Gone With the Wind, by Margaret Mitchell

[nwhyte]

Second paragraph of third chapter:She [Scarlett’s mother, Ellen O’Hara] would have been a strikingly beautiful woman had there been any glow in her eyes, any responsive warmth in her smile or any spontaneity in her voice that fell with gentle melody on the ears of her family and her servants. She spoke in the soft slurring voice of the coastal

Comments

[san_valentine]

I think you're being a little unfair on the portrayal of slavery in the book. It is, after all, seen primarily from the perspective of Scarlett, who was raised from the privileged side of the system and benefitted from it.

The reality of slavery is, admittedly, largely glossed over. The O'Hara's are benevolent despots, who act more like the squires of a Victorian village than slave owners. This may be a result of Gerald's background, as he was not born to the Southern plantation life so doesn't see his slaves merely as objects. So Scarlett's experience of the slavery system is a somewhat sheltered one.

Although Scarlett is quite capable of thinking that slaves in general are stupid or silly, she also relates closely to the ones she knows personally, and defends them as she would any white member of her family. She is outraged on Uncle Peter's behalf when his is insulted by white Northerners.

It is not only the end of slavery that makes the new south a nastier and less civilized soceity, it's the notherners who move in to exploit the chaos. They don't help the newly-freed slaves to adjust to freedom, and taking care of themselves. They either ignore them or exploit them.

The book certainly doesn't condemn slavery: it presents a Disneyfied view of it as a way of life. It also shows what happens when a system like that is wiped out with no planning for the aftermath, and how one woman coped in the mess and the aftermath of war and all the social changes.