Gone With the Wind

[bounty]

that's the thing though danik, Mitchell's views cannot be discerned from reading the book. no fiction authors views can be discerned through their work unless there is some sort of external corroboration. she's not promoting any racial ideology, especially one that endorses slavery, she's just writing a novel. the book could just as easily have been written by an early 20th century northern abolitionist.

for what its worth, the slaves are hardly in appearance in the book and when they are, its almost always in positions of importance where they have responsibility and care about the jobs they are doing, the people they are doing them for, and to some extent the people seem to care about them. if the reader didn't know they were slaves, you'd think they were valets, butlers, nannies and cooks in the same fashion as wealthy british people had.

im far from an American civil war expert, but yes, for a time there were "two countries" and that was one of the reasons for the war---the north's position and the federal governments position of "sorry, nope, you cant secede from the union" and we're going to use force to preserve the union. slavery was one of the contentious reasons for the south's secession, but "state's rights" were a part of the equation too. to the extent that any justification for the war is given at all in gone with the wind this is the one the characters give.

im reading a very interesting biography on alexander Hamilton, who was an important figure during our revolutionary war and especially afterwards. the part I just finished was a bit confusing but it had to do with Vermont's statehood and its land and borders relative to its neighbors (new York and new Hampshire). it seems there was a lot of fighting over the issue to the point where the states, especially in the absence of a yet to be formed strong federal government, would have fought armed battles over it had not the tension been diffused.

I know there are a couple of contemporary civil war books that have been really popular, killer angels and cold mountain. the first is a narrow account of Gettysburg, the battle credited for turning the tide of the war in the north's favor. the second is a romance of sorts, in north Carolina (a southern state) that occurs mostly in the aftermath of the war and somehow affected by the war. but yes, so far as I know, I agree, gone with the wind is the most widely known civil war story.

how did you come to read it?

its interesting danik---I think in the usa we tend to be so insular in our thinking that we often don't think of other places around the world. it makes sense that slave traders coming to the new world from Africa would have also sold people to south America. how did brazil overcome the issue?

[Danik 2016]

so here's someone who didn't like the movie! the movie won the academy award for best picture of the year---that's not to say that everyone who watched it should have loved it, but it makes you wonder about the nature of the complaint.

we've talked about this before---the book to movie or movie back to book sequence can be a stimulating and enjoyable process to engage in.

I recently read a book and watched the movie at the same time, going back and forth between the two (the girl who kicked the hornet's nest), and I really enjoyed it. its fun to consider as I go along through this book, knowing there is a movie out there waiting to be watched, what scenes from the book will be in the movie and what wont. I also like being able to picture clark gable and vivien leigh as Rhett and scarlett.

in last nights reading, Rhett was very forward with scarlett concerning his intentions and pretty much propositioned her. there was some revelation too about his attraction to her---I think I mentioned something akin to this earlier---he sees some compatibility with her based on her not being a lady and their being somewhat alike in their contrarian (to southern culture) nature. all the readings been good and easy so far, but that little section was most interesting and I flew through it---lending more credence to pushkin's line of "the attention of women being almost the sole aim of men..."

but scarlett took offense at his presumption, was a little upset at herself by the end of their discussion, and stormed off never wanting to see him again. Rhett's imperturbable...

why do they make such a compelling couple??

I enjoyed the film. It's one of the universal films that are a must. I remember watching it with a friend in a big old theater, that had known its days of glory but was then decadent.

Scarlet and Rhett enchant maybe because they are so convincing as a couple even when they are quarreling.

[Danik 2016]

that's the thing though danik, Mitchell's views cannot be discerned from reading the book. no fiction authors views can be discerned through their work unless there is some sort of external corroboration. she's not promoting any racial ideology, especially one that endorses slavery, she's just writing a novel. the book could just as easily have been written by an early 20th century northern abolitionist.

for what its worth, the slaves are hardly in appearance in the book and when they are, its almost always in positions of importance where they have responsibility and care about the jobs they are doing, the people they are doing them for, and to some extent the people seem to care about them. if the reader didn't know they were slaves, you'd think they were valets, butlers, nannies and cooks in the same fashion as wealthy british people had.

im far from an American civil war expert, but yes, for a time there were "two countries" and that was one of the reasons for the war---the north's position and the federal governments position of "sorry, nope, you cant secede from the union" and we're going to use force to preserve the union. slavery was one of the contentious reasons for the south's secession, but "state's rights" were a part of the equation too. to the extent that any justification for the war is given at all in gone with the wind this is the one the characters give.

im reading a very interesting biography on alexander Hamilton, who was an important figure during our revolutionary war and especially afterwards. the part I just finished was a bit confusing but it had to do with Vermont's statehood and its land and borders relative to its neighbors (new York and new Hampshire). it seems there was a lot of fighting over the issue to the point where the states, especially in the absence of a yet to be formed strong federal government, would have fought armed battles over it had not the tension been diffused.

