Novel Gone with the Wind by the American Writer Margaret Mitchell

The novel Gone with the Wind by the American writer Margaret Mitchell is primarily regarded as a romantic story focusing on the love between the two main characters, Scarlet O'Hara and Rhett Butler, taking place during the American Civil War and Reconstruction. Mitchell in her historical saga provides a very detail description of life in the South covering the years 1861 to 1874 through the portrayal of Scarlett O’Hara. Scarlett represents both the Old South and the New South. Her change to adjust to the changing face of the South also reflects the transformation of Southern culture and society.

Through the novel, Scarlett is the mixture of the Old and New South. From the beginning, the Old South in Scarlett is what she inherits from her mother Ellen O’Hara, an established aristocratic woman with refined dignity. It’s her beauty with a dark-haired and a green-eyed. Before the war, she obeys nearly all rules of high-class Southern society. When the war occurs, Scarlett accepts the fact that the Old South may be gone physically, but she can still hold her values through her maintenance of Tara. Her desire to return Tara to its former glory reflects the “plantation illusion” in that she hopes to maintain the Old South in spirit, and she does so by marrying Rhett as to access his fortune and restore Tara. And even though the relationship collapses in the end, all left for Scarlett is: Tara. Tara is ultimately the symbol of the Old South and her home, her tap root. It is a place to which she can always return, and the thing she works hardest to keep.

However, Scarlett quickly adjust to the change of the South. She exhibits more of her father’s hard-headedness than her mother’s refined Southern manners. Although initially she tries to behave prettily, her instincts rise up against social restrictions. When the war begins, she starts to indulge her nature to break the social rules because she has to be strong and independent to survive and take care of her family and friends. She becomes increasingly heedless of social mores after she returns to manage Tara and the South loses ground in the war. She becomes self-reliant and business-savvy, traits that would be shocking in an Old South woman but that ensure Scarlett’s survival in the New South. During Reconstruction, Scarlett buys a sawmill and socializes with the Northerners in power. She becomes an opportunist woman. That’s way she adapts herself to the New South.