Discussion: Gone with the Wind by Margaret Mitchell (spoilers)
 

Hello all... let's talk about the Feburary 2010 ebook selection here.

(Started a bit early since it worked out so well last month.)

BOb

I might be a tad late to the discussion - there's a lot of reading in this month's book!

I concur. In the bastardized words of Robert Frost - "I have promises to keep and reams of pages before I sleep.

Haven't had as much time to read as usual combined with a really big book and one which I am savouring every page of.

Mel

I didn't read this book this month, but I've read it twice before. One of my all-time favorites!

It's a good thing I looked for this thread. I thought the discussion wasn't starting until Feb. 24.

I'm ready. Let the games begin.

Yikes, I haven't downloaded it yet! I better get cracking!

I'm on page 20, not sure I'm going to make it...

I'm only on page 66, but I'll definitely be finishing it. If we end up discussing it beyond a notional deadline then, frankly my dear, I don't give a damn!

puff...puff...I'm in the home stretch; just another 150 pages to go...puff...puff...wheeze

I'm finding it heavy going. My current plan is to dig out the audiobook version and read-while-listening to see if that makes it easier.

The problem is that all of the participants are so easy to dislike. The twins are a complete waste of space and should be fed to their dogs. The only interesting character so far is Jeems.

I've been spending more time tweaking my epub to get the chapters and such more to my liking than I have reading the thing.

I see an unabridged audio book is 43 hours long!

I find that reading the ebook version doesn't give much impression how big a book is; I've been using a bookmark in a pbook of GWtW to keep track of how I'm doing.

Aussies must talk faster than the rest of us. The Recorded Books/Audible version is 49 hours long. I, um, acquired it a few years ago. 3 CDs of MP3 ripped from 36*90 min cassettes. A serious business.

On a related note, the Audible page points out that their version is available for $7.49 with a new Audible subscription (I have no idea what that entails, I don't like the idea of having to install Audible software to do the downloading).

I read this a couple of times, but it's been years. About all I remember is wanting to yank Scarlett baldheaded for being such a brat.

:rofl: :rofl: :rofl:

As the personal slave of the Tarleton twins Jeems was a very minor character in the book, but I find his comment, “Huccome po’ w’ite trash buy any niggers? Dey ain’ never owned mo’n fo’ at de mostes’,” to be more telling about Margaret Mitchell than about Jeems. As Mitchell says elsewhere in the book of the poor white farmer Tom Slattery,

The house negroes of the County considered themselves superior to white trash, and their unconcealed scorn stung him, while their more secure position in life stirred his envy. By contrast with his own miserable existence, they were well-fed, well-clothed and looked after in sickness and old age. They were proud of the good names of their owners and, for the most part, proud to belong to people who were quality, while he was despised by all.

It is obvious that Mitchell bought in hook, line, and sinker to the Southern myth of the happy slave.

I’m not surprised. I remember reading in my Virginia History textbook in the early 1960s about how good slaves had it, and how most of the slave-owners were kind and caring. This was before schools were integrated in Virginia (schools in my hometown of Portsmouth, Virginia were among the last in the country to integrate), and these were the textbooks used in the white schools. (In keeping with the Virginia tradition of making sure that citizens of African descent were well “looked after”, as soon as the texts were worn out and replaced in the white schools with new textbooks, the old ones were given to the “colored” schools.)

I couldn’t find an actual copy online of the textbook we used, but I did find something else of interest. In his essay "Doing the Right / Smart Thing" (pub. April 16, 2009), F.T. Rea writes:

In 1961, my seventh grade history book at Albert H. Hill was the official history of Virginia for use in public schools. It had been decreed as such by no less than the General Assembly. Here's part of what it had to say about slavery:

"Life among the Negroes of Virginia in slavery times was generally happy. The Negroes went about in a cheerful manner making a living for themselves and for those whom they worked. They were not so unhappy as some Northerners thought they were, nor were they so happy as some Southerners claimed. The Negroes had their problems and their troubles. But they were not worried by the furious arguments going on between Northerners and Southerners over what should be done with them. In fact, they paid little attention to those arguments."

