LOVED this. I think Scarlet's infatuation with Ashley has less to do with him and more to do with who his family is and where they live (slightly higher up than the O'Haras but their plantation is neighbors with Tara) as well as the fact that he's the only man who doesn't fall under the spell of her charms--which is exacerbated by the fact that he becomes someone she can't have. Of course, Rhett is similarly immune to her charm offenses, which creates a push and pull dynamic between them since she has already set her sights on Ashley. And I agree that Gone with the Wind is overwritten--Mitchell doesn't say anything in one page that she can say in ten. Mostly, however, I agree with every single thing you said about how damaging this book is and has been. It is unforgivably racist and spreads an insidiously hateful message about race and the south. These messages are not subtle so the fact that so many people can't see them is honestly beyond me.
I like your explanation for why Scarlett is in love with Ashley. It makes sense. I think Mitchell stretching it out over 500+ pages is a bit hard to believe but I think you are exactly right. This turned out to be a hate read for me by about page 300, but I’m glad I finished it so I could talk about it free of any guilt.
I am totally writing a sequel where she’s in love with another man’s wife. Sometimes I wonder how I would respond to this book if I read it now (which I just can’t stomach doing again). Would I have more patience or less? I don’t know. Thank you for the comparison with Uncle Tom’s Cabin. That is a book which has not worn well but which had such different sympathies! I am heading off to watch Carol Burnett’s version as a palate cleanser. Shudder.
My original intent was to contrast the depictions of slavery, racism and Reconstruction in GWTW with The Unvanquished, but that would have been an hour long video and I didn’t think anyone would want to watch it. Plus, the pro Klan/ racist violence justifying in GWTW was so extreme that I wanted to focus on that. I think you should write that sequel/ alternate GWTW 😂😂. I couldn’t believe I said that when I edited the video.
@@BookishTexan I would totally watch an hour-long video contrasting the depictions of slavery, racism and Reconstruction in GWTW with The Unvanquished!
Lol please make it Scarlett x Melanie! For all of Scarlett's histrionic pining after Ashley, when reading the novel I could never shake the feeling there was some sort of underlying obsessiveness in the way the two women continually orbited each other... ;)
Thanks for posting your thoughts confirming mine, although I haven't read it all, i have no plans to complete it. I read reviews of this on Goodreads and almost every positive review referred to sections of this book as actual history. And these are current reviews, making your point. Do you have any thoughts on the Pulitzer?
Thank you for the support and kind words. The first time I tried to read this book I gave up. This time I was determined to get through so I hate read it. It is infuriating to me that so many people still see it as actual history and so easily ignore the insidious racism and Klan apologizing in its pages. I'm not a big book prize person and knowing this book won the Pulitzer is one reason why.
I didn't realize Gone with the Wind had won a Pulitzer. I read the Pulitzer-winning Love in the Time of Cholera and was deeply disgusted by some of its content. Now I'm really curious to research more on award-winning books. I'm interested to know how much weight the average reader places on awards. Especially one as well-known as the Pulitzer.
This was an excellent video, Brian. Thank you for identifying so much of the accurate history that needs to be at the forefront of any reading of this book. There is still so much cultural capital involving Gone with the Wind that it continues to be read or watched as people try to understand US culture. The insidious depictions of African-Americans are horrifying and definitely perpetuated racism and the “Lost Cause” myth. I hope you are having a good week and that your next reading experience is much more edifying! Best, Jack
(I put this comment on another book site...) We got along for decades reading this book WITHOUT THE DISCLAIMERS!! How could we have possibly done that without significant brain damage?
Did I say the book should come with a disclaimer? Nope. In the video I said that GWTW has damaged people’s understanding of slavery, the Civil War and race in a way that has made it harder for the nation to overcome our problems surrounding race. That’s not exactly brain damage, but it’s not harmless. Education is the key. Defending GWTW and Mitchell by excusing the racism of both contributes to our collective ignorance and prevents progress. If white people still get triggered by true statements about 90 year old racist book it’s hard to see how we can make progress on more complex issues involving race.
I really need to reread this one. I read it years ago but it was as a much less informed reader. So curious to see how I would react now given how I have reacted to other difficult texts. Knowing the history behind Mitchell’s intent will likely impact how I feel about the book. Appreciate your thoughts.
FINALLY. Finally someone has told the truth. The women on youtube gush about how great this book is and I just know without reading the book that is bull poop. That book is has feed the white woman of Americans' racist ideas since 1930's. Thank you.
Thank you. I am amazed that so many can read it today and miss or dismiss the racism of the author that she sent Ike’s expresses through her characters and sometime directly.
@@BookishTexan I am so insulted to hear the people on book tube speaking on the greatness of this book and then the long list of comments that co sign on the hate in this book. This book literally praises the klan. WT actual F. And you are going to act all hurt when I call you out on the racism you are supporting. My mother was alive when this 'master' piece was published. I am kind of shocked at the number of racist books that have won the Pulitzer. Wow was that a we hate the darkies awards? They gave that poopy award to the Gone with the Wind but ignored James Baldwin or Zora Neale Hurston. No we embrace the propaganda that the Nazis' took notes from. It sickens me. I am so happy to see someone who notice this is trash that needs to sit way back in the library and gather dust.
Read it decades back in high school and immediately forgot everything about it. I think I blocked it from my psyche. Even saw the movie and meh. But I do remember ranting about lynchings in my history class
@@BookishTexan Now I know why I hated the movie so much. I have so many female friends that loved it, but I held to my unpopular opinion. I think I may have tried to read the book back in high school and gave up on it. Thanks for the video!
@@susanmance9436 Thank you. I know lots of people who love the movie and the book, but I don't understand it. I'm sure they feel the same way about some of the books I like. Thanks for your comment Susan
@@BookishTexan I don't remember the book ever appealing to me. I mean, never say never... I might want to see for myself one day. But it does not sound like my cup of tea at all. I'm glad you took one for the team lol
Thank you for a realistic review of this book. I'm a Native American and I'm reading it now because it won a Pulitzer prize. I'm shocked this piece of obvious racist literature is held in such high regard.
Thank you for the kind words. I think at the time it was written racism was so widely accepted and Mitchell's version of the Civil War so widely accepted that the book just became established as a classic. The movie, which obscures some of the more obvious racism in the book, further popularized the book and the image of the South that isn't just fictional, but a deliberate misrepresentation of the South, Slavery, and Reconstruction. Today many who read think, "Well racism was common when it was written so . . ." and they excuse the racist language while missing Mitchell's attempt to further D.W.Griffith's effort in "Birth of a Nation" to make the KKK into heroes and excuse racist violence.
Interesting discussion! I really want to read GWTW and will likely purchase it next month. You picked excellent quotes to exemplify your points. Thanks for the video, Brian.
@@BookishTexan Thanks for letting me know. I have family member who have enjoyed the book in the past which is originally why I wanted to read GWTW. Now, I’m curious about it for other reasons.
Listening to you explain the plot was exhausting so I can’t actually imagine reading this. I was never actually interested in reading this, I was just here for the rant. This sounds like it would be a very uncomfortable reading experience and I like that you discuss the implications of the text on society.
Thank you Elle. The plot is convoluted and I reshot the review part of this video to simplify my plot discussion and shorten the videos length.😂 It was a hate read for me from about page 300 - the end.
This was really interesting, and very well argued- thank you for this! Not having read it (or seen the film), I’d just assumed before that it was just a bit ‘of its time’, but hadn’t realised how bad it was, and the ripple effects of the book. Eesh. Thanks for doing a deep dive into the book to talk about this!
Thank you Bob. Some of its racism is a product of its time, but its Klan promotion and warping of history are different from other books that contain racist language from the time period and its popularity here has embedded that misinformation in ways that I think have been really damaging.
Every time I criticize Gone with the Wind for its racism and glorification of slavery and the South I either get called “too woke” or “sensitive” or being “too political.” (As if condemnation of slavery is some controversial political ideology instead of a moral instinct) The fans of the book are almost more annoying than the book itself because they go to such extreme lengths to excuse these things or pretend the South was this perfect romantic place
I have had the exact same experience. In fact you can probably find something like that in the comments. The fans of this book are often times more annoying than the book. Which is saying something. Thanks for your comment.
As a Black man I've found that I'm often in a double minority when it comes to the legacy of Mitchell. I hate the movie and the book. Many people, including other Black Americans, really work hard to salvage the movie. I just can't get over the repulsive subtext of the movie, which is stated clearly in the book. Thank you for your righteous rage towards this despicable text. Like you, I hate everything that came from this book.
Thank you for watching and commenting. The movie was a favorite of my sister so I watched it dozens of times in my youth. It was only after reading the novel that I truly felt the "repulsive subtext" of the novel (great description by the way). When I researched the history of the novel -- Mitchell's background and her inspirations, the deeply racist nature of the book became clear. When I combined that with what I had learned studying the Civil War and Reconstruction and what was going on currently with all the hysterical backlash over the made up crisis surrounding CRT I realized that GWTW (book and movie) were responsible for miseducating millions of Americans about slavery, the Civil War, Reconstruction, etc. So much damage done by a fairly stupid book.
Have you read Bricks Without Straw, Brian? I got it for background research and as a foundational novel for the time, but hesitate because of racist stereotypes and language treatment... :/
There are people now in 2021 who say this book is one of their favorites and it is just shocking to me. I have actually unsubscribed to booktubers who list it as a favorite.....that may seem harsh but this book made me sick to my stomach and I just don't understand the love for this novel. Just my personal opinion....this was a wonderful review thank you.
Thank you. My feelings about this book are the same as yours. I tried to make the point that this book goes well beyond the racism that was common in the US in the 1930s by pointing out the way's in which it condones and glorifies violence against and the murder of African Americans. Every major male character in the book either personally murders an African American man or participates in white supremacist group violence that results in the murder of African American men. I don't know how people who read this book and say they love it get beyond that.
Thank you for this, it has made me consider my views of the novel. I always thought Mitchell just wanted to be accurate and not judge, but it's impossible to argue that after your video. That this book was written in the 1930s and not say the 1850s is very important, completely changes her audience.
At one point the racism and Klan worship were so over the top that I wondered if Mitchell intended it as satire. After learning more about her I’m confident that it isn’t. Accuracy wise I think Mitchell does capture the attitude of Southerners towards Reconstruction and African Americans. If the racism only came from the mouths of her characters it would be one thing, but most of it comes from the author. One thing that I think throws people off is that Scarlett herself seems to be against the war, the Confederacy, and the Klan. But she isn’t opposed to those things because she disagrees with their beliefs, but because they are inconvenient to her or a threat to her business. Thanks for watching and commenting.
I am glad you did this as a public service even though it was stressful and distasteful. I think it is important to point out as you do that it was written in the 1930s as that clarifies the author's position and intent.
This review came at a good time for me because we're watching the PBS documentary about the Reconstruction era by Henry Gates and everything you said goes right along with the documentation and history of that time. I haven't read GWTW and don't plan to. We already have enough apologists for what happened that are affecting the present.
I have seen some of the Gates documentary about Reconstruction. I went into this reread expecting it to aggrandize the "Old South" and present a sympathetic portrait of the Confederacy and an apology for slavery. But its Klan sympathies took me by surprise despite what I knew about the part where Ashley and Frank Kennedy lead a raid to kill an African American man.
Fantastic review!! You make a great case for it being the anti-Uncle Tom's cabin. I think most people who love the book are mostly relying on their love of the movie, which sanitises a lot of the book's racism. The sad part is it didn't have to be that way - the author could've still included all the racist garbage, but added some critique and analysis of the underlying drivers of it in southern society. Scarlett and Rhett could've gradually come to the realisation of how viciously exploitative was the system they were raised in, Ashley could've discovered the true horrors of the klan and used that as his motivation to break free and become a proper independent resilient husband and man, etc. So many missed opportunities...
Thank you very much. I agree completely about the movie and its impact on the books popularity. And I agree that Mitchell could have done all those things to eliminate the racist garbage. That she didn't, that she intentionally included them, was because they reflected her own thinking.
Excellent review. The point about how the book and movie are all some people know about the Civil War is spot on. I myself have heard actual live people argue that slavery was better for African Americans, and I believe they base that opinion on what they learned from GWTW.
Excellent! I have not read this book, to be transparent, but your direct quotes make it so much worse than I could have ever imagined. There are so many books in the world that I will never have time to get to. This is not one I’ll spend my time on.
I don't think you are missing much. If you've seen the movie you've seen the best parts of the story with a lot of the Klan loving racism filtered out.
The number of people who read your review without having read the book and, now, won’t tickles me, but hearing you say the civil war was about slavery does such injustice to history that I wish people had to be educated before reading the GWTW. The Civil War was about preserving the economics of the Union. The Confederate model, as it were, had slavery as its lynchpin; therefore, in order to win the war, the Union had to dislodge slavery. Yes, GWTW is racist and sexist. Self-evident, in this day and age, I would hope.
