The Tragedy of Margaret Mitchell: Gone with the Wind of Success. The American South in the novel "Gone with the Wind" by M. Mitchell (Observations of a Historian) Mysteries of Family Life
Born November 9, 1900 in Atlanta, Georgia, the son of lawyer Eugene Mitchell and Maria Isabella, often referred to as May Belle, one of the first ladies of Atlanta, a member of various charitable societies and an active suffragette - an adherent of an early form of feminism. It was the mother who became the prototype of the image of a real lady, it was she who gave an idea of the qualities that real woman that time.
Having started her studies, Margaret first attends the Washington Seminary, then in 1918 enters the prestigious Smith College for Women (Massachusetts). She returns to Atlanta to take over the household after her mother's death from the great Spanish flu pandemic in 1918.
AT In 1921, Peggy (that was the name of Margaret all the people close to her) met in Atlanta, in the Hare Hole teahouse, where aspiring writers, students, journalists gathered, with a young man named John Marsh. The man, who was 26 years old by that time, was very serious, and his character was conducive to this. Restrained, internally very disciplined, with an incredibly developed sense of responsibility, John was the best suited for the role of a husband. In addition, the "beauty from the South" quickly won his heart. The girl was not only attractive in appearance, but had a wonderful gift for storytelling, sparkling wit and dreamed of journalism.
After graduating from the University of Kentucky, John moved to Atlanta to be closer to Peggy. But such a quick victory seemed insipid to the extravagant beauty, and there was no desire to refuse the attention of other fans. “I would like to love a man,” wrote young Margaret, “and that he loves me more than all other women. I want to get married, help my husband, raise healthy children. But the trouble is that I don’t know how to love strongly enough ... ”God knows what high demands for a girl - who didn’t have the mind to give herself entirely to family and offspring, but Margaret through puritanical resignation to fate, a kind of “toothy little devil” peeps through, so familiar to the reader of “Gone with the Wind”.
Friends were convinced that John and Peggy would get married. Indeed, the mother of the groom already liked the future bride, already Margaret reads her stories to John in the evenings, already shares her cherished dreams with him, already ... And then something happens that amazed everyone who knew their relationship. On September 2, 1922, Peggy marries Red Upshaw, a loser, an alcoholic, a worthless person, unable to support a family, narrow-minded and boring (in the same year, she starts working as a journalist, becoming a leading reporter for the Atlanta Journal newspaper). Experiments on yourself do not always end well Living together with Upshaw becomes a living hell: Peggy has to endure insults, humiliation and even beatings, which leads her to severe depression. It is not known what would have become of her if not for the loyalty and unwavering support of John. He selflessly drowned out jealousy, cast aside petty grievances to save his beloved and helped her, first of all, to take place as a person. With the help of John, Margaret begins to publish in a local magazine, takes interviews (one of the most successful - with Rudolph Valentino), learns to put thoughts into words.
Force true love opens up to Margaret in John's devotion. Eccentricity and eccentricity turned out to be good only for cheap “tales”, and nothing in life is valued as highly as true understanding and forgiveness. “I can only say,” Margaret wrote to John’s mother, “that I sincerely love John, a faithful and strong friend in whom I have unlimited trust, and a tender, attentive lover.”
Finally Margaret divorced Red, and in 1925 she married John Marsh. The constant tension and nervous stress that accompanied a dramatic relationship with his beloved led John to a serious illness. Her seizures - a sudden loss of consciousness - tormented him throughout his life, because of which he was forced to give up driving. The frivolity of actions was not in vain for Margaret herself. As a memory of the mistakes of her youth, she was left with severe headaches, trouble with her eyes and bouts of severe depression. However, the grievances caused did not overshadow their coexistence, on the contrary, our heroes felt infinitely happy, having finally found each other. The first years of marriage - penniless and carefree - were accompanied by cheerful friendly feasts, evenings at the cinema, short trips and the music of Duke Ellington. Everything was permeated with unclouded joy, ease of attitude to life, anti-Victorian cheerful morality. Then came something greater, inseparable, transcending passion and violent impulses. “By nature, we do not coincide in many ways,” Marsh wrote years later, “because you can be surprised how we managed to cope with each other, because, oddly enough, we have been successfully getting along for many years now. Perhaps the secret is that she forgives me for my qualities, and I forgive her for hers.
But perhaps the secret of their happy marriage was even simpler - John always thought not about his own self-affirmation, but first of all about helping his wife to realize herself, to find herself. For him, she was not his own, albeit precious, thing, but a person who had the right to spiritual joys. It was John who convinced Margaret, after another depression, to take up a case in which her wife could forget herself, which could captivate her. Peggy grew up in an atmosphere of stories about the civil war, she thoroughly knew the history of her native country, and it was a shame to continue to keep this knowledge as "dead capital". Margaret began to write not for the public, not for success, but in order to survive, to find inner balance, to understand herself.
