“…tomorrow is another day.”
In a rare interview with the Atlanta Journal in 1936, Margaret “Peggy” Mitchell described her debut (and only) novel, Gone With The Wind, as follows: “…the story of a girl named Scarlett O’Hara, who lived in Atlanta during the Civil War and the days of Reconstruction. The book isn’t strictly a book about the war, nor is it a historical novel. It’s about the effect of the Civil War on a set of characters who lived in Atlanta at that time.”
In essence, this is an accurate summary, though it is quite a terse overview for the greatest bestseller of all time. Gone With The Wind is a beautifully written and thoroughly researched novel that offers the essential mythology of the American South before, during, and after the Civil War, from the antebellum period to Reconstruction. While the prose in Gone With The Wind is gripping, no review of the novel would be complete without discussing the inaccurate, disappointing, and dehumanizing portrayal of black people in the novel. Throughout the book African Americans are characterized as one-dimensional simpletons who are untrustworthy, ill-educated, and in need of strong guidance from white people. Many black characters are compared to animals or children, with frequent references to “darkies” or “negroes.” The racist tone is pervasive throughout the novel and it casts a dark shadow over an otherwise compelling but extraordinarily dense novel (the original first edition published by MacMillan was 1,037 pages long).
Ironically, while on the surface the novel presents a potent cocktail of nostalgia for the antebellum South, the only characters who successfully survive the Civil War are those who look forward to a better future, not the reactionaries who look backward. Self-seeking, ignoble, and unpatriotic people are shown to be the truly strong survivors while others are cast to the wayside amidst Sherman’s infamous march through Georgia destroying farms, plantations, and railroads. Sherman’s troops eventually torch and loot the city of Atlanta -a key metropolitan juncture for the Confederacy. I had never truly grasped the tactical importance of the city of Atlanta prior to reading this novel, nor did I fully understand how small of a city Atlanta was at the time. Most of the South was rural, pastoral, and agricultural with only several small pockets of towns and cities. Atlanta was an important city primarily because of its railroad intersection connecting Georgia to the ports of Savannah, Charleston, and Wilmington, and therefore it was a hub of communication and trade, as well as a gathering place to care for wounded soldiers.
At any rate, the central theme of the Gone With The Wind is: survivalism. Which characters have the necessary gumption and leadership in times of extreme turmoil? Who survives the aftermath of the Civil War? And why?
Our central protagonist is Scarlett O’Hara, a frustratingly flighty, selfish, and spoiled Southern belle. She lives on her family’s vast North Georgia cotton plantation, and she comes of age right on the cusp of the Civil War, however she cares little for the war. Her days are spent mostly fretting over dresses and parties and toying with young men who might become potential suitors, like the Tarleton twins. Mitchell provides a brief but telling summary of the antebellum South when describing Scarlett’s Irishman father, Gerald O’Hara:
“He liked the South, and he soon became, in his own opinion, a Southerner. There was much about the South – and Southerners – that he would never comprehend; but, with the whole-heartedness that was his nature, he adopted its ideas and customs, as he understood them, for his own – poker and horse racing, red-hot politics and the code duello, States’ Rights and damnation to all Yankees, slavery and King Cotton, contempt for white trash and exaggerated courtesy to women. He even learned to chew tobacco. There was no need for him to acquire a good head for whiskey, he had been born with one” (62).
The Civil War is merely the setting of Gone With The Wind, but the central tension lies in Scarlett’s hidden love for her neighbor -a graceful, blonde, country gentleman named Ashley Wilkes who is betrothed to his shy but innocent, lady-like cousin, Melanie. On the other hand Scarlett is pursued by a curt and arrogant scallawag named Rhett Butler. While neither Ashley nor Rhett are particularly supportive of the war, Ashley is overwhelmed by a sense of duty to his home state when Georgia secedes, but Rhett is unimpressed by the foolhardy men of the South. In turn he is reviled by his compatriots for blockade-running and managing a seedy prostitution business. Rhett maintains neutral business activities both North and South of the Mason-Dixon line throughout the war –he notes the impossibility of victory for the South due to an extensive network of Yankee resources, technology, manufacturing, and manpower, while he characterizes the Confederacy’s call to war as Quixotic and naïve.