That's pretty much as I remember reading it. This was how history was taught in the Virginia of my childhood.

To her credit, the characters created by Margaret Mitchell, black and white, are for the most part fully drawn and three-dimensional. I don’t see intentional malice in her characterizations, and there are instances in the book where the slaves are shown to have better sense than their owners, but still I see a lot of bias. I’m not trying to judge her, but rather understand her and the times in which she wrote. As a veteran, I know how the ravages of war can color our political outlook, and the ravages and horrors of this war were particularly devastating to Southerners for generations after the fact.

What I am saying is that if the slavery system was as wonderful and charming as Mrs. Mitchell and old Virginia textbooks paint it, it’s a wonder why no whites outside of minstrel shows tried passing for black.

She does tackle what she sees as Northern misconceptions head-on; e.g.
"Accepting Uncle Tom's Cabin as revelation second only to the Bible, the Yankee women all wanted to know about the bloodhounds which every Southerner kept to track down runaway slaves. And they never believed her when she told them she had only seen one bloodhound in all her life and it was a small mild dog and not a huge ferocious mastiff. They wanted to know about the dreadful branding irons which planters used to mark the faces of their slaves and the cat-o'-nine-tails with which they beat them to death, and they evidenced what Scarlett felt was a very nasty and ill-bred interest in slave concubinage. Especially did she resent this in view of the enormous increase in mulatto babies in Atlanta since the Yankee soldiers had settled in the town.
Any other Atlanta woman would have expired in rage at having to listen to such bigoted ignorance but Scarlett managed to control herself."

In the UK, we were educated about the appalling treatment African slaves were forced to endure during capture, transportation and when they were put to work.
Mitchell presents aspects of that history that we weren't told about - how accurate it is though, I don't know. Certainly the field hands are not depicted as being well-treated.

Slavery is such an emotion-laden topic that I don't know if we'll ever get an unbiased picture of what life was like under the American system. Furthermore, if we are ever presented with such a picture, how would we recognize it?

The horrors spoken of in Uncle Tom's cabin were all real. There really were people who used whips, chains, and dogs on slaves. The only question is how widespread these horrors were. Even in Harriet Beecher Stowe's book many slaveholders were depicted as kind and caring.

Mitchell had a lot of the preconceptions of many of the most well-intentioned whites in the south. To her credit, with the money from Gone With The Wind, she set up a foundation to fund scholarships to help blacks become doctors which is still in existence to this day.

I didn't know that, and I'm glad you pointed it out.

As I said, I'm not trying to judge her, but I am trying to understand her.

Well, I'm from Atlanta so I know these things. :)

Just before I moved away they opened her old home as a museum.
http://www.margaretmitchellhouse.com/

It's been at least 40 years since I read GWTW, but I still remember quite a lot of it. The novel is a product of its time and place, and, yes, 74 years down the road, some of it is pretty cringe-worthy. But the basic plot still serves as a prototype for a certain type of romance novel, where the haughty, spoiled, bitchy heroine has a love/hate relationship with the roguish, swashbuckling hero through trying historical times. I think this sub-genre kind of peaked in the 1970s with authors like Rosemary Rodgers and Kathleen Woodwiss, but I don't read romance anymore and I could be dead wrong.

Do you suppose that Margaret Mitchell drew her inspiration from Shakespeare's Taming of the Shrew?

I didn't think Scarlett shrewish; she put me more in mind of Becky Sharp from 'Vanity Fair' (maybe also a dash of Moll Flanders).

Well she made you think, and evoked a response. I thought that she came over very well, and though I disliked her intensly too, the book worked from that point of view. All in all an excellent read.

I agree - one of the best books I have ever read!!

:thanks: Lilac_jive for nominating it; I'd never have read it if it hadn't been for the MRBC!

