Question about GONE WITH THE WIND, book or movie. What do you think?

[raccoon]

OK, I know it's just a novel.

But doesn't it look like to you that Scarlett would've become disenchanted with Ashley much sooner than she did? She went through working in the army hospitals, an evacuation, an invading army, poverty, hunger, etc.

Things like that have a way of rubbing your nose in reality.

[teenagebambam]

1. I don't know....

....I've known an awful lot of "Scarlett's" in my life whom I thought would learn lessons a lot quicker than they did.

[Lifelong Protester]

2. I always liked the book better. It was NOT a 'love story' or even

to me the story of a woman who was, as some people describe her "spoiled and greedy". Scarlett overcame her 'center of the universe' pretty quickly when reality came around, and that is why this book was so popular during the depression. I always tell people I read it because it was the story of how someone overcame a lot of bad stuff thrown her way.

Also, the book does a pretty good job of showing the slaves as having a LOT more on the ball than their masters.

And Scarlett does get disenchanted with Ashley at the end. It was hard for her to give up her illusion of him. She finally realizes he was an illusion to her, and a dream is hard to give up.

[raccoon]

3. True, she does, but seems to me it would have happened much earlier.

"And Scarlett does get disenchanted with Ashley at the end."

Especially after all the traumatic events she went through.

[hlthe2b]

4. Oh, I think it was just the allure of wanting what you can't have...

which became an obsession. Whether it is money, respect, power, or the love of another person, I think each have the potential to become an obsessive desire.

[Tansy_Gold]

5. Scarlett was not a real person.

She was a figment of Margaret Mitchell's imagination and was subject only to what Mitchell wanted her to do/think/believe/learn. Authors, especially those who are projecting their own dreams onto their characters, can create some really messed up characters who would not be able to function in the real world.

Case in point: Just about every character in Atlas Shrugged except Eddie Willers and Cheryll Taggart.



TG

[Lifelong Protester]

6. I believe the topic is "Books-Fiction" so we are aware that

Scarlett is not 'real'.

But thanks for pointing that out to us, we would have never figured it out otherwise.

[raccoon]

9. Yeah, as I said, "OK, I know it's just a novel." nt

[Glorfindel]

7. Ashley was her fantasy - her beautiful, romantic escape from reality

Throughout everything that happened to her, including war, disease, multiple deaths, poverty, and hardship, she could think of noble, idealistic Ashley and everything would be better. It was only when she realized that his attraction to her was lustful, not romantic, that she saw the light. Her discovery that Ashley wanted her the way that Rhett wanted "that Watling woman" shattered her dream.

[CTyankee]

8. I didn't take that away when I read the book. Ashley was certainly turned on by her but

she welcomed it and encouraged it and tried to get him to run away with her to Mexico at one point.

At any rate, that to me is irrelevant. What is relevant is the awful way blacks were portrayed in that film and the book. It was that old racist fantasy that slaves had it better when they were slaves and a complete ignoring of the whole Underground movement to help slaves escape to the North. Those of us who grew up in the South as I did were told complete LIES about that history...

[hlthe2b]

10. You know, I lived a large part of my life in the Deep South growing up.

and I am certainly sensitive to the revisionist history-makers. While I would agree with you totally if this were a non-fiction book, I do not think there is an expectation--from even the best historical fiction--to definitively capture the accuracy of events in their totality. So, the absence of mention of the underground railroad (as one example), could be extended to important aspects missing from the best writers of the genre. Artistic license taken in historical fiction should be balanced with a reading of actual history and historical documentaries, IMO. I don't expect that same balance from novels.

I certainly see your point and that is why I think so many have fantasized about a GWTW re-framed from the POV of the African American and specifically the slaves. But, that is not the perspective that Mitchell chose to portray... Nonetheless, I think she does a masterful job of portraying how foolish the heated testosterone-driven rhetoric and blind idealism that lead the young men of the South to "crave" war and the very harsh reality from that perspective. That alone is a worthy portrayal that separates GWTW from the frivolous fiction that litters so many shelves today. Having gone to school with so many modern day "southern belles," I think she likewise does a masterful job of portraying that superficial silliness, while showing how it has such limited utility to the true challenges of life. Scarlett survives, not just because of her skill at flirtatious male manipulation, but because she actually has it within herself to rise to the harsh challenges meted out. Contrast that to her helpless sisters, father and Melanie, when they return to Tara to struggle for basic survival at the end days of the war and early years of reconstruction. In showing that side of her, Mitchell also gets to show the harsh reality of those who are less able to adapt, but do not sacrifice their "moral compass"-- and the more ruthless side of Scarlett, which assures her physical survival at the cost of self-respect and considerable future regret.

I think there is a lot in GWTW to praise-- even with the considerable shortcomings from today's perspective.

[CTyankee]

11. I grew up in segregated Texas but my mother's father (whom I never knew as he was

older when she was born and he died before I was born) had watched the Union army take over his parents farm on the infamous March to the Sea, thru his little community of Griffin, Georgia. They packed up and got to Texas where they started over, literally having everything they had taken away from them. It was a real saga, an awful example of what happens when a "country" loses a war and its spoils go to the vanquishing army. My mother said her father swore never to set foot over the Mason-Dixon line but only relented when her brother graduated from West Point in the 1930s.

So I read GWTW through that lens. I really thought of it as pop fiction of its time and not to be taken seriously as literature. Of course, I was enamored of writers like Camus, who was all the rage when I went to college. So there was a disconnect between me and GWTW.

A few years back, I was in Sicily and mentioned to a German-Italian woman there that my little granddaughter liked American Girl dolls and that they were based on American girls who lived in different historical eras in the U.S. She immediately said "Oh, Scarlett O'Hara!" I was pretty taken aback and said "No, she would be considered politically incorrect." I think this lady was confused...LOL!

[SheilaT]

12. A different way to think about Scarlett's unrelenting

obsession with Ashley is that he was a fantasy that enabled her to endure everything that came her way. She is, as we all are, a product of her time, place, and upbringing. Women of her class were supposed to be simple creatures who couldn't do anything for themselves, even when they were running plantations (like her mother) and businesses, as Scarlett herself did. It's a real case of cognitive dissonance.

The way the entire novel is written I have no problem with Scarlett's continued infatuation with Ashley throughout everything. It seems entirely consistent with everything that happens, and the way all the characters are drawn, especially given the time frame of the novel.