Gone with the Wind

Margaret Munnerlyn Mitchell was the American author who won the Pulitzer Prize in 1937 for her immensely successful novel, Gone with the Wind, that was published in 1936. She was born in Atlanta, Georgia, and often used the name Peggy. Her childhood was spent on the laps of Civil War veterans and of her mother's relatives who lived through the war and the years that followed. They told her everything about the war, except that the Confederates had lost it. She was ten years old before making this discovery. After graduating from Washington Seminary, now known as The Westminster Schools, she attended Smith College but withdrew in 1918. She returned to Atlanta to take over the household after her mother's death earlier that year from the great influenza pandemic of 1918. Mitchell used this pivotal scene from her own life to dramatize Scarlett's discovery of her mother's death from typhoid, when Scarlett returns to Tara. Shortly afterward, she joined the staff of the Atlanta Journal, where she wrote a weekly column for the newspaper's Sunday edition. Mitchell is reported to have begun writing Gone with the Wind while bedridden and nursing a broken ankle. Her husband, John Marsh, brought home historical books from the public library to amuse her while she healed. Finally, he told her, "Peggy, if you want another book, why don't you write your own?" She used her encyclopedic knowledge of the Civil War, and used dramatic moments from her own life, to write her epic novel, typing it out on an old Remington typewriter. She originally called her novel "Pansy O'Hara", and Tara was "Fontenoy Hall." Mitchell wrote for her own amusement, with solid support from her husband, but she kept her literary efforts a secret from all her friends. She wrote in an unorganized fashion, writing the last chapter first, and skipping around from chapter to chapter. Her husband regularly proofread her writings to help keep her motivated. By 1929, when her ankle had healed and most of the book was written, she lost interest in pursuing her literary efforts, until a MacMillan publisher, Howard Latham, came to Atlanta. Latham was scouring the South for promising new Southern writers, and Mitchell agreed to escort him around Atlanta at the request of her friend, who now worked for Latham. Latham was enchanted with Mitchell, and asked her if she had ever written a book. When he found out that she had, he read it immediately and loved it. MacMillan soon sent her an advance check to encourage her to complete the novel. Mitchell completed her work in March, 1936.

Mitchell's work relates the story of a rebellious Georgia woman named Scarlett O'Hara and her interactions with friends, family and lovers in the midst of the South during the Civil War and the reconstruction period. It also tells the story of the love that blossomed between Scarlett O'Hara and Rhett Butler. Mitchell wrote the book mostly for entertainment, although it does have some educational value in helping you to understand better how things progressed in the South at that time and the southerners mind set. In writing the novel, besides the entertainment value, she is trying to help people better understand the South at this point in time.

Critics and historians regard the book as having a strong commitment to the cause of the Confederacy and a romanticized view of the culture of the South. This is apparent from the book's opening pages, which describe how Scarlett's suitors, the Tarleton twins, have been expelled from university and are accompanied home by their elder brothers out of a sense of honor. Nevertheless, the book includes a vivid description of the fall of Atlanta in 1864 and the devastation of war, and shows a considerable amount of historical research. The novel's major themes, other than war, are, love of money, attitudes towards slavery, fantasy versus