Oh, definitely! Yeah, there's no way I'd read a book that large (before ebooks) a couple of times if I hadn't enjoyed it. The book is now and was then a good read. I've always thought Mitchell did a good job with her characters since I remember that Scarlett annoyed me that intensely 15 years after I read the book!

I haven't read much romantic fiction; but a common theme seems to be the catharsis of the heroine by cruelty and rape.

It's an aspect of 'Wuthering Heights' that seems to appeal to a lot of its fans - the brutality of Heathcliffe.

We have another example in 'Gone with the Wind' when Rhett forces himself on Scarlett, Ch 54:

"He hurt her and she cried out, muffled, frightened. Up the stairs he went in the utter darkness, up, up, and she was wild with fear. He was a mad stranger and this was a black darkness she did not know, darker than death. He was like death, carrying her away in arms that hurt. She screamed, stifled against him and he stopped suddenly on the landing and, turning her swiftly in his arms, bent over and kissed her with a savagery and a completeness that wiped out everything from her mind but the dark into which she was sinking and the lips on hers."

and then Scarlett the following morning:

"The man who had carried her up the dark stairs was a stranger of whose existence she had not dreamed. And now, though she tried to make herself hate him, tried to be indignant, she could not. He had humbled her, hurt her, used her brutally through a wild mad night and she had gloried in it. Oh, she should be ashamed, should shrink from the very memory of the hot swirling darkness! A lady, a real lady, could never hold up her head after such a night. But, stronger than shame, was the memory of rapture, of the ecstasy of surrender."

I'm curious to know how scenes like this speak to fans of romantic fiction?
What is their view of Rhett?

105 pages in and I give up. I just can't get past the characters - although colourful described I dislike them. And I just can't be bothered reading this book again when I dislike the characters so much.

I will however follow the discussion as I am interested as to why everyone thinks this book is so great.

Soz, total failure here :o

I'm on about page 40!

I do think I want to read it, but certainly not going to git 'er dun this go round. :)

I haven't quite gotten to this part yet (200 pages to go...) but your analysis is interesting. It reminds me of something a friend once told me that she learned in a film class about Alfred Hitchcock's The Birds that made me look at it a different way. If you look at it from a feminist perspective (and I am now coming to realize that GWTW is one of the great early feminist novels so this fits) the clear theme is that a strong, independent woman is anathemic to the world - she must be violently forced into submission and, moreover, convinced that submission is her proper place, before she can live harmoniously within the world again.

I think characterization is actually one of the great successes of this book. Obviously a bunch of the characters are thinly defined but the main characters - Scarlett, Rhett, Ashley, Melanie are complex in the extreme if you follow their development throughout the book. Their actions and statements are layered with meaning and different potential motives behind them. No one is all good or all bad (and yes that includes the supposedly sainted Melanie Wilkes). Who uses who? What are the consequences, intended and accidental, what are the intentions stated and secret, the book is one big psychological knot begging to be unravelled.

I also think that the book is worth reading for its portrayal of the south its heydey and fall, the war and its strategems, the effects of the war on the unprepared, the statements it makes about politics, feminism, classicism and racism and the origins of the ku klux klan even if you never end up being that interested in the characters.

Mel

Although the two characters are nothing alike, when I think of Scarlett's strength, I am reminded of another strong female character, Erle Stanley Gardner's Della Street from the Perry Mason books. I remember one scene in particular (although the book's title escapes me) where Perry and Della walk straight up to a door guarded by a ferocious dog. Because neither Perry nor Della showed fear, and because they boldly walked past the canine caretaker as if they owned the place, the dog accepted their alpha status did not molest them.

I'd be afraid to test how well that would work outside of novels, but I do remember that the pit bull we once owned got loose one day and ran up behind a woman who was walking down the street and began to bark. The woman spun around and pointed her finger in his face. I was too far away to have any idea of what she said, but Cain's response was clear. He shut his mouth, tucked in his tail, and plainly said in doggie-body language, "Yes ma'am. Sorry, ma'am. Won't happen again, ma'am."