The secession of 7 southern states following Lincoln’s election, the attack on Ft Sumter, and the subsequent secession of 4 more states were the events that led to war. Certainly Lincoln’s initial and primary goal was the preservation of the union, economic, political, etc. when he realized that ending slavery was a key component of that effort he made ending slavery the rallying cry for the north and changed military policy regarding how to handle run away/ captures slaves. But Lincoln didn’t cause the war and his objectives could be achieved without war. The south started and pursued the war for one reason, slavery. Southern politicians made it clear in their secession documents and Stephens in “The Cornerstone Speech” made it clear that their cause was the preservation of their slave dependent economy/society. Therefore the war was about slavery. If all Lincoln wanted was to preserve the economic union he could have called the war off and negotiated a trade deal with the Confederacy to keep norther textile mills supplied with cotton. As it was, northern factory owners continued to buy cotton from the South throughout the war. Cargo ships going north could easily avoid the US Navy blockade by sticking close to the coast.
@@BookishTexan There you go, again! I’m with you ‘til you say the South pursued the war for slavery. Well, slavery certainly was working for the South, but “states rights” is what Southerners tried to term it precisely because the key issue happened to be slavery, but had it afforded Southern planters more of the prosperity they enjoyed, it could have been witchcraft, voodoo, or a kettle-full-of-Fiddle-De-De! Some people undoubtedly cared about the enslaved, but they weren’t the issue so much as what slavery brought to the table. It broke my heart when I first visited the Civil War Museum in Harrisburg, PA. The “history” read as if the conflict were about freeing slaves. That’s what ended up happening, but, no matter what you say, the abolitionist story was only a small part of what was being played out. Southerners were not about to relinquish their aristocratic lifestyles, and if they had won the war (on the back of slavery), they could have choosen not to sell their cotton to the Union anymore, and muck up the manufacturing “Mecca” up north. But, it’s all history, now. Much as I don’t want to support racism or sexism in any way, neither do I want people who came here in bondage to think anyone but the honest to God Abolitionists did them any favors. That’s my bottom line. I’ve enjoyed having a go-‘round with you. Please don’t trounce too hard on the fictional Gone with the Wind characters. I think we all do the best we can given the circumstances we know at the moment … even if we’re just make-believe. ❤️
@@sunnspott2567 Have you read Alexander Stephens' Cornerstone Speech? Here is a quote: **** " The prevailing ideas entertained by him and most of the leading statesmen at the time of the formation of the old constitution, were that the enslavement of the African was in violation of the laws of nature; that it was wrong in principle, socially, morally, and politically. It was an evil they knew not well how to deal with, but the general opinion of the men of that day was that, somehow or other in the order of Providence, the institution would be evanescent and pass away. This idea, though not incorporated in the constitution, was the prevailing idea at that time. The constitution, it is true, secured every essential guarantee to the institution while it should last, and hence no argument can be justly urged against the constitutional guarantees thus secured, because of the common sentiment of the day. Those ideas, however, were fundamentally wrong. They rested upon the assumption of the equality of races. This was an error. It was a sandy foundation, and the government built upon it fell when the "storm came and the wind blew." Our new government is founded upon exactly the opposite idea; its foundations are laid, its corner-stone rests, upon the great truth that the negro is not equal to the white man; that slavery subordination to the superior race is his natural and normal condition. This, our new government, is the first, in the history of the world, based upon this great physical, philosophical, and moral truth." **** Stephens was elected Vice President of the Confederate States of America. Have you read the secession declarations of the Southern States? Here is a quote from Mississippi's: **** "A Declaration of the Immediate Causes which Induce and Justify the Secession of the State of Mississippi from the Federal Union. In the momentous step which our State has taken of dissolving its connection with the government of which we so long formed a part, it is but just that we should declare the prominent reasons which have induced our course. Our position is thoroughly identified with the institution of slavery-- the greatest material interest of the world. Its labor supplies the product which constitutes by far the largest and most important portions of commerce of the earth. These products are peculiar to the climate verging on the tropical regions, and by an imperious law of nature, none but the black race can bear exposure to the tropical sun. These products have become necessities of the world, and a blow at slavery is a blow at commerce and civilization. That blow has been long aimed at the institution, and was at the point of reaching its consummation. There was no choice left us but submission to the mandates of abolition, or a dissolution of the Union, whose principles had been subverted to work out our ruin. That we do not overstate the dangers to our institution, a reference to a few facts will sufficiently prove. The hostility to this institution commenced before the adoption of the Constitution, and was manifested in the well-known Ordinance of 1787, in regard to the Northwestern Territory. The feeling increased, until, in 1819-20, it deprived the South of more than half the vast territory acquired from France. The same hostility dismembered Texas and seized upon all the territory acquired from Mexico. It has grown until it denies the right of property in slaves, and refuses protection to that right on the high seas, in the Territories, and wherever the government of the United States had jurisdiction. It refuses the admission of new slave States into the Union, and seeks to extinguish it by confining it within its present limits, denying the power of expansion. It tramples the original equality of the South under foot. It has nullified the Fugitive Slave Law in almost every free State in the Union, and has utterly broken the compact which our fathers pledged their faith to maintain. It advocates negro equality, socially and politically, and promotes insurrection and incendiarism in our midst." **** I never said that the North's original objective was the end or slavery nor that all Northerners believed in racial equality or even wanted slaves to be freed: They didn't But preserving slavery for racist and economic purposes was the purpose of Southern Secession and therefore the cause of the war.
@@BookishTexan "Very interesting. No, I hadn't/haven't read the theses, and I appreciate your posting what you did. I wholeheartedly agree secession was to preserve slavery, and, think it follows that our US brand of slavery was racist, but this is where you and I start splitting hairs -- disputing semantics. I see the war start when a bunch of Southern hotheads got trigger-happy in the port of Charleston because they anticipated the Yanks weren't going to support their states' rights issue (slavery). -- Enter Ashley and Rhett and their mutual understanding that: … the factories, the foundries, the shipyards … iron and coal mines … (are things they haven't got) ... all we have is cotton and slaves and arrogance … ruclips.net/video/S72nI4Ex_E0/видео.html
@@sunnspott2567 The attack on Ft. Sumter was not the act of hot heads who got trigger happy. The Confederate Government claimed the coastal forts belonging to the US Government, forts like Sumter, and demanded the US remove its forces from them even before Lincoln was inaugurated. A military force, first of SC Militia but by the time of the first shots of Confederate soldiers under the command of a Confederate General P.G.T. Beauregard, had been assembling and establishing military positions opposite Ft. Sumter for weeks. It was the Confederate position that the US must withdraw. They weren't waiting to see if the United States would let them secede. In their minds they had already seceded. That Jefferson Davis could not control the military decision making of the Confederacy does not mean that the decision to fire on Ft. Sumter. There was nothing accidental about Southern Secession or the start of the war.
It’s been probably 40 years since I read it and I agree with your overall impression that it’s only OK, though I’m not sure how much of the book was overpowered by the movie. For example, I can’t think of Rhett and Ashley without thinking of Gable and Leslie Howard, and yes, it’s kind of impossible to figure why someone would be in love with Howard when Gable is around. With other books, I would insist that you are confusing the author’s attitudes with the narrator’s. Mitchell herself did not have to believe the horrible stuff she puts in the book, and in that sense her narrator can be seen as a distinct character from herself. I don’t think you have to know much, if anything, outside the book to know that, for example, the lynching was anything but “quiet.” In the hands of a better writer, we’d likely be praising that sort of passage for its subtle irony. Unfortunately, she’s not that good a writer, so I think you are probably right about them being her views. However, I also think part of the fun of reading this book was in seeing how wrong the authoritative narrator regularly was. And I also have my doubts about whether Mitchell was not doing it deliberately, given how repugnant or weak all of the main characters are.
I have the same problem with the movie intruding on the books. I think we do know that the narrators voice is Mitchell's voice and that she wasn't being ironic about lynchings or the heroism of the KKK. Do a google search on Margaret Mitchell and her PBS interview and you'll see that she was completely serious in her depictions of the post Civil War South. Look up Margaret Mitchell and GWTW in the New Georgia Encyclopedia and read the section about racism and you'll find that she took her depictions of the Klan etc almost directly from Thomas Dixon Jr.'s (whose work she read and admired as a youngster) racist novel _The Klansman_ . A work which inspired D.W. Griffith's racist movie "The Birth of a Nation."
And re: the lynching quote--I just read a histfic novel called Death at the Fair that brings in some of the lynching tradition into the plot, and the author does a pretty good job of showing how a young educated white woman would argue for it...and how patriarchy and racism are inextricable in the US. 😔
The myth of African American men’s innate desire to sexually assault white women was very common and why so many lynchings were the result of accusations of assaults or “inappropriate” actions or comments directed at white women. The myth was used to justify racist violence and an excuse for limiting the freedoms of women.
Gone with the Wind was very popular and is very readable. It contains vestiges of outdated notions held by Americans or a least a large swath of Southerners. Sadly, you are discouraging people from reading it. There are worse books by Cormac Maccarthy that you espouse out there. I think people can read Gone with the Wind and can see that the world is different now and can appreciate the improvement without being subverted to odious ideas.
At no point in any of his books does McCarthy directly, as the author, support the idea that a Klan lynching of black man accused of rape is justified. Mitchell does. ""A Negro who had boasted of rape had actually been arrested, but before he could be brought to trial the jail had been raided by the Ku Klux Klan and he had been quietly hanged. The Klan had acted to save the as yet unnamed victim from having to testify in open court." -- Chapter 42 Gone With the Wind
@@BookishTexan No problem with your videos, which I appreciate. However, we disagree about Gone with the Wind. I think such books that reflect the attitudes of the times have great historical value and should not be shunned. We can see how far we have advanced morally. I don't like supposedly historical novels, which portray historically incorrect attitudes. That is pure rubbish.
@@gs547 The quote I provided is not a quote from a character in the book. It is a quote in which Mitchell inserts her own view of Reconstruction and the Klan in the 1930s. It is not a quote from a character in 1868.
Oh wow I had no idea. I had a colleague get upset with me for having never read or watched Gone with the Wind so it's been on my list to eventually get to, along with the sequel, but now you've saved me a lot of time from reading those large tomes. Thank you!
You’re welcome. The novel itself has some strengths, but the racism and Klan apologizing are shocking. I don’t think everyone is as bothered by it or as aware of it.
An honest, accurate, and excellent review of a deplorable novel. I read the book probably forty or more years ago, so I don't recall the minutiae of its content, but even then I was baffled as to why it was so celebrated. Perhaps if Hollywood hadn't seized upon it as a star stocked means to make money, the book might have settled into a well deserved obscurity!
Yikes! My jaw dropped to my toes with those quotes from the book--some of which sounded as if they could have been read from a Fox News transcript. This was a great review, a great history lesson, and a service to humanity. I am happy you read it because we would not have gotten this review. I feel like I should read it, but then again, no. Thanks for this.
Thank you very much for the very kind words. I expected the racist language and the old south apologizing, but the amount of Pro Klan stuff and promotion of lynching caught me off guard.
I think you judge a 1936 novel with 2021 eyes and ears. America was in the throws of the Depression and the typical American did not complete high school. A large percentage of Americans were still on the farm. Your evident lack of understanding of the circumstances under which the novel was produced and received is eye-opening. You spend a lot of breath blaming Margret Mitchell for the content of this book. What about the editors an Macmillan? If this was so out of place for its time and place how did it get produced? Why did Selznick want to make the movie? Unfortunately, the 30's were racist times compared to our enlightened age of the 2020's; that was 90 years ago! Let's cut 'em some slack. It's perfectly fine for we (the enlightened) to hate the book and the movie. Let's try to realistically look at why this was a phenomena in the 1930s, that's all.
