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

[pilotbob]

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

[Sparrow]

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

[MelC]

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

[banjobama]

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

[WT Sharpe]

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.

[lilac_jive]

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

[kennyc]

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

[Ben Thornton]

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!

[Sparrow]

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

[banjomike]

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.

[Sparrow]

Originally Posted by banjomike

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.

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.

[banjomike]

Originally Posted by Sparrow

I see an unabridged audio book is 43 hours long!

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).

[phenomshel]

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.

[kennyc]

Originally Posted by phenomshel

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.

[WT Sharpe]

Originally Posted by banjomike

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.

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.