Gone with the Wind (novel)
Gone
with the Wind is a novel by American writer Margaret
Mitchell, first published in 1936. The story
is set in Clayton County
and Atlanta, both in Georgia, during the American Civil War
and Reconstruction Era.
It depicts the struggles of young Scarlett O'Hara, the spoiled daughter of a
well-to-do plantation owner, who must use every means at her disposal to claw
her way out of poverty following Sherman's destructive "March to the Sea". This historical novel features a coming-of-age
story, with the title taken from a poem written by Ernest
Dowson.[2]
Gone
with the Wind was popular with American readers
from the outset and was the top American fiction bestseller in 1936 and 1937.
As of 2014, a Harris poll
found it to be the second favorite book of American readers, just behind the
Bible. More than 30 million copies have been printed worldwide.
Gone
with the Wind is a controversial reference point
for subsequent writers of the South, both black and white. Scholars at American
universities refer to, interpret, and study it in their writings. The novel has
been absorbed into American popular culture.
Mitchell
received the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction for the book in 1937. It was adapted into the 1939 film of the same name, which is often considered to be one of the greatest movies ever
made. Gone with the Wind is the
only novel by Mitchell published during her lifetime.[3]
Biographical background and publication
Born
in 1900 in Atlanta,
Georgia,
Margaret Mitchell
was a Southerner and writer throughout her life. She grew up hearing stories
about the American Civil War and the Reconstruction from her Irish-American
grandmother, who had endured its suffering. Her forceful and intellectual
mother was a suffragist
who fought for the rights of women to vote.[4]
As
a young woman, Mitchell found love with an army lieutenant. He was killed in
World War I, and she would carry his memory for the remainder of her life.
After studying at Smith College
for a year, during which time her mother died from the 1918
pandemic flu, Mitchell returned to Atlanta. She
married, but her husband was an abusive bootlegger. Mitchell took a job writing
feature articles for the Atlanta
Journal at a time when Atlanta debutantes
of her class did not work. After divorcing her first husband, she married
again, this time to a man who shared her interest in writing and literature. He
had also been the best man at her first wedding.[citation needed]
Margaret
Mitchell began writing Gone with the Wind in 1926 to pass the time while
recovering from a slow-healing auto-crash injury.[5] In April 1935, Harold Latham of Macmillan, an editor looking for new fiction, read her manuscript and
saw that it could be a best-seller. After Latham agreed to publish the book,
Mitchell worked for another six months checking the historical references and
rewriting the opening chapter several times.[6] Mitchell and her husband John Marsh, a copy editor by
trade, edited the final version of the novel. Mitchell wrote the book's final
moments first and then wrote the events that led up to them.[7] Gone with the Wind was published in June 1936.[8]
Title
The
author tentatively titled the novel Tomorrow is Another Day, from its
last line.[9] Other proposed titles included Bugles Sang True, Not
in Our Stars, and Tote the Weary Load.[6] The title Mitchell finally chose is from the first line of
the third stanza of the poem "Non Sum Qualis Eram Bonae sub Regno
Cynarae" by Ernest Dowson:
I
have forgot much, Cynara! gone with the wind,
Flung roses, roses riotously with the throng,
Dancing, to put thy pale, lost lilies out of mind ...[10]
Flung roses, roses riotously with the throng,
Dancing, to put thy pale, lost lilies out of mind ...[10]
Scarlett
O'Hara uses the title phrase when she wonders to herself if her home on a
plantation called "Tara"
is still standing, or if it had "gone with the wind which had swept
through Georgia."[11] In a general sense, the title is a metaphor for the demise of a way of life in the South prior to the
Civil War. When taken in the context of Dowson's poem about "Cynara,"
the phrase "gone with the wind" alludes to erotic loss.[12] The poem expresses the regrets of someone who has lost his
feelings for his "old passion," Cynara.[13] Dowson's Cynara, a name that comes from the Greek word for
artichoke, represents a lost love.[14]
Plot summary
Gone
with the Wind takes place in the southern United
States in the state of Georgia
during the American Civil War
(1861–1865) and the Reconstruction Era (1865–1877). The novel unfolds against the backdrop of rebellion seven southern states initially, including Georgia, have
declared their secession
from the United States (the "Union") and formed the Confederate States of America (the "Confederacy"), after Abraham
Lincoln was elected president. The Union
refuses to accept secession and no compromise is found as war approaches.
