Irvine Valley College:  Online Literature Study of the School of Humanities and Languages

Literature 110 - Popular Literature

Spring 2013 - Ticket #62740  // Marjorie Coverley Luesebrink, MFA, Instructor

Gone With the Wind, Margaret Mitchell

again, a Chapter-by-Chapter outline - here is is!  Spark Notes on *Gone With the Wind.*

Unit 5d : The Lure of Romance (continued)

Clear-cut Value System

The value system of *GWind* is really quite remarkable in the way that it re-enforces the standard "good" values of the American culture, and, at the same time, gives us a heroine and hero who do not subscribe to the recommended value system at all!  There is, of course, the excuse that this was war time - and everything was Not the Same.  Yet.  Interesting, this.  Hope it will be a topic on the Boards during this session.

Picture of stockade around Georgia Manor during Civil War

In fact, it is Ashley and Melanie who display for us the correct American values at work.  They hold the high moral ground for the entirety of the book, but it doesn't help them very much.  Melanie is unfailingly kind and charitable to everyone, sacrifices her own health and well-being at every turn, and never harbors an unpleasant thought toward any man or woman.  Even Scarlett, who does treat her with disdain (and maybe even betrays her, from her standpoint), never gets a word of reproof from Melanie.  Ashley is similarly honest, honorable, caring, and earnest.  He goes reluctantly off to war, even though he does not believe in it.  Far from letting these characters wear their well-earned haloes, Mitchell seems to give some weight to Scarlett's opinion that Melanie is just a well-intentioned fool.  Even in the case of Ashley, at the end Scarlett sees him as merely a man whose old-fashioned breeding make him unsuitable for the post-war world of commerce and competition.

Slaves picking cotton

In contrast - Scarlett and Rhett are ambitious to a fault, scheming, selfish, and largely indifferent to the sufferings of others.  We do think that Rhett starts to grow during the novel - he does finally go to help his "state" in the war.  He always has a good word to spare for Melanie.  He has some moments of grace.  Moreover, the argument can be made that he truly does love Scarlett.

And Scarlett, too, grows up enough to have the courage to do what she believes needs to be done.  Essentially, though, these characters grow more pragmatic and less idealistic as the novel progresses.  They are hard-headed, fearless, assertive, resourceful, and unsinkable.  Maybe these latter qualities do represent a list of positive values for Americans. (?)  Obeying the law was not one of these qualities.

Rhett Butler was accused of helping the Carpetbaggers after the War

"Readable" Characters

Because Scarlett and Rhett are so familiar in our culture, and because so many novelists who came after Margaret Mitchell incorporated one or many of their characteristics into new stories, we have a hard time assessing whether they are really "readable" or not.  What they do have is high profile and high drama associated with them.  Rhett is a typical "bad boy" in many ways - and we do know that character and are prepared to like him on charm alone.  Rhett has plenty of that.  Even when he is the most outlandish, he is still a magnetic character.

Scarlett is much like many of the more famous female characters in that she is rebellious and high-spirited.  (Think Jo in "Little Women" or Nancy Drew.)  And for that we are prepared to forgive her much.  It is in these partially-satisfied stock characters that we, at first, invest our interest.  Later, we do come to care about them, however flawed they are as moral, upstanding human beings.  We can love them, regardless.  And Americans did and do! 

Mythological and Folk Referents

After the Battle

The novel does draw on a rich tradition of romance literature and lore - and we have looked at some likely classic "romances" of the past earlier in the lecture.  The other place we see a concentrated  set of referents to traditional genre is in the war sequences.  Any story of war has to have a scene of the battlefield after the retreat.  It needs to have a "hospital" scene.  It needs to have a moment of glory.  All of these are completely developed in the war sequences of *GWind.*  Although we do not actually follow the main characters into the war - we have an ever-present sense of the direction and tragedy of the war - seen through precisely these familiar lenses.

Civil War Hospital (tidy version)

Civil War Field Hospital.  Less tidy.

Intimacy of Style and Tone

Margaret Mitchell does not seek to engage us at an intimate level in terms of domestic detail - such as we have seen in Lowndes' work (the interior of the lodging-house, for example) - rather she establishes the intimacy with her focus level.  Right at the beginning, we are focused on Scarlett's face - her not-quite-beautiful visage and her charm which blinds men, nonetheless.  In fact, although we do get quite enough background to know what the yards and lawns and houses and battlefields look like - by far the largest part of the description in almost every chapter is that of faces and bodies.  What people look like, the expressions on their faces, their body language, and their clothes are carefully noted in each scene.  It is this up-close view of the characters and their actions that gives us the illusion of an authorial voice that is close to us, too.

Scarlett

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Romance:  

A very interesting site about contemporary romance fiction (note especially the sub-genres of this for publishing purposes):  http://www.writing-world.com/romance/romgenres.shtml

Popular romance writers are legion, so I chose only one site of a popular romance fiction author - but all you need to do to find out more about your favorite is to enter the name into Google Search.  But maybe some of you have read:  Nora Roberts - http://www.noraroberts.com/

Surprisingly enough, one of the best selling romance writers of today is actually a man, Nicholas Sparks, and we see his books on shelves and towels everywhere:  http://www.nicholassparks.com/TheNovels.html