Margaret Mitchell Quotes/Context/Critics

10) rhett about the man who really loves scarlett

God help the man who ever really loves you. You'd break his heart, my darling, cruel, destructive little cat who is so careless and confident she doesn't even trouble to sheathe her claws.

Blanche Gelfant on children and adults

Gone With The Wind relies upon surprise, the delight and terror of children who like to dress up as adults and to see adults undressed.

Blanche Gelfant on one reader and doubles

Gone With The Wind unites child and adult into one reader, and then by the divisions in its form and its characters, divides and at the same time doubles the reader's response, doubles his pleasure

Watkins on prudishness

Gone with the Wind is far too prudish to be a good novel. Miss Mitchell flirts with the risque.

Watkins on patriotism and sentimentality

Gone with the Wind is narrowly patriotic, prudish, melodramatic, and sentimental.

Watkins on GWTW lacking real depth

Gone with the Wind lacks true depth for one reason because it leaves evil out of the garden of Tara.

Faust on violating the romance plot

Gone with the Wind violates the generic romance plot

71) rhett loving the child

He loved the child, Scarlett, and I guess he drinks to forget about her.

18) scarlet on ashley

He never really existed at all, except in my imagination," she thought wearily. "I loved something I made up, something that's just as dead as Melly is, I made a suit of pretty clothes and fell in love with it.

4) the stabbing

He thought Almighty God had dealt cruelly and unjustly with him; and felt, somehow that he was paying Him back in kind when he stabbed thus into his wife's soul. Moreover he no longer loved her, because of the unconscious injury she had brought upon his home and his name

22) Rhett as dark

He was dark of face, swarthy as a pirate, and his eyes were as bold and black as any pirate's appraising a galleon to be scuttled or a maiden to be ravished. [Rhett]

11) lack of name

He was reminded that she was nameless. What did it matter about a name when he could give her one of the oldest and proudest in Louisiana?

Drew Gilpin Faust on foundations of her identity

Her ambivalence about the foundations of her own identity translated into contradictions and confusions in the novel's narrative and depictions of character

41) on her burdens

Her burdens were her own and burdens are for shoulders strong enough to carry them.

13) vanity and certainty

Her vanity leaped to the aid of her desire to believe, making belief a certainty. If he knew she loved him, he would hasten to her side.

39) Gerald's death

He—well, we figure he died like a soldier and in a soldier's cause." [Gerald dying after refusing a loyalty oath to the Yankees.]

How did she die?

Hit by a speeding taxi

Elizabeth Fox-Genovese on a careful line

Holding a careful line between mystification and autobiographical realism

37) on black people laughing

How dared they laugh, the black apes! How dared they grin at her, Scarlett O'Hara of Tara! She'd like to have them all whipped until the blood ran down their backs. What devils the Yankees were to set them free, free to jeer at white people!

61) what the future will bring

I do not know what the future will bring, but it cannot be as beautiful or as satisfying as the past.

54) bringing presents

I shall bring you presents so long as it pleases me and so long as i see things that will enhance your charms... And I warn you that I am not kind.

20) scarlett as fool by grandma fontaine

I won't be a big-mouthed fool, she thought grimly. Let others break their hearts over the old days and the men who'll never come back.

38) wearing the heart

I'd cut up my heart for you to wear if you wanted it.

2) thinking tomorrow

I'll think of it tomorrow, at Tara. I can stand it then. Tomorrow, I'll think of some way to get him back. After all, tomorrow is another day.

16) scarlett's perseverance

I'm going to live through this, and when it's over, I'm never going to be hungry again. No, nor any of my folks. If I have to steal or kill—as God is my witness, I'm never going to be hungry again.

12) scarlett as tired

I'm tired of saying, 'How wonderful you are!' to fool men who haven't got one-half the sense I've got, and I'm tired of pretending I don't know anything.

Lou Lumenick on the confederate flag

If the Confederate flag is finally going to be consigned to museums as an ugly symbol of racism, what about the beloved film offering the most iconic glimpse of that flag in American culture?

Molly Haskell on introduction

If there was ever a film that needed no introduction, it would be GWTW. Yet that may be just why it does.

9) desiree as slave

In silence he ran his cold eyes over the written words. He said nothing. "Shall I go, Armand?" she asked in tones sharp with agonized suspense.

Molly Haskell on a resting place

It hasn't found a comfortable resting place in the rambling house of literature

Drew Gilpin Faust on Scarlett's transformation

It is only the failure of one man after another that makes Scarlett's transformation necessary and possible

69) losing money losing world

It isn't losing their money, my pet. I tell you it's losing their world—the world they were raised in. They're like fish out of water or cats with wings.

