In my last two posts, I talked about how ambitious and how successful Mitchell is with her epic tale. As a feat of storytelling, Gone with the Wind is amazing. The characters are vivid and consistent. The main characters are rich and wonderful. The story never sags for long, which is hard to do in a short story, let alone in a book of this magnitude. Each section is interesting and rewarding so that you are never left pining for an older section; you happily move on and let the characters go on their way, happy to follow.
Moreover, Mitchell has incredible timing, bringing each twist and turn together to build up to something amazing. Having Melly's child arrive as Atlanta is under siege is fantastic. The rug is constantly pulled out beneath our heroes at just the right time.
As a feat of storytelling, I loved this book.
Politically, I hated this book.
As I touched upon in my last post, the South is romanticized beyond repair. The two burrs in my saddle are not surprisingly the issues of gender and race.
The book seems obsessed with what is masculine and what isn't. Every male character fails the test of masculinity except one. Every one of them is either effeminate ("He's nervous and timid and well meaning, and I don't know of any more damning qualities a man can have.") or boyish. Only Rhett is strong enough to man-handle Scarlett, to bend her to his will, to forcefully kiss her. As we are told repeatedly, "He was a man, and no matter what he did, she could never forget it." Near the end of the book, when Rhett is drunken and confronting Scarlett, he insists on his marital rights and carries her up the stairs. But instead of rape, we find the best sex of Scarlett's life. Once he kisses her roughly and controllingly, Scarlett melts away and gets what she's been needing the whole novel. Because of his uncontainable manhood, Rhett could even get away with knowing french fashions, which on any other man would be "rank effeminacy."
It's not that Mitchell insists on all women acting like women and all men acting like men. But what she does is romanticize the roles and social structures that bind them. The men may not know more, but the women should let them feel like they do. The tension in the book comes from Scarlett and Melanie and Ellen basically having to take care of all the men around them. But this seems to be a result more of the necessity of the times than a comment about any real social equity. And while we pity Ashley and his like-troubled southern men, we are left with something of disgust at their failures. Rhett is a shining example of what they could be and what they have failed to be.
And I do not have to say much about the politics of race here. Mitchell mocks Uncle Tom's Cabin because every northerner thinks that all slaves are brutalized when really they are treated more like family than slaves. But even Uncle Tom's Cabin shows some slave owners who are not brutal. There is nothing bad about slavery in Mitchell's book. In fact, we meet many blacks who having tasted freedom really just want to go back to their masters. And most disturbingly, we are supposed to share Rhett's outrage that he could be jailed for killing a black man who was "uppity" with a white woman. The Klan in Gone with the Wind never has been and never will be a terrorist organization; they are merely respectable southern gentlemen who are given no other recourse to righting the wrongs done against their womenfolk.
Mitchell's defense of southern social structures made parts of the book very difficult. There were many passages that made me feel dirty just to be reading them, and when I read those passages, I wanted to hide the book when someone walked by so they would not know I was reading this racist shit lest they think I endorsed it. And sadly, I cannot say I wholly enjoyed reading or thinking about the novel because of these passages.
I am very interested to see what the movie does with the politics of the novel, to see what extent they are left intact and to what extent they are washed over to emphasize the romance story.
Tuesday, February 8, 2011
Gone with the Wind - Part 2
In my last post I reflected on the greediness of Gone with the Wind and Margaret Mitchell's desire to have it all. That greediness is reflected also in her depiction of the South.
Why is Scarlett so nasty and selfish? Why is the heroine of our book someone we not only love but love to hate? Scarlett believes herself superior to just about everyone except maybe her mother and Ashley. She will step over anyone to get the thing she thinks she wants. She is areligious bordering on atheistic. And unlike modern novels or movies, the story is not one of progress. Scarlett doesn't end the novel a changed woman, regretting her character flaws. Scarlett is Scarlett throughout.
This was my first time reading the novel (and I have yet to see the movie too) and I was surprised at how this most-loved book had a rather wicked protagonist. In any other book, I would have expected the main character to be a sluicing together of Scarlett and Melanie, or Scarlanie. Scarlanie would have Scarlett's determination and strong-headedness. Scarlanie would have Melanie's faith and devotion, her dedication to her friends. Why would Mitchell take this tack?
