Gone with the Wind

Gone With the Wind  
Gone with the Wind cover.jpg
1936 original cover of Gone with the Wind
Author Margaret Mitchell
Country United States
Language English
Genre(s) Historical fiction, Romance, Drama, Novel
Publisher Macmillan Publishers
Publication date May 1936
Media type Print (hardcover and paperback)
Pages 1037 (first edition)
1024 (Warner Books paperback)
ISBN ISBN 0-446-36538-6 (Warner)
OCLC Number 28491920
Followed by Scarlett

Gone with the Wind, first published in May 1936, is a Drama, romantic novel written by Margaret Mitchell that won the coveted Pulitzer Prize in 1937. The story is set in Clayton County, Georgia and Atlanta, Georgia during the American Civil War and Reconstruction[1] and depicts the experiences of Scarlett O'Hara, the spoiled daughter of a well-to-do plantation owner. The novel is the source of the extremely popular 1939 film of the same name.

Contents

Title

The title is taken from the first line of the third stanza of the poem Non Sum Qualis eram Bonae Sub Regno Cynarae[2] by Ernest Dowson: "I have forgot much, Cynara! gone with the wind". The novel's protagonist, Scarlett O'Hara, also uses the title phrase in a line in the book: when her home area is overtaken by the Yankees, she wonders to herself if her home, a plantation called Tara, is still standing, or if it was "also gone with the wind which had swept through Georgia". More generally, the title has been interpreted as referring to the entire way of life of the antebellum South as having "Gone with the Wind". The prologue of the movie refers to the old way of life in the South as "gone with the wind…."

The title for the novel was a problem for Mitchell. She initially titled the book "Pansy", the original name for the character of Scarlett O'Hara. Although never seriously considered, the title "Pansy" was dropped once MacMillan persuaded Mitchell to rename the main character. Other proposed titles included "Tote the Weary Load" and "Tomorrow is Another Day", the latter taken from the last line in the book; however, the publisher noted that there were several books close to the same title at the time, so Mitchell was asked to find another title. She chose "Gone with the Wind."

Plot

Summary

Gone with the Wind takes place in the southern United States of America in the state of Georgia during the American Civil War (1861-1865) and the Reconstruction era (1865-1877) that followed the war. The novel unfolds against the backdrop of rebellion wherein seven southern states, Georgia among them, have seceded from the United States (the "Union") to form the Confederate States of America (the "Confederacy"). A territorial dispute over states' rights has arisen involving Negro slaves that were the source of manual labor on cotton and tobacco plantations throughout the South. The story opens at the "Tara" plantation, which is owned by a wealthy Irish immigrant family, the O'Hara's. The reader is told that Scarlett O'Hara, the fifteen year-old daughter of Gerald and Ellen O'Hara, and the belle of the county, "was not beautiful, but...," and her effect on men, especially when she took notice of them, is described. Scarlett is informed Ashley Wilkes, a Harvard graduate who has returned from a tour of Europe and who has been courting her steadily for two years, is getting engaged to his cousin, Melanie Hamilton. She is stricken at heart to think she is in fact in love with him and not with the dozens of other young men courting her. It is the day before the men are called to war, Fort Sumter having been fired on already. There are brief but vivid descriptions of the South as it began and grew, with backgrounds of the main characters, the stylish and highbrow French, the gentlemanly English, the forced to flee and looked down upon Irish. The following day at the Wilkes' barbecue at "Twelve Oaks," the nearest plantation to Tara, when Ashley and Melanie's engagement is to be officially announced, Scarlett gets a private word with Ashley. She informs Ashley she loves him in a forthright manner, forgetting all her demure ways, and Ashley is forced to admit he loves her too. However, he knows Scarlett, and he knows he wouldn't be happy married to her because of their personality differences. She is full of life while he prefers quiet intellectual pursuits. Scarlett loses her temper, calls Ashley a few well deserved names, and he silently takes it, helpless against the accusations, he leaves the room. Then Scarlett meets Rhett Butler, a man who has a reputation as a rogue. Rhett had been alone in the library where the dialogue between Scarlett and Ashley took place, unseen by the couple when they entered. Rhett applauds Scarlett for her unladylike spirit she displayed with Ashley. Infuriated and humiliated, Scarlett tells Rhett he is not fit to wipe Ashley's boots, and leaves the room. Immediately after, she finds out that war has been declared and the men are going to enlist. Seeking revenge for being jilted by Ashley, Scarlett accepts a proposal of marriage from Melanie's brother, Charles Hamilton. They marry two weeks later. However, Charles dies before the war begins two months later, and Scarlett is pregnant. Now a widow at merely sixteen, Scarlett gives birth to a boy who is named Wade Hampton Hamilton after his father's general. As a widower, she is bound by southern rules and tradition regarding widowhood, having to wear black and not allowed to speak to any young men. All for fear of causing a scandal. She goes into a depression and her mother is told by the doctor that she could die of grief. Alarmed, her mother sends her to visit relatives in Savannah, the Robillards and O'Haras, but they are all old and it is just as depressing. Meanwhile, the Hamilton relatives have been pressing Scarlett to come live with them. Melanie lives in Atlanta with old maid Aunt Pittypat (Sarah Jane Hamilton) and they love Scarlett dearly. Moreover, little Wade Hamilton belongs with them. She arrives in Atlanta, which revives her spirits, and she is soon busy with hospital work and sewing circles for the Confederate army. While in Atlanta and dressed in black mourning attire, she meets Rhett again at a dance held to raise money for the Confederacy. Rhett states plainly to Scarlett the war is a lost cause and he is not fighting in it. However, he is blockading, but only for the profit. The men must bid for a dance with a lady and Rhett bids well over seven times as much as by any other man for any other girl for a dance with Scarlett. Everyone is shocked that Rhett would bid for Scarlett, the widow still in mourning. Melanie quickly comes to Rhett's defense because he is genorously supporting the Confederate cause that her husband, Ashley, is fighting for. Rhett eventually asks Scarlett to be his mistress whereupon Scarlett loses her temper and tells Rhett to leave. Ashley has been granted a leave at Christmas and comes to Atlanta to be with his wife, Melanie. As he departs again for war, he asks Scarlett to take care of now pregnant Melanie while he is away, and she agrees, but only because she loves Ashley. Hundreds of Confederate soldiers lay dying in Atlanta. The expected invasion of the city occurs. Melanie has her baby boy, Beau, as the city of Atlanta burns to the ground, with only inexperienced Scarlett to assist.

