Gone with the Wind (the book)

I agree. Especially Scarlett getting gang banged by 6 of her slaves. How they could live with themselves after cutting that out is beyond me.

Wade and the Hamilton assets.

It is a great book. No wonder they made a great movie from it.

She was not gang banged, you filthy pig at, r1.

The book is a masterpiece. And I have never understood , as a black man, why people think it is racist. If anything it is covert in the way it tells us how connected black people and white people were in the South, especially during the war. There are three pages devoted to Poke, and how he time and again saved them from starvation. And Scarlett's scene with Mammy where Mammy tells her what she think of Rhett and their pending marriage is a real, authentic and proud moment. I think it makes it easier for people to either think that slaves were stupid , docile fools, or seething Nat Turners. But slaves came in various forms as well. And were family. If you had sucked at Mammy's teat the way Scarlett had that is a bond that can't be broken. Now I want to re-read it!

I tried so many times to read GWTW, but I just could not get past those damn Tarleton twins. A friend of mine from Alabama said, "What?! They're on page three and dead by page 10. Read the damn book." He was right. I could barely put it down once I got past those two simps. It's MILES better than the movie (which left out about a third of the plot). Great literature? Not really. Great story and characters? Absolutely.

I love the book, have read it many times, and really don't understand why I love it. Scarlett is a pretty horrible person and everything she believes is wrong, and she belongs to and loves a society that is evil and needed to be destroyed. Why am I not more repelled by her?

Part of the reason is Rhett's contrarianism, he acts as the voice of reason and modernism (20th century version), and he calls Scarlett on her bullshit and points out everything that's wrong with the Old South. The book is both admiring and extremely critical towards the pre-war South, which does create a certain historical interest, perhaps that's it?

A great scene they should have included in the movie was Gerald's funeral and the events that led to it, especially the talk between Scarlett and Grandma Fontaine and the carriage ride to the barbecue where they meet Mrs.Tarlton and her daughters. Ashley was also better characterized in the book and if you red it you could better understand why Scarlett was so obsessed with him. Also all the great little easter eggs like the implication that Rhett and Belle have a secret son together, Ellen's tragic backstory etc.

[quote]And I have never understood , as a black man, why people think it is racist.

Have people said the book is racist? I've heard that about the film, which is considered to be far too nonchalant about slavery and the fact that the men who "went after" the man who attached Scarlet during the reconstruction era were essentially the Klan, but I'd not heard similar things about the book (though in truth I've never had much interest in the book or its reception).

I love the Classics illustrated version of GWTW--all in comic book form

I'll wait for the movie

I tried reading the book. Couldn't make it through. I watched the movie. Made it all the way through but it was a big bore.

It is one of the great, popular, books. Indelible characters. All should know it.

It's an incredible book. Totally engrossing from the first paragraph. The characters are so vivid and defined that they leap off the page. It really is everything that it's been cracked up to be.

Lots of interesting characters from the book were left out of the movie. Among them:

Scarlett's other children: Wade Hampton Hamilton and Ella Lenora Kennedy.

Dilcey, Pork's wife, the mother of Prissy (Pork is not Prissy's father).

Honey Wilkes, Ashley's other sister.

The hot-headed Fontaine brothers: Alex, Tony and Joe and their grandmother, the tough, formidable Grandma Fontaine.

Will Benteen, an ill soldier dropped off at Tara after the surrender, who eventually becomes part of the family.

OK, so I opened this thread out of curiosity... sounds like I should give it a try.

For those of you who've read GWTW - would it make a better TV 'miniseries? From the early posts, it sounds like it would need six hours to be filmed correctly.

8-10 at least, [R15]

F&F this racist thread. GTFO and go back to stormfront.

I agree with R16, 10 hours would still be cutting out a lot. The problem is that you'd still miss out on the internal reasoning.

IMHO the 1939 version is about as good as a filmed version could be. Even if they left out some of the things I enjoyed in the book, such as a hell of a lot of secondary characters, Gable and Leigh brought the leading characters to vivid, charismatic life. I can't think of any modern actors who could bring such authenticity and star power to those roles.

I also can't believe making a longer and more detailed version would actually make a better viewing experience, most long books need to be streamlined and edited to be effective onscreen - which does usually mean cutting down on secondary characters (deal). I also can't believe that today's atmosphere of political touchiness would allow the real story to come through, one of the virtues of the 1939 is that it presents the racism of the Old South without apology, as a kid in 20th century California it was revelatory to me to see these white people ordering their slaves around, and fully expecting to be liked in return.

I think my favorite scene in the book is when Scarlett shoos her shy and sensitive (make of that what you will) little son Wade Hampton Hamilton out of the house and tells him to go play in the street -- during the firebombing of Atlanta. I laughed so hard I had to stop reading. Alas, Wade did not make the screenplay.

Do they talk about BBC at all?

"I think my favorite scene in the book is when Scarlett shoos her shy and sensitive (make of that what you will) little son Wade Hampton Hamilton out of the house and tells him to go play in the street -- during the firebombing of Atlanta."

Actually, she tells him to play in the backyard. Atlanta is inundated with wounded men and everyone with a pair of hands is tending to them. Wade is witness to the scene:

Forgotten in the tumult, little Wade crouched behind the banisters on the front porch, peering out onto the lawn like a caged, frightened rabbit, his eyes wide with terror, sucking his thumb and hiccoughing. Once Scarlett saw him and cried sharply "Go play in the back yard, Wade Hamilton!" but he was too terrified, too fascinated by the mad scene before him to obey.

R8, a love child or relationship between Rhett and Belle is hinted at when Belle opens an handkerchief with Rhetts initials in the carriage with Scarlett and Melanie.

R24,continued.At the moment when Belle is discussing her love child. Scarlett, who in essence is not as good a person as Belle is shocked. Melanie, who is unlikely, but in equal terms as Belle is not.

She was in the European printed editions. That scene actually was filmed and likewise was only in the European prints.

R26, you are a pathetic piece of human shit.

Like most good books you have to truncate the story to make it into a film. Even if you intend to make a sprawling mini-series you still have to leave some stuff out or change the story and character to make it work as a film.

[quote]Like most good books you have to truncate the story to make it into a film. Even if you intend to make a sprawling mini-series you still have to leave some stuff out or change the story and character to make it work as a film.

Exactly, pacing in a book is fundamentally different from pacing in a movie.

If they included everything from the book, a movie, even a mini series, would drag and bore the life out of you.

I'll try reading it based on this thread.

Damn, it's sad that this book and movie are so... Problematic now. It's honest and brutal and unapologetic.

Another great character left out of the movie is Mrs. Tarleton, mother of the Tarleton twins. She has eight children in all, four boys, four girls, all of them redheads. Her passion in life is breeding, particularly horse breeding (she's an expert rider and trainer), but human breeding is something she's very knowledgeable about also. As they're going to the Wilke's barbecue she gives Gerald a speech about why cousins shouldn't marry. She says that her family wanted to marry her off to a second cousin but she rebelled saying that if she did that " my children will all have spavins and heaves." She also says that the Wilkes need to stop marrying their cousins because they're too inbred. Mrs. Tarleton is quite a character.

They also left out Pansy Sue McMartin, the tranny who liked the boys in blue!

Seriously, a stupendous book and story, not great lit, but fantastic fun. I agree the movie is as good as they could make it back then. If Starz or PBS would do a 10 hour reboot, it would be good. HBO, no; maybe Showtime. I always thought Scarlett's family should have had more time in the movie. Mammy is easily the best character; she deserves a backstory. Yes, I read the Mammy novel from a few years ago, it was good.

“Scarlett, always save something to fear—even as you save something to love.” Grandma Fontaine would have added a lot to the scenes immediately after the war when Scarlett and her family are struggling on the destroyed Tara.

Loved the book. Not literature but hugely enjoyable with a delectably flawed anti-heroine.

The first time I read GWTW, I got to the end and promptly went back to the beginning to read it again. I couldn't tell you how many times I've read it since.

For me, the book was about the Civil War and how a strong society can be wiped out in a very short space of time. The film is about the love story between Rhett and Scarlett. The book is much better than the film.

I do think the film got the casting spot on. The book though, is about so much more and I think the film didn't really cover the idea that a society could be 'Gone with the Wind.'

[quote] And I have never understood , as a black man, why people think it is racist.

The book is racist; the portrayal of slaves as being happy with their predicament and showing no signs of wanting to be freed is at odds with the lives they actually lead. It's still a great book in many ways, but to deny that it portrays slavery as some benign institution where slaves were treated like family members does disservice to the struggles of those caught up in human servitude. This is a pretty good article highlighting the books strengths and weaknesses.

Both the book and the film display racism so deeply and unashamedly that some people don't even realize it's there.

