The main character, Scarlett O'Hara, is your basic Southern belle. Basically every boy her age (or of marrying age) wants to marry her. Her world, just before the war, is shattered because she learns that one ex-beau of hers is getting married. She is pretty convinced that she loves him, but it's actually a stupid crush that screws up a good portion of her life--even when she realizes that she never actually truly loved Ashley (about four pages from the book's end), it bites her in the butt. And she doesn't change at all. She almost matures and grows and learns at the end, but she ruins it all.*
Rhett Butler is a suave, smooth-talking ladies' (is that right?) man. He's a scam artist, and he gets around. He's a slippery, slimy thing--unfortunately, even though I hated him at the end of the book, he was the only main character I could like.
The first sentence of the novel is this: "Scarlett O'Hara was not beautiful, but men seldom realized it when caught by her charms as the Tarleton twins were" (1). This is interesting--her eyes are sort of the hypnotizers (yes, I know that's not a word. Roll with it), and her charm draws men in. As the hardships of the war and its aftermath continue, her charm disappears, and her face becomes narrow and even harsher. Her lack of beauty becomes painfully clear, and her face begins to look like her cold mind. (To be fair, it was necessary to become that way to survive the war and all, but while she grew up mentally to survive, she never really matured, if you understand what I mean.*)
So the book starts on the day Scarlett learns Ashley is to be married. She becomes horrified, but somewhat comforted--because she will see him at the barbecue the next day and she becomes sure that she will be able to talk Ashley out of it, or have him admit that it was just a joke, or something. Surprise, surprise, this was not the case. And I've lasted almost three paragraphs without complaining, and now it has to happen: Ashley 'loved' Scarlett (by the end Scarlett realizes it was just infatuation, or lust)--but at the beginning he cannot tell the difference. He didn't propose to Scarlett even though he thought he loved her because he was cowardly. When he reappears after the war it is excruciating, watching their "drama" unfold. They have their dramatic soap opera "I love you and I must kiss you" moments, and I just want to keel haul them both. They need sassy gay friends. Scarlett, he turned you down because he wasn't man enough to make a good decision--and Ashley, you missed your chance. You both need to write sad poems in your diaries and move on. I practically cheered when they realized that they were just being teenagers about each other.
Anywayyys. Scarlett gets livid, and in desperation she accepts a proposal from a certain Charles. Of course Ashley tells Scarlett he loves her that night... Ugh. I didn't find this dramatic or touching or anything, and as you can tell, I never found it particular touching or moving or dramatic. If you can't man up then don't make the rest of us suffer, jeez.
Scarlett's dramatic bit is that Ashley turns the corner and walks away, Scarlett realizes that she is now stuck to Charlie when in reality her and Ashley share
"'The man is too clever with cards to be a gentleman'" (137). Scarlett's father on Rhett, who got him, in a word, wasted, and wrecked him in cards.
"'Once he's made up his mind to something, no one could be braver or more determined but--He lives inside his head instead of outside and he hates to come out into the world'" (142). This is Scarlett's major revelation about Ashley. It comes while she is secretly reading a letter from him to his wife--she realizes that he was too cowardly to marry her for fear it would "'upset his way of thinking and living'" (142). Of course, she doesn't think of it as cowardice. She just gets frustrated that she doesn't quite understand her revelation--what it means to be in your head and to fear coming "out into the world" and thinks that if she could figure it out she would figure out how she could have gotten him to marry her instead of Melanie.
"'All wars are sacred,' he said. 'To those who have to fight them. If the people who started wars didn't make them sacred, who would be foolish enough to fight? But, no matter what rallying cries the orators give to the idiots who fight, no matter what noble purposes they assign to wars, there is never but one reason for a war. And that is money. All wars are in reality money squabbles. But so few people ever realize it. Their ears are too full of bugles and drums and fine words from stay-at-home orators. Sometimes the rallying cry is "Save the Tomb of Christ from the Heathen!" Sometimes it's "Down with Popery!" and sometimes "Liberty!" and sometimes "Cotton, Slavery and States' Rights!"'" (153). First of all, Rhett is referencing the crusades, any sect of Christianity that's not Roman Catholicism (probably the Protestant Reformation?), liberty could be anything, but my first thought was of the Revolutionary war (remember the stamp act, the sugar act, and the other unfair taxes?), and the last one is, of course, the Civil war, which is currently going on (in the story), and which Rhett clearly doesn't support or believe in. Scarlett, idiot as she is, doesn't understand the references and gets annoyed that he is bringing up seemingly unrelated topics.
