novel Scarlett, in 1991, as the authorized sequel to Mitchell's novel.
Author Pat Conroy was also approached to write a follow-up, but the project was ultimately abandoned. <ref>Jonathan D. Austin. "Pat Conroy: 'I was raised by Scarlett O'Hara'", CNN, February 4, 2000.</ref>
In 2000, the copyright holders attempted to suppress publication of Alice Randall's The Wind Done Gone, a book that retold the story from the point of view of the slaves. A federal appeals court denied the plaintiffs an injunction against publication in Suntrust v. Houghton Mifflin (2001), on the basis that the book was parody protected by the First Amendment. The parties subsequently settled out of court to allow the book to be published.
[edit] References
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[edit] External links
- Gone with the Wind at imdb.com
- The story behind Gone with the Wind
- Gone with the Wind Timeline from History in Film
- Gone with the Wind in Photographs A history and background of the film and the photography, along with numerous film stills and actors' portraits from the movie.
- Gone with the Wind Digital Audio Book CD / MP3 Audio Book (check copyright availability in your country)
- Study Guides
- (French) Fiche film Gone with the windar:ذهب مع الريح (رواية)
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