Part I
The
novel opens April 15, 1861,[15] at "Tara,"
a plantation owned by Gerald O'Hara, an Irish immigrant who has become a
successful planter, and his wife, Ellen Robillard O'Hara, from a coastal
aristocratic family of French descent. Their 16-year-old daughter, Scarlett, is
not beautiful, but men seldom realized it once they were caught up in her
charm. All the talk is of the coming Civil War.[16]
There
are brief but vivid descriptions of the South as it began and grew, with
backgrounds of the main characters: the stylish and highbrow French, the
gentlemanly English, the forced-to-flee and looked-down-upon Irish. Scarlett
learns that one of her many beaux, Ashley Wilkes, will soon be engaged to his
cousin, Melanie Hamilton. She is heart-stricken. The next day at the Wilkeses'
barbecue at Twelve Oaks, Scarlett tells Ashley she loves him, and he admits he
cares for her.[17] However, he knows he would not be happy if married to her
because of their personality differences. She loses her temper with him, and he
silently takes it.
Rhett
Butler, who has a reputation as a rogue,
had been alone in the library when Ashley and Scarlett entered and felt it
wiser to stay unseen during the argument. Rhett applauds Scarlett for the
"unladylike" spirit she displayed with Ashley. Infuriated and
humiliated, she tells Rhett, "You aren't fit to wipe his boots!"[17]
After
rejoining the other party guests, she learns that war has been declared and the
men are going to enlist. Seeking revenge, Scarlett accepts a marriage proposal
from Melanie's brother, Charles Hamilton. They marry two weeks later. Charles
dies of pneumonia
following the measles
two months after the war begins. As a young widow, Scarlett gives birth to her
first child, Wade Hampton Hamilton, named after his father's general.[18] She is bound by custom to wear black and avoid conversation
with young men. Scarlett feels restricted by these conventions and bitterly
misses her life as a young, unmarried woman.
Part II
Aunt
Pittypat is living with Melanie in Atlanta and invites Scarlett to stay with them, as she was Charles'
wife. In Atlanta, Scarlett's spirits revive, and she is busy with hospital work
and sewing circles for the Confederate Army. Scarlett encounters Rhett Butler
again at a benefit dance, where he is dressed like a dandy.[19] Although Rhett believes the war is a lost cause, he is blockade
running for profit. The men must bid for a
dance with a lady, and Rhett bids "one hundred fifty dollars-in gold"[19] for a dance with Scarlett. They waltz to the tune of
"When This Cruel War is Over," and Scarlett sings the words.[19][20][21]
Others
at the dance are shocked that Rhett would bid for a widow and that she would
accept the dance while still wearing black (or widow's weeds). Melanie defends
her, arguing she is supporting the cause for which Melanie's husband, Ashley,
is fighting.
At
Christmas (1863), Ashley is granted a furlough from the army. Melanie becomes
pregnant with their first child.
Part III
The
war is going badly for the Confederacy. By September 1864, Atlanta is besieged
from three sides.[22] The city becomes desperate and hundreds of wounded
Confederate soldiers pour in. Melanie goes into labor with only the
inexperienced Scarlett to assist, as all the doctors are attending the
soldiers. Prissy, a young slave, cries out in despair and fear, "De
Yankees is comin!"[23] In the chaos, Scarlett, left to fend for herself, cries for
the comfort and safety of her mother and Tara. The tattered Confederate States Army sets flame to Atlanta and abandons it to the Union
Army.
Melanie
gives birth to a boy, Beau, with Scarlett's assistance. Scarlett then finds
Rhett and begs him to take herself, Wade, Melanie, Beau, and Prissy to Tara.
Rhett laughs at the idea but steals an emaciated horse and a small wagon, and they follow the retreating army out of Atlanta.
Part
way to Tara, Rhett has a change of heart and abandons Scarlett to enlist in the
army (he later recounts that when they learned he had attended West
Point, they put him in the artillery,
which may have saved his life). Scarlett then makes her way to Tara, where she
is welcomed on the steps by her father, Gerald. Things have drastically
changed: Scarlett's mother is dead, her father has lost his mind with grief,
her sisters are sick with typhoid
fever, the field
slaves have left after Emancipation, the
Yankees have burned all the cotton, and there is no food in the house. Scarlett
avows that she and her family will survive and never be hungry again.
The
long tiring struggle for survival begins that has Scarlett working in the
fields. There are hungry people to feed and little food. There is the
ever-present threat of the Yankees who steal and burn. At one point, a Yankee
soldier trespasses on Tara, and it is implied that he would steal from the
house and possibly rape Scarlett and Melanie. Scarlett kills him with Charles's
pistol, and sees that Melanie had also prepared to fight him with a sword.