The slave characters are depicted as happy, loyal, and practically members of the family - and never thinking about anything than their masters. (Now really, how much do you care about YOUR boss?) People think that Scarlett and Mammy have a semi-equal relationship because Mammy calls Scarlett on her bullshit, but Mammy is shown as being deeply concerned with the minutiae of Scarlett's life, while Scarlett never thinks about Mammy's concerns at all. Does Mammy have a husband, children, fears or phobias, likes and dislikes? Scarlett doesn't care, Mammy is her property and only exists to care for her, Mammy gets less concern and care than the average pet dog. And that's a valued house slave, the field hands aren't even thought about until they're gone.

As with most things, it's all so complicated. House slaves were treated differently than field slaves. House slaves were more intimately involved with the family. All that aside, I love GWTW, but isn't it essentially a parable about the folly of romanticizing honor and gentility, so you don't have to think about the dark and destructive parts? And when confronted with the darkness and destruction only the pragmatists survive?

The book is about a racist society no disputing that. But it's also a character study, or in Scarlett's case the development of her charaxter, and I see lots of good points above to explain how Scarlett is developed in contrast with all the supporting characters. Scarlett is basically an empty vessel at the start of the book waiting to turn into something. Compared to the richly explained Tarletons and Fontaines and even her own family, Scarlett has a lot of growing to do. In a sense she represents the south and its oblivion to its own stupidity and hollow ideals and immorality.

I love the book, but like R7 I don't really know why. It's gripping on some subliminal level. Every time I read it, I wind up going down an obsessive rabbit hole researching plantation life, etc. for weeks after.

One thing about the book that I find odd is Scarlett's attitude towards sex. She's in lust with Rhett from the beginning, when they kiss he makes her feel things other men haven't, etc etc, but once they're married her attitude towards sex is that same as it was with her other husbands. Seems obvious to me that Rhett and Scarlett would be having great sex. I assume this is a case of Margaret Mitchell's own issues affecting the writing.

[quote]And I have never understood , as a black man, why people think it is racist.

I think Mammy is one of the smartest characters in literature. I love that scene where she catches Scarlett being disobedient. She can't go to Scarlett's mother (her boss) and tell her outright. So when the family goes to prayer, Mammy starts praying loudly about Scarlett's disobedience. Mammy knew how to work within the system to get things done.

Racist claptrap.

[quote]People think that Scarlett and Mammy have a semi-equal relationship because Mammy calls Scarlett on her bullshit, but Mammy is shown as being deeply concerned with the minutiae of Scarlett's life, while Scarlett never thinks about Mammy's concerns at all.

You can't really apply that idea to Mammy. Scarlett didn't care about anyone but herself. She didn't care about her own mother beyond needing her attention when she wanted it.

I'm not quite getting the statements about the slaves being portrayed as happy. The slaves close to the O'Hara family that were primary characters in the novel are Mammy, who was raised as the childhood companion of Solange Robilard (nee, Fornier), then later is Mammy to her children, including Ellen, later the wife of Gerald O'Hara. For all intents and purposes Mammy is family, and could not imagine her life any other way. Mammy would never have left Ellen's family, which she looked upon as her own. Pork, as Gerald O'Hara's valet was also one of the upper level house servants who was happy with his station, Dilcey, Pork's wife was bought by Gerald from John Wilkes after their marriage, and of course he also bought Prissy, due to mother and child not wanting to be separated. Big Sam, who took advantage of being free, has no ill feelings towards the O'Haras because as Foreman, as he had a powerful position among the manual laborers.

These former slaves were literally the best treated on the plantation, and as a result were loyal and were generally considered an extension of the family and considered themselves as such. Prissy being the only of the "house slaves" who was not well regarded.

The hundreds of field hands who worked in the fields of Tara from sunrise to sunset weren't characters in the novel. Manual laborers like these would have made up the majority of of the black populous and would have been elated at their freedom after a life of being treated as the lowest form of [sub] human life. But as I said, the slaves featured in the novel were those of higher station, who were better taken care of by their old families than trying to live life as free men.

[quote]The book is racist; the portrayal of slaves as being happy with their predicament and showing no signs of wanting to be freed is at odds with the lives they actually lead.

It is racist to blame all white people for slavery while crediting no white people for ending slavery. The black slaves didn't free themselves.

[quote]The hundreds of field hands who worked in the fields of Tara from sunrise to sunset weren't characters in the novel. Manual laborers like these would have made up the majority of of the black populous and would have been elated at their freedom after a life of being treated as the lowest form of [sub] human life

And they run off with the Union army once Tara is sacked.

I love the book and miss some of the aforementioned neighbors of Tara - most of whom, without Rhett's money, became poor white folk after living a life of privelege.

Cathleen Calvert's fate is especially depressing.

I like Ellen Robillard's (Scarlett's mother) backstory, and how she came to marry Gerald O'Hara. As Mammy tells it, with her dying breaths she calls out for "Feleep! Feleep!"

Fun fact: Bonnie Butler's real name is Eugenie Victoria ("after two queens"), and she shares it with Sarah Ferguson's youngest. I always wondered whether Sarah was being respectful to the royal forebears or whether she was a closet GWTW fan.

Regarding Mammy, I think the degree of respect Rhett shows for her is very significant. Rhett, though a scallawag, is the voice of sense in the novel, and the only person he more openly respects is the basically faultless Melanie. It is genuinely important to Rhett to win Mammy's approval. Scarlett has very little awareness of their transactions, so it's not to impress her.

I get irritated when people describe it as a love story. Rhett explains very clearly that he is done with Scarlett forever.

Margaret Mitchell was asked to rewrite the story with a happy ending but she refused. Scarlett and Rhett are not meant to be happy. Why should they be? They're slavers.

Melanie is the most racist character in the book. The shit that comes out of her mouth is incredible. Mitchell kills her.

The climax of the book for me is Mammy's account at the end. Her character is given more humanity in those pages than all other characters put together and makes all the white characters look like filth.

The film is a great product but it doesn't deliver on the complexity of the novel. From what I remember particularly, aside from Melanie's racism, the circumstances surrounding Frank's death are a lot more complicated in the book than what the film shows.

It was an interesting novel. I really enjoyed it. It's about a racist society but I'm not convinced that it's a racist book. It contains a lot of facets. I think it deserves its reputation as significant literature.

R41, supposedly, Margaret Mitchell was anything but a prude or sexually frustrated. In the 1920s she was essentially a flapper, often behaving in ways that shocked Atlanta society. Her brother Stephens Mitchell, who controlled her estate, kept a tight lid on personal information about her, including shunning close friends that might discuss what they knew. After he died in the 1980s, however, things began to open up. People who had known her well began to be more open in discussing her. Back in the late 1980s or 1990s, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution ran a detailed article about her that revealed some of this information. The upshot of the article was that she was very much an enigma, known only to a few close friends, who themselves said she was not self-revealing. One odd note, however, was that the article mentioned without much elaboration that she and her husband John Marsh collected erotica (if I remember, the article actually said pornography) and would discuss it with friends at cocktail parties. I always thought it was an odd factoid for the AJC to include, and I have never seen it repeated anywhere else, although I've never read any of the more recent biographies of her.

[quote]Scarlett and Rhett are not meant to be happy. Why should they be? They're slavers.

The world today is full of celebrated and happy rich people who did highly immoral things to acquire money.

I can believe that some house slaves stayed with their masters after slavery ended, but I don't believe that doing so showed love or loyalty.

Give most people the choice between a crappy job that keeps a roof overhead and food on the table and being homeless, they'll stick with the crappy job - whether they love or loathe their boss... or master. If the field hands ran off to an uncertain future or a vague promise of forty acres and a mule in the future, it showed how badly they'd been treated. They actually chose homelessness.

R53 I recall reading that she had possibly been raped by her first husband and she may have had trauma resulting from that.

I've read the book numerous times. It's excellent. The author pulled from many stories she heard told by family and friends. I don't think the book is racist, but certainly it's about a racist time in our history. I mean, HELLO, Americans owned slaves who were in that predicament based on their race and continent of origin. As well as the horrible brutality that occurred during that era there were many stories of love and loyalty as well. It's an awful time in our nation's history and ironically we're not done with racism yet. One thing I like to remember is the incredible cultural contributions made to the world that came from the horror of slavery. Jazz for example, born of slaves' field calls. African Americans should be held in high honor because of their unique place in America's history. They are among our oldest Americans. Few can trace family history back to the late 1700 and early 1800s like black Americans can.

