Margaret Mitchell’s sweeping epic about the Civil War has been called many things since its publication. Admirers have classified Gone With the Wind as an elegy for a lost and noble civilization, others as nothing more than cheap melodrama. Ultimately, it stands as a remarkable literary achievement in American myth-making, an idealized saga about a way of life that relied on the enslavement and exploitation of human beings. As a Southern writer, Mitchell can hardly be classified among the likes of William Faulkner and Flannery O’Connor. Rather, Gone With the Wind exists in its own territory, partly by virtue of its remarkable scope and partly due to its unabashed and unapologetically self-indulgent combination of emotionalism and historical fiction. Mitchell’s narrative follows the loves and personal struggles of a vain young belle suddenly forced out of her comfortable and privileged existence into the harsh realities of survival in a ravaged land that is no longer recognizable as the lush, verdant home that Scarlett O’Hara once knew. Ultimately, Gone With the Wind is about loss and longing for a kind of uniquely American Shangri La of the mind.
Gone With the Wind is set in the Old South, in the world of the planter aristocracy in rural Georgia. Tara, the O’Hara clan’s grand plantation, is one of many such representations of Southern refinement and wealth, which includes Twelve Oaks, the Wilkes family’s estate. The families who occupy this close-knit and closed society represent a spectrum of social types to be
found in the ante-bellum South, ranging from the aristocratic John and Ashley Wilkes, to Gerald O’Hara, a model of the upwardly mobile immigrant type. They exist together in a world of high teas, day-long barbecues, petticoats and magnolia trees, supported by a slave population seemingly happy in its role as family retainers, overseen by benign owners. Mitchell’s fantasy world provides a backdrop for a young lady who does not fit the mold of the sophisticated Southern woman. Scarlett is strikingly different from the likes of her mother, a devout and patient matron, and Melanie Hamilton/Wilkes, the prototypically gracious Southern woman who is nevertheless vulnerable and reliant upon Scarlett when the war overwhelms their world. The setting for this story is more than backdrop; it is integral to the story’s theme of survival and resilience, qualities that Scarlett possesses but which the fragile world of her youth does not.
The plot follows Scarlett’s efforts to maintain the veneer of Southern feminine virtue despite the fact that she is a deeply passionate and mercurial figure, much like Margaret Mitchell herself. In love with Ashley Wilkes, Scarlett tries to ingratiate herself with the young scion of Ten Oaks, though he is betrothed to Melanie Hamilton, his cousin. Scarlett’s true motivation is transparent to Mammy, the house servant who has raised Scarlett and her sister, and who believes that Scarlett’s actions are a betrayal of her responsibilities as a young belle. When the dashing figure of Rhett Butler enters the story, Scarlett is outwardly scornful of Rhett’s lack of social refinement but is inwardly attracted to him. Ashley, however, remains the true object of her affection, a theme that runs through the story and which eventually comes between Scarlett and Rhett. The deeper dimension to the plot line is self-delusion, the propensity to believe fervently in something that cannot be, that cannot last. Just as Scarlett’s love for Ashley must be
unrequited and remain unfulfilled, the world of the Old South is one of self-deception, a lifestyle that cannot last, cannot survive based on an institution that demands the subjugation of human beings.
And yet Scarlett turns out to have a strength that allows her to survive the end of their way of life, a strength that Ashley, the paragon of Old South gentility and honor, does not have and which costs him the ability to grow as Scarlett grows in the wake of the Confederacy’s destruction. One of the story’s seminal moments shows us Scarlett, brought to her lowest point digging in the dirt for something to eat, suddenly rises and declares she will “never be hungry again” (Mitchell, 367). The Old South can never be rebuilt, has been utterly destroyed, but Scarlett must somehow rebuild her own world, her own life. She does so as a business owner in Atlanta, a role that would have been absolutely unthinkable in the ante-bellum world she once knew but which is vital if she hopes to survive and make good on her promise to never be hungry again. That Scarlett is able to avoid the fate of so many of her class stands as a testament to the indomitability of the human spirit, and to her strength of will. This is the significance of the story, the desire and ability to transcend hardship and misfortune and emerge true to oneself. Change comes to Scarlett in the form of growth, in the realization that her obsession with Ashley is childlike and unrealistic.
Mitchell’s characters, though distinctively part of the Old South civilization, act according to deeply felt personal motivations. Scarlett, as the story’s heroine, is driven through much of the story by her love for Ashley but in the end is fired by a desire to survive and to flourish despite what has happened to her. Ashley is in many ways an embodiment of the Old
South and its nobler values. It was always Ashley’s intent to remain comfortably ensconced at Twelve Oaks, happily strolling the grounds, reading in the library and managing the estate, only superficially interested in the goings-on of the outside world. Ashley is a noble but doomed and tragic figure, an individual profoundly unequipped to deal with the meaner problems and challenges of the world as Scarlett is able to do. The demise of the South is Ashley’s demise, the end of the only world in which he is able to live because he was raised to know no other way of life. In many ways, Ashley is one of the most interesting of Mitchell’s characters, at once a one-dimensional figure yet a man with admirable qualities and a perspective on life that goes deeper than the other figures in the story.
