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A review of Gone With the Wind

by Margaret Mitchell

Reviewed by: Susan Buckner
About Susan Buckner

Gone With the Wind Gone With the Wind is a difficult book to consider in today’s culture. On the one hand, there is the idyllic neverland of benign slavery; on the other, there are Scarlett O’Hara and Rhett Butler, two of the most powerful characters ever to grace the fictional world. Gone With the Wind opens with Scarlett, a spoiled Southern belle, setting her sights on the refined Ashley Wilkes. Although Ashley is going to marry his cousin, Melanie, Scarlett still schemes and plots to make Ashley hers. In the background, the Civil War starts, and Ashley goes off to war.

Scarlett moves to Atlanta, with Melanie, and becomes a nurse, a chore she hates, but can't get out of. It is here, at a charity bazaar and party, she meets Rhett for the first time. Rhett is a dashing smuggler captain, and a man of loose morals. When he sees Scarlett, he knows she is the woman for him, that they are two of a kind. However, Scarlett is still intent on Ashley, even when Melanie becomes pregnant.

When Sherman comes sweeping towards Atlanta, Scarlett flees with Melanie back to her home, the plantation called Tara. She makes it home, to find her mother dead, her father senile, and her sisters ill. She takes on all these trials, and struggles to keep Tara going through the first dark days of Southern defeat.

A pair of Carpetbaggers raise Tara’s taxes, hoping to drive Scarlett out so they can buy it. Scarlett responds by returning to Atlanta, planning to borrow money from Rhett. When Rhett is unable to produce the money, Scarlett marries her sister’s beau in desperation. A year later, her new husband is killed, and Rhett moves in, and marries Scarlett. Their marriage is tempestuous, since Scarlett is still in love with Ashley. It is not until Melanie dies that Scarlett sees Ashley for what he is: A defeated Southern gentleman, who wants only to dream of the old days. And she sees Rhett is in fact her equal and her perfect partner. But Rhett’s love for Scarlett has worn out, and he leaves her. Unconquered, Scarlett returns to Tara, vowing to win Rhett back.

Mitchell has woven the threads of Scarlett’s story with the history of the South: antebellum luxury, Civil War, and Reconstruction. It is here her story may grate most on modern readers, but it is very important, because it demonstrates the Southern view of the most significant event in American history, a view that has stayed with us even today. However, Gone With the Wind ultimately has very little to do with American history, and is instead the greatest love story ever written.

Click here to buy this book, or read more about it at Amazon.com: Gone With the Wind

Copyright © by Susan Buckner, 2002

Reviewed by Susan Buckner:
-- Gone With the Wind - by Margaret Mitchell
-- Watership Down - by Richard Adams
-- The Chronicles of Narnia - by C.S. Lewis
-- The Dark is Rising Sequence - by Susan Cooper









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