Gone with the Wind is
a novel published in 1936 by American author Margaret Mitchell. This is a
coming-of-age novel features one of the most well-known characters of American
literature, Scarlett OHara. The book explores the effect of the American Civil
War 1861-1865 on the characters and is set in the state of Georgia. It
follows the life of the spoiled protagonist, Ms. OHara as she makes her way in
the world, experiencing tragedy and romance while dealing with the social
changes brought by the Civil War.
Gone with the Wind was
immensely popular immediately, becoming the bestselling novel in America in
1936 and 1937. Margaret Mitchell, who was reluctant to publish her work, won a
Pulitzer Prize for the novel in 1937. The novel has been adapted into an
Academy Award-winning film starring Clark Gable and Vivien Leigh, a play and a
ballet. It has also been made into a musical in Japan, Britain and France.
Over 30 million copies
of Gone with the Wind have been printed worldwide. The novel remains popular in
the United States and is still studied in universities and colleges in the
English-speaking world.
Scarlett OHara was
not beautiful, but men seldom realized it when caught by her charm as the
Tarleton twins were. In her face were too sharply blended the delicate features
of her mother, a Coast aristocrat of French descent, and the heavy ones of her
florid Irish father. But it was an arresting face, pointed of chin, square of
jaw. Her eyes were pale green without a touch of hazel, starred with bristly
black lashes and slightly tilted at the ends. Above them, her thick black brows
slanted upward, cutting a startling oblique line in her magnolia-white
skinthat skin so prized by Southern women and so carefully guarded with
bonnets, veils and mittens against hot Georgia suns.
Seated with Stuart and
Brent Tarleton in the cool shade of the porch of Tara, her fathers plantation,
that bright April afternoon of 1861, she made a pretty picture. Her new green
flowered-muslin dress spread its twelve yards of billowing material over her
hoops and exactly matched the flat-heeled green morocco slippers her father had
recently brought her from Atlanta. The dress set off to perfection the
seventeen-inch waist, the smallest in three counties, and the tightly fitting
basque showed breasts well matured for her sixteen years. But for all the
modesty of her spreading skirts, the demureness of hair netted smoothly into a
chignon and the quietness of small white hands folded in her lap, her true self
was poorly concealed. The green eyes in the carefully sweet face were
turbulent, willful, lusty with life, distinctly at variance with her decorous
demeanor. Her manners had been imposed upon her by her mothers gentle
admonitions and the sterner discipline of her mammy; her eyes were her own.
On either side of her,
the twins lounged easily in their chairs, squinting at the sunlight through
tall mint-garnished glasses as they laughed and talked, their long legs, booted
to the knee and thick with saddle muscles, crossed negligently. Nineteen years
old, six feet two inches tall, long of
bone
and hard of muscle, with sunburned faces and deep auburn hair, their eyes merry
and arrogant, their bodies clothed in identical blue coats and mustard-colored
breeches, they were as much alike as two bolls of cotton.
Outside, the late
afternoon sun slanted down in the yard, throwing into gleaming brightness the
dogwood trees that were solid masses of white blossoms against the background
of new green. The twins horses were hitched in the driveway, big animals, red
as their masters hair; and around the horses legs quarreled the pack of lean,
nervous possum hounds that accompanied Stuart and Brent wherever they went. A
little aloof, as became an aristocrat, lay a black-spotted carriage dog, muzzle
on paws, patiently waiting for the boys to go home to supper.
Between the hounds and
the horses and the twins there was a kinship deeper than that of their constant
companionship. They were all healthy, thoughtless young animals, sleek,
graceful, high-spirited, the boys as mettlesome as the horses they rode,
mettlesome and dangerous but, withal, sweet-tempered to those who knew how to
handle them.
Although born to the
ease of plantation life, waited on hand and foot since infancy, the faces of
the three on the porch were neither slack nor soft. They had the vigor and
alertness of country people who have spent all their lives in the open and
troubled their heads very little with dull things in books. Life in the north
Georgia county of Clayton was still new and, according to the standards of
Augusta, Savannah and Charleston, a little crude. The more sedate and older
sections of the South looked down their noses at the up-country Georgians, but
here in north Georgia, a lack of the niceties of classical education carried no
shame, provided a man was smart in the things that mattered. And raising good
cotton, riding well, shooting straight, dancing lightly, squiring the ladies
with elegance and carrying ones liquor like a gentleman were the things that
mattered.
In these
accomplishments the twins excelled, and they were equally outstanding in their
notorious inability to learn anything contained between the covers of books.
Their family had more money, more horses, more slaves than anyone else in the
County, but the boys had less grammar than most of their poor Cracker
neighbors.
It was for this
precise reason that Stuart and Brent were idling on the porch of Tara this
April afternoon. They had just been expelled from the University of Georgia,
the fourth university that had thrown them out in two years; and their older
brothers, Tom and Boyd, had come home with them, because they refused to remain
at an institution where the twins were not welcome. Stuart and Brent considered
their latest expulsion a fine joke, and Scarlett, who had not willingly opened
a book since leaving the Fayetteville Female Academy the year before, thought
it just as amusing as they did.
I know you two dont
care about being expelled, or Tom either, she said. But what about Boyd? Hes
kind of set on getting an education, and you two have pulled him out of the
University of Virginia and Alabama and South Carolina and now Georgia. Hell
never get finished at this rate.
Oh, he can read law
in Judge Parmalees office over in Fayetteville, answered Brent carelessly.
Besides, it dont matter much. Wed have had to come home before the term was
out anyway.
Why?
The war, goose! The
wars going to start any day, and you dont suppose any of us would stay in
college with a war going on, do you?
You know there isnt
going to be any war, said Scarlett, bored. Its all just talk. Why, Ashley
Wilkes and his father told Pa just last week that our commissioners in
Washington would come totoanamicable agreement with Mr. Lincoln about the
Confederacy. And anyway, the
Yankees
are too scared of us to fight. There wont be any war, and Im tired of hearing
about it.
Not going to be any
war! cried the twins indignantly, as though they had been defrauded.
Why, honey, of course
theres going to be a war, said Stuart. The Yankees may be scared of us, but
after the way General Beauregard shelled them out of Fort Sumter day before
yesterday, theyll have to fight or stand branded as cowards before the whole
world. Why, the Confederacy Scarlett made a mouth of bored impatience.
If you say war just
once more, Ill go in the house and shut the door. Ive never gotten so tired
of any one word in my life as war, unless its secession. Pa talks war
morning, noon and night, and all the gentlemen who come to see him shout about
Fort Sumter and States Rights and Abe Lincoln till I get so bored I could
scream! And thats all the boys talk about, too, that and their old Troop.
There hasnt been any fun at any party this spring because the boys cant talk
about anything else. Im mighty glad Georgia waited till after Christmas before
it seceded or it would have ruined the Christmas parties, too. If you say war
again, Ill go in the house.
She meant what she
said, for she could never long endure any conversation of which she was not the
chief subject. But she smiled when she spoke, consciously deepening her dimple
and fluttering her bristly black lashes as swiftly as butterflies wings. The
boys were enchanted, as she had intended them to be, and they hastened to
apologize for boring her. They thought none the less of her for her lack of
interest. Indeed, they thought more. War was mens business, not ladies, and
they took her attitude as evidence of her femininity.
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