| Gone With the Wind | |
|---|---|
1936 original cover of Gone with the Wind |
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| Author(s) | Margaret Mitchell |
| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
| Genre(s) | Historical fiction, Romance, Drama, Novel, Survival |
| Publisher | Macmillan Publishers |
| Publication date | May 1936 |
| Media type | Print (hardcover and paperback) |
| Pages | 1037 (first edition) 1024 (Warner Books paperback) |
| ISBN | ISBN 978-0-446-36538-3 (Warner) |
| OCLC Number | 28491920 |
| Followed by | Scarlett |
Gone with the Wind, first published in May 1936, is a romance novel written by Margaret Mitchell, who won the Pulitzer Prize for the book in 1937. The story is set in Clayton County, Georgia and Atlanta during the American Civil War and Reconstruction. The novel depicts the experiences of Scarlett O'Hara, the spoiled daughter of a well-to-do plantation owner, who must use every means at her disposal to come out of the poverty that she finds herself in after Sherman's March to the Sea. The book is the source of the 1939 film of the same name.
Margaret Mitchell began writing Gone with the Wind in 1926 to pass the time while recovering from an auto-crash injury that refused to heal.[1] In April, 1935, Harold Latham of Macmillan, an editor who was looking for new fiction, read what she had written, and saw that it could be a best-seller. After Latham agreed to publish the book, Mitchell worked for another six months checking the historical references, and rewrote the opening chapter several times.[2] Mitchell and her husband, John Marsh, a copy editor by trade, edited the final version of the novel. Mitchell wrote the book's final moments first, and then wrote the events that lead up to it.[3] As to what became of her star-crossed lovers, Rhett and Scarlett, after the novel ended, Mitchell did not know, and said, "For all I know, Rhett may have found someone else who was less difficult."[1] Gone with the Wind is the only novel by Mitchell published during her lifetime.[4]
Contents |
The author tentatively titled the book, Tomorrow is Another Day, from the last line of the novel.[5] Other proposed titles included: Bugles Sang True, Not in Our Stars, and Tote the Weary Load.[2] The title Mitchell finally chose is from the first line of the third stanza of the poem, Non Sum Qualis Eram Bonae sub Regno Cynarae, by Ernest Dowson:
Scarlett O'Hara uses the title phrase when she wonders to herself if her home on a plantation called "Tara" is still standing or if it is "gone with the wind which had swept through Georgia."[7] In a general sense, the title is a metaphor for the departure of a way of life that existed in the South prior to the Civil War. When taken in the context of Dowson's poem about "Cynara," the phrase "gone with the wind" alludes to erotic loss. The word "gone" means "run," not vanished.[8] The poem expresses the regrets of someone who has lost his passionate feelings for his "old passion," Cynara.[9]
Margaret Mitchell arranged Gone with the Wind chronologically, basing it on the life and experiences of the main character, Scarlett O'Hara, as she grew from adolescence into adulthood. (During the time span of the novel, from 1861 to 1873, Scarlett ages from sixteen to twenty-eight years.) The literary technique applied in telling the story is Bildungsroman,[10] which is a type of novel concerned with the moral and psychological growth of the protagonist. The growth and education of Scarlett O'Hara is influenced by the events of her time.[10] Mitchell used a smooth linear narrative structure. The novel is known for its "readability."[11] The plot (narrative) is rich with vivid characters.
Slavery in Gone with the Wind is a backdrop to a story that is essentially about other things.[12] Southern plantation fiction (also known as Anti-Tom literature) from the early 19th century culminating in Gone with the Wind is written from the perspective and values of the slaveholder and tends to present slaves as docile and happy.[13]
'Way back in the dark days of the Early Sixties, regrettable tho it was—men fought, bled, and died for the freedom of the negro—her freedom!—and she stood by and did her duty to the last ditch—
It was and is her life to serve, and she has done it well.
While shot and shell thundered to release the shackles of slavery from her body and her soul—she loved, fought for, and protected—Us who held her in bondage, her "Marster" and her "Missus!"