Scarlett summons Rhett, and she begs him to take them to Tara, even though it passes by recent battle grounds. Rhett steals a horse and takes Scarlett, Wade, Melanie, Beau, and Prissy (a young incompetent servant) towards Tara. Part way, however, he takes Scarlett by surprise and leaves her to go the rest of the way by herself. He goes on to enlist even though the South has practically lost and he has no sympathy with 'the cause'.

Scarlett makes it to Tara through the retreating armies, advancing yankees, stray stragglers and other dangers of the way, seeing the plantations of the neighbors and friends along the way in ruins. She is afraid Tara might be gone too, but it is standing with Gerald O'Hara welcoming her on the steps. She is at first relieved but soon it is clear things are drastically changed. Her mother is dead and her father, in shock from all that has happened, has lost his mind.

Tara is standing only because the Yankees had used it as their headquarters. The burned all the cotton and took all the food, livestock, money, and anything valuable. All the slaves ran away except four house slaves, an intimate part of the family.

Scarlett is now finding herself being looked up to by everyone as they did to her mother and expecting her to take the place of her mother in running Tara, feeding people and telling them what to do. She finds the home is now more of a heavy load rather than a refuge she was running to, and she is only nineteen.

She has two sisters who are ill and unable to take in reality, frail with long illness with hardly any medicine or food, four slaves, Melanie, Beau, and Wade to care for. They have nothing to live on, save pointless things like a small amount of yams and some rotten apples and such. She decides to give up and let various people take up the responsibility - O'Haras can take in Gerald and Pork, Robillards can take in the two sisters, Hamilton relatives must take care of Melanie and beau - but then courage and determination flows back along with the pride of O'Haras who do not take charity and take care of their own, and she is resolute in taking up the burden of Tara and everyone now in it. Tara is home, Scarlett won't let Tara go.

A long succession of various threats - an occupational yankee army, a marauder looking for stealing and possibly worse - has her scrambling to protect Tara and her people with every possible skill she can muster, her sheer pride and courage being the foremost. She kills the marauder with a shot from Charles's pistol only to find Melanie dragging his sword down the staircase, and her feelings for Melanie now change more perceptibly to admiration, going up notches when Melanie helps her put out the fire in the kitchen set by the army.

