It's not necessary to be a good role model—or even likeable—to be a compelling protagonist. Precious few readers walk away from GWTW with unmixed admiration for Scarlett O'Hara. Nonetheless, she's an interesting and dramatically effective character ... in part, because of her enormous blind spots and self-absorption. The reader sees what Scarlett sees, and also what she can't because of her limited nature. If she were a more admirable person, though, the events around her would have been considerably less interesting and dramatic.
Scarlett is a truly horrible person. I couldn't feel any sympathy for her because she was so self-centred; she genuinely cares about nobody but herself, and is willing to make other people miserable to achieve even the smallest victory.
But it's a horrible book all around anyway. I was stunned by how racist it is. There is actually a scene where Scarlett is nearly raped by a random black guy, and all the white guys around are in the KKK and go kill the black guy, and this is portrayed as heroic. Every main male character in the book is in the KKK; while Rhett derides it, this is treated as a contrast between Rhett's general cynicism and Ashley's old-fashioned idealism (i.e.: participating the KKK is treated as idealistic and moral, if a little un-pragmatic and out of step with the times). There are also scenes included solely for the purpose of communicating that Scarlett's family's slaves were really happier being slaves and are unhappy and don't know what to do with themselves now that they're free. All of the dialogue by black people is written phonetically in order to portray them as ignorant, while the accents of white southerners are not transcribed. Reconstruction is treated as just putting a bunch of ignorant, incompetent, corrupt black people with no idea of how to rule into the state house.
The whole thing is set up to create a myth about antebellum life and myths about reconstruction and to perpetuate every unpleasant racial stereotype that existed in America at the time the book was written, and it's been so successful that it still colours people's understanding of the antebellum South, the Civil War, and Reconstruction. It's disgusting through and through.
edited 1st Sep '12 5:51:46 PM by WarriorEowyn
Yeah, that book is loaded with Values Dissonance, no question! At least we can thank Superman for defeating the Ku Klux Klan!
An interesting detail I've noticed is the difference in tone with the scene of Rhett leaving Scarlett. In the movie, he's leaving in a dramatic rage. In the book, he's weary and he says that line without the "Frankly".
Oh, Equestria, we stand on guard for thee!
Snarky Butt-Monkey
I tried reading this 800 page long monstruosity a couple of years ago. I don't think I made it to the 1/10 of the book. I love the movie, though. I think the admiration people have for Scarlett comes not from her horrible persona, but from the strenght she finds in herself to deal with the tough situations life trows at her.
"It's funny because it's retarded and he's dead."![]()
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If I remember the book accurately, its view of the War's lead-up, progress, and aftermath was pretty complicated and—dare one say?—nuanced. Though Scarlett's not the narrator, she's certainly an "unreliable protagonist," and it doesn't take much to perceive the more complex truths behind hers and the other major characters' self-interested perspectives. It's hard for a perceptive reader to buy that every GWTW character's nostalgia is shared by Mitchell in totally unmixed form, or even by the omniscient narrator.
Mitchell was certainly a child of her time in many ways and the book often shows it, but I think you might have mistaken too many of its characters' notions for the narrator's and author's, and might have imported certain perennial complaints that are far more applicable to the movie than to the novel. For example: I'll take it on faith that the book said something disobliging about black state politicians, but virtually all the Reconstruction passages I can recall were about the egregious conduct of the (lily-white) Northern occupying forces, and were so memorably written that I doubt a sensible reader could leave them with a take-away that was even primarily racialist, much less wholly so.
edited 3rd Sep '12 1:32:40 PM by Jhimmibhob
I need to get around to rereading Gone With The Wind one of these days - I read it when I was far too young and so most of the politics and racial stuff went over my head (also, not being from the US, I completely missed what most of the historical stuff was actually about).
But even pre-teen me reading it could tell it wasn't anything like the grand romance it so often got advertised as, and that Scarlett, though compelling, wasn't a particularly nice person. Her treatment of her children stick in my mind.
edited 3rd Sep '12 3:12:03 AM by Drakyndra
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I'm not confusing it with the movie, because I've never seen the movie. I have, however, read the entirety of the book. And while I don't remember it perfectly, I certainly do remember that black characters were portrayed entirely negatively (either as dangerous, incompetent, or unable to cope with freedom) and Reconstruction portrayed as an utter fiasco/failure. The latter portrayal is one that lingers on in people's understanding of the historical period to this day.
The northern occupation of the South existed because it was needed to prevent southern whites from murdering, oppressing and disenfranchising black people - things each Southern state proceeded to do almost immediately after US forces left.
I don't think we can chalk up the entire portrayal of the antebellum and postbellum South in the book to deliberate use of an unreliable narrator. It was part of a major trend in culture and media of whitewashing the South. It's the version of history - including the idea that slaves were generally well-treated and ended up preferring slavery to freedom - that was written in American school history textbooks up until the 1960s. It's not innocent.
edited 3rd Sep '12 1:48:53 PM by WarriorEowyn
Assuming that we read the same book, I can only say that you walked away from it having perceived fewer things, and more cartoonish things, than I did from my reading. Whether rightly or wrongly, I'm content to let others judge.