I know there are a couple of contemporary civil war books that have been really popular, killer angels and cold mountain. the first is a narrow account of Gettysburg, the battle credited for turning the tide of the war in the north's favor. the second is a romance of sorts, in north Carolina (a southern state) that occurs mostly in the aftermath of the war and somehow affected by the war. but yes, so far as I know, I agree, gone with the wind is the most widely known civil war story.

how did you come to read it?

its interesting danik---I think in the usa we tend to be so insular in our thinking that we often don't think of other places around the world. it makes sense that slave traders coming to the new world from Africa would have also sold people to south America. how did brazil overcome the issue?

I think there are indirect ways of demonstrating ones views and values in a novel. There is for example the narrator of the story. It´s not the author himself/herself speaking but he or she can be a kind of alter ego, who incorporates the point of view of the author. I think this is the case with "Gone with the Wind". Another aspect that often reveals the authors perspective is which characters are depicted as good and which ones as bad in a story.

I remember very vaguely about reading the novel, I got it in some bibliothek and I read it in Portuguese. I´m sure of it for there is a short passage I remember in Portuguese:
Someone is playing the piano (in the house of Atlanta?) to a tune that runs more or less like this:
"The years pass slowly, Lorena
Again the snow covers the fields..."

The Brazilian slavery i´ll leave for another post later.

[bounty]

sure there are ways to indirectly demonstrate ones views in a novel, but short of external corroboration, ideally as direct statements or behaviors from the author, they are at best only guesses.

I was going to ask if you had read it in English or in Portuguese---ive been curious, since its the latter, how does a dialect/accent translate across languages? when prissy says "Miss Scarlett, ah kain walk. mah feets done blistered an' dey's thoo mah shoes, an' wade an' me doan weigh so much..."

they just abandoned the house in atlanta, but I don't remember reading about the piano scene. i'll have to go back through to see if I can spot it.

the past days worth of reading have been page turners---melanie pregnant on the verge of giving birth, the yankees on the outskirts of the city, the confederate army retreating, melanie giving birth with no doctor or midwife, scarlett turning to Rhett for help, them fleeing the city and trying to return to tara, and Rhett confessing he's loved scarlett ever since he first saw her and he grabs her and kisses her and makes her weak in the knees despite herself (a scene like that is one of the major feminist criticisms of James bond), and then Rhett, in a fit of conscience, abandons them in order to somehow help (seemingly) the retreating army.

I think you are about Rhett and scarlett being a convincing couple---and the reader who wants happy endings or happy relationships kinda looks at them and wants them to succeed. so far though I think scarletts 0 for 3 on her "I hate you and never want to see you again" stance.

[Danik 2016]

I don't have the book in Portuguese, so I couldn't look it up, but in this case I think it wasn so difficult, because Brazil had slaves too. But I recall seeing the soap opera "The Slave Isaura" , which was exported which was exported to many countries, in German in the Net. And it was very funny, because the informal Portuguese of the original had been turned into very formal German.
The piano scene may be later in the book and not necessarily in Atlanta, but in some city. There is an atmosphere about women aging without men.
Yes.I vaguely remember these scenes. Rhett isn't meant to be a bad guy, so he goes to the army at the very last moment.
I agree with you, Scarlet's contradictions are very well shown.

