-
Margaret Mitchell (1900–1949): “What Living in the South Means”
- University of Georgia Press
- Chapter
- Additional Information
190 Margaret Mitchell (1900–1949) “What Living in the South Means” Kathleen ann Clark Writing to her friends Clifford and Helen Dowdey in August 1938, two years after the publication of Gone With the Wind had brought her fame and fortune, Margaret Mitchell reflected on the price to be paid for “peace and happiness” in the South: “I couldn’t live any other place in the world except the South. . . . I believe, however, that I see more clearly than most people . . . just what living in the South means. There are more rules to be followed here than any place in the world if one is to live in any peace and happiness.” And yet, the author insisted, the benefits of southern life were well worth the cost: “Having always been a person who was perfectly willing to pay for everything I got, I am more than willing to pay for the happiness I get from my residence in Georgia.” As an individualistic and at times rebellious woman from a prominent Atlanta family, Mitchell was keenly aware of both the costs and the benefits of her particular southern existence. Perhaps, by the age of thirty-seven, when she penned the letter to the Dowdeys, Mitchell really had come to terms with the many “rules to be followed” in order to reap the benefits afforded an elite white woman in pre–World War II southern society. However, there is ample evidence from her life and writings—particularly during the years of adolescence and young adulthood—to suggest that such an unequivocal accommodation, if in fact it was achieved, did not come easily. In striking contrast to her later claims of satisfaction with southern life, Mitchell struggled throughout her adolescence and young adulthood to define an independent white female identity, a struggle that was nourished and ultimately stymied within the social order of Jim Crow. Born on November 8, 1900, Margaret Munnerlyn Mitchell grew up in a household that embodied contradictory impulses shaping white female roles Margaret Mitchell 191 and identity in the turn-of-the-century South. Mitchell’s mother, May Belle Mitchell, was a suffragist active in the Georgia movement throughout Margaret ’s childhood and adolescence. Advocating for political rights on the grounds that women’s exclusion from the right to vote unfairly discriminated against women property holders, May Belle gave voice to oft-repeated economic arguments of women suffragists in Georgia, who—like many elite women throughout the history of the women’s rights movement—crafted a feminist ideology that was fundamentally rooted in distinctions of class and race. In the speeches she delivered throughout the state, May Belle castigated a system that enfranchised men whom she believed to be the distinct inferiors of “quality” women such as herself: “If you stretch your neck a little bit, you can look down Decatur Street [in Atlanta] and see the drunken bums being thrown out of the saloons on the sidewalk. And because they are men, though they haven’t been paid a dime and the city and the county have supported them all their lives, they are entitled to vote and we are not. Is that fair?” May Belle’s unshakable commitment to expanding the rights of women—or at least a select group of women—impressed her young daughter. Indeed, one of Margaret’s earliest and most vivid memories was of a suffrage rally in Atlanta conducted by Carrie Chapman Catt. As there was no one at home to take care of Margaret, who was a toddler at the time, her mother took her along to the rally: “Mother tied a Votes-for-Women banner around my fat stomach, put me under her arm, took me to the meeting hissing blood curdling threats if I did not behave, set me on the platform between the silver pitcher and the water glasses while she made an impassioned speech. I was so at my eminence that I behaved perfectly, even blowing kisses to gentlemen in the front row.” In addition to her championing of women’s suffrage and other civic reforms, May Belle was also a firm believer in the importance of higher education and professional opportunities for women; she made it clear that she expected Margaret to take her studies seriously, and to develop into a strong and capable woman. In her desire for increased educational, professional, and even political opportunities for women, May Belle Mitchell exemplified a number of uneven changes that were occurring in white women’s lives in...