This thread got me re-reading GWTW for the first time in nearly four decades. I’m about 180 pages in, right now (my paperback edition is ~1000 pages; I’m up to where she meets Rhett Butler for the second time), and am falling in love with Margaret Mitchell; she is an absolutely amazing writer; there’s a reason why this book was a runaway bestseller before it ever became a movie. She’s an excellent observer and judge of human character, and she describes her scenes with a remarkable level of detail yet without being boring about it. I’ll have to quote some passages later on.
It’s great historical fiction, even taking into account author’s prejudices and time it was written in and all that jazz; she brings that time alive. Tara after the War is some of the best detail and atmosphere creation I’ve ever read, especially as Scarlett goes to visit neighbors (scenes not in the film). You will absolutely be cold and hungry while reading some of those scenes.
The entire novel is available online through Project Gutenberg Australia (where it’s copyright free- there’s also at least one unauthorized sequelin Australia that can’t be sold in the U.S. without copyright infringement being an issue.) Here it is protected by her heirs who are copyright bloodhounds and priests (literally- priests; one of the Stephens heirs recently left his share of the estate to his diocese).
The authorized sequels are unholy abominations and should not have been sanctioned.
Bump for the new novel about Mammy:
Ruth’s Journey by Donald McCaig
I’ll reserve judgment til I’ve read it, and I have no intention of reading it, but I will say that the Mitchell estate choosing a 70-something white guy from the mountains of Montana and West Virginia to write a novel whose main character is an enslaved Haitian* woman in 19th century Georgia is… interesting.
*Mammy is of Haitian origin in the novel; in my own backstory for her she is Creole as well, since the novel specifically says that Scarlett’s grandmother fled the Haitian revolution and wound up in Savannah and that she owned Mammy from the cradle, so it would make sense that either Mammy or her mother had Haitian roots, though in the novel she also has purely American black patois, which is odd since she’d have grown up speaking French.
I never liked GWTW. Hate the main characters, Prissy’s screetchy voice, and the slaves being depicted as quite happy in their forced servitude. Then they have the chance to get the hell away from Tara and don’t do it.
Mammy relates that everyone save her, Prissy and Pork ran away. Big Sam was in a hobo camp and did not return until he rescued Scarlet. Husband #2 (Frank?) gives him money to travel with, because one of the guys he killed was White, and even the Yankee occupation government would hang him for that.
No indication they were horribly abused at Tara. Where were they going to go, after leaving their home? Just start walking? To some utopia, up north? Where were they going to get money and supplies for the trip? They couldn’t even read or write.
I would love to leave the place I live. I can’t just up and leave. I’m not 20, I’m not in excellent health, there are a couple of people at least who depend on me, and all my friends are here. Better the devil you know…
There was a great exodus to Washington, D.C.
I decided to take a break from Scarlett about 570-580 pages in. More on that in a moment, but before I get there, there were some scenes with Melanie where you find she’s not a bad person to have with you in a tight spot.
When a lone Yankee soldier tries to loot Tara and Scarlett shoots him, Melanie comes off her sickbed to help Scarlett figure out what to do with the body - and volunteering to help, even though she’s in no shape to do so.
And later, when one Yankee soldier in a group of soldiers passing through with Sherman’s army on its way to the sea starts a fire in the kitchen, Melanie saves the day when Scarlett tries to put out the fire but is overwhelmed. (As Melanie is fighting the fire, she suddenly hits Scarlett across the back, at which point Scarlett blacks out. When she wakes up, she asks: “Why did you have to hit me?” Melanie replies, “Because, my darling, your back was on fire.” Melanie had Scarlett’s back, for real. :))
The book lost some of its luster when we get to the beginning of 1866. Reconstruction is already in full swing in the world of the book, which as best as I can tell is an alternate reality. In the real world, Andrew Johnson was President, and the Radical Republicans didn’t dominate Congress until after the 1866 elections.
