BBC’s Top 100 Books, #26, Gone With The Wind

Katie Scarlett O’Hara, the belle that Atlanta loves to hate, and the woman that Rhett Butler hates to love.  And just to be clear, as a society we’re not so sure which category we fall under either.  There’s no denying that this polarizing woman has kept Gone With The Wind firmly in the public eye since its publication in 1936.

There is much to dislike about the book.  The leads are spoiled and selfish, racism reeks from the pages, the history is horribly whitewashed (pun?), and the few “good” characters are relegated to side-story or die off.  But I can’t help it.  For all its flaws, I love Gone With The Wind, and I love Scarlett O’Hara.

I admire women who can survive the worst that life throws at them.  Scarlett does more than survive; she thrives, and the closeted society of wartime and Reconstructionist Atlanta can not forgive her for it.  In running away from her demons- and we must remember that the book begins when she is just 16 and ends at age 28- Scarlett manages to trample on every rule of polite conduct and in the end, in the last painful 100 pages, she loses everything.

In thinking about Scarlett, I can’t help but contrast her behavior with that of another (fictional) young woman living through a war.  Anne Shirley Blythe’s daughter Rilla, the protagonist of Rillia of Ingleside, also begins her story as an irresponsible child, caring more about parties and boys than about the tensions leading up to WWI.  However, to Rilla’s credit, through the course of the novel, she changes from the self-absorbed child into a empathetic, caring, well-adjusted woman.  Perhaps it is the difference between living during a war and actually being in the battlezones, but the same can not be said of Scarlett.  She doesn’t grow up.  She grows cold, continually rebuffing the only real friend she has because she fancies herself in love with that woman’s husband.  She is a failure as a mother, as a wife, as a sister, and as a friend, and when she finally realizes it, the story ends.

The beauty of Scarlett is that we all know she’ll come out ahead, but it remains unclear if she’ll do so by learning from her mistakes and changing her spots, or if she’ll continue on the “mule in a horse’s harness” path where only money and security matter.  Rhett Butler famously doesn’t give a damn, but as for me, I do.

(This book was a re-read.)