A
long post-war succession of Confederate soldiers returning home stop at Tara to
find food and rest. Eventually, Ashley returns from the war, with his
idealistic view of the world shattered.
Part IV
Life
at Tara slowly begins to recover, but then new taxes are levied on the
plantation. Scarlett knows only one man with enough money to help her: Rhett
Butler. She looks for him in Atlanta only to learn that he is in jail. Rhett
refuses to give money to Scarlett, and leaving the jailhouse in fury, she runs
into Frank Kennedy, who runs a store in Atlanta and is betrothed to Scarlett's
sister, Suellen. Realizing Frank also has money, Scarlett hatches a plot and
tells Frank that Suellen will not marry him. Frank succumbs to Scarlett's
charms and marries her two weeks later, knowing he has done "something
romantic and exciting for the first time in his life."[24] Always wanting her to be happy and radiant, Frank gives
Scarlett the money to pay the taxes.
While
Frank has a cold and is pampered by Aunt Pittypat, Scarlett goes over the
accounts at Frank's store and finds that many owe him money. Scarlett is now
terrified about the taxes and decides money, a lot of it, is needed. She takes
control of the store, and her business practices leave many Atlantans resentful
of her. With a loan from Rhett she buys a sawmill and runs it herself, all scandalous conduct. To Frank's
relief, Scarlett learns she is pregnant, which curtails her "unladylike"
activities for a while. She convinces Ashley to come to Atlanta and manage the
mill, all the while still in love with him. At Melanie's urging, Ashley takes
the job. Melanie becomes the center of Atlanta society, and Scarlett gives
birth to Ella Lorena: "Ella for her grandmother Ellen, and Lorena because
it was the most fashionable name of the day for girls."[25]
Georgia
is under martial law,
and life has taken on a new and more frightening tone. For protection, Scarlett
keeps Frank's pistol tucked in the upholstery of the buggy. Her trips alone to
and from the mill take her past a shantytown where criminal elements live. While on her way home one
evening, she is accosted by two men who try to rob her, but she escapes with
the help of Big Sam, the black former foreman from Tara. Attempting to avenge
his wife, Frank and the Ku
Klux Klan raid the shantytown whereupon Frank
is shot dead. Scarlett is a widow again.
To
keep the raiders from being arrested, Rhett puts on a charade. He walks into
the Wilkeses' home with Hugh Elsing and Ashley, singing and pretending to be
drunk. Yankee officers outside question Rhett, and he says he and the other men
had been at Belle Watling's brothel that evening, a story Belle later confirms to the officers.
The men are indebted to Rhett, and his Scallawag reputation among them improves a notch, but the men's
wives, except Melanie, are livid at owing their husbands' lives to Belle
Watling.
Frank
Kennedy lies in a casket
in the quiet stillness of the parlor in Aunt Pittypat's home. Scarlett is
remorseful. She is swigging brandy from Aunt Pitty's swoon bottle when Rhett comes to call.
She tells him tearfully, "I'm afraid I'll die and go to hell." He
says, "Maybe there isn't a hell."[26] Before she can cry any further, he asks her to marry him,
saying, "I always intended having you, one way or another."[26] She says she doesn't love him and doesn't want to be
married again. However, he kisses her passionately, and in the heat of the
moment she agrees to marry him. One year later, Scarlett and Rhett announce
their engagement, which becomes the talk of the town.
Part V
Mr.
and Mrs. Butler honeymoon in New
Orleans, spending lavishly. Upon returning
to Atlanta, they stay in the bridal suite at the National Hotel while their new
home on Peachtree Street
is being built. Scarlett chooses a modern Swiss chalet style
home like the one she saw in Harper's
Weekly, with red wallpaper, thick red
carpet, and black walnut furniture. Rhett describes it as an
"architectural horror".[27] Shortly after they move in to their new home, the sardonic
jabs between them turn into full-blown quarrels. Scarlett wonders why Rhett
married her. Then "with real hate in her eyes",[27] she tells Rhett she will have a baby, which she does not
want.
Wade
is seven years old in 1869 when his half-sister, Eugenie
Victoria,
named after two queens, is born. She has blue eyes like Gerald O'Hara, and
Melanie nicknames her, "Bonnie Blue," in reference to the Bonnie Blue Flag of the Confederacy.