Mitchell, the author of _Gone With the Wind_ , was a Smith College graduate and did not live on a farm. She was educated and affluent. She didn't write GWTW to give insight into The Great Depression though many readers no doubt identified with Scarlett's struggles. I'm not sure how the popularity of the book makes the content of the book less racist. Mitchell's book topped the best seller list for more than thirty consecutive weeks, but then fell from the list. The movie revived interest in the book and the movie's popularity explains its longevity. I do not take issue wit the book being a phenomenon in the 1930s, but rather that people today still defend it "as a product of its time" as though this somehow absolves the books and its author of racism. Mitchell was inspired to write the book by the work of Thomas W. Dixon Jr. whose novel _The Clansman_ portrayed the KKK as a heroic pro-American organization. Dixon's novel was the inspiration for the highly racist movie "Birth of A Nation" and was one of Mitchell's favorites. Will J. Simmons who founded the second incarnation of the Klan in 1915 was inspired by that movie and that novel. Mitchell and the Klan were literally inspired by the same author's work. By the mid 1920s the Klan's power and influence were at their zenith. Klan influence quickly declined after a scandal involving the murder of a young woman by a high ranking Klansman which diminished the Klan's appeal outside the South. In the South, lynchings of black men for alleged assaults on women continued. In fact Lint Shaw was lynched in 1936 by a mob of forty white men who took him from prison before his trial began and killed him for allegedly attempting to assault two white women. That same year, Mitchell published GWTW which contains the following quotes: ""Neither life nor property was safe from them and the white people, unprotected by law, were terrorized. Men were insulted on the streets by drunken blacks, houses and barns were burned at night, horses and cattle and chickens stolen in broad daylight, crimes of all varieties were committed and few of the perpetrators were brought to justice But these ignominies and dangers were as nothing compared with the peril of white women, many bereft by the war of male protection, who lived alone in the outlying districts and on lonely roads. It was the large number of outrages on women and the ever present fear for the safety of their wives and daughters that drove Southern men to cold and trembling fury and caused the Ku Klux Klan to spring up overnight. And it was against this nocturnal organization that the newspapers of the North cried out most loudly, never realizing the tragic necessity that brought it into being." -- Chapter 37. Gone With the Wind ""A Negro who had boasted of rape had actually been arrested, but before he could be brought to trial the jail had been raided by the Ku Klux Klan and he had been quietly hanged. The Klan had acted to save the as yet unnamed victim from having to testify in open court." -- Chapter 42 Gone With the Wind In these quotes Mitchell (in her authorial voice, not the voice of a character) repeats the very lies the Klan's used to justify its existence and the lynching of a black men. Which is chilling given the lynching of Lint Shaw in Georgia only a few months before the publication of GWTW. I can't think of another major work written in the 20th Century in which the author expresses admiration for the Klan and endorses lynching in their own voice (not the voice of a character) can you? If the ideas contained in Mitchell's novel were so widely held, such common cultural currency, why were the incidents of racist violence that populate the book left out of the movie that came out in 1939? Why did they avoid the N word? Why did they avoid scene's glorifying the Klan? There was a lot more going on than just The Great Depression in the 1930s and of all the things that influenced Mitchell's book, current events were not among them. So I don't think that I am the one who displays an "evident lack of understanding of the circumstances under which the novel was produced and received." If people today can read and ignore the novel's virulent racism, that's their right. It doesn't make the racism of the novel go away now anymore than it did in the 1930s.
@@BookishTexan She didn't write GWTW to "give insight to the Great Depression", yet don't life experiences play an indirect role in an author's writing, and a readers interpretation? Secondly, Do you know for a fact know that there were NOT outrages on whites by blacks in the immediate post-Civil War South? I personally don't know one way or the other about this. I assume Margret Mitchell would have had some knowledge on this subject from people she had contact with, people she knew personally who perhaps lived during the Civil War and Reconstruction. I'm very much against virulent racism. I think the KKK is despicable and lynchings by anyone the worst of mankind. I'm also against virulent hatred of people who are in no position to defend themselves.
@@nedmerrill5705 Her life experiences shielded Mitchell to the extent that she was able to ignore the on going economic collapse around her and write a one thousand page book about Georgia during the Civil War and Reconstruction. Again, I'm certain that many readers did identify with Scarlett's struggles because of their experiences during the Depression. How does that make the book less racist? Let me ask you some clarifying questions: 1. There are more than 2000 documented cases of lynchings of black men, women, and children at the hands of white mobs during just the 12 years of Reconstruction. Certainly many black men were accused of sexually assaulting white women in the South. But because those men rarely lived to trial, and black men were frequently wrongly accused or sexually assaulting white women, it is impossible to know how often those assaults occurred. How common would "outrages on whites by blacks" during Reconstruction have to have been to justify the existence of the Klan and widespread lynchings of black men by white mobs? 2. Mitchell certainly talked to her older family members and friends about the Civil War and Reconstruction. Given their racial and cultural biases and the Myth of the Lost cause (which Mitchell also promotes in GWTW) what makes you think the information she got was an accurate picture of what happened? She was not a historian. What makes you think she carefully researched both sides of the issues? 3. I'm glad you are against virulent racism. But, I'm curious as to why you feel you need to defend a racist work of literature and its racist author? Is it your belief that Mitchell was not a racist? That the book does not contain virulently racist descriptions and promote a racist version of the past?
@@BookishTexan 1) Right. I'm sure there were many more lynchings than Black on white outrages. Not that the latter did not occur. 2) We all have our impressions of what the past was like given to us by our elders. You, me, and Margret Mitchell included. We are all "historians" in that respect. As you say, it's the Southern mythos she's reporting, rightly or wrongly. She's a daughter of the South. The novel is more a product of her imagination that a product of historical research (though there may have been some with respect to military matters). 3) As a daughter of the South, for such a person, I think she's no more or less racist than any other person of that era of the 1930s. Perhaps even less racist than most Southerners, as she went to a Massachusetts college. Her writings reflect her true state of mind on this point, in my opinion. Had Margret Mitchell lived today I believe her views would have been drastically modified to fit modern attitudes towards race. In other words, I doubt she was a bigot. But you think that's a moot point, right?
@@nedmerrill5705 1) You didnt answer my question. How many attacks on white women by black men during Reconstruction would it take to justify the creation of the Klan and the lynching of 2000 black people? Because that's what Mitchell does (see quotes from my first response). She justified the creation of the Klan and lynchings in GWTW. 2) Of course she was a product of her environment that's the point. She was raised in a racist society and her novel reflects her racist attitude. 3) You didnt answer my question. Why do you feel the need to defend a racist author and a racist novel? I ask you to read the quotes I provided in my first response and to watch my video again starting at 15:50 and tell me that these are not the statements of a racist author. I know after making a condescending comment based on the belief that you know more about this subject than I that it will be difficult for you to admit that you are wrong, but you are wrong and you know it.
I have no desire to read this book but I think it might be really insightful to read this as an academic exercise on white women as both ignorant (in the literal sense - ignoring the obvious truths) and complicit throughout history and now. Similarly I haven’t yet read but intend to read They Were Her Property which would probably be very informative to read in conjunction.
I somehow missed this video when you first posted it, but I’m glad I found it. Well done! I’m glad you brought up the context of the 1930s - Mitchell was writing only a decade after 50,000 klansmen marched in D.C. In 1923 the Senate approved a “mammy” statue in celebration of the memory of loyal Southern slaves, which would have gone up near the Lincoln memorial. I haven’t read the book, but the film is certainly a toxic piece of Lost Cause propaganda that proliferated during that era.
Thank you. YES! I think too many people just say, "Yeah, its racist. Lots of people were racists," without realizing the context in which it was produced and exactly what the book sought to promote and justify.
I just started reading Gone With The Wind and already in the first pages I can tell that this book is gonna have a lot of racists theme and already I can tell that Scarlett is not gonna be my favorite Protagonist.
The story itself is engaging, but the theme's and the depictions of African Americans are awful. Mitchell had an agenda beyond telling a compelling story. Weirdly, Scarlett isnt the worst of the characters in terms of racism. Thank you for commenting
@@BookishTexan I've read books from the past and some are politically incorrect but their are really a product of their time but as I keep reading gone with the wind it seems different I honestly don't know if Margaret Mitchell was a Racist or just Naive but it does seem that this book does have an agenda, Not only does it talk negative against African Americans, but also poor folks and and Northerners. I think that Gone with the wind is like an accident it's hard for one not to look, So far I would compare Gone with the wind with the Silent Picture from 1915 Birth of a nation, while Birth of a nation celebrates hate Gone with the wind the Novel tries to excuse it. But you know what those kinds of things make me Happy that I don't live in those times, And it helps to understand, appreciate and respect my fellow human being
I think your review is totally wrong. This book is not racist and your are trying to make people to feel sympathy towards your review. This is the story about Scarlett not slavery. This is not a history book. Margaret Mitchell chose the words many people used at the time. What I think is really funny is how you say Mitchel is portraying slavery as romantic and then you go on and on about the words she uses.
The book falsifies the reality of slavery in the US. The book glorifies racist violence (Rhett kills a black man for being "uppity" -- word used in the book) The book justifies and glorifies the Klan. Ashley and Scarlet's second husband are Klan leaders who kill a black man and a "scalawag." Scarlett helps another character escape who had killed a black man. Mitchell wrote _Gone With The Wind_ in the 1930s not the 1830s.
I read this book when I was 15 and I remember absolutely hating it. I thought it was written ok, but found Scarlett insufferable, I just wanted to slap her and didn't even find her interesting. The only other thing I remember is that I hated also the whitewashing of the racism. I have thought that maybe I should give it another try, but thank you for saving me the trouble. After watching your review, I'm convinced I would've hated it even more now 😁 So thanks against for this video, was very good 👍
Thanks for that discussion. It's interesting to posit a contrast between it and _Uncle Tom's Cabin_. (I've never read either, but UTC is on my shelf waiting its moment, which may never come: its place in history beside, at least I believe it holds legitimate claims to literary value.) You almost wonder, at least subconsciously, if Mitchell wasn't trying to build an alternate monument to that, based on the "alternative facts" of the Lost Cause myth. Obviously there was a market for that, just as for the statues of Confederate traitors which have only recently begun to come down. I didn't know about the KKK justification, as with the DW Griffith movie probably one of the main reasons for the book to have come into existence. I too saw the movie with my mom (as another commenter here has said). There might be some curiosity in viewing it again as an adult, but it will never be a priority. I've seen the book, and also decided against it because I disliked the language; but this video discussion gives me a good sense of what's in it and also its stature (hopefully now diminishing) in American society.
Thank you for the great comment. I think that is exactly what Mitchell was doing: She was creating a monument to the Old South, the Confederacy, and the Klan and her monument has been viewed more times than any other. I think Ken Burns documentary may have replaced GWTW in the minds of Americans who don't study/rea history as their main source of their ideas about the Civil War. There is probably more good in that than evil.
I've heard of this book as a classic but didn't know what it was about. Based on this video, I don't think I'll be interested on reading it, I'd probably rather read something about this era that doesn't romanticize the ex slave owners and the KKK 🤮
Brian, I attempted to watch this video. Unfortunately, the number of times you said "you know" within the first five minutes was extremely distracting.
Brian, I am surprised at your knee jerk reaction and indignation. Instead of actually taking a moment of reflection and considering the merits of my critique, you chose to attack. Did I make a false observation ? As a retired history teacher familiar with the process of conducting lectures, clarity and quality of speech was a priority. May I suggest Allen Guelzo's lecture at Hillsdale on Robert E. Lee ( available on RUclips)as a template for your review ?
@@recherche4528 You are surprised that I reacted indignantly to a comment from someone I dont know, who doesn't make content of their own, that called one of my videos unwatchable? That just proves you don't know me very well. I don't suffer trolls lightly. However I watched one of Professor Guelzo's lectures (Did Lee Commit Treason delivered at Washington and Lee University). He has a powerful speaking voice. Too bad he reads his lectures and rarely makes eye contact with his audience. Those are both things you learn not to do in Speech 101. I look forward to your first video so you can, you know, show me how this youtube thing is done. (Also, you are a liar. You clearly watched my video otherwise you wouldn't have referred me to a lecture about Lee.)
@@BookishTexan What is wrong with you? Obviously, I touched a nerve. I actually thought you would take my comment as a suggestion for improvement. Evidently, you disregard critiques from people you do not know personally. In addition, having experience delivering lectures does not qualify giving assessment unless you have a You Tube channel. You said "you know" an insufferable number of times in just the first five minutes (go back and listen). I did not watch the entire video. So, in addition to your inability for self reflection you have an ego problem. I am however aware that you recently have in fact, been called a liar by another booktuber in regards to your earlier claim that you read Gone With The Wind. Apparently, you had disclosed you only watched the movie. It is interesting that after having been called out in a lie you conveniently dedicated a video to the book. As far as Scholar Allen Guelzo, I am presently reading his current book on Robert. E. Lee. In companion with the book, I have sought out his videos. You cannot possibly believe you are a better speaker or anywhere near his league. You conveniently chose to disregard the video recommended in which he engages the audience and delivers his lectures in a thoughtful, stimulating, manner. You have neither the class, smarts, charm, talent or ability of this gentleman.
@@recherche4528 What is wrong with me? You come into the comments section on my channel to criticize my manner of speaking and expect to be taken seriously? You are the one with the ego issues. Seriously, who the hell do you think you are? Why do you think I should give a rats rear end what you think? As for the other incident, because that booktuber was a friend I not only followed their suggestion that I let my viewers know that I had not read GWTW completely by putting a note in the show notes, I also decided to read the book so that I could speak about it with greater authority. That reading allowed me to make this video. That's how seriously I take criticism from content makers and friends. I don't take seriously the trolling comments from anonymous accounts. I never suggested I was as good a speaker or scholar as Professor Guelzo, but since you suggested I get speaking tips by watching him I thought I should let you know that he himself violates several of the rules of good public speaking.