The slaves depicted in Gone with the Wind are primarily loyal house servants, such as Mammy, Pork and Uncle Peter, and these slaves stay on with their masters even after the Emancipation Proclamation of 1863 sets them free. The field slaves, among them the foreman, Big Sam, leave the Tara plantation without any apparent hesitation.
James Stirling, a British writer who visited the American South in 1857, stated there is a distinction between slaves that are house servants and slaves that are field hands in his book, Letters from the Slave States:
A slave narrative by William Wells Brown published in 1847 spoke of the disparity in conditions between the house servant and the field hand:
Of the servants that stayed on at Tara, Scarlett thinks to herself, "There were qualities of loyalty and tirelessness and love in them that no strain could break, no money could buy."[17]
Although the novel is over one thousand pages, Mammy never considers what her life might be like away from Tara.[18] She recognizes her freedom to come and go as she pleases saying, "Ah is free, Miss Scarlett. You kain sen' me nowhar Ah doan wanter go," but Mammy remains duty-bound to "Miss Ellen's chile."[19]
Eighteen years prior to the publication of Gone with the Wind, an article titled, "The Old Black Mammy," written in the Confederate Veteran in 1918, discussed the romanticized view of the mammy character that had been passed on in literature of the South:
Micki McElya, in her book, Clinging to Mammy, suggests the myth of the faithful slave, in the figure of mammy, lingers because white Americans wish to live in a world where African Americans are not angry over the injustice of slavery.[22]
The best-selling anti-slavery novel from the 19th century is Uncle Tom's Cabin, by Harriet Beecher Stowe, published in 1852. Uncle Tom's Cabin is mentioned briefly in Gone with the Wind as being accepted by the Yankees as, "revelation second only to the Bible."[17] The enduring interest of both Uncle Tom's Cabin and Gone with the Wind has resulted in lingering stereotypes of 19th century African American slaves.[23] However, since its publication, Gone with the Wind has become a reference point for subsequent writers about the South, both black and white alike.[24]
The southern belle is an archetype for a young woman of the American old South upper class. The southern belle's attractiveness is not physical beauty, but rather lies in her charm. She is subject to the correct code of female behavior.[25] The novel's heroine, Scarlett O'Hara, charming though not beautiful, is a southern belle.
Fold away all your bright-tinted dresses,
And the wealth of your tendril-like tresses
No more delicate gloves, no more laces,
But come with your souls in your faces
For young Scarlett, the ideal southern belle is represented by her mother, Ellen O'Hara. In "A Study in Scarlett," published in The New Yorker, Claudia Roth Pierpont wrote:
However, Scarlett is not always willing to conform. Kathryn Lee Seidel, in her book, The Southern Belle in the American Novel, wrote:
Scarlett, the figure of a pampered southern belle, lives through an extreme reversal of fortune and wealth, and survives to rebuild Tara and her self-esteem.[29] Scarlett's bad belle traits, her deceitfulness, shrewdness, manipulativeness, and superficiality, in contrast to Melanie's good belle traits, trust, self-sacrifice, and loyalty, enable Scarlett to survive in the post-war South, and pursue her main interest, making money.[30]
Marriage was the goal of all southern belles, and all social and educational pursuits were directed towards it. Regardless of war and the loss of eligible men, young ladies were still subjected to the pressure to marry.[31] By law and Southern social convention, household heads were adult, white propertied males, and all white women and all African Americans were thought to require protection and guidance because they lacked the capacity for reason and self-control.[32]
During the Civil War, Southern women played a major role as volunteer nurses working in makeshift hospitals. Many were middle- and upper class women who had never worked for wages or seen the inside of a hospital. One such nurse was Ada W. Bacot, a young widow who had lost two children. Bacot came from a wealthy South Carolina plantation family that owned 87 slaves.[33]
