Gone With the Wind is better known as a movie than as a book. But on the principle that the book is usually better than the movie, I picked up the novel.
As big as the movie was, it seems that when the book arrived, it was even bigger. Some books take on an importance that's hard to explain after the fact. Uncle Tom's Cabin, as any student that's had to read it can attest, is not really great literature. But it resonated with the readers of its time in such a profound way that it changed history. I think Gone With the Wind was similarly recieved.
First of all, it's a pretty good book. The story is exciting, and the Scarlett is really an interesting hero. It fits nicely into the genre of historical romance. Mitchell pays careful attention to the historical timeline, and the battles and strategies portrayed are really accurate.
But it's not beautiful prose. For gorgeous writing about the civil war, I much prefer Cold Mountain. They were both made into movies. But Gone With the Wind got a Pulitzer and was a much bigger deal when it came out.
So, what's going on?
Mitchell published the book in 1936, seventy-one years after the Civil War ended. The Civil War has had an astonishing half-life. Mitchell knew that, but it took 15 years and another Southern author, Faulkner, to put it unforgettably:
The past is not dead. In fact, it's not even past.I look at the story of this book from two perspectives. First, I see it through the eyes of the characters in it. Scarlett, her father Gerald, Ashley, Melanie, and Rhett — we meet all these people in the impossibly gorgeous plantation lifestyle in Georgia. Oh! The balls and the dresses!
I cannot help but think of those other ball-and-dresses books by Jane Austen. Austen lived in the time that these were the norm, and she cast her ironic eye at the whole proceeding. She wrote in the early 1800s, and Gone With the Wind begins in 1861. Although Scarlett is not a reader of literature, many others in the story are. In their balls, social conventions and obsession with propriety I see an America once again desperate to emulate Europe. The chaperoning, the marrying off for social advantage is all very well-known territory.
The desire to be like the Old County begins even before the start of the story. Gerald O'Hara came over from Ireland with a dream of becoming landed. He wanted to be like the landed nobility of his despised Ireland. The culture and aspirations of the fathers and the children were plucked and planted into this new world.
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