What did she really think of GWTW?

It was "a rotten book" and that she hated the act of writing.

6) setting the scene

It was an October afternoon; the sun was just sinking. Out in the still fields the negroes were picking cotton.

Molly Haskell on waterfalls

Its strengths and weaknesses are as inseparable as drops of water in a waterfall.

Drew Gilpin Faust on the personal and political

Juxtaposing imagery of union and disunion, Mitchell foregrounds the personal over the political

7) making do with our lot

Life's under no obligation to give us what we expect. We take what we get and are thankful it's no worse than it is.

3) Look at my hand

Look at my hand; whiter than yours, Armand' she laughed hysterically.

Molly Haskell on denial

MM understood the paradox of a denial rooted deep in the feminine psyche

28) mammy as black

Mammy was black, but her code of conduct and her sense of pride were as high as or higher than those of her owners.

59) about the baby

"...she's the first person who's ever belonged utterly to me."/ "She belongs to me, too."/ "No, you have two other children. She's mine." / "Great balls of fire!" said Scarlett! "I had the baby, didn't I? Besides, honey, I belong to you." / "Do you, my dear?"

25) big sam's dialects

"An' dey ast me ter set down wid dem, lak Ah wuz jes' as good as dey wuz"

32) scarlet on class(??)

"Class?" said Scarlett, startled at the idea. "Class? What does class matter now, so long as a girl gets a husband who can take care of her?"

37.5) scarlet doesn't care

"I don't know why we fought and I don't care," said Scarlett. "And I'm not interested. I never was interested. War is a man's business, not a woman's."

34) land as important

"Land is the only thing in the world that amounts to anything," he shouted [...] "'Tis the only thing worth working for, worth fighting for—worth dying for!"

30) the value of gentleness

"Nothing, no, nothing, she taught me is of any help to me! What good will kindness do me now? What value is gentleness? Better that I'd learned to plow or chop cotton like a darky. Oh, Mother, you were wrong!

3) gentlemen and ladies

"Sir,"she said,"you are no gentleman!" An apt observation,"he answered airily."And, you, Miss, are no lady."

68) talking about war

"They don't talk of anything else," thought Scarlett. "Nothing but the war. Always the war. And they'll never talk of anything but the war. No, not until they die."

14) all the south has

"Why all we have is cotton and slaves and arrogance. They'd lick us in a month."

How much did the movie rights sell for?

$50,000, the highest amount ever paid to a debut novelist at the time.

8) I thank God

'But above all', she wrote, 'night and day, I thank the good God for having so arranged our lives that our dear Armand will never know that his mother, who adores him, belongs to the race that is cursed with the brand of slavery'

5) the goodbye

'Good-by, Armand' she moaned. He did not answer her. That was his last blow at fate.

How long did GWTW take to write?

3 years

How many men was she engaged to at one point?

5

How many copies did it sell one summer day in 1936?

50,000

How many copies does it sell a year?

500,000

How many Oscars did the film win in 1940?

8/13 it was nominated for

How did she characterise herself?

A dynamo going to waste

Leslie Fiedler on the rape

A fantasy of interethnic rape as the supreme expression of the violence between the sexes and races

Malcolm Cowley on realism

A good share of realism with the romance

64) melanie's view of what the south will be like

Ah," said Melanie sadly, "what will the South be like without all our fine boys? What would the South have been if they had lived? We could use their courage and their energy and their brains

Helen Taylor on difficulties of identity

All her relationships demonstrate the difficulties Scarlett has with her own identity, and especially femininity.

35) wars for money

All wars are in reality money squabbles. But so few people ever realize it. Their ears are too full of bugles and drum and fine words from stay-at-home orators.

Malcolm Cowley on plantation legend

An encyclopedia of the plantation legend

How did she describe herself?

An unscrupulous flirt

46) on the road to ladyhood

As Scarlett "found the road to ladyhood hard", her mother came to the conclusion that "the first duty of a girl was to get married. [...] To this end she and Mammy bent their efforts, and as Scarlett grew older she became an apt student in this subject

How did she meet her first fiance?

At camp gordon- killed in 1918 in France

How did her perceptions of The South form?

At six years old her mother took her on a buggy tour through ruined plantations and "Sherman's sentinels"

55) ashley in rags

At the sight of Ashley in rags, with an axe in his hand, her heart went out in a surge of love and of fury at fate. She could not bear to see him in tatters, working, her debonair immaculate Ashley.

Where did she get a job?

Atlanta Journal Sunday Magazine, using Peggy Mitchell as a byline

What were her birth origins?