In the fall of 1862, Confederate laws were changed to permit the employment of women in hospitals as members of the Confederate Medical Department.[34] Twenty-seven year-old nurse Kate Cumming from Mobile, Alabama, described the primitive hospital conditions in her journal:
The Civil War came to an end on April 26, 1865 when Confederate General Johnston surrendered his armies in the Carolinas Campaign to Union General Sherman. The battles mentioned or depicted in Gone with the Wind are:
Dearest one! do you remember,
When you told how you loved me,
Oh, how proud you stood before me
When you vow'd to me and country
Weeping, sad and lonely,
When this cruel war is over,
The word scallawag is an Americanism and is defined as a loafer, a vagabond, or a rogue.[40] Scallawag had a special meaning after the Civil War as an epithet for a white Southerner who willingly accepted the reforms by the Republicans.[41] Mitchell defines Scallawags as, "Southerners who had turned Republican very profitably."[42] Rhett Butler is accused of being a "damned Scallawag."[43] In addition to Scallawags, there are also other types of scoundrels in the novel: Yankees, Carpetbaggers, Republicans, prostitute and overseer. In the early years of the Civil War, Rhett is called a "scoundrel" for his "selfish gains" profiteering as a blockader.[44]
As a Scallawag, Rhett is despised. He is the "dark, mysterious, and slightly malevolent hero loose in the world."[45] Literary scholars have identified characteristics of Margaret Mitchell's first husband, Berrien "Red" Upshaw, in the character of Rhett,[45]while another sees the image of Italian actor, Rudolph Valentino.[46] Fictional hero, Rhett Butler, has a "swarthy face, flashing teeth and dark alert eyes."[47] He is a "scamp, blackguard, without scruple or honor."[47]
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 declared their secession from the United States (the "Union") and formed the Confederate States of America (the "Confederacy"), after Abraham Lincoln was elected president with no ballots from ten Southern states where slavery was legal. A dispute over states' rights has arisen[48] involving African slaves that were the source of manual labor on cotton plantations throughout the South. The story opens in April 1861 at the "Tara" plantation, which is owned by a wealthy Irish immigrant family, the O'Haras. The reader is told Scarlett O'Hara, the sixteen-year-old daughter of Gerald and Ellen O'Hara, "was not beautiful, but"[49] had an effect on men, especially when she took notice of them. It is the day before the men are called to war, Fort Sumter having been fired on two days earlier.
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. Miss Scarlett learns that one of her many beaux, Ashley Wilkes, is soon to be engaged to his cousin, Melanie Hamilton. She is stricken at heart. The following day at the Wilkes's barbecue at "Twelve Oaks," Scarlett informs Ashley she loves him and Ashley admits he cares for her.[48] However, he knows he would not be happily married to Scarlett because of their personality differences. Scarlett loses her temper at Ashley and he silently takes it.
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. Rhett applauds Scarlett for the unladylike spirit she displayed with Ashley. Infuriated and humiliated, Scarlett tells Rhett, "You aren't fit to wipe Ashley's boots!"[48]
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. Charles dies from measles two months after the war begins. Scarlett is pregnant with her first child. A widow at merely sixteen, she gives birth to a boy, Wade Hampton Hamilton, named after his father's general.[50] As a widow, she is bound by tradition, having to wear black and not allowed to speak to young men. Scarlett goes into a depression over all the restrictions placed upon her.
Melanie, who is living in Atlanta with Aunt Pittypat, invites Scarlett to live with them. In Atlanta, Scarlett's spirits revive and she is busy with hospital work and sewing circles for the Confederate army. Scarlett encounters Rhett Butler again at a dance for the Confederacy. Although Rhett believes the war is a lost cause, he is blockade running for the profit in it. The men must bid for a dance with a lady and Rhett bids "one hundred fifty dollars-in gold"[37] for a dance with Scarlett. Everyone at the dance is shocked that Rhett would bid for Scarlett, the widow still dressed in black. Melanie smooths things over by coming to Rhett's defense because he is generously supporting the Confederate cause that her husband, Ashley, is fighting for.
