Analysis: Chapters XXVI–XXX
Scarlett must adapt quickly to keep pace with the quick
changes facing the South. Starvation, the chaos of the war, and
the lack of help transform Scarlett from a spoiled coquette into
a hardened woman. She stoops to levels she could never have imagined
in her old life. Although she adapts, however, Scarlett does not
really change. She simply gives free reign to the tendencies once
considered shamefully unladylike. In some ways, Scarlett has always
had a personality ideally suited to disaster. Her old cunning and
selfishness now serve her well, and by developing traits she always
possessed she becomes completely self-sufficient and competent.
Because Scarlett has never held to the standards of the old times,
she has no trouble dropping them now. She is determined to “change
with changing ways,” as Old Miss Fontaine puts it. Scarlett and
Rhett stand out among the novel’s Southern characters for their
chameleon-like ability to adapt to a new set of conventions.
During the hard months at Tara, Melanie becomes mentally stronger,
and we start to see her as an alternative heroine to Scarlett. Melanie
retains her kind heart, timidity, and physical frailty, but she gains
a quiet, fiery determination. She helps Scarlett put out the fire set
by the Yankee, and, in one of the novel’s most memorable scenes, tries
to defend Tara against the Yankee thief by wielding a sword too heavy
for her to lift. Melanie is just as brave as Scarlett, enduring
the same hardships and exhibiting the same steely determination
to survive, but Melanie’s bravery is untarnished by the selfishness
and ruthlessness that drive Scarlett. Melanie’s belief in helping
others and in maintaining Southern values motivates her heroic actions. Mitchell
suggests that Melanie possesses a more worthy breed of heroism than
Scarlett does, but she also suggests that because Melanie lacks
Scarlett’s nastiness she will not survive the new order. Like Ashley,
Melanie represents the Old South, a South that cannot survive in
the post–Civil War era. The weakening of Melanie’s body parallels
the weakening of the South. As Melanie becomes sick during pregnancy
in Atlanta, Atlanta becomes sick. As Melanie totters around Tara,
Atlanta struggles to stay alive. Despite their struggles, however,
both Melanie and the South maintain their pride and gentility.
Mitchell’s use of derogatory terms for specific ethnic
or socioeconomic groups causes many readers discomfort. Throughout
the novel, white characters and black house slaves refers to field
hands as “darkies,” “niggers,” and “free-issue trash.” Poor whites
are labeled “white trash” and “crackers.” Many of these racist and
classist terms, offensive though they may be, were part of the common language
of the time period in which the novel is set. Mitchell researched
her novel meticulously, and in order to paint a true-to-life picture,
she used the idiom of the Old South. However, while historical accuracy
can explain some characters’ use of this language, historical accuracy
does not compel the house slave Pork to talk of “trashy niggers.”
Pork uses this language solely to denounce other black people. Surely
a self-hating individual such as Pork could have existed in the
Civil War South, but Mitchell fails to depict such an individual’s
more numerous counterparts, who hated the torture they suffered
at the hands of white oppressors, and who longed to regain their
dignity.
The slaves depicted in Gone with the Wind, especially
the freed slaves, are stereotypes rather than real people. Historically,
some slaves remained loyal to their white owners after the Civil
War, but many of them left to find the freedom they had long been
denied. Mitchell thus paints an unrealistic picture when she writes
that not a single house servant deserts Tara. Mitchell buys in to
the white party line of the Civil War era, which held that slaves
loved and needed their masters. In this novel slaves profess overwhelming
and unrealistic loyalty to white families. For instance, in Chapter
XVII, Big Sam digs trenches with pride because he thinks he is helping
gentle white people to hide. Mitchell makes Big Sam not only loyal
to his slave-owners but also naïve and childish, and therefore in
need of white guidance and support. Mitchell also stereotypes slaves
as dishonest, having Prissy, for example, lie about having experience delivering
babies. Gone with the Wind contains multiple derogatory descriptions
of blacks; it perpetuates negative stereotypes rather than investigating
the black position in the South at the time of the Civil War.