One line in the book "the better class of blacks scorned freedom" is a total turnoff to me. The Underground Railroad pretty much disputes the myth of happy, contented slaves as do the writing of former slaves and actual photographs (photography had begun during the Civil War) of the actual places they were living, not the cozy little bungalows books like GWTW would have you believe. MM was a member of a Klan family and I am sure she heard a great many fairy tales about slavery. While GWTW is a fun read, it bothers me that many people buy into the romantic nature of slavery and how much better off blacks were under slavery. In one paragraph of the book, Tony Fontaine refers to them as black apes out of the jungle and chides them for turning on their former masters after "everything we have done for them".

Never forget that Mammy breast fed Scarlett, and Ellen,her mother. She realizes she is a slave but she also realizes when she is free. And family is family when you have lived and worried and loved someone. The only person Scarlett is really taken aback by until Rhett is Mammy. The book isn't racist- the times were very racist. White Americans owned, used, raped, abused, and loved their slaves. Slavery is a complex relationship. It can and did bring shame to this country. A problem we still live with today. But GWTW tries to show us the rich detail of house slaves. And Mitchell brings up an excellent point about how Mammy and Pork couldn't leave their home and loved ones even if the relationship started out as master and slave, and how Scarlett depended on both of them.

At one point, Scarlett tries to get Mammy to go away and let her do her machinations in peace, but Mammy reminds Scarlett that she'd been freed and now she can go anywhere she wants, or stay right by Scarlett to keep an eye on her...

Harriet Tubman went back for her husband and he refused to go north to freedom with her. Now that might have something to say for their marriage but that is a significant example of a slave refusing their opportunity for freedom.

The book is unusual because the two main characters are constantly criticizing the society in which they live. S and R both hate the war and thinks it's a futile attempt. But they still don't pick up and leave and go somewhere else. They are tied to it just like some of the slaves are tied to the family. There's a misplaced devotion that is at the heart of many of the characters.

Scarlett had an absolute fascination and admiration for Dilcey, the half Indian half black wife of Pork that complicates the idea that Scarlett is a racist. Dilcey is also one of the wisest characters in the book.

Then there's Uncle Henry Miss Pittypat's Major Domo who is described as the only mature thoughtful person in Melanie and Charles childhood.

Complicated piece of fiction.

Scarlett is nice to black people -- one of the slaves tell her if she is as nice to white people as she is to blacks, she wouldn't have so many problems.

Dilcey is devoted to Scarlett because Scarlett had her father also buy Prissy, Dilcey's daughter.

Real people are complicated too. I remember reading that during the Great Depression, FDR's WPA provided work for some educated people by sending them to the South to interview former slaves, then very old. They wanted to record their thoughts before their generation was gone forever. They recorded some of them on records I believe. Many were illiterate so they'd never written their memoirs or diaries.

Many of these very old people described themselves as being sorry slavery was over. They said back in the slave days, elderly slaves were cared for by the families they served. They weren't left to fend for themselves as they were having to do themselves n their old age. Also, they had the "family" of the plantation, so even if they outlived all their natural family, they were still in a group of familiar people that took care of them. If they had outlived their usefulness, they weren't abandoned. They had a sense of continuing community and stability. At least this is what many of the interviewees said.

The interviewers conjectured that they were remembering an idealized version of the past, because they were living in very hard and uncertain times themselves.

Keep in mind they were very old, it was the Depression and they were very poor. Many of them had outlived their entire families. They had no one but great nephews or great grandchildren that often weren't close. Some were barefoot, wearing clothes that were not much more than rags, living in shacks. So in those circumstances, being cared for sounded pretty good. They weren't much better off financially or as far as living conditions went, than they were as slaves. They lived in terrible shacks, probably with an outhouse and a few chickens.

There's another book I read after GWTW, a non-fiction compilation of diaries of a Southern belle in the Civil War. It was widely published in the South and I bet Margaret Mitchell read it. I wondered if Mitchell partly based Scarlett on the writer.

The diary writer and her family were refugees fleeing Union troops during the war. The author was a very pretty, young, single judge's daughter who was very snobby and haughty. In the whole diary, hundreds of pages, she barely mentioned the slaves and only in passing. For example, "[Slave Girl] packed my bags today as we prepared to leave." The relationship between slave and master seemed almost invisible, like there were a lot of interactions but they weren't worth writing down. There seemed to be some slight affection or concern for the slaves as they all became homeless refugees together, but not a lot.

Eventually the former slaves simply disappeared out of the diary, I assume that they left once they were freed and peace returned. But the writer herself was the coldest person I've ever read about. She was very detached from everyone, black and white. Her only attachments seem to be for her male relatives, even the females seemed to mean little to her. She speaks of her brothers as if she worships them. That's another interesting insight into how people thought back then. Men were everything. Women would soon marry and leave.

[quote]Few can trace family history back to the late 1700 and early 1800s like black Americans can.

Many of us in New England can easily trace our American ancestry back to the early 1600s and to the specific towns in the European nations from which our ancestors came.

Trashy book filled with casual lies about history.

Recently PBS presented an "American Masters" episode on Margaret Mitchell.

She was a lot more than just the author of GWTW. She had been one of the first reporters and even went undercover for some stories.

Another thing I learned was that she was became a large donator to Howard University's program for Black Doctors.

AWK!

[quote] ...she was became...

lose the "became".

Sorry.

"The book is racist; the portrayal of slaves as being happy with their predicament and showing no signs of wanting to be freed is at odds with the lives they actually lead."

What you said is total bullshit. SOME of the slaves in GWTW are loyal to their masters and want to stay with them. But of the 100 or so slaves at Tara, only three of them stay after the Yankees come through: Mammy, Pork and Dilcey. The rest of them run off, presumably to savor their new freedom. Most of the slaves belonging to the other plantations in the County also run off. So to say that the novel depicts ALL slaves as happy and contented is pure bull.

Another misconception about GWTW is that all the slaves are docile and simple minded. Well, Prissy was certainly an airhead. And Big Sam was childlike. But two of the wisest, strongest characters in the book are Peter and Mammy. Miss PIttypat doesn't take care of Peter; he takes care of HER. When Melanie and Charles were children their parents were both dead, so Peter took on the role of a substitute parent. And Mammy lets no one tell her what to do; in fact, she tells Scarlett off but good when she tells her she intends to marry Rhett Butler. She calls them both "a mule in a horse harness", telling her you can slick up a mule and hitch him to a fine carriage but he's a mule just the same and doesn't fool anybody. To lump all of the slaves in GWTW into one category is ridiculous. There were all kinds.

It's possible there would be one Mammy in the Old South, someone so enmeshed with her owners' family that she'd identify with them rather than her fellow slaves, and stay genuinely loyal to them when slavery was no longer legal. Some upper servants are like that, they see themselves as an extension of the aristocracy with more in common with their masters than their fellow servants. The butler in "Remains of the Day" has a lot in common with Mammy, except that he eventually realized that his devotion was misplaced and he'd wasted his life.

So I can believe that some slaves stayed with their masters, but IMHO the vast majority of them stayed because they were better off staying where they had a job and a place to live. If Mammy stayed out of genuine loyalty, then IMHO she's a tragic figure.

I always found it implausible and out of character that Rhett would enlist in the Confederate army at the last moment.

She showed several characters showing last minute love for the south -- the convict released from prison and allowed to fight, Ashley. And then Rhett -- but only after all was lost.

The racism of GWTW is a complicated question. I think there is the implicit racism of an author raised in the South who romanticized the past in many respects and took certain social norms for granted regarding black people vs. white people. Certainly the "I sho' does respeck dat genulmn" kind of "quaint Negro" dialect wouldn't fly today in the least. But I don't think the book has a racist message at all. As someone upthread said, it's a character study, and I think Mitchell is one of the finest writers of character I've ever read. Her characters are part of the fabric of a deeply racist society; what do you expect the book to be---a guidebook on social justice? In 1936? It's not great literature, but it's a terrific, absorbing, and moving story.

But the "Negro dialect" Mitchell used was everywhere in those days, she didn't invent it. Even Amos 'n' Andy used it on their radio show, and they were black themselves. It was the common vernacular back then.

You have to judge people by what society was like then.

[quote]I get irritated when people describe it as a love story

One of the best descriptions I read of it is that it was a love story, often wrongly described as a romance.

R73, that was my point; as I said, it wouldn't fly today in the least, so, yes, it looks terrible to people judging the book by today's standards. On the other hand, I wouldn't dare cite Amos 'n' Andy to buttress the argument that what we see as horribly racist was OK in the past. Lampooning someone's dialect and wearing blackface while doing it is inherently racist and always was.

Romanticized a society? The ante-bellum section of the book is 127 pages covering a weeks time.. Then we have 900 pages of Scarlett working through some hellacious experiences all the while becoming the biggest bitch in Christendom. Yeah there's dough at the end but she's lost all of the most important people in her life. (screw those two wimpy kids)

In the end she's got money and some red dirt.