At Christmas (1863), Ashley has been granted a furlough from the army and returns to Atlanta to be with Melanie. The war is going badly for the Confederacy. Atlanta is under siege (Sept. 1864), "hemmed in on three sides,"[51] it descends into a desperate state while hundreds of wounded Confederate soldiers lie dying or dead in the city. Melanie is pregnant and in labor with no doctor available, only inexperienced Scarlett to assist. Prissy, a young Negro servant girl, cries out in despair and fear, "De Yankees is comin!"[52] In the chaos, Scarlett, left to fend for herself, cries for the comfort and safety of her mother and Tara. The tattered Confederate States Army sets flame to Atlanta as they abandon it to the Union army.
Melanie gives birth to a boy named Beauregard, and now they must hurry for refuge. Scarlett tells Prissy to go find Rhett, but she is afraid to "go runnin' roun' in de dahk." Scarlett replies to Prissy, "Haven't you any gumption?"[52] Prissy then finds Rhett, and Scarlett begs him to take herself, Wade, Melanie, Beau, and Prissy to Tara. Rhett laughs at the idea, but steals an emaciated horse and a small wagon, and they follow the retreating army out of Atlanta.
Part way to Tara, Rhett has a change of heart and he abandons Scarlett to enlist in the army. Scarlett makes her way to Tara without him where she is welcomed on the steps by her father, Gerald. It is clear things have drastically changed: Gerald has lost his mind, Scarlett's mother is dead, her sisters are sick with typhoid fever, the field slaves are gone, the Yankees have burned all the cotton and there is no food in the house.
The long tiring struggle for post-war survival begins that has Scarlett working in the fields. There are so many hungry people to feed and so little food. There is the ever present threat of the Yankees who steal and burn, and at one point, Scarlett kills a Yankee marauder with a single shot from Charles's pistol, leaving "a bloody pit where the nose had been."[53]
A long succession of Confederate soldiers returning home stop at Tara to find food and rest. Two men stay on, an invalid Cracker, Will Benteen, and Ashley Wilkes, whose spirit is broken. Life at Tara slowly begins to recover when a new threat appears, hiked up taxes on Tara.
Scarlett knows only one man who has enough money to help her pay the taxes, Rhett Butler. She goes to Atlanta to find him only to learn Rhett is in jail. As she is leaving the jailhouse, Scarlett runs into Frank Kennedy, who is betrothed to Scarlett's sister, Suellen, and running a store in Atlanta. Soon realizing Frank also has money, Scarlett hatches a plot and tells Frank that Suellen has changed her mind about marrying him. Thereafter Frank succumbs to Scarlett's feminine charms and he marries her two weeks later knowing he has done "something romantic and exciting for the first time in his life."[54] Always wanting Scarlett to be happy and radiant, Frank gives her the money to pay the taxes on Tara.
While Frank has a cold and is being pampered by Aunt Pittypat, Scarlett goes over the accounts at Frank's store and finds many of his friends owe him money. Scarlett is now terrified about the taxes and decides money, a lot of it, is needed. She takes control of his business while he is away and makes many Atlantians resent her. Then with a loan from Rhett she buys a sawmill and runs the lumber business herself, all very unladylike conduct. Much to Frank's relief, Scarlett learns she is pregnant, which curtails her activities for awhile. She twists Ashley's arm to come to Atlanta and manage the mill, all the while still in love with him. At Melanie's urging, Ashley takes the job at the mill. Melanie soon becomes the center of Atlanta society, and Scarlett gives birth to a girl named Ella Lorena. "Ella for her grandmother Ellen, and Lorena because it was the most fashionable name of the day for girls."[55]
The state of Georgia is under martial law and life there has taken on a new and more frightening tone. For protection, Scarlett keeps Frank's pistol tucked in the upholstery of the buggy. Her trips alone to and from the mill take her past a shanty town where criminal elements live. On one evening when she is coming home from the mill, Scarlett is accosted by two men who attempt to rob her, but she escapes with the help of Big Sam, the former negro foreman from Tara. Attempting to avenge the assault on his wife, Frank and the Ku Klux Klan raid the shanty town whereupon Frank is shot dead. Scarlett is a widow for a second time.