I believe it has to do with this being a Southern book. Mitchell has stated that Scarlett is like Atlanta during the reconstruction, an odd mixture of the old South and the new South. But she is really only part of the old South in her roots and ties. The old South is found in Melanie and Ashley, the Tarletons, and everything that Tara represents. Scarlett loves these things, but she is not like these things.
By letting us follow hard and ruthless Scarlett, Mitchell avoids a cloyingly sweet novel about the romantic South, while at the same time indulging endlessly in the romantic South. In fact, Scarlett's hardness only makes the old South all that much more romantic. There is no criticism of any of the social structures that propped up the old south. Sexism? No, chivalry. Racism? No, family. There is not one mistreated slave or one cruel master; those things are northern myths. The Klan? They are needed to protect our women from uppity blacks egged on by the carpetbaggers, a necessity created by the North.
It really all comes together in Rhett Butler. You may think that you love his rascally and irreverent ways. Okay, you do, but you can enjoy them because at root he is a southern gentleman who always knows the truth before him. He may deal with the northerners and make friends with ne'er-do-wells, but he knows the score. His charm is all southern, and whenever the chips are down, he acts just like the Old Guard. His southern gentriness is like his love for Scarlett; something that he hides but really the thing that defines him.
So through these characters and this world, Mitchell gets to present the most romantic image of the South possible without seeming to write a novel that pines for the past. Now that is brilliant writing. We get a modern tale with modern players AND the nostalgic romanticized backdrop for them to act out their tale.
Didn't I say she was greedy? But again, you can be greedy as long as you can pull it off. And Mitchell most certainly pulls it off.
Why is Scarlett so nasty and selfish? Why is the heroine of our book someone we not only love but love to hate? Scarlett believes herself superior to just about everyone except maybe her mother and Ashley. She will step over anyone to get the thing she thinks she wants. She is areligious bordering on atheistic. And unlike modern novels or movies, the story is not one of progress. Scarlett doesn't end the novel a changed woman, regretting her character flaws. Scarlett is Scarlett throughout.
This was my first time reading the novel (and I have yet to see the movie too) and I was surprised at how this most-loved book had a rather wicked protagonist. In any other book, I would have expected the main character to be a sluicing together of Scarlett and Melanie, or Scarlanie. Scarlanie would have Scarlett's determination and strong-headedness. Scarlanie would have Melanie's faith and devotion, her dedication to her friends. Why would Mitchell take this tack?
I believe it has to do with this being a Southern book. Mitchell has stated that Scarlett is like Atlanta during the reconstruction, an odd mixture of the old South and the new South. But she is really only part of the old South in her roots and ties. The old South is found in Melanie and Ashley, the Tarletons, and everything that Tara represents. Scarlett loves these things, but she is not like these things.
By letting us follow hard and ruthless Scarlett, Mitchell avoids a cloyingly sweet novel about the romantic South, while at the same time indulging endlessly in the romantic South. In fact, Scarlett's hardness only makes the old South all that much more romantic. There is no criticism of any of the social structures that propped up the old south. Sexism? No, chivalry. Racism? No, family. There is not one mistreated slave or one cruel master; those things are northern myths. The Klan? They are needed to protect our women from uppity blacks egged on by the carpetbaggers, a necessity created by the North.
It really all comes together in Rhett Butler. You may think that you love his rascally and irreverent ways. Okay, you do, but you can enjoy them because at root he is a southern gentleman who always knows the truth before him. He may deal with the northerners and make friends with ne'er-do-wells, but he knows the score. His charm is all southern, and whenever the chips are down, he acts just like the Old Guard. His southern gentriness is like his love for Scarlett; something that he hides but really the thing that defines him.
So through these characters and this world, Mitchell gets to present the most romantic image of the South possible without seeming to write a novel that pines for the past. Now that is brilliant writing. We get a modern tale with modern players AND the nostalgic romanticized backdrop for them to act out their tale.
Didn't I say she was greedy? But again, you can be greedy as long as you can pull it off. And Mitchell most certainly pulls it off.
Gone with the Wind - Part 1
My version of Gone with the Wind is 1450 pages long. Lord knows the book is long enough and complex enough to warrant quite a bit of blogging. I don't know how much energy I'll have, so I decided to create several smaller entries rather than one big one.
Now I don't know Margaret Mitchell personally, you may be surprised to learn, but I do know this: she is greedy. Or at least, Gone with the Wind is the greediest novel I have ever read. Mitchell has decided to put everything into one book. Everything.