Mammy was a great character.

I am so sick of the commentary about this book and film. It is a depiction through the eyes of a privileged southern white woman, period. To volley back and forth is useless. Those who are sympathetic to plantation life and the south will continue to romanticize the debasement of a group for the leisure and well-being of another. Others such as myself (a black man) chose to ignore this... the justification and romanticizing of a terrorist period that nearly caused this country's demise.

Victim Cultures deserve a word on this book, but not the last word.

No one should have the last word on a work of art.

Yes, romanticized, R76. It may have been a week's time and 127 pages in the beginning, but they spent the rest of the book lamenting their "lost, beautiful, gracious civilization."

We can learn a hell of a lot from a romanticized PIV, R78. I always wondered how people could convince themselves that the brutality and dehumanization of slavery was normal and acceptable, and GWTW lays it out. Those people convinced themselves that because they were close to a few house slaves that the slaves didn't resent being slaves, and that all the horrific abuse was taking place elsewhere, perpetrated people who weren't as humane as themselves and their neighbors. It was all someone else, far away, doing all the whipping and rape and ripping families apart. We're the good Masters.

Of course that's not what the author intended to teach me about the history of the South, but she did.

My family goes back to England and Scotland in the latee 1600s. They were in Virginia before the American Revolution, and there is a memorial to one who fought with General Washington. Only the very wealthiest people owned slaves; they were not owned by the equivalent of Joe Sixpack. Of course, many people are cruel and stupid, but there were many people who knew they paid a lot of money for their slaves and took fairly good care of them. I am NOT ADVOCATING slavery, but since my ancestors were wealthy Virginians, some of them owned slaves.

My boss is a fat, educated, elegant black woman. She LOVES Gone With the Wind, the book and movie. Part of her large office displays a portion of her Gone With the Wind collection. It's tasteful and in a cabinet, and not scholcky stuff.

Mammy is one of the greatest characters in the written word. She is very wise, crafty, no nonsense, and can keep up and surpass the best of 'em. People respect her and acknowledge her. Remember in Charleston how she speaks with people from Georgia? Scarlett is a selfish spoiled brat who cares about herself. The smarter characters like Rhett respect Mammy. It may have been a racist era, but not everyone was a racist. Not everyone owned slaves.

Some of you need to stop shouting racist at everything.

As a couple of people have said, there are parallels in white culture to show that servants have inordinate loyalty to masters or employers, who may or may not reciprocate in some way. My great aunts who worked for Yankees in Boston thought their families were gods, even though they got paid crap by them. To some extent it's human nature. Margaret Mitchell was a woman of her time, and wrote as such. It's fine to point out outdated viewpoints in literature, but useless to try to retroactively apply current values to earlier periods. And its dangerous to judge that way -- otherwise we'd burn all books before 1980, or maybe before yesterday.

R73, Amos 'n Andy were white. From 1928 to 1960 Freeman Gosden and Charles Correll played the characters on radio.

There was a television show where Amos 'n Andy were played by black actors that started in 1951 and ran 65 episodes, but they themselves were imitating Gosden and Correll, and all the writers and producers were white. And the show was pulled after sponsor boycotts.

How the heck is Melanie a racist?

Please explain.

The politics don't concern me. It was a beautifully told story... Mitchell's capacity to paint a picture with words and capture the internal workings of character is among the best there is.

R63, what was the name of that book?

I think the mistake we all make is to try and place what we know now on to people and situations from a past that just didn't know any better. Just because they were slaves, it doesn't mean that they didn't have conflicted and complicated feelings for the slavers. Human emotion is a complex thing.

The peculiar institution is an awful stain on our nation's history, one that we will never escape. If you consider GWTW a racist book, then at least be glad that it has allowed people to have these discussions about the old south and slavery.

Oh my god, R85, how did I miss that R73 asserted that Amos 'n' Andy were WHITE? I must have skipped over that and gone straight to his statement that "Negro dialect" was standard and non-racist.

R86, Melanie says that she's so glad that they don't have to move to New York, because Beau couldn't attend school there, because she didn't want him to be in class with black children.

The book is not a historical text. It is fiction. It follows the classic Bildungsroman format. While written in third person omniscient, it is told through the voice of an upper-class southerner and slave owner, reflecting that perspective.

Characters in fiction serve specific function and may or may not be fully fleshed out. Details about relationships are included only when relevant. Mammy is not there to be a whole and unique person. Mammy is there to reflect Scarlett (among other literary purposes).

Whether you consider it good or bad literature, it's still literature, nothing more, nothing less. It must be analyzed in that context first before applying other social criticisms.

R91, that really saddens me. Can you give me the chapter?

Thanks.

This was a fun thread.

For R88, A Confederate Girl's Diary, by Sarah Morgan Dawson.

When Scarlett buys the lumber mill, she and Ashley argue over her use of convict labor, which Ashley opposes. Scarlett reminds him that he grew up with slaves at Twelve Oaks, and Ashley responds by saying he had planned to free all the slaves when his father died. Twelve Oaks is destroyed by the Yankees, so he never gets the opportunity.

[quote][R91], that really saddens me. Can you give me the chapter?

It's right after Scarlett convinces Ashley to come manage the mill for her.

I don't know why it saddens you; you must realize that black and white Southerners did not mix socially at that time. It was the same for many up north as well, of course.

Even if the war never happend, freeing the slaves after his father's death would have been a dumb and inpracticle thing to do for Ashley, I mean how would he have been able to run Twelve Oaks and secure his standard of living without slaves?

That's what I thought too, R98. Those big plantations weren't sustainable without slave labor. If he wanted to abandon the plantation and go work as an accountant or something, fine, Melanie probably would have gone along with it.

But if he was trying to save the plantation and its wealth for future generations, and maintain his family's social status, it wasn't doable. They'd go from rich to poor in a generation. Most people aren't doing that voluntarily. And most plantation owners didn't know how to earn an honest living by work. In that era, work was low class.

Not to mention, what would become of the slaves if he just freed them? Would he give them money or land to live on, or tell them to just go away and be vagrants, or hope against hope that someone in the region would break tradition and actually pay them for their labor? And what was the legal status of free black people in Georgia at the time, correct me if I'm wrong but was there any such thing? Couldn't they be re-enslaved?

No, Ashley was bullshitting, trying to assuage his conscience for having lived on the proceeds of slavery. He knew damn well that he was too useless to earn his own living, he was meant to be a "gentleman" and that meant living off his inheritance. At least he had enough of a conscience to know that slavery was wrong, unlike Scarlett and every other white person in the book.

I think it was Margaret Mitchell's intention to show what a impractical and idealistic dreamer Ashley was, especially compared to Scarlett. From the very beginning of their relationship, Melanie was able to overlook/rationalize/forgive ANYTHING Scarlett did, including murder, marrying her brother Charles, even freezing out India Wilkes who suspected Scarlett of cheating with Ashley. Her loyalty to Scarlett was unflinching.

But when it came to Ashley, Melanie was blind to his shortcomings and weaknesses. Her dying words to Scarlett were to take care of Ashley but "never let him know." Melanie and Ashley were both products of the antebellum South, suited perfectly to each other due to their privileged and sheltered upbringing. Completely opposite of the selfish and pragmatic Scarlett. If the war hadn't come along, Ashley and Melanie could have lived out their lives in genteel indolence, in a dream world.

But it would have been so hot with those dresses on. In the summer I would have traveled with a few of my slaves to Maine. I just read a book on real plantations. A few of the larger ones. The money they made, in it's real total not adjusted, is still staggering today.

There were other industries in the South that Ashley could have engaged in. He was only 23 or 24 at the beginning of the story. He would have been an excellent lawyer or educator, politician, banker, trader and Twelve Oaks would have sold for a pretty penny.

They could have sharecropped Twelve Oaks. Agriculture continued in the south after the Civil War and the end of slavery. Tara was restored. Cotton went SKY HIGH! His wealth wouldn't have been extravagant but as an educated man he would have done well. It was Scarlett and Melanie who held him back after the war.

The Wilkes always interbreed, they had no stamina for work or life. Doomed to fail as products of the incestuous South. Not like the Tarletons!

Melanie knew exactly about Ashley's weaknesses. Also among her dying words were:

"Ashley - isn't practical." Only death could have forced that disloyalty from Melanie.... their glance sealed the bargain that the protection of Ashley Wilkes from a too harsh world was passing from one woman to another and that Ashley's masculine pride should never be humbled by this knowledge.

Are you kidding me R101? Nobody was more aware of Ashley's shortcomings and weaknesses than Melanie. Keeping him from marrying Scarlett was simply protecting him. She wanted to take care of him more than she loved him.