Second of all, Rhett has a very good point. I still kind of have trouble with trying to figure out how the Crusades were more money related than trying to gain back the holy lands from 'heathens', but I'm not very familiar with the Crusades. And it makes sense with an overwhelming amount of battles and wars that can be skimmed off the top of the head.
3. This book certainly proves that noble reasons don't mean squat. The Northerners are portrayed as being more racist than Southerners--after the war, one Northern lady is horrified at the suggestion to get a black nursemaid for her children. The Northern ladies, who have all read Uncle Tom's Cabin, are also grossly interested in hearing about servants being whipped and tortured. Now, as I said, Mitchell may be a Southerner, so she may be trying to make Northerners look stupid--though I've no doubt that there was a good percentage of Northerners that were like this. They didn't give two pence for their noble cause--they might not even have been aware of that. Now, let me go in another direction entirely: Scarlett and Melanie are both shocked at the idea of whipping slaves, and it's true, that only once we see a slave beaten (and that slave is beaten by her own mother) in the book, but remember--we basically are only seeing "house slaves", or "house n-----s". Though life was still rough, their lives were considerably more posh, and probably wouldn't have been treated as harshly as field hands. (Go read the Meet Addy American Girl Doll book for an example of how field hands were treated.) Scarlett thinks of Mammy and Pork and the other house slaves as family, or just below family, so beatings and other harsh actions were probably rare. (Hence why the field hands ran away and Mammy and Pork and company did not.) I can't remember what I was trying to prove, but I hope that this off-kilter rant/long statement was at least somewhat interesting/enlightening. Now then--I guess on to more coherent things...
So, my next note is just a quote from during the siege--when Northerners went through plantations and towns and all and burned whatever they couldn't eat or loot--they burn thousands of dollars worth of cotton at Tara (the O'Hara plantation), for example. "It was as though, the worst having happened, they had nothing more to fear. They had feared a siege and now they had a siege and, after all, it wasn't so bad. Life could and did go on as usual. They knew they were sitting on a volcano, but until that volcano erupted there was nothing they could do, so why worry now?" (218). Or: Gone With the Wind summarizes my basic take on life entirely.
Rhett Butler, right before he took Scarlett, Melanie, and Scarlett's son by Charlie back to Tara during the siege: "'[Yankees] are pretty much like Southerners--except with worse manners, of course, and terrible accents'" (223). This cracked me up. At first I got annoyed (accents? We don't have accents!)--but then I remembered Rhode Islanders, and Bostoners, and... Are New Jersey folks 'Yankees'? And, of course, it's ironic, because Southern accents are simply awful. They grate on my nerves (well, still not as bad as Rhode Island accents, I'll give Southerners that, but...)
Ah, my next note is on a reference to the book of Job--Scarlett manages to grab hold of a mangy horse at Tara. It's been kicked about and is a pretty sad sight, but it's better than having no horse. She says that if the horse was dead, she would just curse God and die--"Somebody in the Bible had done just that thing. Cursed God and died" (261). Of course, no-one had actually done that--while Job is suffering from boils and destroyed crops and his sons becoming ill and dying, his wife suggests that he curse God and die. (What about her? Seems suspicious to me.)
Oh, and of course Melanie was pregnant, and fared badly. Actually, they thought she would die after she had the child--the second there was a worry of her death I was like, "SHE IS GOING TO DIE AND ASHLEY WILL BE ALIVE AND ASHLEY AND SCARLETT WILL GET TOGETHER!" Eventually Melanie does die due to complications--but this is because of a second child, nearly 400 pages and five or six years later. Of course, this is when Scarlett realizes she and Ashley didn't really love each other, but still. I called it this early on, and at that point when she actually died, I rolled my eyes. It's like when the girl conveniently dies in David Copperfield, except it didn't seem so stupid and overwrought then, although I did predict it. Anyways, times are tough, there are infirm, house slaves who are useless because they aren't field hands, there is Scarlett's kid, Melanie's new baby, and Pork's wife just had a baby. Scarlett isn't exactly rejoicing at all the mouths to feed, and to hear that there's another baby about nearly drives her mad. "Babies, babies, babies. Why did God make so many babies? But no, God didn't make them. Stupid people made them" (270). I pretty much died laughing.