Gone with the Wind is a novel of manners. The first part of the book plays like an Austen novel as we follow the young, wealthy, and beautiful folks of the County. There are proper ways to behave, proper things to say, proper reactions to have--and Scarlett follows none of them. The novel is more appropriately a novel of manners turned on its head. Scarlett is no Pamela; she is the opposite, using all her energy just to pass as decent and not give her inner demons away.
Gone with the Wind is an apocalyptic tale. Once Atlanta is in flames, the novel resembles The Road, or The Walking Dead, or The Road Warrior. How will Scarlett and her band of dependents survive? From whence will they get their next meal? Oh thank god she found a calving cow! Oh thank god she shot that nasty Yankee in the face and took his good horse!
Gone with the Wind is a buddy story. Like the novel of manners, however, this buddy story is turned upside down, since one of the buddies loathes the other. For all of Scarlett's continual whining about Melanie, Melanie is by her side the whole of the novel. She's there with the saber when the vile Yankee needs a good Dick Cheneying. She's there to support her every step of the way. Scarlett doesn't know she's in a buddy story; she thinks hers is a love triangle story.
Gone with the Wind is an Horatio Algers story. With a little gumption and honesty, the American Dream is open to everyone. Once the apocalypse has subsided and Scarlett marries Frank, her story is one of the search for the American Dream. Only instead of having honesty and spunk be at her back, it is pure selfishness and fear that gets her to get Frank's shop in shape and to buy two lumber mills and employ a ruthless Irish overseer to beat the prisoner labor force. She get to live her American Dream, but of course, it will turn out to be a nightmare in the end.
Gone with the Wind is a romance. Love overlooked, love thwarted, love barred, love denied--this book has it all.
Gone with the Wind is the greediest book I've ever read. It wants it all. It wants to be every story it can be, even if it has to run over a thousand pages long to get there. Perhaps Mitchell knew she would only write one novel, so she crammed six or seven into the one book for good measure.
The amazing thing is that she pulls it all together and makes it all work as a unified whole. It is dazzling in its ability to be all these things and be such a good and solid story the whole way through.
Now I don't know Margaret Mitchell personally, you may be surprised to learn, but I do know this: she is greedy. Or at least, Gone with the Wind is the greediest novel I have ever read. Mitchell has decided to put everything into one book. Everything.
Gone with the Wind is a novel of manners. The first part of the book plays like an Austen novel as we follow the young, wealthy, and beautiful folks of the County. There are proper ways to behave, proper things to say, proper reactions to have--and Scarlett follows none of them. The novel is more appropriately a novel of manners turned on its head. Scarlett is no Pamela; she is the opposite, using all her energy just to pass as decent and not give her inner demons away.
Gone with the Wind is an apocalyptic tale. Once Atlanta is in flames, the novel resembles The Road, or The Walking Dead, or The Road Warrior. How will Scarlett and her band of dependents survive? From whence will they get their next meal? Oh thank god she found a calving cow! Oh thank god she shot that nasty Yankee in the face and took his good horse!
Gone with the Wind is a buddy story. Like the novel of manners, however, this buddy story is turned upside down, since one of the buddies loathes the other. For all of Scarlett's continual whining about Melanie, Melanie is by her side the whole of the novel. She's there with the saber when the vile Yankee needs a good Dick Cheneying. She's there to support her every step of the way. Scarlett doesn't know she's in a buddy story; she thinks hers is a love triangle story.
Gone with the Wind is an Horatio Algers story. With a little gumption and honesty, the American Dream is open to everyone. Once the apocalypse has subsided and Scarlett marries Frank, her story is one of the search for the American Dream. Only instead of having honesty and spunk be at her back, it is pure selfishness and fear that gets her to get Frank's shop in shape and to buy two lumber mills and employ a ruthless Irish overseer to beat the prisoner labor force. She get to live her American Dream, but of course, it will turn out to be a nightmare in the end.
Gone with the Wind is a romance. Love overlooked, love thwarted, love barred, love denied--this book has it all.
Gone with the Wind is the greediest book I've ever read. It wants it all. It wants to be every story it can be, even if it has to run over a thousand pages long to get there. Perhaps Mitchell knew she would only write one novel, so she crammed six or seven into the one book for good measure.
The amazing thing is that she pulls it all together and makes it all work as a unified whole. It is dazzling in its ability to be all these things and be such a good and solid story the whole way through.
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