When
Scarlett is feeling well again, she makes a trip to the mill and talks to
Ashley, who is alone in the office. In their conversation, she comes away
believing Ashley still loves her and is jealous of her intimate relations with
Rhett, which excites her. She returns home and tells Rhett she does not want
more children. From then on, they sleep separately, and when Bonnie is two
years old, she sleeps in a little bed beside Rhett (with the light on all night
because she is afraid of the dark). Rhett turns his attention toward Bonnie,
dotes on her, spoils her, and worries about her reputation when she is older.
Melanie
is giving a surprise birthday party for Ashley. Scarlett goes to the mill to
keep Ashley there until party time, a rare opportunity for her to see him
alone. When she sees him, she feels "sixteen again, a little breathless
and excited."[28] Ashley tells her how pretty she looks, and they reminisce
about the days when they were young and talk about their lives now. Suddenly
Scarlett's eyes fill with tears, and Ashley holds her head against his chest. Ashley
sees his sister, India Wilkes, standing in the doorway. Before the party has
even begun, a rumor of an affair between Ashley and Scarlett spreads, and Rhett
and Melanie hear it. Melanie refuses to accept any criticism of her
sister-in-law, and India Wilkes is banished from the Wilkeses' home for it,
causing a rift in the family.
Rhett,
more drunk than Scarlett has ever seen him, returns home from the party long
after Scarlett. His eyes are bloodshot, and his mood is dark and violent. He
enjoins Scarlett to drink with him. Not wanting him to know she is fearful of
him, she throws back a drink and gets up from her chair to go back to her
bedroom. He stops her and pins her shoulders to the wall. She tells him he is
jealous of Ashley, and Rhett accuses her of "crying for the moon"[29] over Ashley. He tells her they could have been happy
together saying, "for I loved you and I know you."[29] He then takes her in his arms and carries her up the stairs
to her bedroom, where it is strongly implied that he rapes her—or, possibly,
that they have consensual sex following the argument.
The
next morning, Rhett leaves for Charleston and New Orleans with Bonnie. Scarlett
finds herself missing him, but she is still unsure if Rhett loves her, having
said it while drunk. She learns she is pregnant with her fourth child.
When
Rhett returns, Scarlett waits for him at the top of the stairs. She wonders if
Rhett will kiss her, but to her irritation, he does not. He says she looks
pale. She says it's because she is pregnant. He sarcastically asks if the
father is Ashley. She calls Rhett a cad and tells him no woman would want his
baby. He says, "Cheer up, maybe you'll have a miscarriage."[30] She lunges at him, but he dodges, and she tumbles backwards
down the stairs. She is seriously ill for the first time in her life, having
lost her child and broken her ribs. Rhett is remorseful, believing he has
killed her. When Melanie goes to him in order to give him an update on
Scarlett’s condition, he asks if she's asked for him. When Melanie replies she
hasn't, he breaks down, finally realizing that Scarlett never really loved him.
Sobbing and drunk, he buries his head in Melanie's lap and almost confesses
that Scarlett truly loves Ashley, but stops himself at the last moment.
Scarlett,
who is thin and pale, goes to Tara, taking Wade and Ella with her, to regain
her strength and vitality from "the green cotton fields of home."[31] When she returns healthy to Atlanta, she sells the mills to
Ashley. She finds Rhett's attitude has noticeably changed. He is sober, kinder,
polite—and seemingly disinterested. Though she misses the old Rhett at times,
Scarlett is content to leave well enough alone.
Bonnie
is four years old in 1873. Spirited and willful, she has her father wrapped
around her finger and giving in to her every demand. Even Scarlett is jealous
of the attention Bonnie gets. Rhett rides his horse around town with Bonnie in
front of him, but Mammy insists it is not fitting for a girl to ride a horse
with her dress flying up. Rhett heeds her words and buys Bonnie a Shetland
pony, whom she names "Mr.
Butler," and teaches her to ride sidesaddle. Then Rhett pays a boy named Wash twenty-five cents to
teach Mr. Butler to jump over wood bars. When Mr. Butler is able to get his fat
legs over a one-foot bar, Rhett puts Bonnie on the pony, and soon Mr. Butler is
leaping bars and Aunt Melly's rose bushes.
Wearing
her blue velvet riding habit
with a red feather in her black hat, Bonnie pleads with her father to raise the
bar to one and a half feet. He gives in, warning her not to come crying if she
falls. Bonnie yells to her mother, "Watch me take this one!"[32] The pony gallops towards the wood bar, but trips over it.
Bonnie breaks her neck in the fall, and dies.