"But she could not feel. She could only think and her thoughts were very practical" (358).
As a little bit of a summary of what has gone on--I'm sorry--the war has ended, and Scarlett took a visit back to Atlanta, Georgia. Desperate to make some income for Tara, Scarlett married her younger sister's old beau, Frank Kennedy, and manages his store and two lumber mills. Obviously, this is a scandal to everyone, and Frank is embarrassed, and Scarlett's younger sister hates everything that has ever lived. I believe I've mentioned already about how all the Northern officers' wives were curious about whipping and slave mistreatment because they had all read Uncle Tom's Cabin. Mitchell refers to this as bigotry! Scarlett expresses disbelief at the thought of whipping slaves--but again, Scarlett has only ever been in contact with house slaves--slaves who very rarely would have been whipped. Not only that, Mitchell, I have found out since last writing on here, was a terrible racist. In fact, that's what she's known for more than being the author of this book. Mitchell might not have believed whipping and such occurred. The house slaves she portrays are "like family" (according to Scarlett), but are more often than not portrayed as being very stupid or doglike--like Dilcey. Even if a slave is being portrayed as being intelligent, or at least smarter and cleverer than an animal, they are always brought down, for Mitchell will describe them in broad stereotypical ways. EG, "she had that negro-like way of...", she had X look that was common to negroes such as herself", "she had the powerful glare of a...", et cetera. Mitchell actually even presents the slave system as being necessary. Unbound field slaves being drunken degenerates and a group of them almost gang-rapes Scarlett. Although this probably occurred now and again (just as white men will rape women, it happens), the knowledge of the author makes everything untrustworthy and suspicious. (If the topic of the book itself didn't make the reader wary already...) So--Mitchell was probably trying to say that the slave system was necessary, or else all hell would break loose and no-one would be safe, et cetera.
Mitchell also puts women who believe that they have the right to vote (and men who believe that women should have that right) on the same level as lunatics, alcoholic (women) and divorced women (which was quite a scandal in those days).
Frank is killed after the incident where Scarlett is almost raped--he was a member of the KKK, and upon hearing her recounting of what happened, he rallied the troops, so to speak, and killed the men who did it and lost some of their own. Scarlett feels guilty about his death, especially since she was so nasty to him while they were married. Anyways--Rhett goes to comfort her, and there's a funny scene: "'It's all Frank's fault for not beating you with a buggy whip... I'm surprised at you, Scarlett, for sprouting a conscience this late in life. Opportunists like you shouldn't have them.' 'What is an oppor--what did you call it?' 'A person who takes advantages of opportunities.' 'Is that wrong?' 'It has always been held in disrepute--especially by those who had the same opportunities and didn't take them'" (552).
Rhett then immediately proposes to Scarlett. Scarlett accepts.
"He made her play and she had almost forgotten how. Life had been so serious and so bitter. He knew how to play and swept her along with him" (569).
Again, another reference--really a paraphrase--to the Bible: "'It's harder for speculators' money to get into the best parlors than for the camel to go through the needle's eye" (572). Jesus, in Matthew, says that "It is hard for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven... It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the Kingdom of God" (Luke, Mark, Matthew--various phraseries of this).
As things usually go, Rhett and Scarlett have a child together. The daughter began to suffer from night terrors. After Bonnie was born, Scarlett absolutely refused to have another child and would not even let Rhett share a bed with her. So their daughter slept in her crib in her father's room with the lights on. Scarlett once overhears Bonnie relating one of her horrible nightmares to her father--she explains that a big "it" sat on her chest and had claws. The claws are different, but often incubi are characterized as sitting on their victims' chests or stomachs. (See "The Nightmare", a painting by Henry Fuseli--the 1790 version is pretty nightmare-inducing in its own right, too.) I just thought that that was a rather curious reference, if Mitchell even intended that... (The kid is only four or five!)