[bounty]

that brings up a really interesting and persnickety linguistic problem doesn't it danik? its making me wonder how authors and translators deal with it.

scarlett's made it back to tara to find the house still standing, her mother dead, her father enfeebled by the loss, her sisters close to recovery, and all but a few of the slaves gone.

the last handful of chapters have been scarlett picking up the pieces with an awful lot of grit and determination. they have all fared better because of her and likely would have died if not for her. my goodness, she even shot a yankee invader right in the face!

at present the war's over and the big question of "what comes next" is on the horizon.

its interesting that Rhett has not appeared in many many months.

oh---one small language thing I found interesting. in forrest gump, when forrest's mother gets sick, he says "she got the cancer." most people wouldn't say it that way. we'd say "she got cancer." when scarlett's mother and two sisters got sick, the narrator says "they got the typhoid." again, we'd say "they got typhoid."

im wondering now if adding the article "the" is a southern thing, or an old-fashioned thing, or just a quirky writer thing.

[bounty]

I have read this book a couple of years ago and it really moved me and the places mentioned in the novel resembled the one I grew in, my small village. And what is more things or cultures are intrinsically not different notwithstanding the fact that on the surface they are.

this is an interesting consideration---part of the early attraction of the book I think is the southern gentile charm and cozy relationships the somewhat distant neighbors have with each other. in fact, this very point becomes something scarlett rails against when she finds those around her lamenting how the past used to be, and how their present is very much unlike it.

would have been good for blazeofglory to elaborate on cultures being "intrinsically not different"---at least one part of the book refutes that. there is a character from the North who even though after twenty years of being in the South, still does not fit in or understand southerners.

[Danik 2016]

Just an excursion. You asked me how Brazil dealt with slavery.

Brazil was the last country to end slavery. Other than in US, in Brazil the end of slavery was a gradual process during 19. C. resulting as a consequence of internal and external pressures. There was the pressure of the abolitionistso groups inside and outside parliament, but there was also the counter pressure of the farmers, like the coffee barons from São Paulo, whose production was sustained by slave work. There was foreign pressure, mainly from Great Britain, to end slave traffic. The slaves themselves fled when they could from the farms and organized themselves in "quilombos", secluded black communities. In a novel written during this time it is related that during their flight, many black women threw their newborns into the river, because they didn´t envisage any future for them.

So the most important laws that led up to abolition were:

1850-Law Eusébio de Queirós which, as a direct consequence of British pressure, forbade the slave trade in the whole country.

1871- The Law of the Free Womb- Children born of slaves from that date would be free.

1885-Law of the Sexagenarians which declared free al slaves over 60.

And at last, three years later, in May 13th. 1888, Princess Isabell, the daughter of the then reigning emperor Pedro II, signed the Lei Áurea, the Golden Law that set all slaves free.

However the main argument is that it was more a formal action. For the slaves themselves little changed at first, they remained destitute and without opportunities, some of them even preferred to stay where they had lived up to then. Many farmers though lad to look for new paid workers and that resulted, in the case of São Paulo, in the arrival of Japanese and Italian emigrants. The consequence for the Government was the loss of popularity in certain groups which led to the increase republican aspirations. One year later, in 1889, Brazil was declared a Republic. D. Pedro II and his family had to leave the country.

[bounty]

thanks danik, that was interesting. it makes me wonder if the usa was the only place that had a significant bloody conflict over the matter.

a tie between what you wrote and some elements of the book---when scarlett returns to tara after the union army had already been through it, some of the slaves had remained, refusing to leave.

right now scarlett's in atlanta and she just had a brief interaction with a former slave who was driving a carriage in order to make money for the household. mammy is somewhat upset by the whole scene (including "loafing negroes" and "insolent blacks") in front of them "soon's ah kick dis black trash outer mah way...ah doan lak disyere town miss scarlett. it's too full of yankees an' cheap free issue [the recently freed slaves]."

[bounty]

When I read this in 8th grade, my impressions were exactly what one might expect from a pre-teenager. But now at an extremely advanced age, I'm beginning to think that both the novel -- and especially the so-called "iconic" 1939 movie -- have been over-rated. It's a soap opera in
an historical setting, that's all.

part of the fun of book conversation is the answer to the question of "why are you reading this book?" the answer to that question might be made all the more interesting when you consider the reader is in 8th grade.

I object a bit to the "soap opera" moniker as a criticism. on one level id say "so what?" on another level id say "what book isn't (or close to) a soap opera?"