In
the dark days and months following Bonnie's death, Rhett is often drunk and
disheveled, while Scarlett, though deeply bereaved also, seems to hold up under
the strain. With the untimely death of Melanie Wilkes who was pregnant again, a
short time later, Rhett decides he only wants the calm dignity of the genial
South he once knew in his youth and leaves Atlanta to find it. Scarlett, who
finally realizes she loves him on the night of Melanie's death, confesses to
him, only for Rhett to say he'd given up on her after she'd suffered her
miscarriage and she hadn't asked for him, and delivers the book's most famous
line – "My dear, I don't
give a damn." Meanwhile, Scarlett dreams of
love that has eluded her for so long. However, she still has Tara and knows she
can win Rhett back, because "tomorrow is another day."[33]
Structure
Coming-of-age story
Margaret
Mitchell arranged Gone with the Wind chronologically, basing it on the
life and experiences of the main character, Scarlett O'Hara, as she grew from
adolescence into adulthood. During the time span of the novel, from 1861 to
1873, Scarlett ages from sixteen to twenty-eight years. This is a type of Bildungsroman,[34] a novel concerned with the moral and psychological growth
of the protagonist
from youth to adulthood (coming-of-age story).
Scarlett's development is affected by the events of her time.[34] Mitchell used a smooth linear narrative structure.
The novel is known for its exceptional "readability".[35] The plot is rich with vivid characters.
Genre
Gone
with the Wind is often placed in the literary
subgenre of the historical romance
novel.[36] Pamela Regis has argued that is more appropriately
classified as a historical novel,
as it does not contain all of the elements of the romance genre.[37] The novel has also been described as an early classic of the
erotic historical genre, because it is thought to contain some degree of
pornography.[38]
Plot discussion
Slavery
Slavery in Gone with the Wind is a backdrop to a story that
is essentially about other things.[39] Southern plantation fiction (also known as Anti-Tom literature,
in reference to reactions to Harriet Beecher Stowe's anti-slavery novel, Uncle
Tom's Cabin of 1852) from the mid-19th century, culminating in Gone With
the Wind, is written from the perspective and values of the slaveholder and
tends to present slaves as docile and happy.[40]
Caste system
The
characters in the novel are organized into two basic groups along class lines:
the white planter class, such as Scarlett and Ashley, and the black house
servant class. The slaves depicted in Gone with the Wind are primarily
loyal house servants, such as Mammy, Pork, Prissy, and Uncle Peter.[41] House servants are the highest "caste" of slaves
in Mitchell's caste system.[42] They choose to stay with their masters after the Emancipation Proclamation of 1863 and subsequent Thirteenth
Amendment of 1865 sets them free. Of the
servants who stayed at Tara, Scarlett thinks, "There were qualities of
loyalty and tirelessness and love in them that no strain could break, no money
could buy."[43]
The
field
slaves make up the lower class in
Mitchell's caste system.[42][44] The field slaves from the Tara plantation
and the foreman, Big Sam, are taken away by Confederate soldiers to dig ditches[22] and never return to the plantation. Mitchell wrote that
other field slaves were "loyal" and "refused to avail themselves
of the new freedom",[42] but the novel has no field slaves who stay on the
plantation to work after they have been emancipated.
American
William Wells Brown
escaped from slavery and published his memoir, or slave
narrative, in 1847. He wrote of the disparity
in conditions between the house servant and the field hand:
During
the time that Mr. Cook was overseer, I was a house servant—a situation
preferable to a field hand, as I was better fed, better clothed, and not
obliged to rise at the ringing bell, but about an half hour after. I have often
laid and heard the crack of the whip, and the screams of the slave.[45]
Faithful and devoted slave
Way back in the dark days of the
Early Sixties, regrettable tho it was—men fought, bled, and died for the
freedom of the negro—her freedom!—and she stood by and did her duty to
the last ditch—
It
was and is her life to serve, and she has done it well.
While shot and shell thundered to
release the shackles of slavery from her body and her soul—she loved, fought
for, and protected—Us who held her in bondage, her "Marster"
and her "Missus!"
Although
the novel is more than 1,000 pages long, the character of Mammy never considers
what her life might be like away from Tara.[47] She recognizes her freedom to come and go as she pleases,
saying, "Ah is free, Miss Scarlett. You kain sen' me nowhar Ah doan wanter
go," but Mammy remains duty-bound to "Miss Ellen's chile."[26] (No other name for Mammy is noted in the novel.)