Maybe I didn't phrase it exactly right....I believe Melanie did love Ashley, and she certainly didn't marry him to keep him from marrying Scarlett. She very probably grew up knowing he was her intended husband (the Wilkses always married their cousins!)

She simply refused to acknowledge Ashley's weaknesses, much less Scarlett's. I think Rhett has a line somewhere where he says something about how Melanie refuses to acknowledge the bad in anyone she loves.

Ashley wanted to move to New York to work in a bank, but Scarlett was so obsessed with him that she threw a fit. Whether or not he would have been successful, who knows?

One of my favorite characters in GWTW was Ashley's father, John Wilkes. He was the epitome of the Southern gentleman; poised, hospitable, kind, noble. He hoped (like Ashley) that the North and the South could settle their differences peaceably and that there would be no war. No doubt if that meant freeing all his slaves he would have done it. The South needs every man (and boy) to enlist, so Mr. Wilkes goes off to war at the age of nearly seventy. Mrs. Tarleton thinks so much of him that she gives him her one remaining horse (she donated them all to the war effort), her beloved mare Nellie, to ride off to war on. The last time Scarlett sees him, he's riding off to fight the war. He tells her "I should have liked to see my first grandchild. Goodbye, my dear" and then he "swung onto Nellie and cantered off, his hat in his hand, his silver hair bare to the rain." Later Uncle Henry comes by Aunt Pittypat's house on a short furlough and tells Scarlett that Mr. Wilkes is dead; a shell came right down on him and poor Nellie (Uncle Henry has to shoot her after the shell tears her open). He tells her that he was "a brave man...and a good soldier for all his years." I thought that was one of the saddest events in the novel; the death of kind, gentle John Wilkes.

The line was specific to dishonour. "There's too much honour in her to ever conceive of dishonour in anyone she loves." The drunken Rhett Butler's explanation of Melanie's reaction to Ashley and Scarlett caught not doing anything particularly bad. But it had nothing to do with Ashley's weakness, which was related to survival in the world around him, it was to do with concept of honour, in this case, fidelity.

In reaction to the constant 'push'- pull' regarding the legitimacy and or romanticizing about the book and the film...I think that Thomas Jefferson said it best when he said something to the effect, "that their descendants will neither forgive or forget this.."

Melanie was a passive aggressive histrionic.

I think Melanie was raised to "manage" her husband and other men, as women were in those days. That means using a soft, childlike voice, acting childlike, and acting like she needed to be protected.

Remember how tough Melanie really was when no men were looking. She had a very difficult labor and childbirth, was barely recovering and helped Scarlett handle a dead body. Didn't she come downstairs with a gun or saber or something when a Union soldier got in the house?

The truth is that under the skin, Melanie and Scarlett were a lot alike. They both realized most of the men they knew were unfit to adapt to the new world, including Ashley. Women back then were trained to act weak and helpless to get men to take care of them. Scarlett didn't have the luxury of doing that after the war, she was always aggressive so she adapted quickly. Melanie was raised to act delicate and genteel, yet she backed up Scarlett when the chips were down. Not out of naïveté but out of loyalty.

Here's a really poor video of what I mean. A Union soldier gets in the house, Scarlett is terrified and shoots him. And then "delicate" Melanie, barely off her deathbed, appears on the stairs to back her up. They cut it off right before they show that Melanie has grabbed something to use as a weapon. She's protecting her "sister," Scarlett.

In the book, Scarlett shot the soldier in the face in cold blood, and looked up to see Melanie staggering out of her bedroom with a sword she was too weak to lift. Melanie was very brave, but not a lot of use, which is how Mitchell seemed to view the Ladies and Gentlemen of the Old South in general.

Melanie wouldn't dream of criticizing anyone out loud, directly or indirectly, but that doesn't mean she wasn't aware of their shortcomings. She was devoted to Scarlett, partly because she considered her a sister-in-law through all her subsequent marriages, partly out of gratitude for getting her out of burning Atlanta alive, and I think partly because Scarlett was a better bet to keep a roof over her head than Ashley. And I think she genuinely admired and envied Scarlett because she could say all the things Melanie would never say, and break all the rules she followed. And Scarlett admired and envied Melanie for being the True Lady she couldn't be, their relationship was a true attraction of opposites.

BTW, I hate dealing with people like Melanie, they never EVER say what they really think. And they expect you to infer what they mean even if they don't say it, and then they don't tell you how upset they are that you didn't get it. Life is too short for that shit.

Scarlett didn't desert Melanie when she was pregnant and helped deliver her baby while the war went on not far from where they were. That took guts and plenty of women in those days might have just fluttered around helplessly or worse yet, left Melanie to fend for herself or decided they couldn't leave the area when it wasn't safe. They would have waited for someone else to decide what to do, but there was no one else. I think after the baby's birth, Melanie realized Scarlett would take care of her, Ashley wouldn't, so she stuck by her. That's a kind of survival instinct too. What they went through together was like soldiers fighting in the trenches together, the type of story you tell the grandkids.

Like Scarlett or hate her, she got it done.

My mom made me watch the movie when I was a kid, and I loved it. I've seen it many times since, but only read the book for the first time a couple of years ago. Vivien Leigh was really perfectly cast.

I would love a really great miniseries that would allow more of the book's characters who didn't make it to the movie, but I can't imagine any network that would want to take it on.

One thing that always confused me is, when Mammy was Scarlett's and Ellen's nurse, than that means that she has to have children herself in order to be able to breast feed someone elses children, how did that work? Did she just get pregnant on purpose so she could be a nurse and what happend to her own children?

I don't remember they ever saying Mammy was a wet nurse. She was essentially the nanny/caregiver of Ellen and Scarlett.

[quote]Like Scarlett or hate her, she got it done.

Yes, she had a great loyalty to the people in her life, even if she did treat them poorly on an emotional/personal level. She pretty much carried everybody at Tara on her back because they were her family and you never turn your back on family. That's why what Suellen did to Gerald was especially terrible in Scarlett's eyes. And even then she didn't kick Suellen to the curb, when most people probably would have.

Dilcey was the wet nurse. Mammy never did anything like that.

Actually, Scarlett didn't think what Suellen did to Gerald was "especially terrible." When she hears about the money Gerald would have gotten if he had taken the Iron Clad Oath she totally understands Suellen's motives for what she did. But of course her actions resulted in Gerald's death and Scarlett is justifiably angry about that. But she doesn't tell Suellen off (I wish she had) because Will Benteen convinces her it woould be unseemly to quarrel when her father is about to be put to rest. Will is also protective of Suellen because she's going to be his wife. It's a marriage of convenience; Will wants to stay at Tara and Suellen is desperate for a husband. Gerald is dead, Melanie and Ashley are leaving, and Careen (she's the one Will really loves) is going into a convent, so Will tells Scarlett in order to stay at Tara he'll have to marry Suellen to keep people from gossiping about them. Will is one of the most likable characters in GWTW; it's kind of unsettling that he marries the whiny, self-centered, conniving Suellen but he's calm and takes everything in stride, so it would seem that he would be able to put up with her. Suellen ends up getting married to good old Will but by her mother's standards she's coming down in the world because Will is a "Cracker"; uneducated and with no pedigree or property. Still, he's a good man and will do well by her and Tara. Mammy called him "something the Lord has provided."

There are no words.....

[quote](Mammy) was essentially the nanny/caregiver of Ellen and Scarlett.

In the book, at one point Rhett tells her she is "Mammy in chief" and does not have to do any heavy lifting (Scarlett was afraid the now elderly Mammy might drop Bonnie Blue).

Which would no doubt r120 , result in the dreaded Bonnie Blue bounce.

I am not american and I barely have any knowledge of american history, but I never read anything offensive in this book. It was entertaining imo. It felt like a southern version of Age of Innocence to me. About a group of people who romanticized and idealized a time that has passed and they cannot let go. I dont think th Southern Society people were voicing Margaret Mitchell's point of view either. Rhett Butler and Mammy were clearly the characters who were voicing out some of her true opinions, not Scarlett or Ashley or Melanie.

In the book, the narration repeated several times that Clay Coynty, Ga. was a place of "good relations" between masters and slaves, where beatings and child-selling were practically unknown and everything was lovey-dovey in the plantation houses.

But the narration never explained how the O'Haras were able to get their field hands to bust their asses in the cotton fields from sunup to sundown in raging heat and killing cold, without being paid. Oh sure, Gerald OHara only ever beat a slave once, but how about his slimy overseer who actually had to get work out of the field slaves?

The narration is as deep in denial about slavery as some of the characters. Not Scarlett, though, she's perfectly okay with abusing laborers to make a profit.

Scarlett was a tiger belle.

