Yes. Yes. Yes.
I never read “the sequel”. I have no interest in what this Alexandra woman wants to say about what happened next. It never seemed to matter to me anyway. But if I force myself to think about it, then I come to the same conclusions Lissa has.
On the subject of recycling names, it also occurred as a way of honoring the dead sibling. Alexander Hamilton’s wife was pregnant with their last child when their 20 year old son, Phillip Schuyler Hamilton, was killed in a duel (about two years before his father was killed in a duel). When the baby his wife was carrying was a healthy boy, Hamilton and wife named him Phillip Schuyler Hamilton after his dead older brother (no “the second” or “Junior”, just the same name).
I haven’t read The Wind Done Gone, but it did address something that I was always bothered by in the book. Mitchell gave copious back stories on several characters, but never on Mammy, though it said she had been Ellen O’Hara’s wet nurse (and possibly Scarlett’s also- I can’t remember). To have been a wet nurse she’d have had to have born a child, but there was never any mention of her child or its father. Whazzup?
No, I don’t think she got Rhett back. Scarlett is a survivior and a user. She’d have pawned her looks to marry well yet again and rebuild Tara, marrying a Northern industrialist to do so - the Southern wife of a New York Senator - if she had to. The only reason she chased Ashley as long as she did is because she KNEW she held power over him and would wear him down…I think she knows darn well she doesn’t have that any longer over Rhett and is too concieted, selfish and smart to waste her time. But she doesn’t have long, by the end of the book Scarlett has started to reach an age where looks are going to be secondary to using her conniving brains.
I often wondered if the term “nurse” for Mammy was intended to be a wet-nurse, or simply the person who cared for a child. The former, of course, was quite common at that time. The black wet nurse was expected to provide for the master’s child first and then, if there was anything left over, her own child. If the black child was malnourished, well, that was not nearly so important. We are expected to believe that Mammy’s child, if it existed, was of no concern to her at all, and that she was inordinately fond of Ellen and all the other white children.
If one were cynical, one could speculate that the never-mentioned father was the slaveowner, too. The existence of children who were lighter-skinned than their mothers was observable on many plantations but of course was never spoken of in “polite” company, certainly not in terms of the mulatto children in one’s own garden. In GWTW, I think it was stated that Ellen never spoke of the natural functions even of the animals.
Actually, as Lissa said, back in the days where child mortality was quite a bit higher than it is now, and most families had at least one child that didn’t live to adult hood, it was quite common.
As for Rhett and Scarlett, I wonder if maybe that had an on again, off again thing. He’d come back for a while, then leave, or she’d leave. I think if he DID come back, she’d quickly get bored with him again.
A new epic mini-series would be great. I tried to read the sequel and it sucked. Scarlett living happily as an Irish peasant (well, a very rich Irish peasant!)?
Maybe talk about Ella-she grew up, got pretty, and became everything her mother was not.
Okay, okay, I cry uncle! I was operating from the modern perspective, where it seemed creepy to keep naming children the same until you got one that “stuck.”
I most certainly stand corrected.
Maybe it’s a touchy subject, but could we discuss MM’s treatment of the KKK? Was that historically accurate at the beginning, or did she completely romanticize it?
My opinion is the latter. She certainly romanticized most other aspects of the black/white relationship.
Was MM just a product of her time, then, or did she harbor some latent prejudice? Certainly the phonetic presentation of how the slaves talked was a little disconcerting to a modern reader.
Both. She was a product of her time, which included a great deal of prejudice among people of her mileu. A great book on the subject is Catherine Clinton’s Tara Revisited: Women, War, & the Plantation Legend. The romantic legend of the pre-war South is just that, a legend. It was built up in the literature of the decades after the Civil War. The reality was not very much like GWTW except in a few isolated case.
In the novel I think slavery and the KKK and other social issues are deliberately painted from Scarlett’s self-absorbed “my problems take precedence” stance (one still held by many southern, and I’m sure non-southern as well, women and men). There are little windows in the book that let you know thinks were not as “happy darkies singing in the fields” before the war as Scarlett and Ashley pretend.