I'm just sorry you weren't able to post this a few years ago when there was a brouhaha around her death and publishing of her 2nd book. She was a dyed-in-the-wool racist herself and enjoyed the fame that book brought her. GWTW came out when the KKK was rampant throughout the country. It was and is still a disgrace. I hope your video gets a wide viewing.
Thank you for this thorough, comprehensive, candid review of GWTW. You gave it the credit that it's due as a piece of literature without shying away from shaming it for its problematic content and its troubling influence on society and politics. Well done. What I don't understand about GWTW and other stories/narratives like it, i.e. Lost Cause apologia, is that it staunchly defends slavery as a benign institution that was in the best interest of blacks and whites alike while insisting that the Confederates never took up arms to defend said institution and that the Unionists were the villains for fighting to abolish it. Is the contradictory nature of this rhetoric obvious to anyone else? It makes no sense whatsoever.
Thank you very much. The contradictory nature, lack of logic, and hypocrisy of the "Lost Cause" rhetoric should be obvious to all. Unfortunately it still isn't. I think slavery and Jim Crow twisted the South beyond the point of logical thinking. Southern whites had to tie themselves into such knots to try to justify slavery to themselves and the world that they lost touch with logic. They knew slavery wasn't benign and either consciously or subconsciously knew that having fought a bloody Civil War to preserve an evil institution made their position evil so they attempted to shift focus from slavery as the cause to "state's rights." A society that found it possible to condone and even celebrate the lynching of African Americans for minor social infractions well into mid 20th Century abandoned logic along with decency and humanity.
@@BookishTexan You are absolutely right. You'd think that if they insist that defending slavery was not the South's cause that they'd at least admit to the evils of it. Or, if it wasn't so bad, what's the harm in admitting that this was what the South stood for? But like you said, slavery and Jim Crow definitely skewed the South's logic past is the point of no return.
She was a lifelong resident of Georgia. She didn’t know the Confederacy lost the Civil War until she was 10 years old, despite being regaled with Civil War Stories by her relatives through her early years.
Thanks for saying out loud and reading passages that needed to be "outed." I read this as a teenager (after seeing the movie) and didn't like it then (50 some years ago). I've never been an advocate of banning books, but this would be one of the first if someone ever asked me my opinion. I think the most troubling is how much our American society embraced the book, the movie (as I was reminded by another commentator--that it was shown *every year* on TV) and everything it stands for--the very essence of institutionalized racism.
_I think the most troubling is how much our American society embraced the book, the movie (as I was reminded by another commentator--that it was shown every year on TV) and everything it stands for--the very essence of institutionalized racism_ I agree with this completely. GWTW is not solely responsible for this of course, but it definitely has played a part. I cant support banning books, but I hope that when people read GWTW today they are more aware of the books racism and Klan support. Thanks for the great comment.
I don’t think you’re unintelligent but what you’re saying is dumb. Please tell me, how would you write a civil war novel from the perspective of a white southerner without it coming off as racist? The book is not going out of its way to be racist- it is only acknowledging the mindset of the confederacy. It would be wild if the book were to be written in any other way. Acknowledging racism in itself is not racist
Did you watch the whole video? The book doesn’t “come off as racist.” It is racist. It is racist not because it was sea racist language, but because it never condemns the racist actions of it’s heroes or racism itself. Both Ashley and Rhett Murder black people - Rhett killed a black man for being “upitty” in a conversation with a white woman. Mitchell as narrator asserts that it is better that a family of white people kill their daughter who has been “insulted” by a black man than to let the black man live. Mitchell wrote the book in the 1930s and her authorial voice and attitudes toward slavery are present in the text. Her book contains pro-South propaganda designed to make slavery seem not so bad, slave owners benevolent, the cause of the Civil War something other than slavery, black people to be lazy and ignorant, and Reconstruction to be harmful. The book isn’t written from Scarlett’s perspective. It is written from Mitchell’s. She is the omniscient third person narrator and Mitchell set out to glorify the Old South and the Klan.
It's a great romantic fiction novel. The Civil War South is the place.....young woman Scarlet O'Hara is the time, and her "childish heart's love for Ashley" is the theme. A stubborn Southern Bell spoiled brat attitude of getting the man she wants. Charles says to her: "miss scarlet it's war..isn't it exciting", Scarlet replies: "don't you men every think of anything important...", because she feels her heart breaking at that moment after being rejected by Ashley earlier. Then she marries Charles in spite of Ashley ( a childish act). As Rhett said to her when they were married " your such a child, your throwing away our happiness for someone you can never have." But Ashley's not perfect as she romances he is. Scarlet realizes in the end she is no more to Ashley than what Bell Watson is to Rhett. Honorable Ashley has a little action on the side other than his wife. Rhett know's it...and Melanie allows it...she know's what and how much . Ashley's has a melodramatic heart ...its not sexual...its a passionate play he likes to perform...and Scarlet unknowingly is the cheap women of the play. " The wooden headed Mr Wilkes" as Rhett called him..."why doesn't he make up his mind, he can't be mentally faithful to his wife, but he won't be physically unfaithful to her either!" At the end Rhett says to Scarlet " I'm leaving to find if there still beauty and grace in the world, do you know what I mean?" scarlet replies " I only know that i love you!". Rhett: "that's your misfortune." Best summery lines of the Story: Rhett to scarlet: "your such a child, you think by saying I'm sorry all the past can be corrected." It's all a love story...you missed the point because you are not looking at it as romance fiction
You are, of course, free to read GWTW in this way. That doesn’t make the racism or the Lost Cause/ Klan justifying content go away, but you are free to ignore it.
@@BookishTexan what you don't realize ....Historical, Gone with the Wind is the Southern response to Uncle Toms Cabin. Uncle Tom's Cabin was the most important political book in American History because it was against Slavery. And, for years the Southern white people disputed the facts of Uncle Tom Cabin. They denied slavery as being evil. Then came Gone with the Wind... a romantic fiction book that championed the idea of the institution of slavery as being nobel. Mitchell verses Stowe!!! For instance: UTC: Eva StClair was the daughter of a slave owner dying an angles death but before she died expressed the evil of slavery and the need to end it. Contrary to her is Melanie: who is the champion of Southern nobility and dies an angle death. UTC: Marie St-Clair was a lazy southern bell in a greedy society who abused her slaves to death (literally). Contrary to her: Scarlett O'Hara, a Southern Bell determined to be once again to be the noble master in a lost cause who treats slaves kindly. UTC: Augustine Stclair was an idealistic procrastinator that was cynical of slavery who died before he could free his slaves. Contrary to him: The split personality of Rhett and Ashley: Rhett a cynic of Southern Society (not slavery), and Ashley a dreamer of unable to change his world. We know, GWTW was written during the height of the KKK. President Wilson was a champion of the KKK. If you read up on the History of cotton...The history of the black people from 1612 to 1954 is directed to the History of Cotton. I guess reading is relative.
One of the greatest of American novels. Exceedingly well written, for the most part, historically accurate, a real page turner, a book you never want to end -- THAT is "Gone with the Wind." For anyone to dismiss it as racist and glorifying slavery is simply revelling in Woke lunacy. I have read it FIVE times and love it more every time. Not to recognize the worth of this book is a veritable sin. P.S. Scarlett WAS going back to Tara at book's end
For anyone to read it and not see that it glorifies slavery, the old south and condoned racism/ racist violence is willfully naive. I quoted passages that prove my point. If you think GWTW is historically accurate you haven’t really studied history.
@@BookishTexan Then go after the doctoral level reading and university profs who taught 19th c. Ametican history and black history, some black themselves. Furthermore, none of racist shouters EVER takes context into account. She wrote it from the perspective of the South. She was from Georgia; she grew up hearing Civil War stories from relatives and friends. She also did meticulous research. Did you know when she found out Hattie McDaniel was segregated at the Academy Awards, she contacted her and they corresponded for years? Did you know she enabled financially AT LEAST 70- 80 black medical students to matriculate at Morehouse College? Did you know one of them, Otis Smith (first black pediatrician in GA) and also former President of the NAACP, was vice-chairman of "Margaret Mitchell House, Inc.", devoted to creating a museum at the site where most of her GWTW writing took place? If I may quote him, "Her book describes life the way it was then. We may not like it, but that's history." In fact, he was an admirer of hers long before he even found out it was she who made his medical career possible. Anyone who reads GWTW and who is already bigoted (or guilted later into being against it), who is already myopic in his biases while reading it, should stick to inaccurate, insulting, yet apparently satisfying, negatively reinforcing "history" like the "1619 Project." Following your reasoning, no history we find repulsive should be watched or read UNLESS it is viewed from only one perspective, the "right" perspective (actually the "left's" today), which of course, is THE only acceptable perspective to people like this. It is exactly how we get Holocaust deniers. That's how wackos tried to take out Kate Smith and Lillian Gish. Nutty hurtful nonsense! Furthermore, you mischaracterize my sentiment. I said, " For anyone to DISMISS it as racist and glorifying slavery is simply revelling in Woke lunacy." CERTAINLY sane people are aghast at the concept of slavery, but IT EXISTED and that's a sad part of our history, and world history. Mitchell was entitled to write her Southern perspective, and from my reading and education, she wasn't out of bounds. The book is about human relations SET AGAINST a Civil War backdrop. It IS one of the great Ametican novels. Period. P.S. My education was one of the finest available. I stand by my comments.
@@mmjhcb So Mitchell, whose favorite author was Thomas Dixon author of “The Clansman” the man whose work inspired the racist movie “Birth of a Nation”, presented a non-racist version of Southern History in the book she wrote as a Southerner in the 1930s… please I can tell you didn’t actually watch my video. If you had you’d know that I never said people shouldn’t read GWTW and you do not address any of the specific examples of Mitchell, in her authorial voice, making racist statements and condoning racist violence. I’m m sorry that my video threatened your naive view of one of your favorite books, but reality can be harsh.
@@BookishTexan Her favorite author? Really? That's laughable! It's clear to me who and what you are. You are the problem and I cannot convert a bigot. I can tell YOU didn't read MY entire comment because you CONVENIENTLY (as do all who are incapable of real debate) refrain from commenting on any of it, preferring to go back to tired refrains, falsehoods tossed out as facts, BTW, there were comments you made with which I agree, characterization, etc. However, the entirety of your comments is propaganda.
LOVED this. I think Scarlet's infatuation with Ashley has less to do with him and more to do with who his family is and where they live (slightly higher up than the O'Haras but their plantation is neighbors with Tara) as well as the fact that he's the only man who doesn't fall under the spell of her charms--which is exacerbated by the fact that he becomes someone she can't have. Of course, Rhett is similarly immune to her charm offenses, which creates a push and pull dynamic between them since she has already set her sights on Ashley. And I agree that Gone with the Wind is overwritten--Mitchell doesn't say anything in one page that she can say in ten.
Mostly, however, I agree with every single thing you said about how damaging this book is and has been. It is unforgivably racist and spreads an insidiously hateful message about race and the south. These messages are not subtle so the fact that so many people can't see them is honestly beyond me.
I like your explanation for why Scarlett is in love with Ashley. It makes sense. I think Mitchell stretching it out over 500+ pages is a bit hard to believe but I think you are exactly right.
This turned out to be a hate read for me by about page 300, but I’m glad I finished it so I could talk about it free of any guilt.
I am totally writing a sequel where she’s in love with another man’s wife. Sometimes I wonder how I would respond to this book if I read it now (which I just can’t stomach doing again). Would I have more patience or less? I don’t know. Thank you for the comparison with Uncle Tom’s Cabin. That is a book which has not worn well but which had such different sympathies! I am heading off to watch Carol Burnett’s version as a palate cleanser. Shudder.
My original intent was to contrast the depictions of slavery, racism and Reconstruction in GWTW with The Unvanquished, but that would have been an hour long video and I didn’t think anyone would want to watch it.
Plus, the pro Klan/ racist violence justifying in GWTW was so extreme that I wanted to focus on that.
I think you should write that sequel/ alternate GWTW 😂😂. I couldn’t believe I said that when I edited the video.
@@BookishTexan I would totally watch an hour-long video contrasting the depictions of slavery, racism and Reconstruction in GWTW with The Unvanquished!
Lol please make it Scarlett x Melanie! For all of Scarlett's histrionic pining after Ashley, when reading the novel I could never shake the feeling there was some sort of underlying obsessiveness in the way the two women continually orbited each other... ;)
@@amalgam777 ♥️
Thanks for all the effort and emotion you put into this video, and for sparing many of us from ever going near it.
Thank you for watching and commenting.
This is a thorough and much needed review. Thanks for making it.
Thank you very much.
Thanks for posting your thoughts confirming mine, although I haven't read it all, i have no plans to complete it. I read reviews of this on Goodreads and almost every positive review referred to sections of this book as actual history. And these are current reviews, making your point. Do you have any thoughts on the Pulitzer?
Thank you for the support and kind words.