First a female house servant like Mammy would have breastfed the white children she raised, often along side her. Since Mammy was Ellen's nanny we don't know what happened to her children. They may have been sold, or died. But she would have been breast feeding at the same time Scarlett was born.

I don't think Melly was racist. I like her character because it is a character of strength and nobility. She is what Scarlett should have been and was raised to be, and next to Mammy Rhett respects Melly the most.

Finally I think the book makes a good show of hinting that Ashley was really a closet case.

Finally I think the book makes a good show of hinting that Ashley was really a closet case."

He was no "closet case." He was a dreamer, not a doer. He was cerebral, not visceral, like the other young men in the county. That's doesn't mean he secretly lusted after cock.

This thread is making me want to reread the book, but I don't have time!!! Someone please remind me - doesn't the book make it pretty clear that DL fave Belle Watling has a son by Rhett Butler?

Ashley is a the most thankless of the four major roles. Cannot remember the details of his education, just the pivotal moment when Scarlett sees him for the first time after her returns from his "Grand Tour." These evidently were a part of a Southern gentleman's education (doesn't dying Melanie make Scarlett promise to give her son Beau a Grand Tour?) but we never really find out if Ashley was academically smart or not.

I don't really read Ashley as gay, but he was written as such a weak useless wimp. It would have been interesting if Mitchell had written him just a little sharper, actually stringing Scarlett along in more obviously, perhaps displaying more jealousy of Rhett. Instead he is always portrayed as a helpless loser.

For me, though, Mitchell's incredible skills as a writer, especially as a female in the 30s, are what really makes this book so unique. I think the sex scenes hold up pretty well too. I have always liked this one sentence: "She would miss the long amusing conversations in bed with Rhett, while the ember of his cigar glowed in the dark." And of course the classic, "I have always admired your spirit, my dear, never more than when you are cornered."

I agree with you on all that, R127. Mitchell was an excellent writer. It's been years since I last read the book, but I still remember the feelings her description of Scarlett's brief marriage with Charles Hamilton brought up in me. I can still feel the cringe and revulsion of what intimacy with Charles must have been like for her.

I also like when Rhett tells Scarlett to quit crying: "You're like a thief who isn't sorry he stole but is very, very sorry he's going to jail."

"Someone please remind me - doesn't the book make it pretty clear that DL fave Belle Watling has a son by Rhett Butler? "

Not pretty clear, there's just a couple of hints.

"I don't really read Ashley as gay, but he was written as such a weak useless wimp.'

He wasn't a weak, useless wimp. He was bred to be a Southern gentleman, living his life out on his plantation, in his own sheltered world. But then the Civil War stepped in and changed all that and he was like a fish out of water. At the end of the novel, when Scarlett's infatuation with Ashley is finally over, she tries to dismiss him by saying to Rhett: "He's such a helpless, poor-spirited creature for all his prattle about truth and honor" and he cuts her off, telling her "No...if you must see him as he really is, see him straight. He's only a gentleman caught in a world he doesn't belong in, trying to make a poor best of it by the rules of the world that's gone."

MM was such a good writer, her two line description of Rosemary Butler made her not only likable, but very memorable.

R125 a female house servant would have nursed the gentility if one had been lactating at the time (a Dilcey was when Melanie arrived with a newborn). If no house servant was lactating they would probably bring in a lactating field hand, and expect her to be grateful as she was getting a break from her usual hard work. Hopefully she'd get to keep her own baby and nurse it as well, but the welfare of a field hand's baby wasn't very high on the list of the people who made these decisions.

A 1945 cartoon by World War II cartoonist, Bill Mauldin, shows an American soldier lying on the ground with Margaret Mitchell's bullet-riddled book. The caption reads: "Dear, Dear Miss Mitchell, You will probably think this is an awful funny letter to get from a soldier, but I was carrying your big book, Gone with the Wind, under my shirt and a ..."

In the season 3 episode of I Love Lucy, "Lucy Writes a Novel", which aired on April 5, 1954, "Lucy" (Lucille Ball) reads about a housewife who makes a fortune writing a novel in her spare time. Lucy writes her own novel, which she titles Real Gone with the Wind.

Gone with the Wind is the book that S. E. Hinton's runaway teenage characters, "Ponyboy" and "Johnny," read while hiding from the law in the young adult novel The Outsiders (1967).

A film parody titled "Went with the Wind!" aired in a 1976 episode of The Carol Burnett Show. Burnett, as "Starlett", descends a long staircase wearing a green curtain complete with hanging rod. The outfit, designed by Bob Mackie, is displayed at the Smithsonian Institution.

MAD magazine created a parody of the novel, "Groan With the Wind" (1991), in which Ashley was renamed "Ashtray" and Rhett became "Rhetch." It ends with Rhetch and Ashtray running off together.

A pictorial parody in which the slaves are white and the protagonists are black appeared in a 1995 issue of Vanity Fair titled, "Scarlett 'n the Hood".

In a MADtv comedy sketch (2007), "Slave Girl #8" introduces three alternative endings to the film. In one ending, Scarlett pursues Rhett wearing a jet pack.

In the book Maximum Ride: School's Out Forever (2006), the character of eleven-year-old "Nudge" references Gone with the Wind, and specifically Tara, when she asks her guardian Anne about her house.

Can someone jog my memory about something in the book?

Is it the Southern ladies who are discussing Northern women and are appalled that they would use Irish girls to mind their children? The point being is that they trusted the black Mammys much more than white Irish girls. And were the Northern women equally appalled that the Southern women used black women instead of white Irish girls?

No, it was a Northern woman who asked Scarlett about finding a nanny and Scarlett said she could just ask of the freed slaves traveling through on the road. The Northern woman squawked and said she'd never trust her children with a black woman and demanded an Irish girl.

Scarlett was angry and hurt for all the black people who raised her and her family.

Plantation owners of that time cared very much about the health of a field hand and the children they bore. Not in a loving way but as in an investment. A healthy, male field hand would have cost the equivalent of $34,000.00 in the 1850s.

r134, there was also the book "The Wind Done Gone" which was written about the daughter produced by the union of Scarlett's father and Mammy. There was a huge legal battle over the book. I think they finally got around the Mitchell estate by calling it a parody.

Maybe Ry Murph should use the legal battle for one of his future Feud anthologies.

[quote]Mammy called him "something the Lord has provided."

I thought Scarlett said that (or rather thought it to herself).

Why didn't she ever write another book?

[quote]Why didn't she ever write another book?

She didn't like the fuss GWTW caused, and then she was run over by a car and killed.

She was rather pretty herself.

"I thought Scarlett said that (or rather thought it to herself)."

Mammy said it first: "undoubtedly, as Mammy frequently declared, Will was something the Lord had provided and Scarlett often wondered how Tara could have lived through the last few months without him." Scarlett later thinks the same thing when she comes back to Tara for Gerald's funeral and sees the work Will has done to keep Tara going. Will really is a character of importance in the book, although he's not in it for very long. He is instrumental, along with Scarlett, in saving the plantation from ruin and he loves Tara as much as Scarlett does, so much that he'll willing to marry the awful Suellen in order to stay there.

R132, what was the description? I can't remember.

bump

overrate Harlequin Romance.

What do you think created the template for all those Harlequin romances, R146?

R146, the answer is Jane Eyre, Pamela, plus host of largely forgotten popular 18th and 19th century novels.

Rhett raped Scarlett and she "gloried in it".

Subversive stuff.

I wish I was Scarlett that night.

I don't approve of rape of course but she got pleasured in a way that she never even imagined she could be.

Maybe I should refer to is as seduction? Up the stairs with his hot whiskey breath. LOL.

What say you all?

the hole wants what it wants.

It wasn't really a "rape." Frightened by him (he's drunk and very angry) she runs from him, but he catches her, grabs her, carries her up the stairs, kissing her mouth and body. HE is in control, not her; in every situation she's been in with a man she has been the one to call the shots and now here is a man who is stronger than her, someone she could not "bully or break." She experiences the "ecstasy of surrender." He carries her off to bed and fucks her like she's never been fucked before. It was passion, not rape. He didn't "force" her. She submitted to him. At least that's how I see it. I never did buy the rape scenario.

The trip up the stairs, in the book, is a long passage but is clearly two parts... they've just had an ugly, intense conversation... he's drunk, she's endured the "adultery" party and doesn't understand half of what he's talking about. She attempts to flee the conversation and him. He pursues her. She is clearly frightened when he lifts her off her feet and carries her up the stairs because she doesn't understand what he's doing. But after the first kiss, which is of violent intensity rather than nature, she's totally turned on. There's never any fear after that... just the new sensations of lust. And the next morning she'd plainly do round two if they didn't fight again. The disintegration of that marriage that should have been so successful is really well captured in the last part of the book. But Mitchell was writing all along about two people at cross purposes.

