Decoding Gone with the Wind

Scarlett's goal seemed to me to be "being queen" or "being on top/in control" In the end that's what sabotages her chances at happiness - she can't stand the way pregnancy removes her control over her body, she refuses to make herself emotionally vulnerable by opening her heart to anyone.

It's been an awfully long time since I read it, but I always thought it was some version of "maintaining her southern-plantation way of life," or perhaps more concretely, "keeping Tara."

It starts and ends at Tara, which symbolizes the southern way of life, and getting the very gentlemanly Ashley was an element of keeping her southern way of life, and later marrying Rhett was part of keeping Tara, and so on. It all comes back to keeping Tara.

Chiquita Banana said:

Hi Jan. I was hoping you'd reply! You always seem to have a firm grasp on GMT . I really like the idea that it's about keeping her Southern way of life and I think that could also go well with the idea that she wants to stay on top. Then again, it would be useful to have something concrete like "keeping Tara" like how Dorothy (Wizard of Oz) wants to "get home". The only problem I can see with this one is that she doesn't seem to value it much until we're well into the story. Does the overall goal need to be present at the beginning, I wonder? Maybe I'm being too nit-picky. Dorothy obviously doesn't have the "get home" goal at the beginning of her story because obviously she is home. Hm.

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Ah, but in Oz, the inciting incident/ 'call to adventure' is the tornado. The overall goal doesn't need to be present on page 1. In GWTW the inciting incident is the War.

It's also been a long time since I read this book but it still rates up there with my favorites of all time. I believe it's about the disappearance of a whole way of life and that the historical context is just as important as the conflicts between the main characters.

Scarlett symbolizes the elite who took their privilege and wealth for granted only to have it all ripped away. She/they must experience some hard knocks as the world they know disappears. Scarlett must change from a spoiled, selfish girl into a woman and her conflicts with Rhett are part of this transformation. However she is unable to let go of her selfishness or to learn from her experiences. For this reason she loses a man who could be so good for her, if only she would let him into her heart. He is everything Ashley isn't, but Scarlett is too blind to see it.

Does this also mean that the wealthy elite whose world was turned upside down during the civil war also failed to learn from the experience and simply went on to amass more wealth and remain blind to inequality and racism? Being Australian I can't really comment too much on this, but this is my interpretation.

To put it in a nutshell I'd say the main theme is growing up and seeing the world as it really is with all it's ugliness, inequality and suffering, instead of remaining cocooned in wealth and privilege. Scarlett found out what it was like to live in poverty and feel completely powerless over her destiny but once she had recovered her position in society she could not give away any power to Rhett by admitting that she cared. In the same way the wealthy fought tooth and nail to hold onto what was theirs, meaning that ever step towards racial and economic equality had to be fought for. Scarlett had a great opportunity to change and so did her society but they both ultimately failed.

Scarlett's overriding goal is to escape back into her privileged world where she is protected from the harsh realities of life. She is so obsessed with her fantasies about Ashley because he represents this world that is slipping away.

GWTW is a novel about war, and the underlying conflict of the entire novel is Scarlett being at war with herself. There is a real disconnect between who she really is, and who she thinks she is/wants to become. This conflict is foreshadowed in the opening paragraph, when Scarlett is described as not being conventionally beautiful: "In her face were too sharply blended the delicate features of her mother, a Coast aristocrat of French descent, and the heavy ones of her florid Irish father."

Right there is a picture of Scarlett's divided nature, and that nature is the impetus behind every decision she makes, which in turn generate much of the conflict throughout the story. Just as the War itself was a clash between the old and the new, so Scarlett's inner nature is a tussle between old blood and new, between a fading, unreachable ideal, and brash reality.

JanDarby said:

It's been an awfully long time since I read it, but I always thought it was some version of "maintaining her southern-plantation way of life," or perhaps more concretely, "keeping Tara."

It starts and ends at Tara, which symbolizes the southern way of life, and getting the very gentlemanly Ashley was an element of keeping her southern way of life, and later marrying Rhett was part of keeping Tara, and so on. It all comes back to keeping Tara.

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This. She wants to keep Tara. She fights, kills, and marries two men she doesn't really love in order to keep it. Hell, she almost prostitutes herself to Rhett in order to keep Tara alive.

You could also argue that she wanted to win Ashley's affection, but only until the end of the story when she realizes she loves Rhett.

Mainly, I cast my vote with keeping Tara and of course surviving the war.

gothicangel said:

Ah, but in Oz, the inciting incident/ 'call to adventure' is the tornado. The overall goal doesn't need to be present on page 1. In GWTW the inciting incident is the War.

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Just wanted to add though--and I think it's good for any story--is forshadowing.

True, in OZ Dorthoy doesn't miss home on page one, but at the beginning of the story, she talks about running away. When she meets the "wizard" in Kansas and he "looks into the crystal ball" and sees Auntie Em, she realizes just how much she loves her home.