The first time I tried to read this book I gave up. This time I was determined to get through so I hate read it. It is infuriating to me that so many people still see it as actual history and so easily ignore the insidious racism and Klan apologizing in its pages.
I'm not a big book prize person and knowing this book won the Pulitzer is one reason why.
I didn't realize Gone with the Wind had won a Pulitzer. I read the Pulitzer-winning Love in the Time of Cholera and was deeply disgusted by some of its content. Now I'm really curious to research more on award-winning books. I'm interested to know how much weight the average reader places on awards. Especially one as well-known as the Pulitzer.
Re: your second topic, yep, you can draw a straight line from Birth of a Nation to GWTW...and I only learned about BOAN in the last few years!
Absolutely, Margaret Mitchell was a big fan of the author Thomas Dixon Jr, whose novels were the basis for Birth Of A Nation.
@@DuncanMcCurdie Ah, and there we go with actual evidence. Thanks, Duncan!
Yes I had heard that from Greg over at Supposedly Fun.
Thanks Margaret
This was an excellent video, Brian. Thank you for identifying so much of the accurate history that needs to be at the forefront of any reading of this book.
There is still so much cultural capital involving Gone with the Wind that it continues to be read or watched as people try to understand US culture. The insidious depictions of African-Americans are horrifying and definitely perpetuated racism and the “Lost Cause” myth.
I hope you are having a good week and that your next reading experience is much more edifying!
Best, Jack
Than you Jack.
Yes, that is exactly why I hate this book. An obscure racist novel is bad, a bestseller and blockbuster movie is far more damaging.
(I put this comment on another book site...)
We got along for decades reading this book WITHOUT THE DISCLAIMERS!! How could we have possibly done that without significant brain damage?
Did I say the book should come with a disclaimer?
Nope.
In the video I said that GWTW has damaged people’s understanding of slavery, the Civil War and race in a way that has made it harder for the nation to overcome our problems surrounding race. That’s not exactly brain damage, but it’s not harmless.
Education is the key. Defending GWTW and Mitchell by excusing the racism of both contributes to our collective ignorance and prevents progress. If white people still get triggered by true statements about 90 year old racist book it’s hard to see how we can make progress on more complex issues involving race.
I really need to reread this one. I read it years ago but it was as a much less informed reader. So curious to see how I would react now given how I have reacted to other difficult texts. Knowing the history behind Mitchell’s intent will likely impact how I feel about the book. Appreciate your thoughts.
I hope you will reread and make a video I’d be interested in hearing your thoughts.
FINALLY. Finally someone has told the truth. The women on youtube gush about how great this book is and I just know without reading the book that is bull poop. That book is has feed the white woman of Americans' racist ideas since 1930's. Thank you.
Thank you. I am amazed that so many can read it today and miss or dismiss the racism of the author that she sent Ike’s expresses through her characters and sometime directly.
@@BookishTexan I am so insulted to hear the people on book tube speaking on the greatness of this book and then the long list of comments that co sign on the hate in this book. This book literally praises the klan. WT actual F. And you are going to act all hurt when I call you out on the racism you are supporting. My mother was alive when this 'master' piece was published. I am kind of shocked at the number of racist books that have won the Pulitzer. Wow was that a we hate the darkies awards? They gave that poopy award to the Gone with the Wind but ignored James Baldwin or Zora Neale Hurston. No we embrace the propaganda that the Nazis' took notes from. It sickens me. I am so happy to see someone who notice this is trash that needs to sit way back in the library and gather dust.
Read it decades back in high school and immediately forgot everything about it. I think I blocked it from my psyche. Even saw the movie and meh. But I do remember ranting about lynchings in my history class
I wish I had been there for the rants. GWTW is/was my sister’s favorite movie so I’ve seen it dozens of times.
@@BookishTexan Now I know why I hated the movie so much. I have so many female friends that loved it, but I held to my unpopular opinion. I think I may have tried to read the book back in high school and gave up on it. Thanks for the video!
@@susanmance9436 Thank you. I know lots of people who love the movie and the book, but I don't understand it. I'm sure they feel the same way about some of the books I like.
Thanks for your comment Susan
Thanks for this thorough discussion Brian. It's not a book that was on my list and you've just reconfirmed that for me.
Thank you. I do think its a book that people who are interested should read, but I also think its important to know what you are getting into.
@@BookishTexan I don't remember the book ever appealing to me. I mean, never say never... I might want to see for myself one day. But it does not sound like my cup of tea at all. I'm glad you took one for the team lol
Haha! Thank you Melissa
Thank you for a realistic review of this book. I'm a Native American and I'm reading it now because it won a Pulitzer prize. I'm shocked this piece of obvious racist literature is held in such high regard.
Thank you for the kind words.
I think at the time it was written racism was so widely accepted and Mitchell's version of the Civil War so widely accepted that the book just became established as a classic. The movie, which obscures some of the more obvious racism in the book, further popularized the book and the image of the South that isn't just fictional, but a deliberate misrepresentation of the South, Slavery, and Reconstruction. Today many who read think, "Well racism was common when it was written so . . ." and they excuse the racist language while missing Mitchell's attempt to further D.W.Griffith's effort in "Birth of a Nation" to make the KKK into heroes and excuse racist violence.
Thank you for posting this!
Interesting discussion! I really want to read GWTW and will likely purchase it next month. You picked excellent quotes to exemplify your points. Thanks for the video, Brian.
Thank you Shelly. I will say it was a very difficult book for me to keep reading. The accumulation of the racism in the book wore me down.
@@BookishTexan Thanks for letting me know. I have family member who have enjoyed the book in the past which is originally why I wanted to read GWTW. Now, I’m curious about it for other reasons.
I hope this puts to bed this booktube “controversy”
Listening to you explain the plot was exhausting so I can’t actually imagine reading this. I was never actually interested in reading this, I was just here for the rant. This sounds like it would be a very uncomfortable reading experience and I like that you discuss the implications of the text on society.
Thank you Elle.
The plot is convoluted and I reshot the review part of this video to simplify my plot discussion and shorten the videos length.😂
It was a hate read for me from about page 300 - the end.
@@BookishTexan ahh the fun and dreaded hate read. I don’t have those happen often!
This was really interesting, and very well argued- thank you for this!
Not having read it (or seen the film), I’d just assumed before that it was just a bit ‘of its time’, but hadn’t realised how bad it was, and the ripple effects of the book. Eesh.
Thanks for doing a deep dive into the book to talk about this!
Thank you Bob. Some of its racism is a product of its time, but its Klan promotion and warping of history are different from other books that contain racist language from the time period and its popularity here has embedded that misinformation in ways that I think have been really damaging.
@@BookishTexan Definitely! I hadn’t realised the book did all that as well- really quite terrifying, the more you think about it.
Yes it's a terrible book that acts like the south was a victim of the north.
Every time I criticize Gone with the Wind for its racism and glorification of slavery and the South I either get called “too woke” or “sensitive” or being “too political.” (As if condemnation of slavery is some controversial political ideology instead of a moral instinct) The fans of the book are almost more annoying than the book itself because they go to such extreme lengths to excuse these things or pretend the South was this perfect romantic place
I have had the exact same experience. In fact you can probably find something like that in the comments. The fans of this book are often times more annoying than the book. Which is saying something. Thanks for your comment.
As a Black man I've found that I'm often in a double minority when it comes to the legacy of Mitchell. I hate the movie and the book. Many people, including other Black Americans, really work hard to salvage the movie. I just can't get over the repulsive subtext of the movie, which is stated clearly in the book. Thank you for your righteous rage towards this despicable text. Like you, I hate everything that came from this book.
Thank you for watching and commenting.
The movie was a favorite of my sister so I watched it dozens of times in my youth. It was only after reading the novel that I truly felt the "repulsive subtext" of the novel (great description by the way). When I researched the history of the novel -- Mitchell's background and her inspirations, the deeply racist nature of the book became clear. When I combined that with what I had learned studying the Civil War and Reconstruction and what was going on currently with all the hysterical backlash over the made up crisis surrounding CRT I realized that GWTW (book and movie) were responsible for miseducating millions of Americans about slavery, the Civil War, Reconstruction, etc. So much damage done by a fairly stupid book.
Amen!
Lol
Have you read Bricks Without Straw, Brian? I got it for background research and as a foundational novel for the time, but hesitate because of racist stereotypes and language treatment... :/
I have not read that book.
Great review. What you said is right with the
documentation and history of that time.
Thank you so much for getting such a great video
Thank you for the kind words.
There are people now in 2021 who say this book is one of their favorites and it is just shocking to me. I have actually unsubscribed to booktubers who list it as a favorite.....that may seem harsh but this book made me sick to my stomach and I just don't understand the love for this novel. Just my personal opinion....this was a wonderful review thank you.
Thank you. My feelings about this book are the same as yours. I tried to make the point that this book goes well beyond the racism that was common in the US in the 1930s by pointing out the way's in which it condones and glorifies violence against and the murder of African Americans. Every major male character in the book either personally murders an African American man or participates in white supremacist group violence that results in the murder of African American men. I don't know how people who read this book and say they love it get beyond that.
Thank you for this, it has made me consider my views of the novel. I always thought Mitchell just wanted to be accurate and not judge, but it's impossible to argue that after your video.
That this book was written in the 1930s and not say the 1850s is very important, completely changes her audience.
At one point the racism and Klan worship were so over the top that I wondered if Mitchell intended it as satire. After learning more about her I’m confident that it isn’t.
Accuracy wise I think Mitchell does capture the attitude of Southerners towards Reconstruction and African Americans. If the racism only came from the mouths of her characters it would be one thing, but most of it comes from the author. One thing that I think throws people off is that Scarlett herself seems to be against the war, the Confederacy, and the Klan. But she isn’t opposed to those things because she disagrees with their beliefs, but because they are inconvenient to her or a threat to her business.
Thanks for watching and commenting.
Thank you for this review. Excellent & Necessary.
Thank you.
I am glad you did this as a public service even though it was stressful and distasteful. I think it is important to point out as you do that it was written in the 1930s as that clarifies the author's position and intent.
Thank you. It was much more disturbing than I anticipated and I thought I was prepared. But there is something satisfying about finishing a hate read.
Amen.
This review came at a good time for me because we're watching the PBS documentary about the Reconstruction era by Henry Gates and everything you said goes right along with the documentation and history of that time. I haven't read GWTW and don't plan to. We already have enough apologists for what happened that are affecting the present.
I have seen some of the Gates documentary about Reconstruction. I went into this reread expecting it to aggrandize the "Old South" and present a sympathetic portrait of the Confederacy and an apology for slavery. But its Klan sympathies took me by surprise despite what I knew about the part where Ashley and Frank Kennedy lead a raid to kill an African American man.
Too true!
Thank you, this was fantastic!
Thank you Sina
“Muh everything is racist” we’ve heard it all before. This is a great movie, one of the classics.
You realize my video is about the book. Right?
Yes, it is. ViviEn LEigh was phenomenal.
Yep that summed up pretty much why I'll never read it.
Ha! I definitely dont think the story outweighs the racism and inaccurate history.
Fantastic review!! You make a great case for it being the anti-Uncle Tom's cabin. I think most people who love the book are mostly relying on their love of the movie, which sanitises a lot of the book's racism.
The sad part is it didn't have to be that way - the author could've still included all the racist garbage, but added some critique and analysis of the underlying drivers of it in southern society. Scarlett and Rhett could've gradually come to the realisation of how viciously exploitative was the system they were raised in, Ashley could've discovered the true horrors of the klan and used that as his motivation to break free and become a proper independent resilient husband and man, etc. So many missed opportunities...
Thank you very much. I agree completely about the movie and its impact on the books popularity. And I agree that Mitchell could have done all those things to eliminate the racist garbage. That she didn't, that she intentionally included them, was because they reflected her own thinking.
Excellent review. The point about how the book and movie are all some people know about the Civil War is spot on. I myself have heard actual live people argue that slavery was better for African Americans, and I believe they base that opinion on what they learned from GWTW.
Excellent! I have not read this book, to be transparent, but your direct quotes make it so much worse than I could have ever imagined. There are so many books in the world that I will never have time to get to. This is not one I’ll spend my time on.
I don't think you are missing much. If you've seen the movie you've seen the best parts of the story with a lot of the Klan loving racism filtered out.
My favorite book and movie.
The number of people who read your review without having read the book and, now, won’t tickles me, but hearing you say the civil war was about slavery does such injustice to history that I wish people had to be educated before reading the GWTW. The Civil War was about preserving the economics of the Union. The Confederate model, as it were, had slavery as its lynchpin; therefore, in order to win the war, the Union had to dislodge slavery. Yes, GWTW is racist and sexist. Self-evident, in this day and age, I would hope.
The secession of 7 southern states following Lincoln’s election, the attack on Ft Sumter, and the subsequent secession of 4 more states were the events that led to war.