Before long, Tara is slowly recovering. Scarlett has managed to acquire some food and seeds using the marauder's horse to visit neighbours. Scarlett manages to keep Tara going with everyone doing work and herself along with Dilcey more than anyone else working in the fields. After the war is over there is a long succession of soldiers returning home who stay overnight or more and are fed and rested before they go on, a hardship on a place with so many hungry people and so little food to share. Two men stay on, an invalid cracker Will Benteen recovering slowly, and Ashley who has returned but broken within. Twelve Oaks is burned to grounds by yankees, and for now Tara is their refuge.

Jonas Wilkerson, a yankee overseer who was fired by Ellen for having fathered Emmy Slattery's baby without marrying her, has set his mind on acquiring Tara and has hiked up taxes to a huge three hundred dollars so he can take it and feel like he is one of the gentry. Scarlett knows only one man who is known to have any money, Rhett Butler, whom she sets to Atlanta to somehow get the money from, whether it means marrying him or accepting his proposition to save Tara and her people.

Rhett is in jail however, and even after he realises she is not visiting him out of love and distress but only to save her people and home at any cost to herself, he is in silent rage at being unable to help since any such help to her and the yankees will take all the money, with no help for her whatsoever. He advises her to remember to be more feminine with the next man she has in mind.

When Scarlett is returning from jail she meets Frank Kennedy who is now engaged to her sister Suellen although at Twleve Oaks barbecue he had forgotten about Suellen the moment Scarlett smiled at him and spent the whole day trying to entice Scarlett. Suellen won't help the family at Tara a cent if she marries Frank with his money, Scarlett reflects, and she tells Frank Kennedy Suellen has changed her mind and is marrying a much younger man in the neighbourhood. Frank marries Scarlett and she is able to send money to Tara and save the roof over the family's head.

Scarlett is now terrified about the taxes and decides money, a lot of it, is needed to keep the wolf at bay, having nightmares. Frank is a gentle middle aged man who is unable to understand, and when he is ill with cold being pampered by Aunt Pittypat who is closer to him in age, Scarlett goes over the accounts and realises she can do business far better than Frank, perhaps as good as any man or better. She takes control of his business, and increases its profitability with business practices that are normal to yankees (such as insisting people pay bills) that make many Atlantians resent her.

She borrows money from Rhett who hurries to her the moment he is free to see if she is all right, buys the sawmill Frank was planning to buy, and runs the lumber business herself, a very unladylike conduct although other women are doing some ladylike businesses such as selling baked goods, and she is tough competition for the men. She gives birth to a daughter and gets Ashley and Melanie to Atlanta so he can manage the mill, and Melanie soon is the centre of society of Atlanta. Frank is killed when he and other Ku Klux Klan members raid a shanty town where Scarlet was assaulted while driving alone.

Remorseful after Frank's death, Scarlett has Rhett console her with the thought that she only did what she had to and Frank's death was not her fault nor was his marrying her - "men are free agents", he tells her - and Rhett proposes or rather insists she marry him, since he "cannot get her any other way", although he is aware of her love for Ashley but hopes that one day she will come to love him instead. Loss of one child and death of another with Scarlett almost dying in the first leaves their relationship in a fragile state, with Rhett withdrawn after the death of his beloved daughter whom he thought he could love instead of Scarlett with all the same traits of a headstrong Irish temper.

Scarlett eventually comes to realize that she does love Rhett, but only once the couple has been through so much that Rhett no longer wishes to hope for a life of love. He prefers to return to the gentle south he had left behind and scorned for all his adult life. Scarlett, however, does not have the same choice - he had taken her out of society and did not carry her with him when he went back, and society is far more unforgiving of a woman.

Characters

Butler family

Wilkes family

O'Hara family

Other characters

Setting

The novel opens in April 1861 and ends in the early autumn of 1873.

Politics

The book includes a vivid description of the fall of Atlanta in 1864 and the devastation of war (some of that aspect was missing from the 1939 film). The novel showed considerable historical research. According to her biography, Mitchell herself was ten years old before she learned that the South had lost the war. Mitchell's sweeping narrative of war and loss helped the book win the Pulitzer Prize on May 3, 1937.

An episode in the book dealt with the early Ku Klux Klan. In the immediate aftermath of the War, Scarlett is assaulted by a couple of men out to rob and tear her dress to find money, while she is driving through forest bordering shantytown, whereupon her former black slave Big Sam saves her life. In response, Scarlett's male friends attempt to make a retaliatory nighttime raid on the encampment. Northern soldiers try to stop the attacks, and Rhett helps Ashley, who is shot, to get help through his prostitute friend Belle. Scarlett's husband Frank is killed. This raid is presented sympathetically as being necessary and justified, while the law-enforcement officers trying to catch the perpetrators are depicted as unsympathetic, out to control, unable to understand south, Northern occupiers.