Atlanta- great-great- grandfather fought in American Revolution, a 4th generation Atlantan

How early did she start to write?

Began making up stories before she could write, dictating them to her mother

Mitchell on being GWTW's author

Being the author of 'Gone With the Wind' is a full-time job, and most days it is an overtime job filling engagements and meeting visitors. In addition, I am giving all the time I can to war activities and future commitments in this field which will take me out of the city.

47) on teaching her gentleness

Between them [Ellen and Mammy], they taught her all that a gentlewoman should know, but she learned only the outward signs of gentility. The inner grace from which these signs should spring she never learned, nor did she see any reason for learning it.

Drew Gilpin Faust on the black characters

Black characters remain little more than caricatures in Mitchell's hands.

What happened in her second marriage?

Brief to a prominent Raleigh annulled two years later

How many did GWTW sell?

By the turn of the 21st century, more than 30 million copies had been sold worldwide in more than 40 languages.

8) women and facing the worst

Child, it's a very bad thing for a woman to face the worst that can happen to her, because after she's faced the worst she can't ever really fear anything again

6) scarlet and helplessness

Dear Scarlett! You aren't helpless. Anyone as selfish and determined as you are is never helpless. God help the Yankees if they should get you.

Henry Steele on the triumphant rise

Despite its melodrama and occasional sentimentality, it 'rises triumphantly over this material and becomes, if not a work of art, a dramatic re-creation of life itself

What happened at the last charity ball of the season?

Did a sensuous dance popular in nightclubs in France

38) ellen description

Ellen O'Hara was thirty two years old, and, according to the standards of her day, she was a middle-aged woman, one who had borne six children and buried three.

Mitchell on fighting

Fighting is like champagne. It goes to the heads of cowards as quickly as of heroes. Any fool can be brave on a battlefield when it's be brave or else be killed.

57) Rhett's love for scarlett

For I do love you, Scarlett, because we are so much alike, renegades, both of us, dear, and selfish rascals.

Drew Gilpin Faust on writing for self-assertion

For a woman, the very decision to write represented an act of self-assertion and self-definition with powerful emancipatory implications.

Molly Haskell on claustrophobia of Scarlett

For all Scarlett's sizzle and guile and charm, there is something tiresome and claustrophobic about being stuck inside a mind so stubbornly self-reflexive, cloistered in an eternal present, incapable of analysis or retrospection, unable to expand or reconsider

60) Rhett overpowering Scarlett- the rape scene

For the first time in her life she had met someone, something stronger than she, someone she could neither bully nor break, someone who was bullying and breaking her.

Floyd C. Watkins on manners and dress

Formal manners and dress in Gone with the Wind give a false picture of the old South, idealize its flaws

What things was she known for?

Frequenting "dirty" bookstores and collecting "French postcards," her sharp tongue and salty language, as well as for smoking three packs of cigarettes a day and drinking great quantities of alcohol.

Helen Taylor on hopes and dreams

GWTW is the ultimate expression of the hopes, dreams, and fears of Southern womanhood.

Molly Haskell on businesswomen

The awesomely shrewd businesswomen who subverts the ethics and threatens the masculinity of the dear white honorable, paternalistic southern gentleman

Donald Adams on the best novel

The best Civil War novel

Lou Lumenick on Yankee sympathisers

The book buys heavily into the idea that the civil war was a noble lost cause and casts Yankees and Yankee sympathisers as the villains

Which bit of the book did she write first?

The conclusion, then in no particular order

44) on her competitive dress

The dress set off to perfection the seventeen-inch waist, the smallest in three counties, and the tightly fitting basque showed breasts well matured for her sixteen years.

Leslie Fiedler on blacks and whites

The nightmare of black insurrection and white violation

66) the old days had gone

The old days had gone but these people would go their ways as if the old days still existed, charming, leisurely, determined not to rush and scramble for pennies as the Yankees did, determined to part with none of their old ways.

2) the passion

The passion that awoke in him that day, when he saw her at the gate, swept along like an avalanche, or like a prairie fire, or like anything that drives headlong over all obstacles.

Molly Haskell on Madonna's etc

The post-suffragette flapper meets the postfeminist powergirl, a Madonna derivative

Drew Gilpin Faust on realities of slavery

The realities of slavery remain largely and curiously hidden in Gone with the Wind—horn Scarlett, from the reader, and seemingly from Mitchell herself.

Drew Gilpin Faust on men's shortcomings

The shortcomings of men are at the center of Mitchell's novel

19) the difference

They both see the same unpleasant truth, but Rhett likes to look it in the face and enrage people by talking about it—and Ashley can hardly bear to face it.