"Oh she wept with delight when he gave her a smile....

And trembled with fear at his frown."

I suppose you could say it was more sexual dominance than rape, not that it wasn't perfectly legal for a man to brutally rape his wife. And it would have been rape-rape if Scarlett had kept resisting, but presumably she started showing her appreciation for dominance/submission sex at some point.

But it was close enough to rape to leave Rhett appalled at what he'd done, he took a long trip after that and didn't fuck her again. Scarlett was fine with it the next morning.

Are there nude daguerreotypes of Pork?

Trivia: Ashley's full name was George Ashley Wilkes.

I am a criminal defense attorney, and I can't tell you how many times I have stated that line by Rhett about being a thief. One of my clients was so taken aback by the truth of the matter he never got in trouble again. So GWTW can be a useful tool. And Mitchell was a great writer. No one has mention she won a Pulitzer Prize for GWTW. Isn't odd how Southern women ( Mitchell, Harper Lee, Eudora Welty, Flannery O' Connor, Willa Cather, Carson McCullers, Zora Neale Hurston, and Marjorie Kinnan) wrote the best literature America has ever known.

Rhett had some of the best lines in the book ("A cat's a better mother than you!") . But I like when he tells Scarlett to call her new store in Atlanta "Caveat Emptorium" - she has the sign painted and hung, until Ashley has to translate it for her.

Do you think he jammed it up her ass?

The "Caveat Emptorium" is a favorite of mine, too. Great burn, Rhett.

He really got all the good lines. When they're discussing the new monster house she wants to build - mispronouncing the word chalet throughout - and when he clues in (after making her spell it) she says you must have seen one like it. Says Rhett "I have, but not in Switzerland. The Swiss are a very intelligent race and keenly alive to architectural beauty."

And one of my favourites: "Really, Scarlett, I can't go all my life waiting to catch you between husbands."

and when she says she doesn't love him: That should be no drawback. I don't recall that love was prominent in your other two ventures.

That whole proposal scene is a master class in humour illustrating insight.

I read that Vivien Leigh and Clark Gable both said that the proposal scene was their favorite together.

So much of Rhett's humor fits in with the romantic comedy style of the Thirties. I can imagine William Powell doing justice to that aspect of the character at least.

The passage in the fog where she realizes she never loved Ashley and really loved Rhett was my favorite part.

What does Caveat mean? Sorry english isn't my first language.

"Caveat Emptorium" is Latin for "Let the Buyer Beware."

Rhett loved to screw with Scarlett.

Thank's R165.

The dogs bark but the caravan passes on.

"Taint fittin'! Taint fittin'!"

Go stick your head in a punch bowl, Melody.

R164, since English isn't your first language, it's spelled "Thanks," not "thank's."

Apostrophes are never used to write a plural. You see people do this on the internet all the time, but they're wrong. If you mean to use a plural, just add and "s" on at the end and you're done. For example, dogs, cats, books, barns, etc. No apostrophe.

Apostrophes are used for either a possessive, like "that is Scarlett's dress," or a contraction, like:

that is = that's

can not = can't

will not = won't

do not = don't.

And since I'm nagging you:

It's = it is

Its = a possession that belongs to "it," like: "The baby shook its rattle."

There = a location

Their = something that belongs to them

They're = a contraction of "they are."

Now you're more literate than half of America.

" Scarlett I think you are the verge of a crying jag"- one of the funny lines of all time!

Waitin' for him like a spider!

This is an excellent thread. Unfortunately, I read the book on my Kindle and I think a lot was left out. I'll have to get the book version of it. The movie was wonderful...even Roger Ebert loved it. The only actor who was miscast was Ashley, and poor Leslie Howard would have agreed.

Scarlett enjoyed being ravished in both versions.

If anyone has ever bothered to read the slave narratives, written or dictated by actual slaves, you would realize that both the idea of all slaves being happy and contented AND the idea that they hated their owners, are both equally wrong. Slaves AND slave owners were individuals not monoliths. Each relationship and plantation was different and complex. This is especially true when it came to Mammys. Many of them had no family of their own, they grew up as a companion to a young white women, then they raised her children and grandchildren. She was essentially cast in the role of a maiden aunt. As she lived her life raising several generations of one family, she would naturally grow close to the family and see them as her own. Likewise, the children would develop familial feelings toward her. GWTW was very good at portraying this relationship. For people like Scarlett, Mammy is second only to her own parents, and was the one black person who could speak truthfully to them without fear. GWTW, was also right about Rhett wanting to earn Mammy's approval. Reading letters from the time-period about courting, it was known that it was best if you could gain not only the approval of the parents but also the Mammy, even though in GWTW it was different since Scarlett was a double widow with no living parents. For one thing, Mammys tended to chaperone the young lady during her courtship, her report to the parents about his actions would determine if they approved. Even after Emancipation, Mammys were the one group of former slaves, who remained in the esteem of the elites, and often remained with the family. For instance, when Confederate General Wade Hampton later ran for Governor of South Carolina, as a Democrat "Redeemer," his mammy was one of his featured and most persuasive campaigners. She helped to sell him to both black voters(who were not yet disenfranchised) and to white voters. Yet, there are also slave narratives from Mammys that were treated horribly. Though, from white letters written at the time, how a person treated their mammy was considered to be an indicator of how they were as a person. As always, the truth is never white and black, but grey.

GWTW, was also correct in portraying the Yankee overseer in a bad light. One thing I noticed in slave narratives is that if a Yankee was placed in charge of a plantation, the slaves almost always described them as worse than the Southern overseers.

While I don't have a problem with us, today, looking back and calling slavery wrong, as it most certainly was. I don't agree with condemning all slave owners or "slavers" for engaging in slavery. As an institution slavery had been universally practiced for thousands of years, including among Africans who sold the slaves to the Europeans. The abolitionist movement wasn't even a hundred years old when the Civil War started. It is hard to condemn people when they lived in a world that was only starting to take the position it was wrong. Just as I can't condemn people, until recently, for being anti LGB, since the gay liberation movement only started to enter the mainstream conscience in the 1960s and wasn't removed from being considered a mental illness until the 1970s. I can't condemn people for having views that were literally instilled in them by every facet of society, with little push back against those views. However, since we now live in a more evolved age, I do feel comfortable condemning people with such views on race or sexual orientation, today.

[quote] But the narration never explained how the O'Haras were able to get their field hands to bust their asses in the cotton fields from sunup to sundown in raging heat and killing cold, without being paid.

Statements like this always bug me. They didn't labor in the fields all day. Cotton and tobacco only grow well when the temps are in the 60s and higher. planting starts in late March and can go on until the end of May. Then you wait. You can weed and do pest control but slaves were never in the fields from dawn til dusk, except maybe for a few weeks in the fall for harvest . Plants have to grow. There was actually a lot of downtime in the winter. Other tasks would be done but winters were actually leisurly even for the slaves.

R177 And during the summer, as the cotton grew in the fields, slaves would work in their own vegetable patches. Slave owners would want their slaves to grow some of their own food, since that reduced costs for the owner. Slaves had to be fed. A malnourished slave was no use to the slave owner.

That argument that "all the slaves" in GWTW are happy, docile, simple minded and loyal to their owners doesn't hold up. There are two simple minded slaves in GWTW; airhead Prissy and childlike Big Sam. But two of the wisest, strongest characters in the book are Mammy and Peter. Nobody pushes Mammy around; she speaks her mind and usually gets her way. And Peter is the caretaker of Miss Pitty; HE takes care of HER. There ARE slaves in the book that remain loyal to their owners; Mammy, Peter, Pork, Dilcey. Of course Prissy would also stay; what else would she do, being such a dingbat? But Tara had around a hundred slaves and all of them but Pork, Dilcey and Mammy remain after the Yankees comes through. And the book mentions all the newly freed slaves in Atlanta. So that argument that all the slaves were happy and dumb and content doesn't hold water.

In honor of the movie GWTW's 80th anniversary TCM showed it on Friday and again today. It really is something. But the book is better.

R179 People also fail to mention that Big Sam turns the stereotype of the big black man raping a white woman on its head, as he is the one to save Scarlett. To have Big Sam be the one to save her was actually progressive and subversive.

[quote]But the narration never explained how the O'Haras were able to get their field hands to bust their asses in the cotton fields from sunup to sundown in raging heat and killing cold, without being paid.

Well duh. They also grew food for the household. But again periods of high activity followed by hurry up and wait. There was also animal husbandry, beekeeping blacksmithing etc.. But the point is that the image of the slave hoeing in the field from dawn til dusk is erroneous. Life in an agricultural setting was more varied than that and had periods of extensive downtime.

Now a sugar cane plantation in the tropics was another story.