The turning point in the creative destiny of Margaret Mitchell can be considered her conversation with John in the fall of 1926, after which he gave her a Remington typewriter, jokingly congratulating her on her career. And now the whole life of our heroine revolved around this chirring apparatus. The story of the war between the North and the South becomes the core of their joint existence, their only brainchild, their Noah's Ark. John's participation in the creation of the novel can hardly be overestimated: he wanted to love and be loved, as a result, he came up with the idea that glorified his Galatea.
Every evening, returning from work (John worked for the rest of his life in the Electric Company in the advertising department), the husband sat down to read the pages written by Peggy during the day. Long after midnight, new twists of the plot were discussed, amendments were made, and difficult parts of the novel were finalized. John turned out to be a brilliant editor and a delicate adviser - he not only helped his wife hone her writing skills, but also sought necessary literature, meticulously dealt with every detail of life, costume, described era.
Basically, the novel was written by the end of 1932, but was finalized until 1935. It seemed that the game started by John had successfully come to a victorious end, but the child born into the world showed obstinacy and wanted to get rid of the parental diapers. The editor of the American branch of the English "Macmillan" with professional instinct caught the originality of the idea and convinced Mitchell to publish her work.
After the conclusion of the contract, the married couple realized what a serious business they had taken. It's one thing to entertain each other in the evenings with an invented story, it's another thing to prepare a novel for publication. The work was not written in a strict sequence, with a huge number of options (Mitchell had sixty first chapters alone). And how intense was the search for the name! What was not offered! Finally, Margaret settled on "Gone with the Wind," a line from a poem by Ernst Dawson.
It is not enough to say that the novel became an event in American literature: in 1936 he received the most prestigious Pulitzer Prize in the United States. Most importantly, Mitchell managed to recreate the "American dream", she gave the domestic reader a certain model of behavior, a certain symbol of a "true citizen". Its heroes can be compared with the mythological characters of ancient legends - this is exactly what the images of "Gone with the Wind" had for the Americans. The men nurtured Ratt's enterprise and democratic individualism. Women imitated Scarlett's clothes and hairstyle. The flexible American industry promptly responded to the popularity of the book: dresses, hats, Scarlett-style gloves appeared on sale. Renowned film producer David Selznick worked hard for four years on the script for Gone with the Wind.
The premiere, held in Atlanta - the city in which Mitchell spent most of her life - on December 15, 1939, was an unprecedented triumph for the film, and the novel, and its author. To the question: “Well, are you proud of your wife, John?” Marsh replied, “I was proud of her long before she wrote the book.”
The test of fame fell on Mitchell unexpectedly, and she would not have survived it if she had not had a faithful friend next to her. Overnight, Margaret became incredibly popular: she was invited to lectures, interviewed, tormented by photographers. " Long years John and I lived the quiet, solitary life that we enjoyed so much. And now we are in sight ... ”The husband took on part of the heavy burden: he tried his best to protect Margaret from annoying visitors, helped with correspondence, negotiated with publishers, and made financial business.
To one of the frequently asked questions about whether she wrote off the main character from herself, Margaret sharply answered: “Scarlett is a prostitute, I am not!” And she explained: “I tried to describe a far from delightful woman about whom little good can be said ... I find it ridiculous and ridiculous that Miss O'Hara has become something of a national heroine, I think it is very bad for the moral and mental state nation - if the nation is able to applaud and be carried away by a woman who behaved in a similar way. Over time, seeing the growing enthusiasm, the writer gradually warmed to her creation ...
Looking back at the history of the creation of this unique book, we can rightfully say that we have the rarest example when a man gave priority to a woman's personal affirmation in the family, when he created ideal conditions for the success of his wife at the cost of his own career and ... did not miscalculate.
August 16 1949died after being hit by a car. John outlived her by three years. One of the journalists, a family friend, said: “Gone with the Wind might not have been written if not for the constant support from the one to whom the novel is dedicated:“ J. R. M. ”. This is the shortest and simplest initiation that can be ... "
“No, ma'am, I can't tell you if Miss Scarlett gets her captain back or not. No, ma'am, Miss Margaret doesn't know either. Yes, ma'am, I've heard her say a hundred times that she has no idea what happened to Miss Scarlett when she went home to Tara…” Housekeeper Margaret Mitchell says patiently into the phone for the hundredth time. The matter is not limited to calls: curious admirers besiege the threshold of the writer's house, fill her up with letters, do not allow passage on the street. Mitchell writes in one of his letters: “I dream of living to the moment when my book is no longer sold,” and does not flirt.