Rhett puts on a charade to keep the men who participated in the shanty town raid from being arrested. He walks into the Wilkeses' home with Hugh Elsing and Ashley, singing and pretending to be drunk. Yankee officers outside the home question Rhett and he tells them he and the other men had been at Belle Watling's brothel that evening, a story Belle later confirms to the officers. The men are indebted to Rhett for saving them, and his Scallawag reputation among them improves a notch, but the men's wives, with the exception of Melanie, are livid at owing their husbands' lives to Belle Watling.
Frank Kennedy lies cold in a coffin in the quiet stillness of the parlor in Aunt Pittypat's home. Scarlett is in a remorseful state. She is swigging brandy from Aunt Pitty's swoon bottle when Rhett comes to call. She tells Rhett tearfully, "I'm afraid I'll die and go to hell," to which Rhett replies, "Maybe there isn't a hell."[19] Before she can cry any further, Rhett asks Scarlett to marry him saying, "I always intended having you, one way or another."[19] Scarlett declares she doesn't love him and doesn't want to be married again. However, Rhett kisses her passionately, and in the heat of the moment she agrees to marry him. One year later, Scarlett and Rhett announce their engagement.
News of the impending marriage is the talk of the town. Mr. and Mrs. Butler honeymoon in New Orleans, spending lavishly. Upon their return to Atlanta, the couple take up residence in the bridal suite at the National Hotel while their new home on Peachtree Street is being constructed. Scarlett chooses a modern Swiss chalet style home like the one she saw in Harper's Weekly, and red wallpaper, thick red carpet and black walnut furniture for the interior. Rhett describes the house as an "architectural horror."[56] Shortly after the Butlers move into their new home, the sardonic jabs between them turn into full-blown quarrels. Scarlett wonders why Rhett married her. Then "with real hate in her eyes"[56] she tells Rhett she is going to have a baby, a baby she does not want.
Then here's to our Confederacy, strong we are and brave,
Like patriots of old we'll fight, our heritage to save;
And rather than submit to shame, to die we would prefer,
So cheer for the Bonnie Blue Flag that bears a single star.
Hurrah! Hurrah!
For Southern rights, hurrah!
Hurrah for the Bonnie Blue Flag that bears a single star.
Wade is seven years old in 1869 when his sister, Eugenie Victoria, named after two queens, arrives in the world. She has blue eyes like Gerald O'Hara and Melanie gives her the nickname, "Bonnie Blue," in reference to the Bonnie Blue Flag of the Confederacy.
When Scarlett is feeling well again, she makes a trip to the mill and talks to Ashley, who is alone in the office. In the conversation with him, she comes away believing Ashley still loves her and is jealous of her intimate relations with Rhett, which excites her. Scarlett returns home and tells Rhett she does not want more children. From then on, Scarlett and Rhett sleep in separate bedrooms, and when Bonnie is two years old, she sleeps in a little bed beside Rhett's bed (with the light on all night long because she is afraid of the dark). Rhett turns his attention towards Bonnie, dotes on her, spoils her, and worries about her reputation when she is older.
Melanie is giving a surprise birthday party for Ashley. Scarlett goes to the mill to keep Ashley there until party time, a rare opportunity for Scarlett to see Ashley alone. When she sees him, she feels "sixteen again, a little breathless and excited."[57] Ashley tells her how pretty she looks, and they reminisce about the days when they were young and talk about their lives now. Suddenly Scarlett's eyes fill with tears and Ashley holds her head against his chest. Then in the doorway of the office Ashley sees standing his sister, India Wilkes. Before the party has even begun rumors of an adulterous relationship between Ashley and Scarlett have started, and Rhett and Melanie have heard the gossip. Melanie refuses to accept any criticism of her sister in-law and India Wilkes is banished from the Wilkeses' home for it, causing a rift in the family.