Although the Klan is not mentioned in that scene (though Rhett tells Archie to burn the "robes"), the book notes that Scarlett finds the Klan abominable. She believed the men should all just stay at home (she wanted both to be cared 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. At one point, he said that if it were necessary, he would join in an effort to join "society". The novel never explicitly states whether this drastic step was necessary in his view. The local chapter later breaks up under the pressure from Rhett and Ashley.

Scarlett expresses views that were common of the era. Some examples:

Inspirations

As several elements of Gone with the Wind have parallels with Margaret Mitchell's own life, her experiences may have provided some inspiration for the story in context. Mitchell's understanding of life and hardship during the American Civil War, for example, came from elderly relatives and neighbors passing war stories to her generation.[3]

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.[4] Mitchell's maternal grandmother, Annie Fitzgerald Stephens, was born in 1845; she was 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.

Many researchers believe that the physical brutality and low regard for women exhibited by Rhett Butler was based on Mitchell's first husband, Red Upshaw. She divorced him after she learned he was a bootlegger amid rumors of abuse and infidelity. Some believe he was patterned on the life of George Trenholm.[5][6][7]

After a stay at the plantation called The Woodlands, and later Barnsley Gardens, Mitchell may have gotten the inspiration for the dashing scoundrel from Sir Godfrey Barnsley of Adairsville, Georgia.

Belle Watling was based on Lexington, Kentucky, madam Belle Brezing.

Martha Bulloch Roosevelt, the mother of US president Theodore Roosevelt may have been an inspiration for Scarlett O'Hara. Roosevelt biographer David McCullough discovered that Mitchell, as a reporter for The Atlanta Journal, conducted an interview with one of Martha's closest friends and bridesmaid, Evelyn King Baker, then 87. In that interview, she described Martha's physical appearance, beauty, grace, and intelligence in detail. The similarities between Martha and the Scarlett character are striking.

Reception

The sales of Margaret Mitchell's novel in the summer of 1936, at the virtually unprecedented price of three dollars, reached about one million by the end of December.[8] Favorable critics found in the novel and its success an implicit rejection of what one reviewer dismissed as "all the thousands of technical tricks our novelists have been playing with for the past twenty years," [9] while from the ramparts of the critical establishment almost universally male reviewers lamented the book's literary mediocrity and labeled it mere "entertainment."

Symbolism

Over the past years, the novel Gone with the Wind has also been analyzed for its symbolism and treatment of For example, Scarlett has been characterized as a heroic figure struggling and attempting to twist life to suit her own personal wishes in society.[10] The land is considered a source of strength, as in the plantation Tara, whose name is almost certainly drawn from the Hill of Tara in Ireland, a mysterious and poorly-understood archeological site that has traditionally been connected to the temporal and/or spiritual authority of the ancient Irish kings. It also represents the permanence of the land in a rapid changing world.[11] Scarlett’s beautiful, perky hats take part of the symbolism as well. They show her feminine side and how she wants nothing more than to be the most attractive woman and the center of attention.[11]

Sequels

Although Mitchell refused to write a sequel to Gone With The Wind, Mitchell's estate authorised Alexandra Ripley to write the novel Scarlett in 1991.

Author Pat Conroy was approached to write a follow-up, but the project was ultimately abandoned.[12]

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. After its release, the book became a New York Times bestseller.

In 2002, the copyright holders blocked distribution of an unauthorised sequel published in the U.S, The Winds of Tara by Katherine Pinotti, alleging copyright infringement. The story follows Scarlett as she returns to Tara where a family issue threatens Tara and the family's reputation. In it Scarlett shows just how far she will go to protect her family and her home. The book was immediately removed from bookstores by publisher Xlibris. The book sold in excess of 2,000 copies within 2 weeks before being removed. More recently, in 2008, Australian publisher Fontaine Press re-published "The Winds of Tara" exclusively for their domestic market, avoiding U.S. copyright restrictions.[13]

A second sequel was released in November 2007. The story covers the same time period as Gone with the Wind and is told from Rhett Butler’s perspective – although it begins years before and ends after. Written by Donald McCaig, this novel is titled Rhett Butler's People (2007).[14]

Adaptations

Gone With The Wind has been adapted several times for stage and screen, most famously in the 1939 film starring Clark Gable and Vivien Leigh.