As the novel progresses, the war explodes amidst much enthusiasm. Scarlett hurriedly marries a young suitor named Charles Hamilton in a foolish attempt to make Ashley jealous, but her young husband Charles soon dies of a disease while en route to the warfront, leaving Scarlett pregnant and alone with a child. And despite her obligatory public displays of mourning, she moves to Atlanta and quickly begins attending parties and engaging in playful banter with the unscrupulous Rhett Butler while he is in town. She stays at her Aunt’s home along with her sister-in-law Melanie (now pregnant with Ashley’s child) and she tends to the wounded soldiers who increasingly fill the streets of Atlanta while a steady stream of Confederate forces continue to fall back. Just as Melanie goes into labor, the Union army begins their assault on the city of Atlanta. In desperation, Scarlett finds Rhett Butler who helps them escape the tumult just as Atlanta is torched to the ground. The loss of Atlanta essentially spells the end of the Confederacy -a shock to many prideful Southerners.
In the second half of the novel Scarlett quickly grows up. She returns to her family’s plantation, Tara, and becomes a survivalist -caring and providing for a postpartum Melanie, as well as her ill and depressed father (saddened by the loss of his wife), and other members of the house –including a handful of former slaves who have chosen to remain at Tara. They raise livestock, pick cotton, and grow vegetables to survive. Ever-present is the threat of Union soldiers or General Sherman’s troops storming their land, taking their possessions or else much worse. At one point, Scarlett displays her own gumption by killing a stray Union soldier who enters the house, presumably to rob and rape the women. Scarlett becomes the de facto leader of her household. However, as Reconstruction begins, the Radical Republicans take control of everything in Georgia and they begin brutally punishing former Confederate sympathizers. For those they cannot imprison they disenfranchise and raise exorbitant taxes on the old properties. With little money to spare, Scarlett travels to Atlanta to beg Rhett Butler for money only to find that he has been imprisoned. She offers herself as a mistress in exchange for money but an amused Rhett claims he has no access to his money. Meanwhile, Ashley stumbles his way to Tara after surviving a Union prison camp. With more mouths to feed, Scarlett grows desperate. By happenstance, she runs into an old acquaintance, Frank Kennedy, a gentleman from the antebellum days. Although he is betrothed to Scarlett’s neighbor, she quickly concocts a lie and marries Frank for his money, earning her the ire of her neighbors.
In order to secure herself a lasting income, Scarlett uses her husband’s money to build a lumber mill which quickly grows into a successful business despite Republican efforts to thwart Southern enterprise. The entire order of Georgia is cast aside as crime and lawlessness rules the day. However, Scarlett grows arrogant with her business and one night she rides through a notorious shantytown filled with vagrants. Two men attempt to rob her, leading a “vigilante” group to seek vengeance –the infamous Ku Klux Klan. In the chaos, Scarlett’s husband, Frank Kennedy, is killed but Rhett Butler saves Ashley Wilkes from imprisonment by providing an alibi: the men were drinking all night at a local brothel (which, as it turns out, is owned by Rhett Butler). The story checks out and Ashley is allowed to recover from his wounds.
Almost immediately after Frank’s death, Rhett Butler proposes marriage to Scarlett and in a heated passion she agrees. They honeymoon in New Orleans while spending Rhett’s vast sums of money before returning to Atlanta -to Peachtree Street- to build a house near where Scarlett stayed during the Union Army’s assault on Atlanta years earlier. Scarlett gives birth to a baby girl, much to her chagrin, and Rhett nicknames her “bonnie” because of her blue eyes -an allusion to the “bonnie blue flag,” an early flag of the Confederacy. Rhett dotes upon bonnie day and night, and he proudly takes her on carriage rides around town. One day, Scarlett visits her lumber mill where Ashley is now employed and they reminisce about the old days before the war, but while caught up in nostalgia they are spotted and the scene is mistaken for impropriety. It causes a great scandal amidst the Atlanta gentry, and Rhett Butler grows furious. He drags Scarlett to a party in order to embarrass her, and in the evening (Mitchell suggests) Rhett assaults his wife. As an aside, Gone With The Wind is filled with all manner of shameful acts that shocked early 20th century readers and continue to remain scandalous to this day. Scarlett becomes pregnant with another child, but in a fight with Rhett she lunges at him and accidentally falls down a flight of stairs, breaking her ribs and causing a miscarriage.