Rhett, more drunk than Scarlett has ever seen him, returns home the evening of the party long after Scarlett. His eyes are bloodshot and his mood is dark and violent. He enjoins Scarlett to drink with him. Not wanting Rhett to know she is fearful of him, Scarlett throws back a drink and gets up from her chair to go back to her bedroom. But Rhett stops her and pins her shoulders to the wall. Scarlett tells Rhett he is jealous of Ashley and Rhett accuses Scarlett of "crying for the moon"[58] over Ashley. He tells Scarlett they could have been happy together saying, "for I loved you and I know you."[58] Rhett then takes Scarlett in his arms and carries her up the stairs to her bedroom where passion envelops them.
The following morning Rhett leaves town with Bonnie and Prissy and stays away for three months. Scarlett finds herself missing him, but she is still unsure if Rhett loves her, having told her so when he was drunk. She learns she is pregnant with her fourth child.
On the day Rhett arrives home, Scarlett waits for him at the top of the stairs. She wonders if Rhett will kiss her, but to Scarlett's irritation, he does not. He tells her she looks pale. Scarlett tells him she is pale because she is pregnant. Rhett sarcastically asks her if the father is Ashley. She calls Rhett a cad and tells him no woman would want a baby of his. To which Rhett responds, "cheer up, maybe you'll have a miscarriage."[59] At that comment, Scarlett lunges at Rhett, but he side steps and she tumbles backwards down the stairs. She is seriously ill for the first time in her life, having lost her child and broken her ribs. Rhett is remorseful, believing he has killed her. Sobbing and drunk, Rhett buries his head in Melanie's lap and confesses he had been a jealous cad.
Scarlett, who is thin and pale, goes to Tara taking Wade and Ella with her, to regain her strength and vitality from "the green cotton fields of home."[60] When she returns a healthy woman to Atlanta, she sells the mills to Ashley. She finds Rhett's attitude has noticeably changed. He is sober, kinder, polite and seemingly disinterested. Though she misses the old Rhett at times, Scarlett is content to leave well enough alone.
Now Bonnie is four years old in 1873. A spirited and willful child, she has her father wrapped around her finger and giving into her every demand. Even Scarlett is jealous of the attention she gets from him. Rhett rides his horse around town with Bonnie in front of him, but the household mammy, "Mammy," insists it is not fitting for a girl to ride a horse with her dress flying up. Rhett heeds Mammy's words and buys Bonnie a Shetland pony, whom she names "Mr. Butler," and teaches her to ride sidesaddle. Then Rhett pays a boy named Wash twenty-five cents to teach Mr. Butler to jump over wood bars. When Mr. Butler is able to get his fat legs over a one foot high bar, Rhett puts Bonnie on the pony, and soon Mr. Butler is leaping bars and Aunt Melly's rose bushes.
Wearing her blue velvet riding habit with a red feather in her black hat, Bonnie pleads with her father to raise the bar to one and a half feet. He gives in and raises the bar, warning her not to come crying to him if she falls. Bonnie yells to her Mother, "Watch me take this one!"[61] The pony gallops towards the wood bar, but trips over it splintering the wood. Mr. Butler tumbles to the ground then scrambles to his feet and trots off with an empty saddle. Little Miss "Bonnie Blue" Butler is dead.
In the dark days and months following Bonnie's death, Rhett is often drunk and disheveled, while Scarlett, though deeply grieved also, seems to hold up under the strain. With the untimely death of Melanie Wilkes a short time later, Rhett decides he only wants the calm dignity of the genial South he once knew in his youth and he leaves Atlanta to find it. Meanwhile, Scarlett dreams of love that has eluded her for so long, but she still has Tara, and "tomorrow is another day."[62]
I made up Tara, just as I made up every character in the book. But nobody will believe me.
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.
Scarlett and Rhett are survivors because they adapt to the changes brought about by the war and Reconstruction.
Scarlett fails to understand what love is until the novel's end.
Gone with the Wind expresses the true horrors of war.