Eighteen
years before the publication of Gone with the Wind, an article titled,
"The Old Black Mammy," written in the Confederate Veteran in 1918, discussed the romanticized view of the mammy
character that had persisted in Southern
literature:
...
for her faithfulness and devotion, she has been immortalized in the literature
of the South; so the memory of her will never pass, but live on in the tales
that are told of those "dear dead days beyond recall".[48][49]
Micki
McElya, in her book Clinging to Mammy, suggests the myth of the faithful
slave, in the figure of Mammy, lingered because white Americans wished to live
in a world in which African Americans were not angry over the injustice of
slavery.[50]
The
best-selling anti-slavery novel, Uncle Tom's Cabin by Harriet Beecher Stowe, published in 1852, is mentioned briefly in Gone with the
Wind as being accepted by the Yankees as "revelation second only to
the Bible".[43] The enduring interest of both Uncle Tom's Cabin and Gone
with the Wind has resulted in lingering stereotypes of 19th-century African-American slaves.[51] Gone with the Wind has become a reference point for
subsequent writers about the South, both black and white alike.[52]
Southern belle
Young misses whut frowns an' pushes
out dey chins an' says 'Ah will' an' 'Ah woan' mos' gener'ly doan ketch
husbands.
The
southern belle
is an archetype for a young woman of the antebellum American South upper
class. The southern belle was believed to be physically attractive but, more
importantly, personally charming with sophisticated social skills. She is
subject to the correct code of female behavior.[54] The novel's heroine, Scarlett O'Hara, charming though not
beautiful, is a classic southern belle.
For
young Scarlett, the ideal southern belle is represented by her mother, Ellen
O'Hara. In "A Study in Scarlett", published in The
New Yorker, Claudia Roth Pierpont wrote:
The
Southern belle was bred to conform to a subspecies of the nineteenth-century
"lady"... For Scarlett, the ideal is embodied in her adored mother,
the saintly Ellen, whose back is never seen to rest against the back of any
chair on which she sits, whose broken spirit everywhere is mistaken for
righteous calm ...[55]
However,
Scarlett is not always willing to conform. Kathryn Lee Seidel, in her book, The
Southern Belle in the American Novel, wrote:
...
part of her does try to rebel against the restraints of a code of behavior that
relentlessly attempts to mold her into a form to which she is not naturally
suited.[56]
The
figure of a pampered southern belle, Scarlett lives through an extreme reversal
of fortune and wealth, and survives to rebuild Tara and her self-esteem.[57] Her bad belle traits (Scarlett's deceitfulness, shrewdness,
manipulation, and superficiality), in contrast to Melanie's good belle traits
(trust, self-sacrifice, and loyalty), enable her to survive in the post-war
South and pursue her main interest, which is to make enough money to survive
and prosper.[58] Although Scarlett was "born" around 1845, she is
portrayed to appeal to modern-day readers for her passionate and independent
spirit, determination and obstinate refusal to feel defeated.[59]
Historical background
Marriage
was supposed to be the goal of all southern belles, as women's status was
largely determined by that of their husbands. All social and educational
pursuits were directed towards it. Despite the Civil War and loss of a
generation of eligible men, young ladies were still expected to marry.[60] By law and Southern social convention, household heads were
adult, white propertied males, and all white women and all African Americans
were thought to require protection and guidance because they lacked the
capacity for reason and self-control.[61]
The
Atlanta Historical Society has produced a number of Gone with the Wind
exhibits, among them a 1994 exhibit titled, "Disputed Territories: Gone
with the Wind and Southern Myths". The exhibit asked, "Was
Scarlett a Lady?", finding that historically most women of the period were
not involved in business activities as Scarlett was during Reconstruction, when
she ran a sawmill. White women performed traditional jobs such as teaching and
sewing, and generally disliked work outside the home.[62]
During
the Civil War, Southern women played a major role as volunteer nurses working
in makeshift hospitals. Many were middle- and upper class women who had never
worked for wages or seen the inside of a hospital. One such nurse was Ada W.
Bacot, a young widow who had lost two children. Bacot came from a wealthy South
Carolina plantation family that owned 87 slaves.[63]
In
the fall of 1862, Confederate laws were changed to permit women to be employed
in hospitals as members of the Confederate Medical Department.[64] Twenty-seven-year-old nurse Kate Cumming from Mobile,
Alabama, described the primitive hospital conditions in her journal:
They
are in the hall, on the gallery, and crowded into very small rooms. The foul
air from this mass of human beings at first made me giddy and sick, but I soon
got over it. We have to walk, and when we give the men any thing kneel, in
blood and water; but we think nothing of it at all.
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