I really wish someone would uncover the novelette Mitchell wrote called "Ropa Carmagin." Apparently, she submitted it to Macmillan at the same time as GWTW, but they rejected it as too short. It is about a white southern woman in love with a biracial man.

ooops that was the wrong quote in 182

I meant to respond to this quote: And during the summer, as the cotton grew in the fields, slaves would work in their own vegetable patches. Slave owners would want their slaves to grow some of their own food, since that reduced costs for the owner. Slaves had to be fed. A malnourished slave was no use to the slave owner.

I think what was refreshing about GWTW from the very beginning, was that Scarlett was presented as a shallow, selfish and vain girl---not some perfect, noble, sweet little missy (like Melanie). Rather than have her evolve into a sweet heroine type, Mitchell shows us that people do not intrinsically change re their character throughout their lives. If you're a selfish and mean cunt as a kid, chances are pretty damn good that you still are, though you may do your best to hide this from others.

By the book's end, Scarlett still lacks self-awareness, has self-serving delusions about herself and her motives and, above all, is still stubbornly willful and determined to get her way in everything.

"But Tara had around a hundred slaves and all of them but Pork, Dilcey and Mammy remain after the Yankees comes through. And the book mentions all the newly freed slaves in Atlanta."

Oops, I meant all the slaves but Pork, Dilcey and Mammy RUN OFF after the Yankees come through. At any rate, GWTW is one of the best books I ever read. I always looked at it that way, that is, it was just an entertaining, engrossing book. I never viewed it as a statement on race. I never took it deadly serious at some people do.

r5 How about we talk about another book The Help. Just think about all those Black nannies who raised those white kids and cared for them. How many of them grew up to fight for the rights of those nannies? How many of them didn't and went on with their lives as if they never new a good, decent, hard working, gem of a human being existed that was Black.

It's not that there were no good portrayals of Black people in Gone With The Wind, but that it didn't mean anything to anyone in terms of humanizing us or bringing out compassion and humanity in the whites who read it. Just a good story with slaves in the mix. how nice, on with your life.

[quote]Big Sam turns the stereotype of the big black man raping a white woman on its head,

r181 that is not a stereotype, it's a lie predicated on fear about the virility of Black men. Black men were not raping white women. Black men couldn't even look at white women without risking their lives. Read about Emmett Till his death was brought about by lies and the hysteria over the beliefs about Black male sexuality at that time. No proof of any of it, just irrational fear. Please don't ever make this statement again.

From Websters:

stereotype

something conforming to a fixed or general pattern especially : a standardized mental picture that is held in common by members of a group and that represents an oversimplified opinion, prejudiced attitude, or uncritical judgment

Scarlett grew as a person, realized her delusions and faults and learned compassion for others by the end of the book. She remained strong, determined and confident though to win back the only man she ever truly loved.

R188 From the Cambridge dictionary : Stereotype: a set idea that people have about what someone or something is like, especially an idea that is wrong: racial/sexual stereotypes He doesn't conform to/fit/fill the national stereotype of a Frenchman. The characters in the book are just stereotypes.

From Collins: A stereotype is a fixed general image or set of characteristics that a lot of people believe represent a particular type of person or thing.

It was a stereotype that black men raped white women. It was wrong, but it was a widely held stereotype. A Stereotype does not need to be based upon fact. It only has to be widely held by a group of people.

That little girl should never ridden a pony by herself.

In the movie it makes it seem like Rhett is intending that Bonnie Blue be an expert horse rider while she's still in her cradle. What happened in the book was that he would take her riding with him on his horse until Mammy comments on the impropriety of a little girl in front of her father on a horse "with her dress flying up." So he buys her her own pony (it was to be for all three of Scarlett's children, but Wade and Ella have no interest in horse riding) and she becomes enamored of horseback riding. Rhett has a young boy teach the pony to jump over a bar and she adores jumping over it. After a while she begs Rhett to move the bar higher but he says the pony's legs aren't long enough and that he'll eventually buy her a bigger horse when she's a little older. But Bonnie is used to having way and she throws tantrums and whines until he raises the bar higher for her. She then attempts to jump the higher height but the pony balks and she goes over her head, breaking her neck. By the way, although Gerald also died from falling off a horse he didn't die in the same manner as he did in the movie. His was a much darker situation. But that's another story.

Scarlett and Rhett lost two children within 7 minutes with Melanie and her unborn child dying soon after.

Very depressing.

R193, no, that’s not true in the book or in the film. Scarlett’s miscarriage occurs a few weeks to months before Bonnie’s death. In the novel, Scarlett recuperates from the miscarriage at Tara.

R133, the novel makes a vague reference to Scarlett possibly breastfeeding Wade. When she, Prissy, and the baby travel by train to Atlanta, Wade cries and won’t accept the pacifier Mammy made for him. Scarlett thinks there’s nothing she could do about Wade now (on the train). Either there was no way to modestly feed him, or he had a wet nurse at Tara and was awaiting one at Aunt Pittypat’s. Similarly, it seems Melanie was somewhat expected to nurse Beau, if she’d been able to. It was just luck Dilcey had an infant at the same time.

"When she, Prissy, and the baby travel by train to Atlanta, Wade cries and won’t accept the pacifier Mammy made for him."

Actually, it's Prissy who accompanies Scarlett to Atlanta and Aunt Pitty's house. She wishes Mammy were there because Mammy "had only to lay her hands on a child and it hushed crying." So Scarlett tells Prissy "Give him that sugar-tit in your pocket, Priss. Anything to make him hush. I know he's hungry but I can't do anything about that now." Which brings up another matter: just what the hell is a "sugar-tit?"

Per Wikipedia —

Sugar tit is a folk name for a baby pacifier, or dummy, that was once commonly made and used in North America and Britain. It was made by placing a spoonful of sugar, or honey, in a small patch of clean cloth, then gathering the cloth around the sugar and twisting it to form a bulb. The bulb was then secured by twine or a rubber band. The baby's saliva would slowly dissolve the sugar in the bulb.

Was Hamilton. I thought there was a son in the family and when I read the book back in high school. Too bad they cut them out of the film.

IA that the book was better, they usually are, but if they had added even more scenes to the movie people would have had to bring a change of clothing and a meal to see the already almost 4 hour film.

The book is extremely racist, much more so than the movie. I believe the movie people worked with the NAACP to tone down the racism of the book. It's not made explicit in the film that Ashley and Rhett are in the KKK, for example.

The book is incredibly racist. It would not be publishable today. "Lost Cause" and all that.

R199 Rhett wasn't in the KKK, he saved Ashley and the rest, because they were avenging Scarlett and he respected Melanie.

Racist, and proto-feminist, simultaneously.

Her description of war, loss and tragedy was heartbreaking. War so easily entered by naive, stupid men. But war that destroyed most everything and everyone in it's sights.

All you idiots screaming "racist" seem unaware of something; GWTW was a work of FICTION. It was not meant to be viewed as historical fact. And the characters in it are by and large white slave owners in the South; what do you think they're going to be like? Do you think they're going to in favor of racial equality? And the African-American characters in the book are just that: characters. They weren't meant to represent the entirety of their race. It amazes me that there are people who take GWTW SO seriously. That's so stupid.

The book and movie needs to be Zhuzhed up for a contemporary, gen z audience. Perhaps some mandingo sex scenes and black hair narratives. Maybe the Mandingo can be transitioning and wants to be a house slave.

"Her description of war, loss and tragedy was heartbreaking. War so easily entered by naive, stupid men."

That's the thing about the book, there's some really amazing insight, as well as all the racism and idiotic admiration for the KKK.

But Mitchell had a damn good grip on the horrors of war, the foolishness of young men assuring each other that one gentleman could like a dozen Yankees, the men assuring each other that it doesn't matter that the North has all the munitions factories and shipping, and the horrors inflicted on civilians and ordinary schmucks who thought soldiering was glamorous. Really, the only thing she left out, was the old men in the government, who *counted* on the naivite of the regular Joes, when looking for cannon fodder.

It's considered racist because it presents a complicated, truthful view of history. People don't want to confront the realism behind issues such as slavery and discrimination because it means they'd have to address the idea that humans are capable of that evil. It's also hard for people to accept the idea that some slaves were resigned to being slaves (albeit because that was all they'd ever known), because again, it makes history more complex and human than people want it to be. The controversy behind the sequel to To Kill A Mockingbird is a great example of this. It turns Atticus Finch into a complicated, human historical character rather than a divine golden-hearted champion of equal rights. It also makes people confront the idea that good white people can still be racist, people would rather believe that there's bad white people and good white people, and only bad white people can be racist. Anyways, the answer is simple: people don't like it because it presents history as something tangible and real rather than a thing of the past, and most folks don't like confronting the realities behind their demons.