Charming emancipe
Margaret (Peggy) Mitchell was born November 8, 1900 in Atlanta in the family of a successful lawyer. As a child, there were no signs of a writing career: she didn’t like to read too much either. “My mother paid me five cents for every play I read by Shakespeare, a dime for the novels of Dickens, and for the books of Nietzsche, Kant and Darwin I received 15 cents ... But even when the tariff went up to 25 cents, I could not read either Tolstoy or Hardy , nor Thackeray, ”she later admits. However, already in her teens, the girl began to write stories, and in 1922 she shocked her surroundings by getting a job as a reporter for the Atlanta Journal newspaper: at that time this occupation was considered purely masculine. The editor was rather reluctant to hire what seemed to him a pampered girl, but it turned out that she was able to write on any topic from fashion to history and politics and take excellent interviews with Rudolf Valentino and other celebrities.
Although Mitchell will resent all her life attempts to draw parallels between her and Scarlett O'Hara, one analogy is inevitable: in the ability to shock the public, Peggy, perhaps, could give her character a head start. In conservative Atlanta, which had not yet reached the liberties of the "jazz era", she could perform an Apache dance at a grand debutante ball, be photographed in men's clothes, and changed fans so often that at some point she found herself engaged to five men at once. Beautiful, red-haired, she was, by her own definition, "one of those tough women with short hair and short skirts, about whom the priests say that by the age of 30 they will either go to the gallows or go to hell."
Mitchell could perform an Apache dance at a grand debutante ball, be photographed in men's clothes, and changed fans so often that at some point she found herself engaged to five men at once.
By 1922, gossip columns reported that Peggy had received more marriage proposals than any other girl in Atlanta. Alas, she chose the wrong one. The husband, a charming bootlegger with defiant manners, turned out to be prone to drunkenness and aggression, and, in addition, mixed with the maids. So just ten months later, Mitchell filed for divorce - another unheard-of scandal for conservative Atlanta.
The second marriage, concluded three years later, was much stronger. With insurance agent John Marsh, who was the best man at her last wedding, Margaret lived until the end of her life - perhaps because he was the exact opposite of her first spouse. After marrying him, Margaret radically changed her lifestyle: she quit her job, fell in love with seclusion, and, as it seemed to the family who breathed a sigh of relief, finally began to lead the life of a normal American housewife.
“How are they going to sell anything?”
In fact, the next seven years - from 1926 to 1933 - were spent on the creation of the novel. And to constant self-criticism: what she wrote seemed to her miserable amateur experiments, which it was embarrassing to show even to her husband (he, however, did not share her skepticism and supported her as best he could).
Margaret Mitchell (center). Photo: ASSOCIATED PRESS / FOTOLINK / East News
The already finished novel lay on the table for two years before she ventured to give the manuscript to the literary agent of the Macmillan publishing house. I gave it away - and immediately in a panic sent a telegram with a request to return it back; fortunately, the agent has already begun to read. “I can’t understand how they are going to sell at least something,” she was perplexed in a conversation with her husband when the publisher offered her a contract. “Don't worry: you and I have so many relatives that we will sell at least 5,000 copies in Georgia alone,” he replied.
Novel title and name main character appeared just before publication. Scarlett's name during the writing process was Pansy, and the novel was titled "Tomorrow Is a New Day". The publishers did not like the name, and the writer suggested 24 options instead: “ gone With the Wind” went under No. 17, but with a note that Mitchell herself liked him the most.
The publishers did not like the name "Tomorrow is a New Day", and the writer suggested 24 options instead: "Gone with the Wind" went at number 17.
Another request from the publishers concerned the ending of the novel: reviewers seriously urged Mitchell to change the final chapter so as not to upset sensitive readers with a sad denouement. But Margaret, who started writing the book from the end and built the whole storyline, did not give up: "I will change everything you want, just not the end." And it turned out to be right: open final novel will be discussed for the next 80 years.
Copper pipes
The success of "Gone with the Wind" at home can not even be compared with: in the first three weeks - 176 thousand copies sold, in the first year - 1 million 200 thousand, the Pulitzer Prize, the compliments of H. G. Wells, not to mention the endless commercial offers.
But Mitchell's failed success is more annoying than encouraging. She hates forced publicity, cannot stand speeches and autograph sessions, and most of all - crazy visitors who besiege the house from morning to evening. So when it comes to filming a film, she gives permission on the condition: “I don’t want to take on the work of a screenwriter, I don’t want to be a consultant on the set. I want the exact opposite: that no one, under any pretext, disturbs me and my family. I don't care about casting, filming, promoting the picture. Give me silence. Forget about me."
Margaret Mitchell, 1937 Photo: AP Photo / East News
I don't want to take on the job of a screenwriter, I don't want to be a consultant on the set. I don't care about casting, filming, promoting the picture. Give me silence. Forget about me.
Nevertheless, rumors immediately appear in the newspapers that it is Mitchell who selects the entire cast, and young talents are added to the exalted fans of the novel, demanding to arrange them in the cinema. “You will laugh, but several ladies have already sent me photos of their little daughters doing splits elegantly. The ladies admit that they have never read Gone with the Wind, but they ask to use their daughters in the main role of the film version of the novel. People slip their butchers and chefs in so I can give them a ticket to Hollywood to play Mammy and Uncle Peter. If I ever get a break, I might laugh about it, but not now.”