Ashley is terrible and depresses the world--it kills him that Scarlett has turned so hard and money hungry, but she's had to become that way. Though she's hard and cruel now, she has adapted, and he's become weak because he can't handle a hard life of work and money garnering.
"'I shouldn't have let him make me look back,' she thought despairingly. 'I was right when I said I'd never look back. It hurts too much, it drags at your heart till you can't ever do anything but look back'" (615).
"'Burdens are for shoulders strong enough to carry them'" (675). Scarlett, after seeing Melanie in her deathbed, when she realizes that she would have gotten nowhere if Melanie hadn't been at her side. As she realizes this, she realizes that she never needed Ashley at all. Her love for him wasn't really love at all, it was hardly anything: "Out of the dullness, one thought arose. Ashley did not love her and had never really loved her and the knowledge did not hurt. It should hurt. She should be desolate, broken hearted, ready to scream at fate. She had relied upon his love for so long. It had upheld her through so many dark places. Yet, there the truth was. He did not love her and she did not care. She did not care because she did not love him. She did not love him and so nothing he could do or say could hurt her" (675).
*So--as Scarlett has her revelation, Rhett has his own. He was sick of playing second banana to Ashley for so long, and now that Melanie is out of the picture, he sees no point in staying on. When Scarlett attempts to explain that she truly loved him all along and only just realized it, he explains that he fell out of love with her as easily as she did with Ashley. Now--this disappointed me, though I understood it. It made sense. Now, as a backtrack, Scarlett's little anthem was "I'll think about it tomorrow, tomorrow is another day", etc--and that's how the book ends: "'I'll think of it all tomorrow, at Tara. I can stand it then. Tomorrow, I'll think of some way to get him back. After all, tomorrow is another day'" (689). The last line is inspiring. As last sentences go? Very nearly one of the best. But--"some way to get him back"? Oh no. Oh hell no. You spent four hundred and fifty pages attempting to do this with Ashley. You are not doing this again. You are still an idiot. Though she grew up--she became money-minded, could manage food and all--managed a store, two mills and Tara--but she didn't mature any. Ughhh.
Oh, and the last time I saw the movie, I was about eleven. Basically the only scene I remember was when Rhett and Scarlett's daughter dies--she falls off a pony while riding sidesaddle when it jumps a hedge. The second Rhett bought her the pony I was basically like, IT IS ALL OVER, YOU HAVE SEALED YOUR DAUGHTER'S FATE. The only other scenes I remember clearly are these two: the iconic "frankly, my dear, I don't give a damn" scene, and an added scene where Scarlett gets mad that her waist is nineteen inches (because of her two children) instead of sixteen as it used to be. I remember it because I couldn't figure out what the big deal was.
Well, there's that. The book was rather gripping--I was completely sucked in during the war years. Unfortunately, when Ashley showed up again and their pathetic romance played out I lost interest. But still--if you're interested in this period, definitely read it. Like I said, it was pretty interesting to see the war and its aftermath from a Southern perspective. It was even more interesting because I took a history class first semester that was something like America 1650-1870, so I actually knew what the battle of Vicksburg met, who Carpetbaggers were, and so on. I wouldn't read it if you haven't got a lot of free time, though--my edition clocks in at nearly seven hundred pages, and it's columned like a Bible.
MLA Citation Information: Mitchell, Margaret. Gone With the Wind. The Macmillan Company: New York, 1936. (Is it possible that I have a first edition of this book!? Or a close to first!? It's in awful condition, but still, that's pretty cool...)
Unrelated Revelation Time: I was thinking about sunflowers the other day and realized something about the film adaptation of Everything is Illuminated--in The Sunflower, Wiesenthal observes that every grave of a soldier has a sunflower growing on it. In Everything is Illuminated; however, those flowers are probably meant to represent the dead residents of Trachimbrod. Or maybe soldiers too. There were an awful lot of flowers.
No comments:
Post a Comment