Gone With The Wind

The social hierarchy so rigidly maintained among the planter class makes change and innovation impossible. To some extent, this attitude is justified as long as cotton remains king and can be grown in massive quantities through enslaved labor. No one in power sees any point in changing a system that works for those at the top. However, the Civil War tests the assumptions of this closed system to the breaking point. Right after the Battle of Fort Sumter, Southerners are eager to give the Yankees a thrashing. They believe in their own superiority because their insularity protects them from knowledge of a nonagricultural economy. Rhett makes no friends among the planters when he points out this blind spot:

I have seen many things that you all have not seen. The thousands of immigrants who’d be glad to fight for the Yankees for food and a few dollars, the factories, the foundries, the shipyards, the iron and coal mines—all the things we haven’t got. Why, all we have is cotton and slaves and arrogance. They’d lick us in a month (147-48).

It takes much longer than a month, but Rhett’s assessment of the situation is correct. Although the Civil War proves to be humbling, the biggest challenge to Southern values is the need to react quickly to changing circumstances. Agricultural societies, in general, are attuned to the cycles of the seasons. Life moves slowly because nature moves slowly to grow crops.

When faced with starvation, adaptation becomes a critical skill that few in the planter class possess. Scarlett and Rhett are the rare exceptions. When faced with the devastation at Tara, Scarlett immediately springs into action to scavenge for food and hide whatever sustenance she can from looters and vandals. Rhett sees an opportunity in becoming a blockade runner to import needed supplies. Both prosper in the face of uncertainty because they don’t deny the necessity for change but embrace it.

While Yankees might approve of such initiative, members of the planter class deeply resent it. Rhett briefly enjoys popularity by acting as a pirate for the Confederacy. When the war is over, he is accused of profiting from the misery of others. Scarlett is never even given temporary approval. As a Southern lady, her role is to suffer and die quietly rather than raise a finger to change her fate. Adaptation therefore becomes a double-edged sword for those who can wield it. By ensuring their own livelihoods, Scarlett and Rhett earn the hatred of those who would rather look back fondly on days that are gone forever.

Adaptability to change is not just key to Scarlett’s and Rhett’s survival, but it reflects the novel’s incomplete adherence to the portions of the Lost Cause narrative that keep the Old South mired in the past. Through this theme, the author again suggests that the South, too, must embrace change—or else.

Gone with the Wind does far more than focus on sweeping historical events affecting an entire nation. It also tells the small personal stories of the search for lost love. Throughout the novel, Scarlett’s greatest failing is her obsession with Ashley Wilkes. The book ends with her realization that she never loved the knight in shining armor whom her imagination created:

She stood up straight and looked at the house on the hill. She had thought, half an hour ago, that she had lost everything in the world, except money, everything that made life desirable, Ellen, Gerald, Bonnie, Mammy, Melanie and Ashley. She had to lose them all to realize that she loved Rhett (1316).

Scarlett has fallen victim to the same failing for which she criticizes so many others—pining for a lost past. From the age of 16, Scarlett created an idealized version of Ashley, which fused in her imagination with her memories of plantation life before the war. Her mother and sister fall victim to the same failing by chasing their own ghosts. Ellen only married Gerald because her true love died in a barroom brawl. Sister Carreen’s true love died during the war. Neither Ellen nor Carreen ever stopped pining for what they could never have.

Pining for lost love parallels Southerners’ pining for their lost way of life, the ultimate motive behind the rise of the Lost Cause narrative. As Ashley frequently observes, he misses the slow, easy life of a gentleman planter and doesn’t know how to function in the hectic world after the war. In this respect, he is similar to the rest of the Old Guard, who retain their sense of social superiority despite their reduced economic circumstances. They are highly critical of the members of their class who strive to succeed in the bustling postbellum economy. In fact, genteel poverty is seen as a badge of honor, and the Old Guard’s resentment of their lost world never diminishes. Through Ashley, in particular, the author questions this resentment and obsession with the past. Through Scarlett, she highlights a different way forward.

By the story’s end, only Scarlett overcomes this self-defeating behavior pattern. Even though Rhett rejects her love in the book’s final pages, she is optimistic, still convinced that tomorrow is another day. This shift from past to future provides a glimmer of hope that she might transcend the failings of the planter class and let go of the past.