Gone With The Wind's Reflection Of 1930s Society

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Anastasia Tompkins

Period 3

English

Gone With The Wind Essay

Historians agree that the Civil War ended after five, dreadfully long years; however, they are incorrect. It did not end in April of 1865 in the southern region of the United States of America. Seventy years later, in Atlanta, Georgia, a young woman named Margaret Mitchell told a story of the Lost Cause from the eyes of her fiery heroine, Scarlett O’Hara. In her novel, Gone With The Wind, she revealed the parallels between Scarlett’s world and hers. The painful reminders of the South‘s defeat framed their society by avoiding reconciliation with northerners and lingering in the past world before the war.
In 1936, the United States was desperately trying, in vain, to stay neutral and prevent World War II. The axis powers, Germany in particular, were becoming a large threat with Hitler conquering countries with his Nazi army and Aryan race. President Roosevelt was re-elected and proposed his New Deal. The Supreme Court thought Roosevelt was “undermining the separation of powers,” but the Supreme Court gradually became in favor of his ideas. Despite the progression the world was making, Mitchell was caught up in her grandfather’s stories of the romanticized glory in the Antebellum South (Raab n. pag.). The Mitchell family told Margaret many stories of the way the Confederate soldiers were treated and of how her own grandfather walked fifty miles after the battle of Sharpsburg and had been shot twice in the head (Cossette n. pag.). Her teachings of the Civil War were more extensive then most college classes; however, one vital fact was absent from her vast knowledge: the Confederates lost. Her childhood was framed around a world that had died many years before she was born, and yet her family and friends held onto the one moment in time when their pride was bruised. Mitchell’s mother, Maybelle, showed her homes of southerners that General Sherman had demolished in his march to the sea and cryptically taught her to be cautious of northerners, or “yankees.” It would be years later that she realized how the war really ended (Cossette n. pag.).
Mitchell got the idea to begin writing Gone With The Wind in 1926 after a car accident. She was bedridden for so long, her husband, John Marsh, brought her books home from the library and she had read nearly all of them. He made an offhanded comment that now she would have to write her own. What was supposed to be a small joke, Mitchell took as an excellent idea and commenced her novel, still in bed.
“Again, the green eyeshade and baggy overalls were donned as she sat at her typewriter. She piled some cushions for her leg beneath the table, stuffed her old manuscript into a big manila envelope and put a pile of blank yellow paper in its place. She knew she had a story to tell, one about women during the war, like her Grandmother and Mrs. Benning” (Cossette n. pag.).
The South in the 1930s was suffering through the Great Depression like the rest of the United States; however, their “boom” in the twenties wasn’t nearly as significant as the North’s. Due to their still persistent avoidance of industry, the South unintentionally saved themselves from a harder fall. The South went through a pivotal depression immediately following the Civil War which was not dissimilar to the depression occurring during the era in which Mitchell wrote her novel. She added this aspect about the South in Gone With The Wind in the conversation between the gentlemen in the lounging room right after the news of the battle at Fort Sumter.
“’Has any one of you gentlemen ever thought that there’s not a canon factory south of the Mason-Dixon Line? Or how few iron foundries are there in the South? Or woolen mills or cotton factories or tanneries? Have you thought that we would not have a single warship and the Yankee fleet could bottle up our harbors in a week, so that we could not sell our cotton abroad?” (Mitchell 122-123).
Depression and despair are traits that are not easily overcome by any human being. Scarlett, although a partially fictional character, showed an evergreen strength that could be invoked at any point in time. When the readers interpreted Gone With The Wind, they involuntarily obtained hope from how Scarlett overcame her obstacles, thus giving them the strength to go on through the Great Depression. “When Scarlett swears to God after rooting around for that radish in the undone garden of Tara that she will never go hungry again, she was giving voice to every American who had suffered want and fear during the Hoover years” (Conroy 10).
In Mitchell’s novel, she identifies certain character with the Antebellum South and the New South. Their distinct characteristics prevail in their means of dealing with the results of the war. Scarlett, in many ways, is Mitchell’s representation of the New South. She schemes and calculate to get her way not necessarily for survival but to maintain her own sense of pride. Her set of values is very different from her mother’s and even her peer, Melanie. In starvation and scrapping for money, Scarlett developed a ruthlessness that saved her from emotional destruction. Ashley and Melanie represent the Old South. They are smiled upon by the society in the days before the Civil War and suffered through the agony of defeat while keeping their dignity. Pride was still a large part of the New South, as well at the Old South; however, in it was important in two different ways. Pride became individualistic. Scarlett’s pride could be maintained by working with Yankees to keep her hunger suppressed and Tara’s ownership in her hands, but Melanie’s pride involved shunning the Yankees and starving in the process. “’Starving’s not pleasant,” he said. “I know for I’ve starved, but I’m not afraid of that. I’m afraid of facing a life without the slow beauty of our old world that is gone’” (Mitchell 499).
As a direct result of the comparable aspects of Gone With The Wind and Mitchell’s life, her novel would later be called her autobiography. She blatantly stated that although many instances could be found in her life that parallel Scarlett’s, she had no intention of it being her autobiography. As a matter of fact, she never intended for the main character to be Scarlett. When she began Gone With The Wind, she had the Melanie figure in mind as her heroine (Cossette n. pag.).
Mitchell took ten years to write and polish her story of the Old South. Gone With The Wind provided the world with more than a heart wrenching tale of a lost love.
She documented the obstacles in her era by depicting her portrayal of the transition between the Antebellum South to the New South through a coquettish girl who was forced to become a strong woman after her world fell to pieces.

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Works cited:

Conroy, Pat. Gone With The Wind. Georgia: Macmillan, 1996.

Cossette. “Margaret Mitchell.” 16 Aug. 1998. 16 May 2005. .

Mitchell, Margaret. Gone With The Wind. Georgia: Macmillan, 1936.

Raab, Steven. “Franklin Roosevelt Articulates a Vibrant, Meaningful and Liberal Political Philosophy.” The Raab Collection. 16 May 2005. .