The offended public takes such a reaction for posture and arrogance. Revenge for refusing to flaunt your life is fantastic rumors that spread like a virus. And if some of them turn out to be unworthy of delirium (she has a wooden leg, and she wrote a novel in bed in a plaster corset; she was saved from blindness by a surgeon who operated on a Siamese king), others will deeply hurt the writer. They concern the authorship of Gone with the Wind.
Probably, suspicions of plagiarism are the fate of all authors of one book. In the case of Mitchell, there are three main "versions": according to the first, she wrote off the novel from her grandmother's diary, the second attributes authorship to her husband, and the third to a recent Nobel laureate Sinclair Lewis, who was allegedly paid by Margaret to write the novel. Rumors that do not stand up to serious criticism will not stop even after the death of the writer (in August 1949 she will be hit by a drunk driver when she and her husband go to the movies): a will according to which almost all of her archives will be burned will only provoke gossips.
Meanwhile, other, much more real facts from Mitchell's biography remain without public attention. So, almost no one will know that during World War II, Margaret not only was a Red Cross volunteer and made large donations to the American army, but also personally wrote dozens of letters to soldiers with words of support.
The Amazing Adventures of Scarlett in Russia
Mitchell flatly refused to write a sequel to the book and forbade others to do so. However, after the death of the writer and her husband, there was no one to stop the greedy publishers, and the continuation of the authorship of Alexandra Ripley was published, where Scarlett suddenly finds herself at the center of the struggle for the independence of Ireland.
More more interesting life Scarlett and her friends developed in the post-Soviet space. Soviet readers read Gone with the Wind rather late (the first edition was published only in 1986) and were eager for new stories about their favorite heroes, and nothing was impossible for the era of “wild capitalism” that followed. Therefore, in the 90s, bookstores were flooded with an unimaginable number of sequels, prequels and other books "based on" that no one had heard of in Scarlett's homeland (as well as anywhere else except the former USSR). The earliest chronologically covered the life of the ancestors of Scarlett and Rhett up to the fifth generation; in the later ones, the heroes were already well over a hundred, but they continued to sort things out just as dramatically.
Terentyeva Tatyana Vitalievna
Faculty of Philology of Moscow State Pedagogical Institute M. E. Evsevyeva Saransk, Russia
Resume: The article considers the novel Gone with the Wind by M. Mitchell from the standpoint of demonstrating the loss of the Golden Age of the American South after the end of the Civil War of 1861‒65. The author touches upon the significant role of M. Mitchell's novel in changing the mass consciousness in relation to traditional American mythology.
Key words: M. Mitchell, American myth, Mass culture, Civil War
«Gone with the wind» by M. Mitchell as the heritage of mass culture
Terentyeva Tatyana Vitalyevna
philology faculty MSPI named after M. E. Evsevyev Saransk, Russia
Abstract: The article examines the novel of M. Mitchell, "Gone with the Wind" from the perspective of demonstrating of the loss of the Golden Age of the American South after the Civil War of 1861‒65. The author concerns the significant role of the novel in changing of mass consciousness in the relation to the traditional American mythology.
Keywords: M. Mitchell, American myth, mass culture, the Civil War
As you know, reading a foreign language fiction contributes to the emergence of socio-cultural knowledge and ideas. There are cases when a work, in terms of its artistic level, is unworthy of comparison with the classics, nevertheless, gains unheard of popularity. In American literature, an example of such a novel is Gone with the Wind by M. Mitchell. Published in 1936 and filmed three years later, this novel, which gives a rather banal picture of the Civil War, made in the spirit of pseudo-historical fiction, which has always been one of the mainstreams of US popular literature, has been one of the most popular for more than half a century. books read, successfully competing with the classics. Is it a love story that has no likeness, love-war, love-extermination, where it grows through cynicism, despite etching from both sides; either a ladies' novel that has risen to real literature, because only a lady, probably, could spy on her heroine, how she kisses herself in the mirror, a lot of other more subtle internal details: whether this is a country estate novel, as we once did, only this estate cracks, burns and disappears in the first half of the novel, as if it were not there.
In the center of the novel was the legend of the heroism and valor of the Southerners in civil war. The writer tried to rethink the heroic past of her people. M. Mitchell's two grandfathers fought on the side of the southerners. The writer herself grew up in an atmosphere of stories about the events of this legendary era. Describing the events of the war years, she shows scenes of life away from the trenches. But what is happening in the military, put into the background, invades the lives of the heroes and greatly shakes it.