Perspective is what Rhett Butler brings to the story. A pragmatist, Rhett is a rake, a scurrilous figure who does not buy into the image of Southern courage, virtue and invincibility the leads the mean of the county to go off to war confident in their ability to bring the Yankees to their knees. Having been in the North, Rhett knows that the industrialized Union military is too powerful for the agrarian South, and that the Confederacy’s noble cause is ultimately doomed to failure. A tragic figure in his own right, Rhett nevertheless carries on as a blockade runner, benefiting financially as a privateer though holding himself aloof from what he considers a vainglorious and foolish undertaking. However, his perspective fails him when confronted by his attraction to Scarlett. Their relationship is Rhett’s self-delusion. He hopes that Scarlett will come to love him despite her feelings for Ashley, who is just the kind of character that Rhett reviles and dismisses as quixotic and unrealistic. Personal growth comes with difficulty for Rhett when he finally faces the fact that the relationship he thought he could have with Scarlett is
itself unrealistic.
Ultimately, the narrator is trustworthy in that this third-person voice has a direct line on the characters’ feelings, thoughts and motivations. The narrator binds the story together without actually being one of the characters. However, there is a critical aspect to the narration; this view of the story is important in that it provides the reader with a perspective on the characters that is informative as to the reliability and worthiness of their actions and emotions. In this way, the narrator does shed light on the story’s meaning because it offers the reader insight on the particularities of each character.
The mood of the story ranges from exuberance to sadness as it traces the characters’ problems and triumphs. The story itself is compelling in that Mitchell makes the reader care about what happens to Scarlett, Ashley, Rhett and the other key figures. One has the impending feeling that their self-satisfied ante-bellum world of parties and dances, of beaus and belles,
is too good to be true and is due for some kind of moral judgment that will result in a tragic end. Those who survive will be forever alter; how they will be changed is what makes the reader want to read on as much as the desire to see who ends up with whom, whether Scarlett will eventually win over Ashley, or whether Scarlett and Rhett’s marriage will be lasting and fulfilling to them. The expectant mood is tempered by reality, by the ways in which the characters are forced to confront the way things truly are.
There are humorous interludes, as well as grim and tragic. The slaves are generally treated as comic figures, though stalwart in their support of their masters. Prissy is one such example, the young girl who brags that she knows how to assist in a birth, but who comically
denies such knowledge when the moment arrives. “Fo’ Gawd, Miss Scarlett! We’s got ter have a doctah. Ah-Ah-Miss Scarlett, Ah doan know nuthin’ ‘bout bring’ babies. Maw wouldn’ nebber lemme be ‘round folkses whut wuz havin’ dem” (Mitchell, 282). Scarlett’s reaction, and Mitchell’s description of what follows, is reflective of the prevailing attitudes among whites in the early-20th century South concerning blacks. Scarlett lunges for Prissy, bent on punishing her, and reference is made to Prissy’s “kinky head” (282).
Later, the reader is as anticipatory as Scarlett and Melanie as they travel back to the county after Sherman’s army has stormed through, not knowing what they will find and whether anything remains of the homes and estates they grew up among. The scene at Twelve Oaks is symbolic of the tragic fate of the South in general. The grand old estate of the county is a burnt-out shell of its former greatness. The Yankees have left little of the Wilkes estate. When Scarlett returns to Tara, the reader shares Scarlett’s outrage when she learns what use the Yankees made of her childhood home. Wondering why Tara did not share the fate of Twelve Oaks, she asks her father why the house still stands. “’Why-,’ he fumbled, ‘they used the house as headquarters,” Gerald replies (Mitchell, 322). Scarlett is shocked at the truth of the situation, but learning that her beloved home was as vulnerable to the enemy as any other, even though it was left standing, gives Scarlett a personal insight that aids her personal growth. Her return home will be an important step in her maturing, and will give her a strength of resolve that will allow her and what is left of her family to survive.
Mitchell conveys mood through a realistic use of vocabulary, seeking to illustrate the social and personal differences between the aristocracy and white underclass as well as the negro
slaves. The slaves, like Prissy, speak in the colloquial language of 19th-century Southern blacks. Mitchell’s characterization of Scarlett, who goes from coquettish young temptress to hardened businesswoman, changes as the story progress. Scarlett goes from a loquacious speaker seeking to attract young men to a woman using a clipped, hardened language in order to get what she wants. Upon returning to Tara after the war, she must adopt a commanding tone in order to get her sisters and their former slaves to adopt the same resolve that moves her. She knows that she must speak harshly and be demanding of those close to her, that this is the only way they can hope to survive.
Survival is an over-arching theme in Gone With the Wind. Scarlett survives war, hunger, heartbreak and financial ruin, and endures as a woman possessing an inner strength that even she did not know she had. Her strength sets her apart in the story, in that the other characters in Mitchell’s novel do not have the ability to persist as Scarlett does. She is eternal, an unconquerable spirit that endures even as the only world she has ever known comes crumbling down around her. Her home is destroyed, she is denied the love of her life, loses a daughter and her husband leaves her. And yet despite all this, one has the distinct feeling that she will go on no matter what happens, that her travails have proven not only to us but to herself that all she needs is within herself. Gone With the Wind is a tale of war and love, but its most powerful message is that the human spirit can survive the worst of calamities.
Works Cited
Mitchell, Margaret. Gone With the Wind. New York: Scribner, 2007.