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.[11] The book was a best-seller by the time reviews began to appear in national magazines.[3]
Herschel Brickell, a critic for the New York Evening Post, lauded Mitchell for the way she, "tosses out the window all the thousands of technical tricks our novelists have been playing with for the past twenty years."[84]
Ralph Thompson, a book reviewer for the New York Times, was critical of the length of the novel, and wrote in June 1936:
One criticism leveled at Gone with the Wind is for its portrayal of African Americans in the 19th century South.[86] For example, former field hands (during the early days of Reconstruction) are described behaving "as creatures of small intelligence might naturally be expected to do. Like monkeys or small children turned loose among treasured objects whose value is beyond their comprehension, they ran wild—either from perverse pleasure in destruction or simply because of their ignorance."[73]
It has also been argued that Mitchell downplayed the violent role of the Ku Klux Klan. Bestselling author Pat Conroy, in his preface to the novel, describes Mitchell's portrayal of the Ku Klux Klan as having "the same romanticized role it had in The Birth of a Nation and appears to be a benign combination of the Elks Club and a men's equestrian society."[87]
Regarding the historical inaccuracies of the novel, historian Richard N. Current points out:
In Gone with the Wind, Mitchell is blind to racial oppression and "the inseparability of race and gender" that defines the southern belle character of Scarlett.[89]
Although Mitchell refused to write a sequel to Gone with the Wind, Mitchell's estate authorized Alexandra Ripley to write a sequel, which was titled Scarlett.[90] The book was subsequently adapted into a television mini-series in 1994.[91] A second sequel was authorized by Mitchell's estate titled Rhett Butler's People, by Donald McCaig.[92] The novel parallels Gone with the Wind from Rhett Butler's perspective.
The copyright holders of Gone with the Wind attempted to suppress publication of The Wind Done Gone by Alice Randall,[93] which retold the story from the perspective of the slaves. A federal appeals court denied the plaintiffs an injunction (Suntrust v. Houghton Mifflin) against publication on the basis that the book was parody and therefore protected by the First Amendment. The parties subsequently settled out of court and the book went on to become a New York Times bestseller.
A book sequel unauthorized by the copyright holders, The Winds of Tara by Katherine Pinotti,[94] was blocked from publication in the United States. The novel was republished in Australia, avoiding U.S. copyright restrictions.
Numerous unauthorized sequels to Gone with the Wind have been published in Russia, mostly under the pseudonym Yuliya Hilpatrik, a cover for a consortium of writers. The New York Times states that most of these have a 'Slavic' flavor.[95]
Gone with the Wind has been adapted several times for stage and screen. The novel is the basis of the Academy Award-winning 1939 film starring Clark Gable and Vivien Leigh. On the U.S. stage the book has been adapted into two musical versions, Scarlett and Gone with the Wind. The Japanese Takarazuka Revue produced a musical adaptation of the novel. There has also been a French musical adaptation by Gérard Presgurvic, Autant en Emporte le Vent.[96]
On May 3, 1937, author Margaret Mitchell won the Pulitzer Prize for Gone with the Wind. It is the second favorite book by Americans, just behind the Bible, according to a 2008 Harris Poll.[97] The poll found the novel has its strongest following among women, those aged 44 or more, both Southerners and Midwesterners, both whites and Hispanics, and those who have not attended college. The novel is on the list of best-selling books, selling more than 30 million copies. TIME magazine critics, Lev Grossman and Richard Lacayo, included the novel on their list of the 100 best English-Language novels from 1923 to the present (2005).[98][99]
On June 30, 1986, the 50th anniversary of the day Gone with the Wind went on sale, the U.S. Post Office issued a 1-cent stamp showing an image of Margaret Mitchell. The stamp was designed by Ronald Adair and was part of the U.S. Postal Service's Great Americans series.[100]
On September 10, 1998, the U.S. Post Office issued a 32-cents stamp as part of its Celebrate the Century series recalling various important events in the 20th century. The stamp, designed by Howard Paine, displays the book with its original dust jacket, a white Magnolia blossom, and a hilt placed against a background of green velvet.[100]
To commemorate the 75th anniversary (May 2011) of the publication of Gone with the Wind in 1936, Scribner published a paperback edition featuring the book's original jacket art.[101]
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