The events of the Civil War of 1861–65, according to culturologists, are significant in today's perception of the US past. The myth of the Civil War, preserved in the literature of the American South for almost half a century, gained particular relevance by the end of the Great Depression of 1929-39. According to a pre-American Civil War myth, Americans were the most happy people. After the war, the "magnolia" paradise shattered into pieces, leaving a confused people who could not adapt to the loss of the Golden Age. The American South needed traditional values that would moral support, which makes it possible to oppose the heroic past to the vague present, and, relying on it, to build new system moral values. Among the constituent parts of the “southern myth”, the following elements stand out: 1) war is a purely male occupation; 2) the cult of the "beautiful southern lady"; 3) self-confidence of southerners; 4) the endurance of the southerners and the super-bravery of the soldiers of the Confederation; 5) the kindness of a negro can only be spoiled; 6) code of honor "gentleman"; 7) the disappointment that befell the southern aristocrats after the end of the war.
Referring to the work, we note that the attraction of many American writers to modern mythology in literature is explained by their passionate desire to find stable values and guidelines in the modern world.
According to the norms and ideas of that time, war was considered a male occupation, especially when it comes to southerners. It is believed that a true gentleman is always ready for exploits. In contrast to such a mythical statement, M. Mitchell cites the arguments of the aristocrat Ashley Wilkes, trying to tell readers about his view of the Civil War. “War is a dirty business, and dirt disgusts me. I am not a warrior by nature and I am not looking for a heroic death under bullets. M. Mitchell debunks the myth that the head of any house in the southern states is a man. The main character M. Mitchell Scarlett was the model of a woman with two children, leading a household and a sawmill at the same time. But what happened in the family of Scarlett's parents: Gerald “it seemed that, having heard the thunderous voice of the owner, everyone rushed to do his will. He was far from thinking that only one voice - the quiet voice of his wife - obeyed everything in the estate. All were participants in a delicate conspiracy: the owner must consider that here his word is the law.
M. Mitchell does not support the myth of a "beautiful southern woman" with snow-white skin, secular manners, a calm temperament, who observes religious precepts. Scarlett easily discards all moral precepts. Her appeal to God is blasphemous. As a result, she lies to her loved ones, violates the commandments “Thou shalt not kill,” closes her eyes to the theft of servants, and is ready for adultery. M. Mitchell confirms with his novel that “the moral code of the southern community justifies any lie, murder, if they are aimed at protecting the myths of the “traditional society”.
The novel Gone with the Wind by M. Mitchell is the final stage of the romantic tradition. The hero of this novel, Tommy, once said: “If our mother-in-laws went to war with us, we would have dealt with the Yankees in a week. We held out for so long because our women stood behind us. Having lost the only value that they had before the war, their men, they do not give up and make plans for the future: “All of us who have sons must raise them worthy to take the place of the departed, grow them as brave as those » .
M. Mitchell highlights the ideal southerner - an aristocrat. This image is represented by Elline Robillard, Scarlett's mother. She is a symbol of real southern aristocracy, to which her daughter is trying to join. More often than not, Scarlett did things that Ellyn Robillard would not approve of. With the death of the mother, the perfection of the dream was destroyed. The myth does not withstand a collision with reality. The heroine nostalgically resurrects in her mind the state of a childhood gone forever. Reality does not match the dream and Scarlett wants to, at least mentally, at least for a moment, return to the past, where the dream was a reality.
M. Mitchell in the novel "Gone with the Wind" combines the facts of American history with fictional situations. It was based on the stories of contemporaries of the Civil War and on the many books she read. scientific research, correspondence of prominent military figures of the North and South. Critics saw M. Mitchell's novel as a defense of the position of the South. In our opinion, M. Mitchell convincingly presented both the "southern" and "northern" points of view in the novel. Despite the fact that Margaret grew up and lived all her life in the South, she sees the failure of the positions of the southerners. With a deep understanding of the historical subtext of events, M. Mitchell draws a series of scenes in which the bluster of southern society clashes with Rhett Butler's confidence in the futility of the "Southern Cause".
There is an opinion that with the beginning of the Civil War, the southerners made a feasible contribution to the equipment of military squadrons. Slave owners donated horses and money to the Right Cause. M. Mitchell departs from this mythical statement, citing the words of Mrs. Tarleton, who does not want to part with her horses. And here are the experiences of the main character of the novel Scarlett O'Hara on the same occasion: “If the detachment takes all the living creatures from her, no one in the house will last until spring. The question of what the army would eat did not bother her. Let the army feed itself as best it can.”
Speaking about the courage of the southerners, it is impossible not to note the attitude of M. Mitchell to the legendary steadfastness of the Confederates. She managed to show the resilience and inflexibility of several characters in her novel. Uncle Henry Hamilton, for example, after returning from the front, was so emaciated that “his rosy cheeks sagged and dangled, and his long gray hair was indescribably dirty. Lice crawled on him, he was almost completely barefoot, hungry, but still unbending in spirit.
