On my Bookshelf: Gone With the Wind

Gone With the Wind is one of those books. One of those books you know is a classic. One of those books you know you should read because of that. One of those books that languish in ‘to-be-read’ piles for ages. At least that’s what it was for me until last weekend, when I’d finally finished the last of its almost 1,000 pages.

It took me quite a while to finally start reading Gone With the Wind. I would say at least four to five years. We had an old copy in my High School library that used to catch my eye from time to time, but back then I was not interested. I was similarly disinterested when I reencountered the book at different university libraries, even though I felt a small prick of my conscience. I was a student of American Literature after all, so shouldn’t I give it a go at some point?
            My reluctance (almost bordering on unwillingness, really) had several reason. For one, there was the departmental reading list (not to mention reading lists for individual courses) that wanted to be finished, and Gone With the Wind was not on it. This at least gave me a handy excuse along the lines of “Well, I’m reading all these other classics….”. Besides these books, there was of course a pile of others I wanted, needed, longed to read. The first two installments in Patrick Rothfuss’s Kingkiller Chronicles, for example; or George R. R. Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire Series; or anything Margaret Atwood has ever written; or all the Maria Kallio novels by Leena Lehtolainen (if you’ve always wanted to read a Finnish crime series, read this one!). I could continue this list for pages. And I haven’t even started on all the books I would love to read a second (or third) time.

            So what got me to finally read it, you ask? Well, a course on the American Civil War in Literature and Film, for one. Frankly, a new literature course is always a good excuse to read some books that have been on your list for a while, or that you know you should have read – if they have something to do with the course, that is. So, one part of my new resolution to read this brick of a book was my curiosity that finally got the better off me. Another part was an attempt to see if it might offer up a possible subject for a term paper.

            But enough with the long-winded introduction, and on to the actual review. Did I enjoy the book? Yes, I have to say I did. Did Scarlett O’Hara annoy me at times? Oh, yes, she did. She’s one of the most airheaded, unobservant and selfish character I have encountered in my years of reading. But she’s also an incredibly strong woman that pulls through unimaginable hardship and suffering. She’s also a woman that does not care what her neighbors think or say when she buys and runs two sawmills and refuses to turn them over to her gentleman husband who’s absolutely not business-savvy. So it’s fair to say that Scarlett and I formed a kind of love-hate relationship.

            There were a few things that rankled a part of my while reading, however. Mostly, of course, the portrayal of black people in the novel. All of those are pretty predictable stock characters (the caring and bossy ‘Mammy’, the equally bossy ‘Uncle Peter’, the lying and incompetent young black girl, etc., etc.). What maybe got to me the most was when Mammy, after the war is over, several times refuses to be sent from Atlanta back to the O’Hara’s farm Tara, basically saying: “I am free and I am staying.” I’m not saying that this never happened, but portraying this as the ideal behavior of a black person after being released from slavery did not sit completely right with me. Additionally, in Mitchell’s post-War Atlanta, all the blacks who stay with their former owner are automatically ‘good’, while all the blacks who have left their former owners are automatically ‘bad’. Which honestly seems to be a slight oversimplification.

            And then there is of course the famous love story between Scarlett and Rhett Butler. And it is a good one, I’ll give you that. Though the fact that it takes Scarlett years to get over her youthful crush on Ashley Wilkes, and to realize that she actually loves, and depends on, Rhett is a bit tiresome at times. It does add excitement though, and a punch to the ending. The same goes for Scarlett’s transformation from hating Ashley’s wife Melly to actually loving and needing her – a transformation that the reader can guess at, but that Scarlett realizes only when Melly is dying.

            All in all, Gone With the Wind proved to be an enjoyable read, even though I sometimes wished it would be possible to set Scarlett straight on a few things. But then, the characters we love to hate are sometimes the most enjoyable ones (I had a similar reaction to Jane Austen’s Emma – don’t you wish you could wring her neck sometimes?). I might even reread it in a few years time – or not, depending on the height of my ‘to-be-read’ pile.