Certainly Lincoln’s initial and primary goal was the preservation of the union, economic, political, etc. when he realized that ending slavery was a key component of that effort he made ending slavery the rallying cry for the north and changed military policy regarding how to handle run away/ captures slaves.
But Lincoln didn’t cause the war and his objectives could be achieved without war. The south started and pursued the war for one reason, slavery. Southern politicians made it clear in their secession documents and Stephens in “The Cornerstone Speech” made it clear that their cause was the preservation of their slave dependent economy/society. Therefore the war was about slavery.
If all Lincoln wanted was to preserve the economic union he could have called the war off and negotiated a trade deal with the Confederacy to keep norther textile mills supplied with cotton. As it was, northern factory owners continued to buy cotton from the South throughout the war. Cargo ships going north could easily avoid the US Navy blockade by sticking close to the coast.
@@BookishTexan There you go, again! I’m with you ‘til you say the South pursued the war for slavery. Well, slavery certainly was working for the South, but “states rights” is what Southerners tried to term it precisely because the key issue happened to be slavery, but had it afforded Southern planters more of the prosperity they enjoyed, it could have been witchcraft, voodoo, or a kettle-full-of-Fiddle-De-De! Some people undoubtedly cared about the enslaved, but they weren’t the issue so much as what slavery brought to the table.
It broke my heart when I first visited the Civil War Museum in Harrisburg, PA. The “history” read as if the conflict were about freeing slaves. That’s what ended up happening, but, no matter what you say, the abolitionist story was only a small part of what was being played out. Southerners were not about to relinquish their aristocratic lifestyles, and if they had won the war (on the back of slavery), they could have choosen not to sell their cotton to the Union anymore, and muck up the manufacturing “Mecca” up north. But, it’s all history, now. Much as I don’t want to support racism or sexism in any way, neither do I want people who came here in bondage to think anyone but the honest to God Abolitionists did them any favors. That’s my bottom line.
I’ve enjoyed having a go-‘round with you. Please don’t trounce too hard on the fictional Gone with the Wind characters. I think we all do the best we can given the circumstances we know at the moment … even if we’re just make-believe. ❤️
@@sunnspott2567 Have you read Alexander Stephens' Cornerstone Speech?
Here is a quote:
****
" The prevailing ideas entertained by him and most of the leading statesmen at the time of the formation of the old constitution, were that the enslavement of the African was in violation of the laws of nature; that it was wrong in principle, socially, morally, and politically. It was an evil they knew not well how to deal with, but the general opinion of the men of that day was that, somehow or other in the order of Providence, the institution would be evanescent and pass away. This idea, though not incorporated in the constitution, was the prevailing idea at that time. The constitution, it is true, secured every essential guarantee to the institution while it should last, and hence no argument can be justly urged against the constitutional guarantees thus secured, because of the common sentiment of the day. Those ideas, however, were fundamentally wrong. They rested upon the assumption of the equality of races. This was an error. It was a sandy foundation, and the government built upon it fell when the "storm came and the wind blew."
Our new government is founded upon exactly the opposite idea; its foundations are laid, its corner-stone rests, upon the great truth that the negro is not equal to the white man; that slavery subordination to the superior race is his natural and normal condition. This, our new government, is the first, in the history of the world, based upon this great physical, philosophical, and moral truth."
****
Stephens was elected Vice President of the Confederate States of America.
Have you read the secession declarations of the Southern States?
Here is a quote from Mississippi's:
****
"A Declaration of the Immediate Causes which Induce and Justify the Secession of the State of Mississippi from the Federal Union.
In the momentous step which our State has taken of dissolving its connection with the government of which we so long formed a part, it is but just that we should declare the prominent reasons which have induced our course.
Our position is thoroughly identified with the institution of slavery-- the greatest material interest of the world. Its labor supplies the product which constitutes by far the largest and most important portions of commerce of the earth. These products are peculiar to the climate verging on the tropical regions, and by an imperious law of nature, none but the black race can bear exposure to the tropical sun. These products have become necessities of the world, and a blow at slavery is a blow at commerce and civilization. That blow has been long aimed at the institution, and was at the point of reaching its consummation. There was no choice left us but submission to the mandates of abolition, or a dissolution of the Union, whose principles had been subverted to work out our ruin.
That we do not overstate the dangers to our institution, a reference to a few facts will sufficiently prove.
The hostility to this institution commenced before the adoption of the Constitution, and was manifested in the well-known Ordinance of 1787, in regard to the Northwestern Territory.
The feeling increased, until, in 1819-20, it deprived the South of more than half the vast territory acquired from France.
The same hostility dismembered Texas and seized upon all the territory acquired from Mexico.
It has grown until it denies the right of property in slaves, and refuses protection to that right on the high seas, in the Territories, and wherever the government of the United States had jurisdiction.
It refuses the admission of new slave States into the Union, and seeks to extinguish it by confining it within its present limits, denying the power of expansion.
It tramples the original equality of the South under foot.
It has nullified the Fugitive Slave Law in almost every free State in the Union, and has utterly broken the compact which our fathers pledged their faith to maintain.
It advocates negro equality, socially and politically, and promotes insurrection and incendiarism in our midst."
****
I never said that the North's original objective was the end or slavery nor that all Northerners believed in racial equality or even wanted slaves to be freed: They didn't
But preserving slavery for racist and economic purposes was the purpose of Southern Secession and therefore the cause of the war.
@@BookishTexan "Very interesting. No, I hadn't/haven't read the theses, and I appreciate your posting what you did. I wholeheartedly agree secession was to preserve slavery, and, think it follows that our US brand of slavery was racist, but this is where you and I start splitting hairs -- disputing semantics. I see the war start when a bunch of Southern hotheads got trigger-happy in the port of Charleston because they anticipated the Yanks weren't going to support their states' rights issue (slavery). -- Enter Ashley and Rhett and their mutual understanding that: … the factories, the foundries, the shipyards … iron and coal mines … (are things they haven't got) ... all we have is cotton and slaves and arrogance …
ruclips.net/video/S72nI4Ex_E0/видео.html
@@sunnspott2567 The attack on Ft. Sumter was not the act of hot heads who got trigger happy. The Confederate Government claimed the coastal forts belonging to the US Government, forts like Sumter, and demanded the US remove its forces from them even before Lincoln was inaugurated. A military force, first of SC Militia but by the time of the first shots of Confederate soldiers under the command of a Confederate General P.G.T. Beauregard, had been assembling and establishing military positions opposite Ft. Sumter for weeks. It was the Confederate position that the US must withdraw. They weren't waiting to see if the United States would let them secede. In their minds they had already seceded. That Jefferson Davis could not control the military decision making of the Confederacy does not mean that the decision to fire on Ft. Sumter.
There was nothing accidental about Southern Secession or the start of the war.
It’s been probably 40 years since I read it and I agree with your overall impression that it’s only OK, though I’m not sure how much of the book was overpowered by the movie. For example, I can’t think of Rhett and Ashley without thinking of Gable and Leslie Howard, and yes, it’s kind of impossible to figure why someone would be in love with Howard when Gable is around.
With other books, I would insist that you are confusing the author’s attitudes with the narrator’s. Mitchell herself did not have to believe the horrible stuff she puts in the book, and in that sense her narrator can be seen as a distinct character from herself. I don’t think you have to know much, if anything, outside the book to know that, for example, the lynching was anything but “quiet.” In the hands of a better writer, we’d likely be praising that sort of passage for its subtle irony. Unfortunately, she’s not that good a writer, so I think you are probably right about them being her views. However, I also think part of the fun of reading this book was in seeing how wrong the authoritative narrator regularly was. And I also have my doubts about whether Mitchell was not doing it deliberately, given how repugnant or weak all of the main characters are.
I have the same problem with the movie intruding on the books.
I think we do know that the narrators voice is Mitchell's voice and that she wasn't being ironic about lynchings or the heroism of the KKK. Do a google search on Margaret Mitchell and her PBS interview and you'll see that she was completely serious in her depictions of the post Civil War South. Look up Margaret Mitchell and GWTW in the New Georgia Encyclopedia and read the section about racism and you'll find that she took her depictions of the Klan etc almost directly from Thomas Dixon Jr.'s (whose work she read and admired as a youngster) racist novel _The Klansman_ . A work which inspired D.W. Griffith's racist movie "The Birth of a Nation."
Thanks for this video, Brian. You are a nobler person than I am for actually reading it. Way to take one for the team 🙂
Not sure hate reading the last 200 pages of a novel is noble but thanks for the kind words.
Fantastic review!
Thank you
And re: the lynching quote--I just read a histfic novel called Death at the Fair that brings in some of the lynching tradition into the plot, and the author does a pretty good job of showing how a young educated white woman would argue for it...and how patriarchy and racism are inextricable in the US. 😔
The myth of African American men’s innate desire to sexually assault white women was very common and why so many lynchings were the result of accusations of assaults or “inappropriate” actions or comments directed at white women. The myth was used to justify racist violence and an excuse for limiting the freedoms of women.
Gone with the Wind was very popular and is very readable. It contains vestiges of outdated notions held by Americans or a least a large swath of Southerners. Sadly, you are discouraging people from reading it. There are worse books by Cormac Maccarthy that you espouse out there. I think people can read Gone with the Wind and can see that the world is different now and can appreciate the improvement without being subverted to odious ideas.
At no point in any of his books does McCarthy directly, as the author, support the idea that a Klan lynching of black man accused of rape is justified. Mitchell does.
""A Negro who had boasted of rape had actually been arrested, but before he could be brought to trial the jail had been raided by the Ku Klux Klan and he had been quietly hanged. The Klan had acted to save the as yet unnamed victim from having to testify in open court."
-- Chapter 42 Gone With the Wind
@@BookishTexan No problem with your videos, which I appreciate. However, we disagree about Gone with the Wind. I think such books that reflect the attitudes of the times have great historical value and should not be shunned. We can see how far we have advanced morally. I don't like supposedly historical novels, which portray historically incorrect attitudes. That is pure rubbish.
@@gs547 The quote I provided is not a quote from a character in the book. It is a quote in which Mitchell inserts her own view of Reconstruction and the Klan in the 1930s. It is not a quote from a character in 1868.
Oh wow I had no idea. I had a colleague get upset with me for having never read or watched Gone with the Wind so it's been on my list to eventually get to, along with the sequel, but now you've saved me a lot of time from reading those large tomes. Thank you!
You’re welcome. The novel itself has some strengths, but the racism and Klan apologizing are shocking. I don’t think everyone is as bothered by it or as aware of it.
An honest, accurate, and excellent review of a deplorable novel. I read the book probably forty or more years ago, so I don't recall the minutiae of its content, but even then I was baffled as to why it was so celebrated. Perhaps if Hollywood hadn't seized upon it as a star stocked means to make money, the book might have settled into a well deserved obscurity!
Thank you Barbara.
I have a feeling you are right about the kids but impact of the movie on the books longevity.
Of course it's racist, look when it was written and by whom. I haven't read it, but am not opposed to reading it with a historical lens.
Not opposed to anyone reading it. Racism I expected Ku Klux Klan justification I didn’t.
Yikes! My jaw dropped to my toes with those quotes from the book--some of which sounded as if they could have been read from a Fox News transcript. This was a great review, a great history lesson, and a service to humanity. I am happy you read it because we would not have gotten this review. I feel like I should read it, but then again, no. Thanks for this.
Thank you very much for the very kind words. I expected the racist language and the old south apologizing, but the amount of Pro Klan stuff and promotion of lynching caught me off guard.
I think you judge a 1936 novel with 2021 eyes and ears. America was in the throws of the Depression and the typical American did not complete high school. A large percentage of Americans were still on the farm. Your evident lack of understanding of the circumstances under which the novel was produced and received is eye-opening. You spend a lot of breath blaming Margret Mitchell for the content of this book. What about the editors an Macmillan? If this was so out of place for its time and place how did it get produced? Why did Selznick want to make the movie? Unfortunately, the 30's were racist times compared to our enlightened age of the 2020's; that was 90 years ago! Let's cut 'em some slack. It's perfectly fine for we (the enlightened) to hate the book and the movie. Let's try to realistically look at why this was a phenomena in the 1930s, that's all.
Mitchell, the author of _Gone With the Wind_ , was a Smith College graduate and did not live on a farm. She was educated and affluent. She didn't write GWTW to give insight into The Great Depression though many readers no doubt identified with Scarlett's struggles. I'm not sure how the popularity of the book makes the content of the book less racist. Mitchell's book topped the best seller list for more than thirty consecutive weeks, but then fell from the list. The movie revived interest in the book and the movie's popularity explains its longevity.
I do not take issue wit the book being a phenomenon in the 1930s, but rather that people today still defend it "as a product of its time" as though this somehow absolves the books and its author of racism.