[Danik 2016]

thanks danik, that was interesting. it makes me wonder if the usa was the only place that had a significant bloody conflict over the matter.

a tie between what you wrote and some elements of the book---when scarlett returns to tara after the union army had already been through it, some of the slaves had remained, refusing to leave.

right now scarlett's in atlanta and she just had a brief interaction with a former slave who was driving a carriage in order to make money for the household. mammy is somewhat upset by the whole scene (including "loafing negroes" and "insolent blacks") in front of them "soon's ah kick dis black trash outer bloomah way...ah doan lak disyere town miss scarlett. it's too full of yankees an' cheap free issue [the recently freed slaves]."

You have me there, bounty, because I don't which other countries beside US and Brazil had slaves. In Brazil there were conflicts in some states, but nothing like the Secession War.
This sentence of Mammy you cited is a wonderful example of how in the novel the black that remained loyal to their former owners, saw the conflict with their eyes. A real Mammy would hardly use these descriptions of her own race.

[Sancho]

…oh---one small language thing I found interesting. in forrest gump, when forrest's mother gets sick, he says "she got the cancer." most people wouldn't say it that way. we'd say "she got cancer." when scarlett's mother and two sisters got sick, the narrator says "they got the typhoid." again, we'd say "they got typhoid."

im wondering now if adding the article "the" is a southern thing, or an old-fashioned thing, or just a quirky writer thing.

I like those little linguistic details. Why and when do we put the article before the noun? Americans get sick and go to the hospital, but Brits get sick and go to hospital. When we go to school we’re going to a place but also we’re engaging in a pursuit of knowledge. When we go to the school we’re going to a specific building. New Yorkers take I-95, but Californians take The 5.
I’m from the south and I don’t remember people saying “I’ve got the cancer” unless of course they were trying to sound more southern by channeling Sally Field.

[Danik 2016]

Well, i`m only an outsider, but I never remembered reading that someone got "the cancer". But I´ve seen the article in front of illnesses that are in the plural:https://youtu.be/GWEHsGXGqvE

It´s only very indirectly related to Gone in the Wind and the Quixote but I would like very much read your opinions about this, also tailor´s, after all it´s a neighbor country. Is this just a humorous way to make money?
https://www.slowjamastan.org/

[Sancho]

A close neighbor to Weebeejammin no doubt. Looks like some guys having a little fun. I’ve never been to Slowjamastan, but I’ll bet they have some cool vibes. It’s probably in New Orleans.

[bounty]

I was going to suggest that weebeejammin would be a good candidate for the slowjamastan national anthem, but I see they already have one!

hard to know what to make of that danik---but I noticed it cost 150 dollars to buy a brick for goodness sake. if they are wanting to make money, I think they are ironically charging too much.

I don't remember the name of the place but just recently some wise guys created a fake city and convinced Newark NJ to become their "sister city."

Sancho im an avid watcher of the tour de france and am glued to the telly every july. phil liggett, a brit, has done the tv commentary for the tour for decades, and someone usually ends up "in hospital."

I haven't mentioned anything "vocabulary" yet, which is another fun part of reading books from other time periods or other countries. ive heard the word "scalawag" before but didn't know that one of its meanings is a white southerner who supported the northern republicans during reconstruction.

both scarlett and mammy recently used the word "hant"---from the context it might mean a ghost.

danik, I cannot say definitively that some blacks in the south who remained in the service of their former owners, would criticize freed blacks in the manner that mammy did, but what she said rings true to me both as something that likely happened, and as something consistent with the context of book.

to the latter point, its less about blind race identification, and more about social class and loyalty. there are numerous instances in the book where certain people are referred to as "white trash." mammy also has a tremendous maternal devotion to scarlett, both for scarlett's sake, and for the memory of her deceased mother ellen. there is a bit of snobbery in the first part, but a commendable selfless spirit in the second. given that, its easy to see how mammy could think what she did concerning her fellow blacks who have less social standing and manners, but more importantly, have given up their charges.

"the typhoid" appears in the second line on pg 279, a letter to scarlett from her father, "...and then, at the end of his letter, mentioned briefly that careen (one of her sisters) was ill. the typhoid, mrs o'hara said it was."

a couple interesting small trivia points---there is a minor character called rene picard. its the same name of captain jean-luc picard's nephew who died in a fire in the early part of star trek: generations.

Sancho, surely you recognize the name judge kenesaw mountain landis. maybe I knew this once but forgot, or maybe I never knew---but "kenesaw mountain" is a real place in Georgia, and it appears in the book. oddly enough, landis was born in ohio.

LOTS has gone on the book lately. will catch up here soon...