Certainly, GWTW generally failed to treat its slave characters as three-dimensional human beings, with complex human opinions and motives. Of course, one could also say that of the popular modern counter-narrative, in which invading Northerners were uncomplicatedly "greeted as liberators" (to use a recent locution) by their childlike benefactees. Both narratives treat the black characters as less-than-human touchstones, designed solely to facilitate some white person's self-admiration.
And as someone whose own family scrounged, starved, and sometimes died under said U.S. occupation, I reserve the right to take your fatuous description of the occupiers' intentions with a pillar of salt. I'll say this for it, though: it certainly makes Mitchell's narration look all the more nuanced by comparison.
I do not know which "modern counter-narratives" you are referring to. I agree that any narratives that treat black characters as caricatures rather than people are problematic, but cannot comprehend drawing moral equivalence between narratives that assert black characters preferred slavery and ones which recognize it as barbaric.
I do not assert that the motives of the North were entirely altruistic, but that the primary reason the occupation of the south was necessary was that without it, the 14th and 15th amendments wouldn't be worth the paper they were written on. History proves the later part of this statement, at least, to be correct. Reconstruction was the one period prior to the Civil Rights Movement where African-Americans served as US Senators, and in the governments of southern states. Strange as it may be, the US military was the only thing creating a semblance of democracy in the South; when it left, democratic government went with it and white supremacy reasserted itself.
And yes, I do find a novel which idealizes white supremacy repellant.
edited 4th Sep '12 3:05:38 PM by WarriorEowyn
I thought the one thing all historians of the post-Civil War era agree on was that the whole Reconstruction project was a colossal failure?
As seen here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reconstruction_Era_of_the_United_States
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So if I follow you correctly, it'd be preferable for us to remain under direct foreign military rule to this day (to help ensure "democratic government," Orwellianly enough). If so, the readers of this thread can probably draw their own conclusions about your critical judgment w/r/t many issues of that day, much less the novel that obliquely dealt with them in between the main plotlines.
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No, they don't. Read Eric Foner's Reconstruction, one of the main historical texts on the subject (there's an abridged version as an alternative to the brick-sized one). Capitol Men by Philip Dray, about African-Americans in government during the Reconstruction era, is also extremely interesting.
The failure of Reconstruction was that it lost popular support in the North, was unable to deal with white supremacist political terrorism, and ended too soon.
And no, military forces should have remained in the South until it were willing to accept that the rights to life and liberty delineated in the Declaration of Independence applied to black people as well. Hopefully it would have taken less than 150 years.
edited 5th Sep '12 3:01:24 PM by WarriorEowyn
I believe that "Ashley" used to be more common among men; it only gradually became a popular girl's name. In fact, you might have it backwards: it could have been the GWTW character, and his general soppiness, that helped make the name unpopular for baby boys, and gave it its effeminate (to us) undertones.
Although Mr. Ashley J. Williams might want a word with us and other people who think it effeminate.
Yeah, Ashley's a unisex name, it just happens to be more popular for girls nowadays.
I doubt that Ashley's character caused that trend: there's nothing "effeminate" about being noble and gentlemanly. It's just a case of Double Standard: giving your daughter a slightly masculine-sounding name is seen as more OK than giving your son a possibly feminine one.
edited 8th Sep '12 5:41:32 AM by DoktorvonEurotrash
It is somewhat on the same lines as pink really being the manly color rather than blue. The Victorians, like they did on so many other things, screwed that up completely. Or at least started the process. Ashley used to be as manly as hell for a boy's name.
And I would defy anyone to call Ashley Riot a pansy...
I don't think the author intended this but I see some chracters in Gone With The Wind as heavenly/demonic metaphors. Ashley and Melanie are angels, Rhett is the devil and Scarlett is humanity. Course this is largely due to my own warped perceptions of "good", "evil" and humanity. Ashley and Melanie are pretty and pious and say all the right things and. at least in Melanie's case, mean them. But they're ultimately inneffective. Rhett is usually right and on some level people know it but don't want to admit it. I'll let Scarlett's words and deeds speak for themselves as to my view of humanity.
edited 10th Sep '12 1:30:29 PM by tricksterson
Trump delenda estI don't know ... so far from angelic/demonic, most of the novel's main characters seem to be people with plausible mixtures of virtues and vices/weaknesses. Mitchell's Scarlett comes across as a Type III or IV Antihero ... someone to be admired for her liveliness, audacity, cussed will to endure, and (within certain areas) intelligence, but not liked—the Dolokhov of American letters.
It's moderately long, but no longer than many another widely-read novel—next to War and Peace, Lord of the Rings, and most of Dickens's works, it's a brochure. And though Shelby Foote probably wouldn't choose GWTW as a textbook, it's accurate enough by the forgiving standards of historical fiction. (It's not as if the fall of Troy went down precisely as Homer showed it!)

What's this? No thread for Gone With The Wind? Oh, wait, there is now!
When I think about this story, I think about how far it has gotten into pop culture. It seems that Scarlett O'Hara is considered a popular character in a number of fictional works.
But I have to ask this: why is Scarlett considered a cool role model? I mean, anyone who has looked into this story can say that Scarlett is not really that cool, and she is certainly not what I consider a role model. Is this an example of Did Not Do The Research?
I mean, Rarity from My Little Pony Friendship Is Magic is Scarlett O'Hara ponified, and Rarity has way more redeeming qualities and is overall more likeable than Scarlett!
Oh, Equestria, we stand on guard for thee!