Even the behavior of the wounded soldiers is distinguished by restraint and patience: “The orderlies with a stretcher scurried back and forth, often stepping on the wounded, and they were stoically silent, looking up, waiting for the orderlies to reach their hands.”
M. Mitchell pays no less attention to the issue of the devotion of the servants. To the “positive” servants, she refers Mammy, who guesses the desires of her masters from a half-word, Pork, who is ready to go to crime in the name of her masters, and Dilsey, who is ready to work anywhere, just to thank her master. Using the example of Dilsey, the myth that the kindness of a Negro can only be spoiled is rejected.
War changes people. People around evaluate a person by the degree of his participation in the Civil War. So Rhett Butler has changed. Now he is attracted to what he discarded in his youth: family and honor. At the beginning of the war, he declared: “The fate of the Confederacy does not bother me at all. You can’t lure me into any army with a roll.” A little later, the code of honor of a “true gentleman” leads him to the front in the ranks of the retreating southerners, although at that moment it was clear to everyone that the South was defeated. In response to a question from Scarlett, he succinctly explains: “Perhaps because of the damned sentimentality that lurks in every southerner. Our South needs every man now. I'm going to war." Unlike Scarlett, Ashley Wilks was a dreamer. Ashley himself admitted: "I am not fit to live in this world, and the world to which I belonged has disappeared." On the one hand, drawing the images of Ashley Wilks and the Scarlett sisters and Aunt Pitty, M. Mitchell emphasizes their ornamentality. These people are used to being cherished and cherished, and the slightest change in living conditions is an insurmountable barrier for them. They feel powerless to change anything. Looking at Scarlett, it is clear that the author was trying to show that not all southerners are hothouse plants. With the onset of the war, Scarlett is disillusioned with the system of education in which she grew up. But in the most difficult moments, in a ghostly haze, her ancestors stood before Scarlett. She recalled stories about how each of them got into such troubles, from which, it seemed, it was impossible to get out. But they all managed and later achieved prosperity and well-being. And Scarlett herself eventually becomes a model of a woman who managed to go through all the obstacles and not break. This new myth about a southern woman who can endure everything and not give up, the author of the novel wanted to emphasize, in our opinion.
The American critic, Malcolm Cowley, wrote that Gone with the Wind is an encyclopedia of "southern legend". M. Mitchell told it in such a way that the legend is strengthened, although it is told by mixing realism with romanticism. The defeat of the South gives the past a special significance. There is a need to justify defeat at all costs. This contributes to the transformation of historical information into a legend. The legend begins to dominate the facts of this historical event and changes them.
Despite all the external contradictions between north and south, their positions were not so far apart. The result of the Civil War was not the overthrow of the South, but rather an alliance of victors and vanquished.
According to many researchers, M. Mitchell's novel embodies the well-established myths of the American South about the "special path of the South", about social harmony that was destroyed by the war, about the unity of slave owners and slaves and about the perniciousness of its destruction, about the aristocratic code of life, for the preservation of which are ordinary southerners. Despite the fact that in the novel by M. Mitchell in the description of the South and in the characters of the characters there are significant deviations from the canons of the "southern myth", it should be emphasized that the novel by M. Mitchell actively contributed to the further preservation and spread of the "southern myth", including far outside the southern states".
The American Historical Southern Romance is emphatically pacific. M. Mitchell in his novel to a certain extent follows the traditions of the literature of the “lost generation” in depicting the war. American historical novel"Gone with the Wind" corrects, changes the idea of American history that has developed in the mass consciousness. In addition, he began to destroy traditional American mythology, both the "Southern Myth" and the "American Dream".
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2. Kadomtseva, S. Yu. The myth of the South and the Civil War in the novels of M. Mitchell and A. Tate / S. Yu. Kadomtseva // Vestnik PSLU. ‒ 2010. ‒ No. 4. ‒ P. 207‒211.
3. Mitchell, M. Gone with the Wind. Novel: in 2 vols. Vol. 1 / M. Mitchell. ‒ Saransk: Mordov. book. publishing house, 1990. ‒ 576 p.
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“I forgot a lot, Cinara ... the scent of roses was carried away by the wind,” this motif from Dawson’s poem migrated to the title of one of the most famous works Twentieth century - Margaret Mitchell's novel "Gone with the Wind".
The "Book of the Century," as the novel is defined in the Literary History of the United States, quickly became a bestseller. "Gone with the Wind" lost first place in popularity to the Bible, but took second place firmly. According to some reports, the popularity of Mitchell's novel in 2014 in the United States surpassed that of the Potter series.
What was the biography of Margaret Mitchell? The writer, author of the cult novel, seemed to be living a fairly standard life. What is the secret of this success story?