Belle_91 said:

This. She wants to keep Tara. She fights, kills, and marries two men she doesn't really love in order to keep it. Hell, she almost prostitutes herself to Rhett in order to keep Tara alive.

You could also argue that she wanted to win Ashley's affection, but only until the end of the story when she realizes she loves Rhett.

Mainly, I cast my vote with keeping Tara and of course surviving the war.

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I think that part of why she wanted Ashley was that he was part of the package, the ideal Southern gentleman to go with the house and lifestyle. He was gentle, and intelligent, and kind, all those virtues she prized in her mother, and wanted for herself.
And, as he lived nearby, which would be convenient, not just at the time, but in the future. She could be mistress of both Twelve Oaks, and Tara.
In Rhett, she would get another version of herself, those parts of herself that weren't part of the ladylike image she thought was proper. And, he came from Charleston! What if he took it into his head that they should live there once they were married?

I think in both books the main characters took what they had for granted until the inciting incident. Dorothy didn't think much about her home life on the farm until the tornado yanked it away. Scarlett took her plantation belle life as a given until the war stole it all. It's been many years since I read GWTW, and I didn't like it greatly, for lots of reasons. But I kept thinking the "layers" of Scarlett's true personhood were stripped away like layers off an onion, until her self was much more transparent.

Okay, I totally missed that Scarlett fell in love with Rhett so I thought his leaving was a good thing for her. I may have to read it again.

To me the book was about survival and escaping the gilded cage that society had locked all women of Scarlett's class in. The war broke that lock and freed her to become a 'modern' woman without no lessons, no instructions in how to do it.

Remember the book was written in the 30s when women were forced out of their homes not to work, but to do anything they could to fight for their family's survival. I think that made Scarlett's battle something they could relate to, and if she loved Rhett taking him away when she'd saved her family and Tara was a downer. But he wasn't taken away completely, there was the question, 'Would he come back or not?" And my grandmother said that question occupied people for hours.

It's been a couple decades since I read that book, but when I did read it I went through it about 6 times.

I read it because it was a good story.

You can analyze it forever, but when it was written, Mitchell was not concerned with the issues and motivations raised in this thread. She was writing a story about a spoiled, selfish, stubborn belle who was in love with a man she couldn't have.

Mitchell kept things simple so far as motives go: Scarlett wanted Ashley, Ashley loved Melanie, Scarlett married one man for spite, another for money, and another for fun (and money).

Scarlett made poor decisions, obsessing on Ashely and in the end realizes she never loved him after all. By then, it's too late. Rhett's had enough and walked, yet she remains optimistic. That's her saving grace, she rallies and keeps moving forward.

Rhett Butler was based on Mitchell's husband, Red Upshaw, who was an abusive drunk. She divorced him. During the process she had to get work to support herself and began writing for the Atlanta Sunday Magazine. She began writing GWTW about then.

The book is more of an historical, not a romance. The Civil War was not ancient history to her, there were plenty of friends who recalled it first-hand and the damage to the countryside from Sherman's march was still in place. She wanted to preserve the stories she heard and worked those into the book.

Today it would never sell due to the racism, and the lack of a HEA prevents it from being placed as a romance. An editor would tell her to remove the politically incorrect stuff, demand the MC's be more "heroic" and insist on a happy ending.

I think today the big whopping chunks of undigested racism (like the weird authorial intrusions about how Reconstruction was bad, Scarlett being saved by Rhett from a bunch of rapist black men led by a drunken rapist white Irishman, Ashley being one of the founders of the Ku Klux Klan, oh so many things) wouldn't make it out of editorial.

Which would have been beneficial to the structure of the book, actually, as that stuff just slows things down (in addition to being racist and silly).

But it would have sold as an historical today, just as it did in 1936, not as a romance. Probably would have done just as well as other historicals about the US Civil War, like Cold Mountain and March and so on.

Actually, Scarlett was saved from being raped by a white man and possibly his black partner, by one of Tara's field hands, Big Sam. That was in the book and the movie. Sam killed the white attacker, drove her in buggy to safety, and he had to be spirited out of town before he could be caught and hanged. There's a brief scene in the film where Kennedy gives him money.

Then Frank Kennedy, Ashley, and others in white sheets went to burn out the shanty town. In the South in that era, the Klan was seen as a positive thing. (Ugh!) Rhett got wind of things and went to warn them before the Union army could ambush them.



It's a good bet Mitchell watched Birth of a Nation, as that was pretty much a love letter to the Klan.

Different world and I'm glad I don't live in it.

Margaret Mitchell grew up in the shadow of the Old South. Women in her era heard stories of the war from their veteran grandparents.

Scarlett was a symbol of all the young women who saw the war sweep away the life for which her upbringing had prepared her, and had to survive as best she could. She went from rich and spoiled to dirt poor in four years.