Gone With The Wind Sparknotes

There’s so much more to Gone With The Wind than cheesy, Civil War era, romance. There is race relations and female empowerment, but the book touches on the ugliness of war, the power of the land ownership and land itself, tradition, self reliance, and loss. Margaret Mitchell does a marvelous job of individually addressing separate real life issues of land, family and community, which affected the everyday lives of the characters. Gone With the Wind has a main theme of land possession and love for the land as the book continues. As foreshadowed in Chapter 2, Gerald tells Scarlett that she doesn’t need love; land will be the only thing that has ever meant anything. He says, “But there, you’re young. ‘Twill come to you, this love of land. There’s …show more content…
She never questions the institution of slavery, seeing nothing wrong with it as long as owners treat their slaves fairly. She never mentions any incidences of abuse of slaves by owners, though this obviously existed. Mitchell approves of the loyal and devoted slaves like Pork, Mammy and Uncle Peter, who, after the war and emancipation, wish to stay with their white former owners. She strongly disapproves of the freed slaves (termed "free issue niggers"), describing their lives as "a never-ending picnic, a barbecue every day of the week, a carnival of idleness and theft and insolence." She describes the freed slaves themselves as "lazy and dangerous as a result of the new doctrines being taught them." Not one of the characters has anything good to say about the freed slaves, and even Mammy holds them in contempt. It is significant that Scarlett is attacked by a freed slave in Shantytown and rescued by Uncle Sam, a slave who has tried freedom and rejected it, wanting only to return to Tara. A more balanced account of the emancipation of slaves might include mention of the immense hardship faced by these people, who had no money, no property, little or no education or training, and no experience of life beyond slavery. Many ended up in shantytowns in the towns and cities. Historically, the Freedmen's Bureau did much …show more content…
Scarlett O’Hara is not a “strong woman,” still less a “feminist icon” because her putative strength and feminism are predicated on the forced labor of others. Not to mention that in the pure face of it, she’s no model of feminism, having married her way to wealth not once but twice. I did very much enjoy reading Gone With The Wind when it didn’t drag on during the middle or how it spent four hundred pages explaining how Rhett can’t get the guts to tell Scarlett he actually loves her. I didn’t actually think I would like this book since it has always been portrayed as a “love story”, but I soon realized that it isn’t all about love, but rather the effects of war on the characters. If I did get one piece of “relationship advice” from this book, it’s that if you love someone, truly love someone, you shouldn’t have to fight for them and push your way to them if they don’t even care to notice how much you’d do for them. Scarlett was very foolish for chasing Ashley throughout the whole book. As much as Scarlett loves Ashley, he continually hurts her due to the fact that he’s married to someone else. Scarlett accepts this and keeps torturing herself by keeping him in her life because she loves him. She didn’t even value Rhett or care to notice that he actually loved her. Also, your dream guy may not be the right guy.