Gone With the Wind (finally)
I've tried several times to write a Gone With the Wind review, to no avail. Thus it is that I find myself once more backlogged on book reviews and dreading writing them more and more the longer I put the task off. And, then, of course, there's the fact that my memory has all the fine-tuned retention of cheese cloth, and the longer I put off writing
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Well, whoa nellie. The first scene I read was Scarlett's grammy teller her about the death and bloodshed at the hands of Red Indians during the first few precarious years here--an utterly gripping story, deep with human suffering and stoic heroism--to which Scarlett, the shallowest of the shallow, shrugs and rolls her beautiful eyes, and wonders why old people are always yammering on and on about dead people. By some paradox, I fell in love with Scarlett just at that moment, but my admiration was entirely for the author.
By the time the car ride was over, I was not willing to give the book back until I had read further.
I was entirely hooked. Until the feminist movement, females had been the superior sex, usually well able to outwit their slower-thinking and hairier counterparts. In this case my lovely young wife simply outwitted me, and tricked me into reading a (bleech!) romance novel. Of course, calling this masterpeice a romance is like calling WAR AND PEACE as war story. It is not.
What it is, is an entirely original idea in literature: a story of a war and its aftermath, told, not from the point of view of the men who march off and fight the war, but from the point of view of their women who stay behind, fighting against odds just as steep, with a quieter heroism no Homer ever praised.
Melanie in particular is a heroine. There is a scene where Belle Watson, the town harlot, saves the menfolk by her quick thinking from the Yankee soldiers, and Melanie goes to thank her with such firmness and gentleness that this scarlet woman, for a moment, is treated like a queen. The scene captures something a modern audience might not grasp: a society that does not see the difference in status between a wellborn lady and a demimonde does not see the nobility and common decency in Melanie's generous act. While it might be nice to live in a world where everyone is equal, planters alongside, er, sex workers, there is something lost in such a world, including the chance to lift up someone who needs a hand.
The ending is both unsatisfying and perfect: Rhett leaves with a curse on his lips. Her life is broken, and might not ever be mended. There is many a widow after a war whose life is likewise cursed and broken, and many a reader in the Great Depression whose homes and businesses were lost in turns of fate just as sudden. But there is always Tara, and tomorrow is an other day.
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I quite relished that scene with Scarlett and Old Miss, but had quite forgotten it until you mentioned it! I remember thinking that finally Scarlett would connect with someone because here was another woman who had suffered just as much as she had, but she once again surprised me with how insensitive she could be. The contrast between Old Miss's heart-wrenching tale and Scarlett's "fiddle-dee-dee" response was delicious.
And props to your wife for getting you to read a "romance"! I begin to think that she is a kindred spirit: she made you read GWTW and also suggested penguin!Rhadamanthus, who was my favorite part of The Golden Age. (The which I will be reviewing sometime in the not-too-distant future, I hope...just finished it a week or two ago.)
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