Mitchell was inspired to write the book by the work of Thomas W. Dixon Jr. whose novel _The Clansman_ portrayed the KKK as a heroic pro-American organization. Dixon's novel was the inspiration for the highly racist movie "Birth of A Nation" and was one of Mitchell's favorites. Will J. Simmons who founded the second incarnation of the Klan in 1915 was inspired by that movie and that novel. Mitchell and the Klan were literally inspired by the same author's work. By the mid 1920s the Klan's power and influence were at their zenith. Klan influence quickly declined after a scandal involving the murder of a young woman by a high ranking Klansman which diminished the Klan's appeal outside the South. In the South, lynchings of black men for alleged assaults on women continued. In fact Lint Shaw was lynched in 1936 by a mob of forty white men who took him from prison before his trial began and killed him for allegedly attempting to assault two white women. That same year, Mitchell published GWTW which contains the following quotes:
""Neither life nor property was safe from them and the white people, unprotected by law, were terrorized. Men were insulted on the streets by drunken blacks, houses and barns were burned at night, horses and cattle and chickens stolen in broad daylight, crimes of all varieties were committed and few of the perpetrators were brought to justice
But these ignominies and dangers were as nothing compared with the peril of white women, many bereft by the war of male protection, who lived alone in the outlying districts and on lonely roads. It was the large number of outrages on women and the ever present fear for the safety of their wives and daughters that drove Southern men to cold and trembling fury and caused the Ku Klux Klan to spring up overnight. And it was against this nocturnal organization that the newspapers of the North cried out most loudly, never realizing the tragic necessity that brought it into being."
-- Chapter 37. Gone With the Wind
""A Negro who had boasted of rape had actually been arrested, but before he could be brought to trial the jail had been raided by the Ku Klux Klan and he had been quietly hanged. The Klan had acted to save the as yet unnamed victim from having to testify in open court."
-- Chapter 42 Gone With the Wind
In these quotes Mitchell (in her authorial voice, not the voice of a character) repeats the very lies the Klan's used to justify its existence and the lynching of a black men. Which is chilling given the lynching of Lint Shaw in Georgia only a few months before the publication of GWTW.
I can't think of another major work written in the 20th Century in which the author expresses admiration for the Klan and endorses lynching in their own voice (not the voice of a character) can you?
If the ideas contained in Mitchell's novel were so widely held, such common cultural currency, why were the incidents of racist violence that populate the book left out of the movie that came out in 1939? Why did they avoid the N word? Why did they avoid scene's glorifying the Klan?
There was a lot more going on than just The Great Depression in the 1930s and of all the things that influenced Mitchell's book, current events were not among them. So I don't think that I am the one who displays an "evident lack of understanding of the circumstances under which the novel was produced and received."
If people today can read and ignore the novel's virulent racism, that's their right. It doesn't make the racism of the novel go away now anymore than it did in the 1930s.
@@BookishTexan She didn't write GWTW to "give insight to the Great Depression", yet don't life experiences play an indirect role in an author's writing, and a readers interpretation? Secondly, Do you know for a fact know that there were NOT outrages on whites by blacks in the immediate post-Civil War South? I personally don't know one way or the other about this. I assume Margret Mitchell would have had some knowledge on this subject from people she had contact with, people she knew personally who perhaps lived during the Civil War and Reconstruction. I'm very much against virulent racism. I think the KKK is despicable and lynchings by anyone the worst of mankind. I'm also against virulent hatred of people who are in no position to defend themselves.
@@nedmerrill5705 Her life experiences shielded Mitchell to the extent that she was able to ignore the on going economic collapse around her and write a one thousand page book about Georgia during the Civil War and Reconstruction. Again, I'm certain that many readers did identify with Scarlett's struggles because of their experiences during the Depression. How does that make the book less racist?
Let me ask you some clarifying questions:
1. There are more than 2000 documented cases of lynchings of black men, women, and children at the hands of white mobs during just the 12 years of Reconstruction. Certainly many black men were accused of sexually assaulting white women in the South. But because those men rarely lived to trial, and black men were frequently wrongly accused or sexually assaulting white women, it is impossible to know how often those assaults occurred.
How common would "outrages on whites by blacks" during Reconstruction have to have been to justify the existence of the Klan and widespread lynchings of black men by white mobs?
2. Mitchell certainly talked to her older family members and friends about the Civil War and Reconstruction. Given their racial and cultural biases and the Myth of the Lost cause (which Mitchell also promotes in GWTW) what makes you think the information she got was an accurate picture of what happened? She was not a historian. What makes you think she carefully researched both sides of the issues?
3. I'm glad you are against virulent racism. But, I'm curious as to why you feel you need to defend a racist work of literature and its racist author? Is it your belief that Mitchell was not a racist? That the book does not contain virulently racist descriptions and promote a racist version of the past?
@@BookishTexan 1) Right. I'm sure there were many more lynchings than Black on white outrages. Not that the latter did not occur.
2) We all have our impressions of what the past was like given to us by our elders. You, me, and Margret Mitchell included. We are all "historians" in that respect. As you say, it's the Southern mythos she's reporting, rightly or wrongly. She's a daughter of the South. The novel is more a product of her imagination that a product of historical research (though there may have been some with respect to military matters).
3) As a daughter of the South, for such a person, I think she's no more or less racist than any other person of that era of the 1930s. Perhaps even less racist than most Southerners, as she went to a Massachusetts college. Her writings reflect her true state of mind on this point, in my opinion. Had Margret Mitchell lived today I believe her views would have been drastically modified to fit modern attitudes towards race. In other words, I doubt she was a bigot. But you think that's a moot point, right?
@@nedmerrill5705
1) You didnt answer my question. How many attacks on white women by black men during Reconstruction would it take to justify the creation of the Klan and the lynching of 2000 black people? Because that's what Mitchell does (see quotes from my first response). She justified the creation of the Klan and lynchings in GWTW.
2) Of course she was a product of her environment that's the point. She was raised in a racist society and her novel reflects her racist attitude.
3) You didnt answer my question. Why do you feel the need to defend a racist author and a racist novel?
I ask you to read the quotes I provided in my first response and to watch my video again starting at 15:50 and tell me that these are not the statements of a racist author.
I know after making a condescending comment based on the belief that you know more about this subject than I that it will be difficult for you to admit that you are wrong, but you are wrong and you know it.
I have no desire to read this book but I think it might be really insightful to read this as an academic exercise on white women as both ignorant (in the literal sense - ignoring the obvious truths) and complicit throughout history and now. Similarly I haven’t yet read but intend to read They Were Her Property which would probably be very informative to read in conjunction.
That sounds really interesting. I have never heard of _They Were Her Property_ but I will look it up.
There’s a part of me that wants to hate read this.
That's what I did. I came close to DNFing it. The underlying racist and Klan apologizing themes in the book are vile.
I hope you spare yourself. There's enough to deal with everyday in 2021. Why add more pain?
I somehow missed this video when you first posted it, but I’m glad I found it. Well done! I’m glad you brought up the context of the 1930s - Mitchell was writing only a decade after 50,000 klansmen marched in D.C. In 1923 the Senate approved a “mammy” statue in celebration of the memory of loyal Southern slaves, which would have gone up near the Lincoln memorial. I haven’t read the book, but the film is certainly a toxic piece of Lost Cause propaganda that proliferated during that era.
Thank you. YES! I think too many people just say, "Yeah, its racist. Lots of people were racists," without realizing the context in which it was produced and exactly what the book sought to promote and justify.
I just started reading Gone With The Wind and already in the first pages I can tell that this book is gonna have a lot of racists theme and already I can tell that Scarlett is not gonna be my favorite Protagonist.
The story itself is engaging, but the theme's and the depictions of African Americans are awful. Mitchell had an agenda beyond telling a compelling story. Weirdly, Scarlett isnt the worst of the characters in terms of racism.
Thank you for commenting
@@BookishTexan I've read books from the past and some are politically incorrect but their are really a product of their time but as I keep reading gone with the wind it seems different I honestly don't know if Margaret Mitchell was a Racist or just Naive but it does seem that this book does have an agenda, Not only does it talk negative against African Americans, but also poor folks and and Northerners. I think that Gone with the wind is like an accident it's hard for one not to look, So far I would compare Gone with the wind with the Silent Picture from 1915 Birth of a nation, while Birth of a nation celebrates hate Gone with the wind the Novel tries to excuse it. But you know what those kinds of things make me Happy that I don't live in those times, And it helps to understand, appreciate and respect my fellow human being
@@BookishTexan P.S Scarlett might not be the worst racist character, But oh boy what a selfish, conceited egotistical Brat
I think your review is totally wrong. This book is not racist and your are trying to make people to feel sympathy towards your review. This is the story about Scarlett not slavery. This is not a history book. Margaret Mitchell chose the words many people used at the time. What I think is really funny is how you say Mitchel is portraying slavery as romantic and then you go on and on about the words she uses.
The book falsifies the reality of slavery in the US.
The book glorifies racist violence (Rhett kills a black man for being "uppity" -- word used in the book)
The book justifies and glorifies the Klan. Ashley and Scarlet's second husband are Klan leaders who kill a black man and a "scalawag."
Scarlett helps another character escape who had killed a black man.
Mitchell wrote _Gone With The Wind_ in the 1930s not the 1830s.
There is a book where the n word is constantly repeated, it is called "The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn"
That is true.
I read this book when I was 15 and I remember absolutely hating it. I thought it was written ok, but found Scarlett insufferable, I just wanted to slap her and didn't even find her interesting. The only other thing I remember is that I hated also the whitewashing of the racism. I have thought that maybe I should give it another try, but thank you for saving me the trouble. After watching your review, I'm convinced I would've hated it even more now 😁 So thanks against for this video, was very good 👍
Scarlet is mostly insufferable. The “white washing” of the Klan caught me by surprise.
Thanks for that discussion. It's interesting to posit a contrast between it and _Uncle Tom's Cabin_. (I've never read either, but UTC is on my shelf waiting its moment, which may never come: its place in history beside, at least I believe it holds legitimate claims to literary value.) You almost wonder, at least subconsciously, if Mitchell wasn't trying to build an alternate monument to that, based on the "alternative facts" of the Lost Cause myth. Obviously there was a market for that, just as for the statues of Confederate traitors which have only recently begun to come down. I didn't know about the KKK justification, as with the DW Griffith movie probably one of the main reasons for the book to have come into existence.
I too saw the movie with my mom (as another commenter here has said). There might be some curiosity in viewing it again as an adult, but it will never be a priority. I've seen the book, and also decided against it because I disliked the language; but this video discussion gives me a good sense of what's in it and also its stature (hopefully now diminishing) in American society.
Thank you for the great comment.
I think that is exactly what Mitchell was doing: She was creating a monument to the Old South, the Confederacy, and the Klan and her monument has been viewed more times than any other.
I think Ken Burns documentary may have replaced GWTW in the minds of Americans who don't study/rea history as their main source of their ideas about the Civil War. There is probably more good in that than evil.
I've heard of this book as a classic but didn't know what it was about. Based on this video, I don't think I'll be interested on reading it, I'd probably rather read something about this era that doesn't romanticize the ex slave owners and the KKK 🤮
I wish I had some recommendations of novels that you could read instead, but o don’t read much historical fiction.
100% agree with your analysis!
Thank you.
*mic drop*
Margaret Mitchell was a product of her times, it is only a book people!!! Besides the movie was toned down for the movie. Lighten up folks!!!
Did you watch my video?
Brilliant!
Thank you James.
5 minutes in and I have all the proof I need to support my lack of interest in either the book or the movie.
Thanks for watching and commenting.
Brian, I attempted to watch this video. Unfortunately, the number of times you said "you know" within the first five minutes was extremely distracting.
You should try making videos yourself. It might help you gain some perspective, you know?
Brian, I am surprised at your knee jerk reaction and indignation. Instead of actually taking a moment of reflection and considering the merits of my critique, you chose to attack. Did I make a false observation ? As a retired history teacher familiar with the process of conducting lectures, clarity and quality of speech was a priority. May I suggest Allen Guelzo's lecture at Hillsdale on Robert E. Lee ( available on RUclips)as a template for your review ?
@@recherche4528 You are surprised that I reacted indignantly to a comment from someone I dont know, who doesn't make content of their own, that called one of my videos unwatchable? That just proves you don't know me very well. I don't suffer trolls lightly.
However I watched one of Professor Guelzo's lectures (Did Lee Commit Treason delivered at Washington and Lee University). He has a powerful speaking voice. Too bad he reads his lectures and rarely makes eye contact with his audience. Those are both things you learn not to do in Speech 101.
I look forward to your first video so you can, you know, show me how this youtube thing is done.
(Also, you are a liar. You clearly watched my video otherwise you wouldn't have referred me to a lecture about Lee.)
@@BookishTexan What is wrong with you? Obviously, I touched a nerve. I actually thought you would take my comment as a suggestion for improvement. Evidently, you disregard critiques from people you do not know personally. In addition, having experience delivering lectures does not qualify giving assessment unless you have a You Tube channel. You said "you know" an insufferable number of times in just the first five minutes (go back and listen). I did not watch the entire video. So, in addition to your inability for self reflection you have an ego problem.