Drew Gilpin Faust on emancipation and female freedom

This inability to deal with the meaning of emancipation for African Americans that rendered her unable to imagine a genuine female freedom.

What did her husband think about her starting writing?

Tired of lugging armloads of books home when she broke her ankle, so suggested she write her own: For God's sake, Peggy, can't you write a book instead of reading thousands of them?

40) worse than betraying her father

To them she had done worse than murder her father. She had tried to betray him into disloyalty to the South.

What were some of the potential titles?

Tomorrow Is Another Day, Another Day, Tote the Weary Load, Milestones, Ba! Ba! Blacksheep, Not in Our Stars, and Bugles Sang True.

36) scarlet killing

Yes, he was dead. Undoubtedly. She had killed a man.

70) life's glitter

Yes, life has a glitter now—of a sort. That's what's wrong with it. The old days had no glitter but they had a charm, a beauty, a slow-paced glamour.

12) Young Aubigny's rule

Young Aubigny's rule was a strict one, too, and under it his negroes had forgotten how to be gay

killing the soldier

[...] suddenly she was vitally alive again, vitally glad with a cool tigerish joy. She could have ground her heel into the gaping wound which had been his nose and taken sweet pleasure in the feel of his warm blood on her bare feet. She had struck a blow of revenge for Tara—and for Ellen.

53) wearing a veil

[I'd think you had] better taste than to wear that veil to advertise a grief you never felt

Patricia Williams on a flapper

an antebellum southern belle, she is also a thirties revision of the flapper

Pres. Harry S. Truman on giving the world

an artist who gave the world an eternal book.

33) frank on convict labourH

e felt that it was a traffic in human bodies on a par with prostitution, a sin that would be on his soul if he permitted her to do it.

Lou Lumenick on enshrining a myth

great lengths to enshrine the myth that the civil war wasn't fought over slavery — an institution the film unabashedly romanticises

52) on rhett's clothesh

is physique and face, for he was foppishly groomed, the clothes of a dandy on a body that was powerful and latently dangerous in its lazy grace

45) on her hair and hands

the demureness of hair netted smoothly in a chignon and the quietness of small white hands folded in her lap, her true self was poorly concealed

48) thinking of joining the army

when I think of joining the army in varnished boots and white linen suit [...] those long cold miles in the snow after my boots wore out and I had no overcoat and nothing to eat

65) ashley not wanting life to be real

Until the war, life was never more real to me than a shadow show on a curtain. And I preferred it so. I do not like the outlines of things to be too sharp. I like them gently blurred, a little hazy. [Ashley]

Watkins on the facts of the novel

Much in the novel is bad, false to the facts of rural and Southern life particularly, false to history, and, worst of all, false to human nature

58) Rhett's feelings are hurt

My feelings are already lacerated with disappointment at discovering it was my money and not my charming self you wanted.

42) on reputation

Until you lose your reputation, you never realize what a burden it was or what freedom really is.

Mitchell on her time

My time is not my own. It has not been my own since 'Gone With the Wind' was published. The very fact that since 1936 I have never had the time to sit down to my typewriter and write--or try to write--another book will give you some indication of what I mean.

23) scarlett on negros

Negroes were provoking sometimes and stupid and lazy, but there was loyalty in them that money couldn't buy, a feeling of oneness with their white folks which made them risk their lives to keep food on the table.

Floyd C. Watkins on never has been more praised

Never has a book been more praised than Gone with the Wind for what it omits

Molly Haskell on double standards

Never was there a heroine so admirable, so despicable, and above all so beyond the reach of the double standard that traditionally closes in on women in Hollywood films

29) on gentleman

Of course he wasn't a gentleman and there was no telling what men would do when they weren't gentlemen. There was no standard to judge them by.

62) do you remember

Oh, there were so many things she would preface with "Do you remember!"

5) reputation and freedom

Until you've lost your reputation, you never realize what a burden it was or what freedom really is.

Leslie Fiedler on women writing rape

Only a woman could have written (or gotten away with writing) about a woman being 'raped' and liking it.

What was Scarlett called initially?

Pansy

4) longing for the old days

Perhaps - I want the old days back again and they'll never come back, and I am haunted by the memory of them and of the world falling about my ears.

11) vanity and love

Vanity was stronger than love at sixteen and there was no room in her hot heart now for anything but hate

The time capsule

Put in in 1938 and buried in Flushing Meadows

49) the handsome soldiers

Scarlet and gold sashes swung to and fro, sabres glittered and banged against shining boots, spurs rattled and jingled. Such handsome men, thought Scarlett, with a swell of pride in her heart

31) scarlet on the rules of the game

Scarlett did not realize that all the rules of the game had been changed and that honest labor could no longer earn its just reward.