She flees home to Tara to recuperate with her children:
“They left the village behind and turned into the red road to Tara. A faint pink still lingered about the edges of the sky and fat feathery clouds were tinged with gold and palest green. The stillness of the country twilight came down about them as calming as a prayer. How had she ever borne it, she thought, away for all these months, away from the fresh smell of country air, the plowed earth and the sweetness of summer nights? The moist red earth smelled so good, so familiar, so friendly, she wanted to get out and scoop up a handful. The honeysuckle which draped the gullied red sides of the road in tangled greenery was piercingly fragrant as always after the rain, the sweetest perfume. Above their heads a flock of chimney swallows whirled suddenly on swift wings and now and then a rabbit scurried startled on the road, his white tail bobbing like an eiderdown powder puff. She saw with pleasure that the cotton stood well, as they passed between plowed fields were the green bushes reared themselves sturdily out of the red earth. How beautiful all this was! The soft gray mist in the swampy bottoms, the red earth and growing cotton, the sloping fields with curving green rows and the black pines rising behind everything like sable walls. How had she ever stayed in Atlanta so long?” (645-646)
However, tragedy soon strikes again. Bonnie falls in a horse-jumping accident, much like her grandfather, and the fall tragically snaps her neck. Her death cases Rhett to fall into a deep, alcoholic depression just as Melanie Wilkes becomes pregnant again, causing her already frail body to grow deathly sick. Scarlett goes to speak with her just before her death. Scarlett also speaks with Ashley and she finally realizes that she does not love him anymore. Maybe she only ever loved the idea of Ashley. In truth, Ashley is an effeminate relic of the old Southern aristocracy -incapable of caring for himself or his own business interests. Rhett Butler describes Ashley as follows:
“…Ashley Wilkes-bah! His breed is of no use or value in an upside-down world like ours. Whenever the world is up-ends, his kind is the first to perish. And why not? They don’t deserve to survive because they won’t fight – don’t know how to fight. This isn’t the first time the world’s been upside-down and it won’t be the last. It’s happened before and it’ll happen again. And when it does happen everyone loses everything and everyone is equal.” (Rhett Butler defaming Ashley Wilkes to Scarlett pg 719)
Scarlett runs to Rhett Butler in love and hope, but her dreams are dashed as he apparently has already moved on, uttering the book’s most famous line:
“My dear, I don’t give a damn.”
The novel ends with Scarlett finally overcoming her girlish infatuation with Ashley Wilkes, but filled with the hope of winning back the love of Rhett Butler …for “tomorrow is another day.”
The title of the novel is derived from the third stanza of an 1894 poem by English writer, Ernest Dowson. It refers to a deep loss of love that will never be regained, while ‘gone with the wind’ in the novel refers to the old antebellum Southern aristocracy, an agrarian economy of gentlemen farmers, as well as a caste system predicated on human enslavement. In summary, the wind that sweeps through Georgia decimates an entire way of life, for better or worse, and the soft romantic aristocrats of yesteryear are left behind while the hardened survivalists are the ones who endure.
The 1937 Pulitzer Prize Decision
The selection of Gone With The Wind as a Pulitzer Prize winner in 1937 was controversial. There was a growing chorus of accusations decrying racism in the novel, but the Pulitzer decision was also criticized for apparently caving to vulgar popular opinion (Gone With The Wind was a smash-hit bestseller). The Pulitzer Prize has often been forced to balance its decisions between commercial popularity and lasting literary quality.
The 1937 Novel Jury was composed of the same three people for the eighth and final year in a row: Jefferson Fletcher (Chair of Columbia University), Robert Lovett (a literary scholar), and Albert Paine (an American biographer known for his work on Mark Twain -he died later that same year in 1937). This trio would be the longest serving consecutive group to populate the Novel Jury. Apparently, in 1937 they provided a list to the Pulitzer Advisory Board of the top 6 novels recommended for the award. The two at the top of the list were Margaret Mitchell’s Gone With The Wind and George Santayana’s The Last Puritan. The Pulitzer Advisory Board simply unilaterally selected Gone With The Wind.
- Jefferson Butler Fletcher (1865-1946) was born in Chicago, served in the American Field Ambulance Services during World War I, and educated at Harvard and Bowdoin College. He was a long-serving professor of Comparative Literature at Columbia University (from 1904-1939). He was considered a foremost expert on the Italian Renaissance and Dante, and in his obituary in The New York Times, it was noted that he served on the Pulitzer Novel Jury for “several years.” Sadly, his son died in an automobile accident in 1926, and Fletcher also had a daughter.
- Robert Morss Lovett (1870-1956) was a Bostonian and studied at Harvard. He taught literature at the University of Chicago for many years, he was associate editor of The New Republic, served as governor secretary of the Virgin Islands, and was accused of being a communist by the Dies Committee which forced him out of his secretary position. He was often on the frontlines of left-leaning picket lines, and he helped to launch the careers of several young writers, including John Dos Passos. In later years, his wife became a close friend and associate of Jane Addams and the couple lived at Hull House for a spell.