I am however aware that you recently have in fact, been called a liar by another booktuber in regards to your earlier claim that you read Gone With The Wind. Apparently, you had disclosed you only watched the movie.
It is interesting that after having been called out in a lie you conveniently dedicated a video to the book. As far as Scholar Allen Guelzo, I am presently reading his current book on Robert. E. Lee. In companion with the book, I have sought out his videos. You cannot possibly believe you are a better speaker or anywhere near his league. You conveniently chose to disregard the video recommended in which he engages the audience and delivers his lectures in a thoughtful, stimulating, manner. You have neither the class, smarts, charm, talent or ability of this gentleman.
@@recherche4528 What is wrong with me? You come into the comments section on my channel to criticize my manner of speaking and expect to be taken seriously? You are the one with the ego issues. Seriously, who the hell do you think you are? Why do you think I should give a rats rear end what you think?
As for the other incident, because that booktuber was a friend I not only followed their suggestion that I let my viewers know that I had not read GWTW completely by putting a note in the show notes, I also decided to read the book so that I could speak about it with greater authority. That reading allowed me to make this video. That's how seriously I take criticism from content makers and friends. I don't take seriously the trolling comments from anonymous accounts.
I never suggested I was as good a speaker or scholar as Professor Guelzo, but since you suggested I get speaking tips by watching him I thought I should let you know that he himself violates several of the rules of good public speaking.
She's in love with another man's wife? Huh? I'd like the book a lot more if that happened.
Haha! I caught that after I posted it and wasn't going to go back and try to edit it out.
It would be a much more interesting book.
I'm just sorry you weren't able to post this a few years ago when there was a brouhaha around her death and publishing of her 2nd book. She was a dyed-in-the-wool racist herself and enjoyed the fame that book brought her. GWTW came out when the KKK was rampant throughout the country. It was and is still a disgrace. I hope your video gets a wide viewing.
I’m sorry I missed it. The fact that Mitchell new the Klan was back and terrorizing people when she wrote the book makes it even more enraging.
I have never had any interest in reading this, and hearing those excerpts, I have less than zero interest. That is way wo6than I expected.
It was worse than I expected as well
It was worse than I expected as well
You live in Texas and racism in a book shocks you? Wow.
Not shocked, angry. Racism still makes me angry and I hope it always does.
Thank you for this thorough, comprehensive, candid review of GWTW. You gave it the credit that it's due as a piece of literature without shying away from shaming it for its problematic content and its troubling influence on society and politics. Well done.
What I don't understand about GWTW and other stories/narratives like it, i.e. Lost Cause apologia, is that it staunchly defends slavery as a benign institution that was in the best interest of blacks and whites alike while insisting that the Confederates never took up arms to defend said institution and that the Unionists were the villains for fighting to abolish it. Is the contradictory nature of this rhetoric obvious to anyone else? It makes no sense whatsoever.
Thank you very much.
The contradictory nature, lack of logic, and hypocrisy of the "Lost Cause" rhetoric should be obvious to all. Unfortunately it still isn't.
I think slavery and Jim Crow twisted the South beyond the point of logical thinking. Southern whites had to tie themselves into such knots to try to justify slavery to themselves and the world that they lost touch with logic. They knew slavery wasn't benign and either consciously or subconsciously knew that having fought a bloody Civil War to preserve an evil institution made their position evil so they attempted to shift focus from slavery as the cause to "state's rights." A society that found it possible to condone and even celebrate the lynching of African Americans for minor social infractions well into mid 20th Century abandoned logic along with decency and humanity.
@@BookishTexan You are absolutely right. You'd think that if they insist that defending slavery was not the South's cause that they'd at least admit to the evils of it. Or, if it wasn't so bad, what's the harm in admitting that this was what the South stood for? But like you said, slavery and Jim Crow definitely skewed the South's logic past is the point of no return.
When I was a kid, GWTW was a huge annual event when the movie was shown on TV, a ratings blockbuster. FFS. Was Mitchell a Southerner herself?
She was a lifelong resident of Georgia. She didn’t know the Confederacy lost the Civil War until she was 10 years old, despite being regaled with Civil War Stories by her relatives through her early years.
@@DuncanMcCurdie Whut
I did not know that about Mitchell. It doesn’t surprise me though.
I watched it many times with my sister who loved the movie. Yes, Mitchell was from Georgia.
@@BookishTexan I watched it at least once with my mother, who loved the melodrama.
Thanks for saying out loud and reading passages that needed to be "outed." I read this as a teenager (after seeing the movie) and didn't like it then (50 some years ago). I've never been an advocate of banning books, but this would be one of the first if someone ever asked me my opinion. I think the most troubling is how much our American society embraced the book, the movie (as I was reminded by another commentator--that it was shown *every year* on TV) and everything it stands for--the very essence of institutionalized racism.
_I think the most troubling is how much our American society embraced the book, the movie (as I was reminded by another commentator--that it was shown every year on TV) and everything it stands for--the very essence of institutionalized racism_
I agree with this completely. GWTW is not solely responsible for this of course, but it definitely has played a part.
I cant support banning books, but I hope that when people read GWTW today they are more aware of the books racism and Klan support.
Thanks for the great comment.
I don’t think you’re unintelligent but what you’re saying is dumb. Please tell me, how would you write a civil war novel from the perspective of a white southerner without it coming off as racist? The book is not going out of its way to be racist- it is only acknowledging the mindset of the confederacy. It would be wild if the book were to be written in any other way. Acknowledging racism in itself is not racist
Did you watch the whole video?
The book doesn’t “come off as racist.” It is racist.
It is racist not because it was sea racist language, but because it never condemns the racist actions of it’s heroes or racism itself. Both Ashley and Rhett Murder black people - Rhett killed a black man for being “upitty” in a conversation with a white woman. Mitchell as narrator asserts that it is better that a family of white people kill their daughter who has been “insulted” by a black man than to let the black man live. Mitchell wrote the book in the 1930s and her authorial voice and attitudes toward slavery are present in the text. Her book contains pro-South propaganda designed to make slavery seem not so bad, slave owners benevolent, the cause of the Civil War something other than slavery, black people to be lazy and ignorant, and Reconstruction to be harmful.
The book isn’t written from Scarlett’s perspective. It is written from Mitchell’s. She is the omniscient third person narrator and Mitchell set out to glorify the Old South and the Klan.
wow @ this book WOW that's a lot of cringe, Margaret.
Yep. A lot of cringe.🤓
It's a great romantic fiction novel. The Civil War South is the place.....young woman Scarlet O'Hara is the time, and her "childish heart's love for Ashley" is the theme. A stubborn Southern Bell spoiled brat attitude of getting the man she wants. Charles says to her: "miss scarlet it's war..isn't it exciting", Scarlet replies: "don't you men every think of anything important...", because she feels her heart breaking at that moment after being rejected by Ashley earlier. Then she marries Charles in spite of Ashley ( a childish act). As Rhett said to her when they were married " your such a child, your throwing away our happiness for someone you can never have." But Ashley's not perfect as she romances he is. Scarlet realizes in the end she is no more to Ashley than what Bell Watson is to Rhett. Honorable Ashley has a little action on the side other than his wife. Rhett know's it...and Melanie allows it...she know's what and how much . Ashley's has a melodramatic heart ...its not sexual...its a passionate play he likes to perform...and Scarlet unknowingly is the cheap women of the play. " The wooden headed Mr Wilkes" as Rhett called him..."why doesn't he make up his mind, he can't be mentally faithful to his wife, but he won't be physically unfaithful to her either!" At the end Rhett says to Scarlet " I'm leaving to find if there still beauty and grace in the world, do you know what I mean?" scarlet replies " I only know that i love you!". Rhett: "that's your misfortune." Best summery lines of the Story: Rhett to scarlet: "your such a child, you think by saying I'm sorry all the past can be corrected." It's all a love story...you missed the point because you are not looking at it as romance fiction
You are, of course, free to read GWTW in this way. That doesn’t make the racism or the Lost Cause/ Klan justifying content go away, but you are free to ignore it.
@@BookishTexan what you don't realize ....Historical, Gone with the Wind is the Southern response to Uncle Toms Cabin. Uncle Tom's Cabin was the most important political book in American History because it was against Slavery. And, for years the Southern white people disputed the facts of Uncle Tom Cabin. They denied slavery as being evil. Then came Gone with the Wind... a romantic fiction book that championed the idea of the institution of slavery as being nobel. Mitchell verses Stowe!!!
For instance: UTC: Eva StClair was the daughter of a slave owner dying an angles death but before she died expressed the evil of slavery and the need to end it. Contrary to her is Melanie: who is the champion of Southern nobility and dies an angle death. UTC: Marie St-Clair was a lazy southern bell in a greedy society who abused her slaves to death (literally). Contrary to her: Scarlett O'Hara, a Southern Bell determined to be once again to be the noble master in a lost cause who treats slaves kindly. UTC: Augustine Stclair was an idealistic procrastinator that was cynical of slavery who died before he could free his slaves. Contrary to him: The split personality of Rhett and Ashley: Rhett a cynic of Southern Society (not slavery), and Ashley a dreamer of unable to change his world. We know, GWTW was written during the height of the KKK. President Wilson was a champion of the KKK. If you read up on the History of cotton...The history of the black people from 1612 to 1954 is directed to the History of Cotton. I guess reading is relative.
One of the greatest of American novels. Exceedingly well written, for the most part, historically accurate, a real page turner, a book you never want to end -- THAT is "Gone with the Wind." For anyone to dismiss it as racist and glorifying slavery is simply revelling in Woke lunacy. I have read it FIVE times and love it more every time. Not to recognize the worth of this book is a veritable sin. P.S. Scarlett WAS going back to Tara at book's end
For anyone to read it and not see that it glorifies slavery, the old south and condoned racism/ racist violence is willfully naive. I quoted passages that prove my point. If you think GWTW is historically accurate you haven’t really studied history.
@@BookishTexan Then go after the doctoral level reading and university profs who taught 19th c. Ametican history and black history, some black themselves. Furthermore, none of racist shouters EVER takes context into account. She wrote it from the perspective of the South. She was from Georgia; she grew up hearing Civil War stories from relatives and friends. She also did meticulous research. Did you know when she found out Hattie McDaniel was segregated at the Academy Awards, she contacted her and they corresponded for years? Did you know she enabled financially AT LEAST 70- 80 black medical students to matriculate at Morehouse College? Did you know one of them, Otis Smith (first black pediatrician in GA) and also former President of the NAACP, was vice-chairman of "Margaret Mitchell House, Inc.", devoted to creating a museum at the site where most of her GWTW writing took place? If I may quote him, "Her book describes life the way it was then. We may not like it, but that's history." In fact, he was an admirer of hers long before he even found out it was she who made his medical career possible.
Anyone who reads GWTW and who is already bigoted (or guilted later into being against it), who is already myopic in his biases while reading it, should stick to inaccurate, insulting, yet apparently satisfying, negatively reinforcing "history" like the "1619 Project."
Following your reasoning, no history we find repulsive should be watched or read UNLESS it is viewed from only one perspective, the "right" perspective (actually the "left's" today), which of course, is THE only acceptable perspective to people like this. It is exactly how we get Holocaust deniers. That's how wackos tried to take out Kate Smith and Lillian Gish. Nutty hurtful nonsense!
Furthermore, you mischaracterize my sentiment. I said, " For anyone to DISMISS it as racist and glorifying slavery is simply revelling in Woke lunacy." CERTAINLY sane people are aghast at the concept of slavery, but IT EXISTED and that's a sad part of our history, and world history. Mitchell was entitled to write her Southern perspective, and from my reading and education, she wasn't out of bounds. The book is about human relations SET AGAINST a Civil War backdrop. It IS one of the great Ametican novels. Period.
P.S. My education was one of the finest available. I stand by my comments.
@@mmjhcb
So Mitchell, whose favorite author was Thomas Dixon author of “The Clansman” the man whose work inspired the racist movie “Birth of a Nation”, presented a non-racist version of Southern History in the book she wrote as a Southerner in the 1930s… please
I can tell you didn’t actually watch my video. If you had you’d know that I never said people shouldn’t read GWTW and you do not address any of the specific examples of Mitchell, in her authorial voice, making racist statements and condoning racist violence.
I’m m sorry that my video threatened your naive view of one of your favorite books, but reality can be harsh.
@@BookishTexan Her favorite author? Really? That's laughable! It's clear to me who and what you are. You are the problem and I cannot convert a bigot. I can tell YOU didn't read MY entire comment because you CONVENIENTLY (as do all who are incapable of real debate) refrain from commenting on any of it, preferring to go back to tired refrains, falsehoods tossed out as facts, BTW, there were comments you made with which I agree, characterization, etc. However, the entirety of your comments is propaganda.
Woke Lunacy is all I need to know where you stand on things.