Molly Haskell on tomboys

Scarlett embodies the secret masculinization of the outwardly feminine, the uninhibited will to act of every tomboy adolescent, here justified by the rule-bending crisis of war.

Elizabeth Fox-Genovese on Scarlett as nice

Scarlett has never been nice and, with the advent of the war, commits herself wholeheartedly to surviving

Drew Gilpin Faust on Scarlett's punishment

Scarlett is both punished and celebrated throughout the book as Mitchell consistently makes her the victim of the freedom she permits her to seek

Drew Gilpin Faust on Old South

Scarlett represents the fulfillment of the Old South rather than its transformation or betrayal.

Elizabeth Fox-Genovese on Scarlett's tragedy

Scarlett' s tragedy lies in her inability to understand the meaning of being a lady

43) on ignoring life

She could not ignore life. She had to live it and it was too brutal, too hostile, for her even to try to gloss over its harshness with a smile.

67) scarlett on ignoring life

She could not ignore life. She had to live it.

What happened when visitors came?

She covered her work with a towel, keeping her novel a secret.

7) desiree's disappearance

She disappeared among the reeds and willows that grew thick along the banks of the deep, sluggish bayou; and she did not come back again

56) scarlett wanting him

She had wanted him, in that first instant, wanted him as simply and unreasoningly as she wanted food to eat, horses to ride and a soft bed on which to lay herself.

17) ashley on melanie

She is the only dream I ever had that lived and breathed and did not die in the face of reality.

51) on melanie

She looked - and was - as simple as earth, as good as bread, as transparent as spring water....

Mitchell on what her mother said about the Old South

She talked about the world those people had lived in, such a secure world, and how it had exploded beneath them. And she told me that my world was going to explode under me, someday, and God help me if I didn't have some weapon to meet the new world.

15) scared of a dream

She was less frightened also because life had taken on the quality of a dream, a dream too terrible to be real.

50) trapped between two things

She wasn't a girl who could dance and flirt and she wasn't a wife who could sit with other wives and criticize the dancing and flirting girls. And she wasn't old enough to be a widow.

38) racism talk

We'll do something about it if it means another war. Soon we'll be having ****** judges, ****** legislators—black apes out of the jungle—"

1) kissing and impatience

Well, my dear, take heart. Someday, I will kiss you and you will like it. But not now, so I beg you not to be too impatient.

63) the past and the dead and the old days

What was past was past. Those who were dead were dead. The lazy luxury of the old days was gone, never to return. And as Scarlett settled the heavy basket across her arm, she had settled her own mind and her own life. There was no going back and she was going forward

13) frowning and smiling

When he frowned she trembled, but loved him. When he smiled, she asked no greater blessing of God.

27) on white black rape

When she thought of the black hand at her bosom and what would have happened if Big Sam had not appeared, she bent her head lower and squeezed her eyes tightly shut.

10) awaking one day

When the baby was about three months old, Desiree awoke one day to the conviction that there was something in the air menacing her peace. It was at first too subtle to grasp. It had only been a disquieting suggestion.

Drew Gilpin Faust on Melanie vs Scarlett

While Melanie Hamilton Wilkes represents for Mitchell the embodiment of true ladyhood, Scarlett O'Hara mockery, its caricature

24) on slaves

Slaves were neither miserable nor unfortunate. The negroes were far better off under slavery than they were now under freedom, and if she didn't believe it, just look about her!

Mitchell on Southerners

Southerners can never resist a losing cause.

Why might she have never written another novel?

Spent so much time working with her brother and her husband to protect the copyright of her book abroad

9) sin in society

That is the one unforgivable sin in any society. Be different and be damned!

1) How to fall in love

That was the way all the Aubignys fell in love, as if struck by a pistol shot.

What did she do in WW2?

Worked tirelessly for the American Red Cross, even outfitting a hospital ship. She also set up scholarships for black medical students.

Drew Gilpin Faust on fighting like a man

Mitchell and Scarlett remind us that the attraction of the war for the woman writer was more than simply a desire to write or fight like a man.

Drew Gilpin Faust on war and women

Mitchell assures the reader that war is not women's business, but she is unable to make clear in the course of the more than thousand-page novel what in the postwar South women's business has become.

Elizabeth Fox-Genovese on investing conflicts

Mitchell invests Scarlett with the conscious and unconscious conflicts that inform the transition from explosive and tense girlhood to socially- determined womanhood

Drew Gilpin Faust on the theme of rape

Mitchell uses the theme of rape more broadly in Gone with the Wind to represent the frightening vulnerability that ultimately justifies female dependence.