I DON’T KNOW NOTHIN’ ABOUT BIRTHIN’ BABIES!
If’n you gonna do it, do it right.
I DON’T KNOW NUFIN ‘BOUT BIRTHIN’ NO BABIES
Actually, that’s a whole lot funnier when you do it during an actual birth, complete with hand-wringing and panicked look. Especially if you’re the doctor delivering the baby. Just ask Dr.J.
Well, the size and inventory of Tara, as described by Mitchell, would make it larger than any plantation that existed in Clay County, Georgia, at the time.
I would argue that this book falls in the category of historical fiction. My problem with the book is that it glorifies the lifestyles of slavemasters while ignoring the widespread suffering and racism that made their lifestyle possible. It’s impossible to read it without feeling that the bad guys are the Northerners who are trying to destroy Scarlett’s happy life.
I don’t feel that the “Yankees” are the bad guys.
When I read it, I see Scarlett as someone that has common sense, but is basically a very shallow, vapid person who ruins her own life-out of her own selfishness and stupidity.
I don’t like GWTW, and I’m as southern as fried catfish and grits.
Well, maybe not that southern.
While it’s not racist in the same way as The Turner Diaries, the passages in the story that depict slaves as animals (and there are many of them) or fools to be laughed at work my nerves so much that it makes enjoying the plot (which I didn’t like anyway, seeing as how I couldn’t stand the protagonist as a person) very difficult to do. Plus, it’s not great literature. The writing is not on par with other great southern writers of her time. I’m from Jo-Jah, but I think Margaret Mitchell was very overrated as an author.
When people hail the book as the greatest of all time (second to the Bye-Bel, a’course), I have to admit my confusion. What makes it so great? The writing? The plot? The characters? I also have to admit that when people say they love the book (or the movie), I have to wonder why it is so easy for them to ignore the racist imagery embedded in the characterization of black characters and it’s so hard for me.
As for cringe-inducing, the movie is worse than the book, even though Hattie McDaniel WAS the first African-American to win an Academy Award. (And it was for playing a maid).
I like it though, if only for the costumes. I have a thing for costume dramas. I also like the book, I like the descriptions of things, like the food, or the decor or what have you. It’s also interesting hearing about certain customs, like “Second Day” dresses.
I think in a way, GWTW is a character study-the old, snobbish Southern women, who are too stuck on themselves to get out and DO something like Scarlett. Yet, Scarlett, for all her free-thinking, is selfish, spoiled, nasty and vain, and NOT someone you’d want as a friend. She rejects the only person who really knows her and loves her for what she is-and loses him only after learning that she loved him all along. Melanie, the woman she hates and makes fun of, is probably the best friend she’ll ever have-and she only realizes that when Melanie dies.
I dunno, it’s an interesting read-but then, I usually skim over the slave parts and that.