Solo presenta­tion: `Gone with the Wind” by Margaret Mitchell

Before analyzing the topics it is appropriate to summarize the book roughly. The novel is split up into four main sections, all plot between the years 1861-73:

The coquettish and by her parents pampered sixteen years old Scarlett O’Hara, daughter of Gerald O’Hara, an Irish Immigrant and Ellen O’Hara who descends from a French aristocratic family, lives on the “Tara” plantation which is owned by her parents. She is secretly in love with the gallant Ashley Wilkes who happens to be engaged to his cousin Melanie Hamilton. On their engagement, Scarlett makes Ashley a declaration of love and after he politely refuses, Scarlett takes revenge by deciding to marry Melanie’s brother, Charles Hamilton. She got pregnant but Charles died a few days after he was called to join the war. (Seven states in the South, Georgia among them, declared their secession from the Union and formed the Confederacy. A Civil War broke out, the Northern States wanted to enslave the South, where slaves were needed as manual labor forces on cotton plantations.) Although Scarlett does not care a lot about her loss and was sick of playing the grieving widow, she was depressed and unhappy about her current situation. In order to make a change of scene, Scarlett’s parents ship her off to Atlanta, where Auntie Pittypet lives with Melanie. There, Scarlett is busy with hospital work and sewing circles for the Confederate army. As a result, Scarlett’s spirits revive. While attending a dance of the Confederate army, Scarlett runs into Rhett Butler who she happened to make acquaintance before. In contrast to all able-bodied men, he is not fighting in the war but works as a blockade runner and speculator, in order to make money instead. As Union forces invade Atlanta, Scarlett asks Rhett Butler to set herself, her child and Melanie with her baby on the road to Tara. Back in Tara, Scarlett is confronted with the death of her beloved mum and moreover her dad has gone mad from grief. Additionally, the Yankees have taken just about everything and most slaves were set free by them and had left. Scarlett takes it as a duty to protect and care for her family who is suffering a famine and was hit with massive taxes on Tara, set up by the Restriction government. In order to save the farm from selling, Scarlett marries the fiancé of her older sister (Frank Kennedy), whose money she uses to build up Tara. As Scarlett happens to be attacked by black people, encouraged by the Restriction government to be violent, Frank and Ashley who both turn out to be members of the Ku- Klux- Klan, ride out to avenge her and got trapped by the Yankees. Frank was killed and Ashley injured. After Frank’s death Rhett Butler who just got out of prison because he killed a black man, proposed to Scarlett. She got married for the third time and gave born to her third child, Ellen Lorena, whom Rhett totally dotes on. He buys her a pony and teaches her how to jump over wood bars. As the pony trips over a highly- set wood bar, Ellen Lorena breaks her neck in the fall. Both, Scarlett and Rhett are deeply grieved and the death pushes them even further apart. Although the Southern Democrats take control over Atlanta and the South, which was actually a good thing, speaking in political terms for the South, Rhett leaves Scarlett because he is not sure whether he loves her anymore. Scarlett decides to take time out on the plantation to overthink how she can win Rhett back.

The fact that GWTW is written from the perspective and values of the slaveholder, forms the base of the presentation and characterization of slaves in the novel; slaves are always presented as docile and happy. But however, there is no doubt that GWTW is presenting the wrong view of slavery. First of all it is essential to distinguish the different conditions of slavery in the South. In fact, there were huge disparities in terms of condition between the house servants and the field hands. House servants were, in contrast to the field hands, relatively well off. Although Mitchell does not characterize the house servants in detail, at least she provides the reader some pieces of information about them: Big Mammy, Prissy, Big Sam and Uncle Peter are the only servants who wear a “name” in the novel. They have been serving for the family for a really long time, Big Mammy, for example “had been raised in the bedroom of Solange Robillard, Ellen O’Hara’s mother” (p. 24). She participates in the daily-family live of the O’Haras and even “felt that she owned the O’Hara’s body and soul” (p.24). House servants appear to enjoy the highest “caste” in Mitchell’s “caste-system”. House servants are judging servants under their “caste” and talk to them as if they were the white slave holders: “Wuthless nigger! She ain’ never whar she does nobody good” (p.25) –That’s how Big Mammy is addressing another slave.

Even after the Yankees enslaved the South and it was up to the slaves to leave the plantation or not, a remarkable high number of slaves remained on the plantation and showed no interest in leaving. Scarlett explains their faithfulness as follows: “There were qualities of loyalty and tirelessness and love in them that no strain could break, no money could buy.” (p.645) However, only those ones were portrayed nicely in the novel who did not seek for their freedom; Slaves who left were seen as unscrupulous and were looked down. Mitchell displays the readers how cheerful and contended slaves were in order to cover all the miserable conditions under slaves were hold. As a consequence of the faithful character traits Mitchell attributes to some of the house servants, the reader tends to feel sorry for Scarlett who is left stranded without her slaves.

Another point why Mitchell’s novel has to face disapproval (besides empathizing the “old South and slavery holding”), is her way she is glorifying the Ku-Klux-Klan: Violent, drunk darks are only constituting a threat for the “white people [who are] unprotected by law” (p.640) Due to these darks, belonging in the “lowest […] social order” (p.638) and urged to violence by “Bureau agitators and the Carpetbaggers” (p.640). The Ku-Klux-Klan was seen as a guardian of the white people who were victims of the crimes which “trashy free issue niggers” (p.638) committed.

Mitchell glorifying this brutal group was even in the year 1939,when the novel was published, totally inacceptable. Although the US-government tries to forbid and extinguish organizations like the KKK in the South it, is deplorable that, referring to an article from the “Washington Post” black churches in the South were burned by the KKK in 1996. Novels in which the KKK is glorified are destructive in terms of combating racial violence, especially in the US.

Three years after the novel was published, in 1939 the movie GWTW was released. It was a box-office-hit, featuring Vivien Leigh and Clark Gable. However, the movie is almost even more engraved with racism than the book:

“There was a land of Cavaliers and Cotton Fields called the Old South. Here in this pretty world gallantry took its last blow. Here was the last ever to be seen of Knights and their ladies Fair of Master and of slave. Look for it only in books, for it is no more than a dream remembered. A civilization gone with the wind.”

According to this introduction that easily could be seen as a political sin, the film falls into the genre of “racist American classic”. In fact it is almost regrettable what the directors of the film understood as a “comic surprise”: African American characters were shown as overwhelmingly childlike and stupid. Prissy, for example, was irritating, hysterical and loud, she lied often and seemed rather to be a useless attachment than a help to Scarlett.

Moreover it should be mentioned that Hattie McDaniel, who played the role of “Big Mammy” in the film was the first African American who won an Oscar. But even if an African American was rewarded, it does not change the fact that African American actors were separated from white Americans on the film set. They had their own wardrobes and different hair and make- up artists.

In conclusion, I think that GWTW can be read in two different ways: Either you totally focus on the love story, look up to Scarlett and see her as a strong personality enduring the difficulties of Civil war like Lily Casey (And most Americans) did OR you face Scarlett’s deceitfulness as well as shrewdness and neglect the lifestyle of the “Old South” which Matchell glorifies in the novel.

Quotes:

"The Old Black Mammy",

"BBC - The Big Read". The Bible is America's Favorite Book Followed by Gone With the Wind,