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Clutching the Chains That Bind: Margaret Mitchell and Gone with the Wind

Clutching the Chains That Bind: Margaret Mitchell and Gone with the Wind ESSAY Clutching the Chains That Bind Margaret Mitchell and Gone with the Wind by Drew Gilpin Faust ince its publication in 1936, Gone with the Wind has sold an average of 500,000 copies each year. More Americans learn about the Civil War from Margaret Mitchell than from any other single author. Yet in striking ways, Mitchell's portrait is at odds widi bodi die prevailing national and die soudiern mydiologies of die war. Far from a glorious military adventure or a sacred episode of purposeful sacrifice, the war became in Mitchell's rendering an "inferno of pain" (354-55). Her hero- ine, Scarlett, never understood its aims, "never gave a damn about the . . . Confederacy" (616); and for all their differences, her heroes, Rhett and Ashley, both "knew the war was all wrong" (2 3 3 ).' Growing up just after the turn of the century in a Soudi saturated widi Civil War memories, Margaret Mitchell passed her childhood listening to "ageing, graying relations" tell their stories of the conflict. Yet when Mitchell began to write her version of history in 1926, she drew significantly on her own life experiences as she refashioned die war for fictional purposes. Gone http://www.deepdyve.com/assets/images/DeepDyve-Logo-lg.png Southern Cultures University of North Carolina Press

Clutching the Chains That Bind: Margaret Mitchell and Gone with the Wind

Faust, Drew Gilpin.
Southern Cultures , Volume 5 (1) – Jan 4, 1999
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Publisher
University of North Carolina Press
Copyright
Copyright © Center for the Study of the American South.
ISSN
1534-1488
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Abstract

ESSAY Clutching the Chains That Bind Margaret Mitchell and Gone with the Wind by Drew Gilpin Faust ince its publication in 1936, Gone with the Wind has sold an average of 500,000 copies each year. More Americans learn about the Civil War from Margaret Mitchell than from any other single author. Yet in striking ways, Mitchell's portrait is at odds widi bodi die prevailing national and die soudiern mydiologies of die war. Far from a glorious military adventure or a sacred episode of purposeful sacrifice, the war became in Mitchell's rendering an "inferno of pain" (354-55). Her hero- ine, Scarlett, never understood its aims, "never gave a damn about the . . . Confederacy" (616); and for all their differences, her heroes, Rhett and Ashley, both "knew the war was all wrong" (2 3 3 ).' Growing up just after the turn of the century in a Soudi saturated widi Civil War memories, Margaret Mitchell passed her childhood listening to "ageing, graying relations" tell their stories of the conflict. Yet when Mitchell began to write her version of history in 1926, she drew significantly on her own life experiences as she refashioned die war for fictional purposes. Gone

Journal

Southern Cultures – University of North Carolina Press

Published: Jan 4, 1999

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