On stage it has been adapted as a musical Scarlett (premiering in 1972). The musical opened in the West End followed by a pre-Broadway tryout in 1973 (with Lesley Ann Warren as Scarlett). The book was again adapted as a musical called Gone With The Wind which premiered at the New London Theatre in 2008 in a production directed by Trevor Nunn.[15]

The Japanese Takarazuka Revue has also adapted the novel into a musical with the same name. The first performance was in 1977, performed by the Moon Troupe. It has been performed several times since by the group, the most recent being in 2004 (performed by the Cosmos Troupe).

There has also been a French musical Autant en Emporte le Vent, based on the book.

Awards

The novel won the 1937 Pulitzer Prize and was adapted into an Academy Award-winning 1939 film of the same name. The book was also adapted during the 1970s into a stage musical Scarlett; there is also a 2008 new musical stage adaptation in London's West End titled Gone With The Wind. It is the only novel by Mitchell published during her lifetime. It took her seven years to write the book and a further eight months to check the thousands of historical and social references. The novel is one of the most popular books of all time, selling more than 30 million copies. Over the years, the novel has also been analyzed for its symbolism and treatment of archetypes.[10][11]

Time magazine included the novel in its TIME 100 Best English-language Novels from 1923 to 2005.[16]

See also

References

  1. ↑ See linked terms for more explanation and source references.
  2. ↑ RPO - Ernest Dowson: Non Sum Qualis Eram Bonae sub Regno Cynarae
  3. ↑ Arehart-Treichel, J: "Novel That Brought Fame, Riches Had a Surprising Birth", Psychiatric News, 40(4):20
  4. ↑ Gone With The Wind - Finding the Real Margaret Mitchell
  5. ↑ Treasures of The Confederate Coast: the "Real Rhett Butler" & Other Revelations, by Dr. E. Lee Spence, (Narwhal Press, Charleston/Miami, 1995), ISBN 1886391017
  6. ↑ Rosen, Robert N. Confederate Charleston: An illustrated history of the city and the people during the Civil War. University of South Carolina Press, 1994. p. 151.
  7. ↑ Strauch, Ileana Ashley Hall, SC. Arcadia Publishing, 2003. p. 10.
  8. ↑ Claudia Roth Pierpont, "A Study in Scarlett," New Yorker (August 31, 1992), p. 87.
  9. ↑ Pierpont, "A Study in Scarlett," p. 88.
  10. ↑ 10.0 10.1 O. Levitski and O. Dumer, "Bestsellers: Color Symbolism and Mythology in Margaret Mitchell’s Novel Gone with the Wind" (of "Bonnie Blue"), Americana: The Institute for the Study of American Popular Culture, September 2006, webpage: APC-Mitchell.
  11. ↑ 11.0 11.1 11.2 "SparkNotes: Gone with the Wind: Themes, Motifs & Symbols" (book notes), Spark Notes, 2006, webpage: SparkN-GWTW.
  12. ↑ Jonathan D. Austin (February 4, 2000). "Pat Conroy: 'I was raised by Scarlett O'Hara'". CNN. http://archives.cnn.com/2000/books/news/02/04/pat.conroy/. 
  13. ↑ Kate Deller-Evans (July 18, 2008). "Book Review - The Winds of Tara, Katherine Pinotti". Fairfax. http://www.independentweekly.com.au/news/local/news/entertainment/book-review-the-winds-of-tara-katherine-pinotti/967723.aspx. 
  14. ↑ Rich, Motoko (16 May 2007). "Rhett, Scarlett and Friends Prepare for Yet Another Encore". New York Times. http://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/16/books/16book.html?8dpc. Retrieved 2007-11-07. 
  15. ↑ "Gone with the Wind show to close". BBC News. 2008-06-01. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/7430135.stm. Retrieved 2008-06-01. 
  16. ↑ Time.com/

External links

Awards and achievements
Preceded by
Honey in the Horn
by Harold L. Davis		 Pulitzer Prize for the Novel
1937		 Succeeded by
The Late George Apley
by John Phillips Marquand
Gone with the Wind by Margaret Mitchell
Characters
Scarlett O'Hara  · Rhett Butler  · Ashley Wilkes  · Melanie Hamilton  · India Wilkes  · Others
Adaptations
Film  · Harold Rome Musical  · Margaret Martin Musical
Related Works
Scarlett  · Rhett Butler's People  · The Wind Done Gone  · The Winds of Tara
Related Topics

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