For example, when Scarlett returns to Tara during the war, all of the slaves who hadn’t been taken for the Confederate effort have run away, showing that they really weren’t happy being Mr. Gerald’s property. In one of the books best moments Mammy informs Miss Scarlett that she’s going with her to Atlanta (I believe it’s the “I saw it in the window and just had to have it” section) and Scarlett arrogantly tells her “you’re staying at Tara”. In a line not in the movie and that I’m paraphrasing because I’m not near a copy of the book, it says something to the effect of “Mammy looked at Scarlett and told her coldly 'Miz Scarlett… I am free. I will go where I like” and the line "Had Mammy said to Scarlett ‘I shall see thee at Philippi’ the words could not have been more chilling’.
Mammy loved her white children, but she was clearly glad not to still be a slave.
The KKK, while never the heroic organization of Birth of a Nation, really did start for different reasons than racism. It was essentially an underground citizen’s militia formed by thousands upon thousands of battle seasoned PTSD thoroughly defeated soldiers to guard against a military occupation of their homeland. It didn’t take it very long to become a society dedicated to bigotry, ignorance and racism (which, incidentally, is why it’s first president [though not, as sometimes referenced, its founder] Nathan Bedford Forrest, quit the organization [an odd moment of conscience from a former bigtime slave trader]). Ashley as portrayed in the book would certainly have joined for more romantic notions, while Frank would have joined for business reasons as well as unexamined social views. The attack on the shanty town was actually somewhat justifiable, however, due to the attempted robbery and rape of Scarlett. It wasn’t based solely in race: I could easily imagine urban black men today banding together to take revenge on an area where women could not go without being carjacked or sexually assaulted.
My dream cast for a remake:
SCARLETT- would have to be a worldwide talent search of course (but NO Julia Roberts, Nicole Kidman or other $20 million superstar)
RHETT- Johnny Depp
ASHLEY- Orlando Bloom
MELANIE- ? (Drew Barrymore? Very negotiable)
ELLEN- Catherine Keener
GERALD- Brendan Gleason
MAMMY- RUPAUL (oh alright, Loretta Devine, but only if Lady Chablis can be Prissy)
EMMY SLATTERY- Juliette Lewis
JONAS WILKERSON- Steve Buscemi
POLK- Lou Gossett, Jr.
BELLE WATLING- Jodie Foster
CHARLES HAMILTON- Haley Joel Osment
FRANK KENNEDY- Dennis Quaid
GRANDMA FONTAINE- Lily Tomlin
TARLETON TWINS- Mary Kate & Ashley Olsen- in drag
Replace that with Macauley Culkin. Haley’s not quite ripe yet for a husband role (even a young ill fated one).
I would cast Wynona Ryder as Melanie. Her delicate acting in The Age Of Innocence perfectly suits the role.
Johnny Depp isn’t old enough to play Rhett. I’d go with Timothy Dalton.
If she were younger, Morgan Brittany for Scarlett. Or could she pull it off? I see Anne Bancroft as Grandma Fontaine. We’d need to cast all eight of the Tarleton chidren, the four boys as well as the four girls.
I want Gary Sinise as Will Benteen, and that old monk from Ladyhawke to play Archie.
Haley could play Wade Hampton. Or is he too old?
Nope, don’t wanna go with Timothy Dalton. He played Rhett already in the mini-series “Scarlett” from the sequel penned by Alexandra Ripley.
Forgot to mention one little piece of characterization. Melanie was portrayed in the movie as a sweet, calm, tolerant, and loving to all person. But one of the reasons, in the book, she was glad that Scarlett had offered Ashley a job was that they wouldn’t have to move North, and have her son go to school with black children, or “pickaninnies” as she called them.
Lalalalalalala I can’t hear you. I think Dalton would be perfect to play Rhett. Or if Pierce Bronsnan can learn a South Carolinian accent I’ll take him.
That would be so awesome.