- Albert Bigelow Paine (1861-1937) was born in Bedford, Massachusetts and grew up throughout the Midwest. He worked as a photographer and became a full-time writer living in New York and abroad in Europe. He became friends with Mark Twain and served as Twain’s biographer and also wrote travel books, novels, and children’s stories. In France, he wrote two books abut Joan of Arc which earned him the title of Chevalier from the Legion of Honour.
Today (as recently as 2014) Americans continue to rank Gone With The Wind among their favorite books, second only to The Bible. Nevertheless, controversies continue to plague the novel. Gone With The Wind has frequently found its way onto lists of banned books (remarkably the Nazis banned the book in Germany in the 1930s), and even as recently as 2020 an online video streaming service removed the 1939 classic film adaptation from their selection our of a fear of featuring racist content on their service (Gone With The Wind was later re-added with a detailed introduction discussing its racist content). As with many of the Pulitzer Prize-winning novels on my list, reading Gone With The Wind has been strangely timely amidst continuing demands for a national conversation on race in America following the tragic death of George Floyd in 2020 and the ensuing protests and riots.
Who Is Margaret Mitchell?
Margaret Mitchell (1900-1949) was raised among the traditions and mythology of the old South. She grew up hearing the stories of the time before the war, as well as the difficult days of Reconstruction. Her father, Eugene Mitchell, was an attorney and a remarkable historian of the Civil War, particularly with regard to Georgia. In one of her few interviews, Margaret Mitchell recalls how her father could recite every single battle of the Atlanta campaign, the names of the commanding officers, and if they were shot and where. Her mother and brother were also amateur Civil War historians.
Mitchell attended Smith College for one year, but when her mother died she returned home and never finished college. In 1922, at the age of twenty-two she began working as a writer for the Atlanta Journal Sunday Magazine (she was one of the first female reporters in the state of Georgia). A few years later she married John R. Marsh and left her job due to recurring injuries, including an ankle injury. Bored and restless, she began writing her epic, Gone With The Wind. Her writing style was haphazard –she typed some pages here and there while scribbling down others on handwritten notes, and various editions and pages were hidden around her house. Only a few friends close to Mitchell actually knew about the book. For nine years Mitchell continued writing and re-writing the manuscript.
One day a publishing agent for the MacMillan Company (from New York) was touring through the South hunting for new literary talent. A friend referred Mitchell, and the rest is history. After a few months of editing, Gone With The Wind went on sale on June 30, 1936 and became a national phenomenon –it was a surprising turn of events for everyone involved. The novel won the Pulitzer in 1937 amidst both celebration and controversy. When she received her congratulatory phone call for the Pulitzer, Mitchell simply continued about her evening routine: attending service at a black church. The press hunted for her all over Atlanta but they never did find her.
She was often asked if she would write another book, but Mitchell always responded that she was far too busy being the full-time author of Gone With The Wind. She was paid $50,000 for the rights to the film by David O. Selznick -a massive sum in those days- and the incredible technicolor film later won Best Picture in 1939 (read my review of the film here). Margaret Mitchell attended the premiere for the film at the Loew’s Theatre in Atlanta, alongside the mayor of Atlanta, Producer David Selznick, Vivien Leigh, Clark Gable, and a cohort of surviving Confederate Civil War veterans. The whole city was filled with cheering crowds and parties honoring the Old South.
Despite persistent accusations of racism (in both the film and the novel) in the 1990s, it was revealed that Margaret Mitchell had anonymously funded the education of many Black/African-American medical students to attend Morehouse College throughout her lifetime. She risked her life to do so. In addition, she was outspoken about the plight of women in America – she was a flapper girl and a debutante in her 20s, as well as a tomboy. As with most writers, a greater degree of complexity lurks just beneath the surface of their works and this axiom holds true for the enigmatic and reclusive Margaret Mitchell .
In 1949, while en route to see a movie on Peachtree Street in Atlanta, a street that ironically plays an important role in Gone With The Wind, Margaret Mitchell was struck and killed by an off duty cab driver. She was only 48 years old. Gone With The Wind was the only novel she published in her lifetime. Years later, another short romantic novella surfaced that she wrote in her teenage years and it was eventually posthumously published and entitled Lost Laysen.
Mitchell, Margaret. Gone With The Wind. Scribner, 1996.
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