Then again, Cain always was all bark and no bite ... fortunately!

I've just started Gone With the Wind and I've gotten to about the same page. I'll finish it. It might take awhile. But I don't much care for the world Mitchell creates in the novel. You've got the upper classes with Scarlett's family and friends, the Negroes and beneath the Negroes (because even they need someone to look down on), the Poor White Trash, who are so barely human they might as well be in an. H. G. Wells novel.

I want the North to come in and wipe these people out, which obviously isn't the author's intended reader response.

I'm finding Mitchell's attitudes on race and class sort of repulsive but the novel's entertaining and readable enough I'll keep going and also because if I commit to reading a 1000 page novel, then I'm gonna do what I can to finish it.

Every author is of course a product of the society in which he or she grew up, and we certainly shouldn't blame them for having attitudes which different from our own. In the words of Leslie Hartley:

You may like to read Dickens' "American Notes", which is a record of a journey he made through America in 1842. He has a lot to say about slavery in that book, seeing it as an "outside observer".

Well said, Harry.

Thanks for the recommendation. It sounds interesting.

Life under the slavery system life was uncertain and a slave's power of choice was extremely limited. As a slave, you had to please the master if you didn't want to end up being sold off and separated from your family and loved ones. Even under the best of masters, your life could be devastated by a downturn in your master's fortunes that forced unpleasant financial decisions upon them. That being said, many slaveholders seemed to hold paternalistic attitudes toward their slaves and believed, or at least sold themselves on the belief that slavery was best of all possible worlds for blacks as well as whites.

Human beings have always been adept at rationalizations, and I don't wish to judge too harshly those in whose shoes I've never walked. As for the institution of slavery, that's another thing altogether, and I have no reservations about labeling it with a blanket condemnation.

I believe our third president—himself a slaveholder—had it right when he said, "The whole commerce between master and slave is a perpetual exercise of the most boisterous passions, the most unremitting depotism on the one part, and degrading submission on the other...."

Further words on that topic (from that same document) seemed absolutely prophetic:

"Indeed, I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just; that his justice cannot sleep forever."

— Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826), “Notes on the State of Virginia” (1781-1785).

Good on you for finishing it. :thumbsup: I just don't enjoy the book. I can see where she is going with it and that it is a good description of what the south was (apparently). I just dislike Scarlett too much - and why read a book I don't enjoy. So I concede on this one quite happily. I tried and didn't like it. Would be interested to know what you think at the end of it.

I can understand how people can be put off by the politics of Gone With the Wind, but in my humble opinion the storytelling is excellent and the characters are as fully drawn and interesting. I guess I'll just have to file this under everyone has different tastes; but for the life of me, I don't see how anyone can not be drawn into this story.

I can't explain it either - just everytime I started reading the book again it was like a chore. I got no enjoyment out of it at all. And it's not as if the story reveals anything new - there are other books about that area. I just dislike it. Couldn't explain it for the life of me appart from a thorough dislike for the characters. :blink:

I'm drawn into the story. Mitchell does an amazing job of describing that world and that era. I live in the Charleston area so on that local level, it's fascinating reading because what Mitchell is writing about is still relevant today. So I'm not finding it difficult to read. It's just I'm finding Scarlett so unsympathetic--maybe she grows but right now she's insensitive and solipstic almost to the point of being mentally disturbed; she doesn't even care that her husband died--and Mitchell's politics so dubious that I'm reading Gone With the Wind at a distance, almost feeling a bit queasy at times, like I'd be better off reading Dickens or something.

GWTW taught me a lot about the origins and aftermath of the American Civil War, maybe that helped make it a more appealing book to me than to those who already had a good knowledge of it.
What particularly surprised me was how funny parts of the first third of the book were. Scarlett's self-centredness provided a rich vein for humour.

Now you mention him I think, in encompassing practically the whole range of human emotions and experiences against an epic backdrop, Mitchell achieved something Dickens himself would have been proud of.