A Study of Scarletts: Scarlett O'Hara and Her Literary Daughters

Introduction

Introduction #43 “Like the interpretation of dreams, the interpretation of an aesthetic object is motivated not by a wish to know the artist’s intention . . . but by the desire to create knowledge on one’s own behalf and on behalf of one’s community from the subjective experience of the work of art.” David Bleich, Subjective Criticism (93) “Almost every reader will well remember a book from childhood, the circumstance of its reading, and the atmosphere it represented in his mind. Although it is probably not possible to recover original historical circumstances , if the memory of such events has lasted, such residues have important truth value and demonstrable relevance to current, conscious tastes.” David Bleich, Subjective Criticism (154) I well remember my first viewing of the movie Gone with the Wind with my eighth-grade class in the mid-1970s. Our history teacher took us to see the movie on the big screen as it made its last rounds in theaters before going to cable. I was so disturbed by the movie’s ending, Rhett leaving Scarlett just when she finally realizes she loves him, that I came home and read the last few pages of my mother’s copy of the novel in search of a less troubling conclusion. I didn’t find such comfort in the novel’s closing pages, so I didn’t 2 Introduction read the novel. I did see the movie again a few times over the ensuing decade and a half and continued to be crushed by Rhett’s desertion of Scarlett.Then as we discussed my doctoral exams, my advisor mentioned this novel, which I confessed to never having read. “Well, you certainly need to do so before your exams,” she replied. I tried to explain the “trauma” that made this novel anathema to me, but she would have none of it and reminded me that since I was taking the very first doctoral exam on southern literature that the University of Tennessee would give, I simply had to read this southern literary phenomenon—and she added that she would be certain there was a question that could not be answered by familiarity with the movie: “I’ll ask about Will Benteen.” “Who’s Will Benteen?” “Read the novel.” So I read it—and was devastated again by its ending—and then read it again, wrote about it, and continued to return to it over the years, first, compelled to find a happy ending for Scarlett,and then,looking for evidence with which to defend her against her critics. My focus in this study is on the character Scarlett O’Hara. I do not spend much time defending the rest of the novel.Others have addressed the issue of its historical accuracy, the extent to which it perpetuates plantation mythology , and its depiction of African American characters. Beyond what follows in this introduction, these issues will come up within this study only as they are relevant to the discussion of Scarlett. Here I will repeat and expand on my answer to a question posed to me in an interview on the occasion of the seventy-fifth anniversary of the novel Gone with the Wind: “The most common criticisms of the book are that it romanticizes the Old South and that it uses racist stereotypes. How do you respond to those criticisms?” (SSSL).* I noted in my answer that the novel is not romantic from the woman’s perspective either. Recall the tableau Scarlett observes during the Wilkes picnic, a scene left out of the movie, as it requires Scarlett’s musings on what she sees (and the narrator’s musings on what Scarlett misses): Under the arbor sat the married women, their dark dresses decorous notes in the surrounding color and gaiety. Matrons, regardless of their * The following response to this question largely repeats my interview response with some rephrasing and expansion. To avoid the possible confusion regarding who I am quoting when I quote myself from that interview, I have dropped quotation marks from the parts of my response that I reuse here. Introduction 3 ages, always grouped together apart from the bright-eyed girls, beaux and laughter, for there were no married belles in the South. From Grandma Fontaine, who was belching frankly with the privilege of her age, to seventeen-year-old Alice Munroe, struggling against the nausea of a first pregnancy, they had their heads together in...