Life path and early career
Margaret was born in the family of lawyer Eugene Mitchell on November 8, at the turn of the century - in 1900, in the state of Georgia. Southerner Mitchell, a descendant of the Scots, was a well-known lawyer in Atlanta and was a member of the historical society. Margaret and her brother Stephen grew up in an atmosphere of interest and respect for the past, which came to life in stories about the events that swept the South during the Civil War.
Already at school, Margaret wrote plays for the school theater, composed adventure stories. Margaret attended Washington Seminary, a prestigious Atlanta Philharmonic, where she founded a drama club and became its director. She was the editor of Facts and Fantasy, a high school yearbook, and she also earned the presidency of the Washington Literary Society.
In September 1918, Mitchell entered Smith College in Northampton, Massachusetts. It was there that her pseudonym appeared - Peggy. She was carried away by ideas, his philosophy. But soon a tragedy occurred: in January 1919, Margaret's mother died of the flu.
She then returned to Atlanta and soon met Berrien Upshaw. She married him in 1922. However, this marriage did not bring much happiness to the future writer. Four months after the wedding ceremony, Upshaw traveled to the Midwest and never returned.
Shortly after the dissolution of her first marriage, Mitchell entered into a new one, in 1925. Her second husband was named John Marsh, he worked for the railroad company in the advertising department. The couple settled in a small apartment, which they called "the Dump" ("dump").
In 1922, Margaret got a job at the Atlanta Journal Sunday Magazine, for which she wrote about 130 articles, and was a proofreader and columnist. She specialized in historical writing, using her college pseudonym.
main creation
Mitchell herself briefly described her work as a "survival novel". At the same time, the author answered negatively to questions about whether the characters have any prototypes in reality.
The years of Mitchell's life passed under the sign of the suffragist movement, the democratization of morals, the Great Depression and the development of an unprecedented, fundamentally new teaching - psychoanalysis. All this could not but leave its mark on the main character of the novel, who turned out to be, perhaps, too ambitious and purposeful for those times. Mitchell emphasized the absurdity of the situation in which a not-so-positive heroine suddenly became a symbol of America.
Apparently, the former journalist approached the writing of the novel seriously, because only ten years later he got to the publishers. The first chapter, according to various sources, had 60 options! The name of the main character was determined at the last moment: Scarlett found it when Mitchell was already preparing to hand over the manuscript to the publisher, and at first the heroine's name was Pansy.
In the end, a goldmine was opened for Macmillan's publishing house - in 1936 the book "Gone with the Wind" came out of print. Margaret Mitchell won the Pulitzer Prize for her novel a year later. Almost from the first days, Mitchell's work captured the attention of the public (more than a million copies were bought during the first half of the year). The film rights were sold back in those days for $50,000.
In our time, this literary masterpiece does not lose ground: the novel sells a quarter of a million copies annually, it has been translated into twenty-seven languages, withstood 70 editions in the United States. Three years after the publication of the novel, an Oscar-winning (receiving eight Oscars) film was made, which became no less popular than the book. Clark Gable and Vivien Leigh unconditionally won the hearts of those who preferred watching movies to reading.
No other novels were published under Mitchell's name. The writer dedicated her life to her only literary offspring. She handled copyright protection for Gone overseas. In addition, Mitchell personally answered the letters that came to her about the sensational novel.
Soon the second World War, and Margaret gave a lot of time and energy to work in the American Red Cross.
A tragic accident in 1949 ended the life of an outstanding writer. Margaret and her husband went to the cinema, but on the way they were hit by a car that lost control.
Facts
- Mitchell can hardly be called a lucky person: three car accidents, two falls from a horse, clothes on fire right on her (as a result - severe burns), concussion.
- Margaret was by no means a good girl: she was sharp-tongued and loved to collect "French postcards."
- The author of Gone with the Wind smoked three packs of cigarettes a day.
- It seems that the writer began to write a novel out of boredom: at least she spoke of her book as “rotten” and claimed that she hated the process of writing.
- Death overtook her on August 16, 1949 - two years before her 50th birthday and five days after a car accident on Peachtree Street in downtown Atlanta.
Margaret Manerlyn Mitchell lived a busy life, but certainly too short for such an extraordinary person - she managed to write a novel that for decades has consistently ranked as one of the most popular books in the world.
It is difficult to explain such great success with the public, because most critics disapproved of Gone with the Wind, and the attitude towards Mitchell's work is still ambiguous. But everything in the end is always decided by the readers, and the audience award unconditionally belongs to Margaret Mitchell: having written only one book, she went down in history. Author: Ekaterina Volkova
A committed feminist and supporter of the slave South, Margaret Mitchell lived an uneven life. She learned to manage her own life and her husband, had no problems with finances, and most importantly, she became a literary classic during her lifetime. Her novel "Gone with the Wind" is sold in millions of copies, and filmmakers consider it an honor to make a film based on this work, and Margaret's only one left.