In the book, by January 1866, “Georgia was virtually under martial law now. The Yankee soldiers garrisoned throughout the section and the Freedmen’s Bureau were in complete command of everything and they were fixing the rules to suit themselves. the Freedmen’s Bureau was loaded with enough cash in the winter and spring of 1866 to pay Negroes enough money that they could hang around and loaf all day, and incidentally the Freedmen’s Bureau was run by the men who used to be the overseers at Tara and nearby plantations.”
In the real world, the overseers would have been the last people that the freed slaves would have wanted to be doing business with, but in the book, all the Bad People (freed blacks and low-class whites of all sorts) were on the same (wrong) side. So Margaret Mitchell, after having made not a single misstep for 500 pages, has launched into selling us a bill of goods on Reconstruction. It’s a bit retch-worthy, really.
And of course one of those low-class whites is somehow in charge of setting the property taxes, which he raises sky-high on Tara, which sends Scarlett to Atlanta in search of Rhett and money.
Scarlett’s internal monologue:
And this is where one really wants to grab Scarlett by the shoulders and shake some sense into her. If she’d gone to Rhett, been honest about her situation, and said, “Rhett, I don’t need just money, I need a plan,” and enlisted his aid as an ally, he would have wanted to move heaven and earth for her. (Prevented by his being in prison, of course.) But unfortunately, the only way she knows to deal with men is by manipulation, so that’s the route she takes.
And when Rhett is unable to help her, and she has her chance encounter with a suddenly affluent Frank Kennedy, she’s willing to lie to Frank, telling him Suellen has married someone else, so that she can steal Frank from her own sister. (I’d forgotten that, in the book at least, she lies like this to Frank. My recollection had been that she simply came on strong, and it worked.)
Up to this point, Scarlett’s ruthlessness in fighting for her own survival and that of those dependent on her has been largely admirable, even if it’s made her hell to get along with. But this is the point at which sympathy becomes impossible. That she’s defined what she is, and is just haggling over the price, is almost incidental to her betrayal of both her sister and herself.
So I’ve put the book down for awhile. It was just hard to keep pushing forward.
(double post)
Yes, but she didn’t double post. 
No, but she triple married.
Well, hell, I did that. 
The movie left out the story of Will, a lower class soldier recuperating at Tara, and he was memorable in the book. A good man. He married Suellen, despite not being of her ‘class’ - marriageble men after the war were SCARCE, and he was a good man. She was lucky to get him.
carnivorousplant is Mormon? :eek:
Jewish, actually.
Well, it’s a thousand-page book, so a few things had to go when they made the movie. Will Benteen, as you mention, and also Scarlett’s children by her first two marriages.
I’ll have to watch the movie when I’m done with the book, so I can see what else had to go. Less than one might think, I expect, because Mitchell described scenes in great detail, which is one of the book’s strengths, but while that is responsible for a nontrivial chunk of the book’s length, in the movie all that scene detail is just there as the camera pans over it.
Gone With the Wind could easily field a 12 hour HBO miniseries and not include everything from the book (especially the backstories).
I would insist on Grandma Fontaine being cast, however (preferably by Carol Burnett [and a pox if they tried to get Shirley MacLaine]).
I’ve seen it a few times. The most recent being about two years ago.
Parts of it are still entertaining. But not nearly as entertaining as they once were. Many parts did not hold up very well and I couldn’t watch them. I had to FF through them. I couldn’t understand just why so much of the film was no longer entertaining.
Anyone have any ideas on that?
Well, the film hasn’t changed; therefore, it must be that your brain has changed.
A bit of a hijack, but…
GWTW and other very long films were shown with intermissions in their original runs.
In 2.5 hour+ movies you need time to stretch your legs, go to the restroom, etc., and the concession stands would probably make money during it as well.
Anyone know what the last film released with an intermission was? (I could probably google it, but I’m lazy at the moment.)