Rereading ‘Gone With The Wind’

The story of Scarlett O’Hara and the ruin of the south is so tied in with the film adaptation of Margaret Mitchell’s novel, “Gone With The Wind“, that if you’ve seen the film, it’s difficult to separate the two in your mind.  I first read “Gone With the Wind” in the 8th grade, and the love triangle between Scarlett, Ashley, and Rhett absorbed me completely.  I’ve read the book so many times since that I can open it at any page and know what’s going on, just by reading one sentence.  It’s one of those books.  I was thinking about it recently, however, and I realized that I’ve only read the entire book, cover to cover, once or twice.  I tend to find myself thinking about a scene in the story, and I open the book and read that scene.  I may get pulled in and read another chapter or two, but not more than that.  It’s just too long and all encompassing to get pulled into very often.  So I decided that I wanted to come at it with fresh eyes, or as fresh as possible, and read it from cover to cover.

Being 30 years older than I was in the 8th grade also helped me to change my perspective a bit.  I slowed down and noticed the story of the war, that Mitchell really seemed to love the south, and at the same time, to be criticizing the ‘Glorious Cause’ and all that it stood for.  She admitted that there was perhaps a beauty to that antebellum time, but at the same time, she notes that it was a beautiful time only to a privileged few, and that for the majority of people, it was a very restrictive time that would allow little in the way of non-conformity or difference.  Certainly had the war not come along, Scarlett, with her steel will and wild ways, would have stifled and chaffed at the bit.  Not to mention the issues of slavery and racism.  Indeed, issues which are glossed over and treated as though they were nothing.  And they’re not nothing.  Not at all.  From an Atlantic article on race in GWTW:

But some readers had found Mitchell’s treatment of race less a cartoon than a nightmare. She had, for example, depicted her leading black characters as content with slavery, uninterested in freedom. They often seemed more like pets than people. When Scarlett and Big Sam were reunited after the war, “his watermelon-pink tongue lapped out, his whole body wiggled, and his joyful contortions were as ludicrous as the gambolings of a mastiff.” The “good” black characters both loved and needed the whites. Though Mammy was one of the strongest characters in the novel, she could not manage Tara after the war without the guidance of her white masters. Her mind was too simple, not yet fully evolved, as readers could infer from a description of her as she looked at the once-grand plantation, her face “sad with the uncomprehending sadness of a monkey’s face.”

These are the passages in Gone With the Wind that get under my skin, in a bad way. When you skim the book, as I have for so many years, you can ignore these sections. But by doing so, you not only miss the depth of Mitchell’s criticism of Southern culture, and some very moving descriptions of the happenings during the war, you miss some of the moments that point you towards Mitchell’s own racism, which is an ugly thing indeed. When I admit my love for this book, I’m always a little bit afraid that my black friends will think less of me for it. But I’m not brave enough to ask their thoughts. I’ve never brought it up in a black friend’s presence, but I wonder…can a black reader get past these ugly passages, or are they too damn insulting? I mean, there is a lot of dignity in many of the black roles in GWTW, but the passages comparing the slaves (and former slaves) to animals are difficult to reconcile.

As for Scarlett, as I said in my meme the other day, I love her. I love how she does the right thing when it’s important, and not when it isn’t. How she’s selfish when it comes to the conventions of the day, but generous when it comes to life vs. death and her family. I do draw the line at her hiring convict labor for her lumber mill. That was selfish, and no one gained anything from that. I can’t love her for that.

What about you, my friends? Have you read Gone With the Wind? Did the racist sections trouble you? The convicts? The husband stealing? Personally, I’m more willing to forgive Scarlett the convict labor and the husband stealing, because she is a flawed character, and Mitchell is trying to show that, not hide it. The racism, I think, is Mitchell’s more than Scarlett’s.

By the way, if you’d like a bit of an antidote to the ugly racism in Gone With the Wind, may I suggest that you might enjoy The Wind Done Gone? I loved it. Truly.