But dozens of questions that have not yet been answered make us take a closer look at the biography of Margaret Mitchell herself and her most modest husband. John Marsh, who deliberately burned the archive of the writer after her death.
Southerner, feminist and just a beautiful girl
Margaret Mitchell was born in 1900 in Atlanta, Georgia, in the American South, which just a few decades earlier had suffered a humiliating defeat in the Civil War.
The daughter of a lawyer and suffragist listened with rapture to the stories of her grandfathers about the exploits and victories of this war, as well as about an honest and calm life, which was put to an end by the conquerors from Washington.
The girl entered the Massachusetts College, but she could not complete her education. The Spanish flu pandemic took the lives of more than a million people on earth in 1918-1919, including mother Margaret and her fiancé. Henry Clifford. Margaret was forced to return to Atlanta, where she took over the management of the household. At the same time, she began working as a reporter for the Atlanta Journal.
In 1922 she married a handsome man Berrien Kinnard Upshaw who loved to drink and mercilessly beat his wife for the slightest misconduct. She even had to buy herself a gun, which she promised to use at the first appropriate moment.
In 1925, Margaret managed not only to divorce Upshaw, but also to become the wife of insurance agent John Marsh, who at the previous wedding was the only witness from the groom. Great twist!
Mysteries of family life
The girl immediately quit the newspaper and became not quite an ordinary housewife: in her free time, she took up writing the main novel of her life.
The family of John and Margaret Marsh led a quiet and prosperous life. The couple almost never quarreled, but Margaret carried a gun with her for several more years. Until the body of her first husband, shot through the head, was found somewhere in the US Midwest.
Whether because of the temperament, or for other reasons, but John Marsh tried not to argue with his wife, who became the real head of the family. Much later it would become clear that he simply loved his Peggy as Margaret was often called.
Somehow, unexpectedly, the Marsh house became a literary salon, which was visited with pleasure by the workers of the Atlanta pen. Here they drank and talked, and the young and beautiful hostess was everyone's favorite.
And suddenly, by the mid-1930s, Margaret Mitchell (in literature, she decided not to change her maiden name) was finishing writing a novel about complex and long-term love. Scarlett O'Hara and Rhetta Butler. How did a girl with not the most outstanding education manage to do this? A serious question that baffles most critics.
book from nowhere
According to the official version, Margaret wrote her essay for several years, reading individual chapters only to her husband, who had to give them a reader's assessment. At first it was a love story between a white woman and a mulatto, but who in the South would read about such nonsense?
Some sources claim that only the 60th version of the first chapter, which was given to the writer with great difficulty, became final.
In early 1935, Margaret showed her manuscripts to one of the editors of Macmillan, who was a good family friend. After several days of reading, the editor declared that he had a future bestseller in front of him, which only needed to be finalized.
For six months, Margaret, together with her patron, finalized the novel, which initially had neither a title nor even the name of the main character.
The publication of the book "Gone with the Wind" was being prepared for a long time, and the interest of potential readers was skillfully fueled by a competent advertising campaign. The very first print run in 1936 made a splash among the inhabitants of the American South. people saw own life without embellishment and instantly fell in love with the author - a sweet woman who lives next to them.
By the end of 1936, more than one million copies of this novel had been sold, and the following year, Margaret Mitchell, who did not have a special education, won the prestigious Pulitzer Prize for Literature.
Massive success or outstanding scam?
Margaret Mitchell sold the film rights to Gone with the Wind for $50,000, which was unimaginable for the cinema of that time, and the feature film of the same name, released in 1939, received 8 Oscars at once.
Everyone was waiting for new masterpieces from the young writer. But she suddenly exhausted her creativity, concentrating her efforts on disputes with publishers with whom she was ready to squabble for every cent.
The novel "Gone with the Wind" began to be translated into foreign languages (today the number of such translations has reached 37). Readers' love went off scale, money flowed like a river, and the need for further work disappeared.
This is precisely the official version of critics who have studied the work of Margaret Mitchell. And what else can they say if, according to Margaret's will, her husband John Marsh burned the entire archive of the writer, leaving intact only the sample manuscripts and preparatory material for Gone with the Wind? Or maybe other manuscripts simply did not exist and readers fell victim to a grandiose scam?
Questions without answers
Many literary critics claim that the real author of Gone with the Wind is John Marsh, and Margaret Mitchell only skillfully used her charms to promote this work.
Others believe that the couple wrote the novel together, but Margaret, who dominated the family, demanded that she be identified as the author. There is a version that the real author of the book is Stevens is the author's older brother.
But the most incredible version suggests that Margaret Mitchell simply ordered the writing of the novel by a Nobel laureate. Sinclair Lewis, who did not want to "smear his name" with such literature.
Margaret died in the most absurd way: she was knocked down by a certain Hugh Gravitt when the writer and her husband went to watch a movie. Cinematography, cars - all this was from a new world, so unlike the world of Margaret Mitchell's heroes.
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