The novel "Gone with the Wind" is the most loved work for millions. It was written about 70 years ago by the talented writer Margaret Manerlyn Mitchell, whose life, in fact, is divided into "before" and "after" the publication of the novel "Gone with the Wind". In this article we will tell you about the life and work of the writer, as well as some interesting facts from her life.

Margaret Mitchell: biography

The future writer, like her heroine Scarlett, was born in the South of the United States, in the capital of Georgia, Atlanta, at the very beginning of the 20th century. Her parental family was wealthy. The girl was mixed French (by mother) and Irish (by father) blood. Margaret Mitchell's grandfathers participated in the war between the North and the South and were on the side of the southerners. One of them almost died, having received a bullet in the temple, but miraculously escaped. And the other grandfather, after the victory of the Yankees, was hiding for a long time.

The writer's father, Eugene Mitchell, was the most famous lawyer and real estate expert in Atlanta. By the way, in the years of his youth he dreamed of a career as a writer. He was also chairman of the Atlanta Historical Society, and studied the history of the country, especially during the Civil War. It was thanks to him that his children - Stephen and Margaret Mitchell (see photo in the article) - from early childhood grew up in an interesting and fascinating atmosphere of various exciting stories about the past and present. Their mother was a socialite who spent all her evenings at balls and parties. They had many servants in the house, whom she skillfully controlled. Her image can also be found in the novel.

Education

At school, Peggy (as Margaret was briefly called as a teenager) made great strides precisely in the humanities. Her mother was a supporter of classical education and made children read the classics of world literature: Shakespeare, Dickens, Byron, etc. Peggy always wrote interesting compositions, as well as scripts and plays for school productions. She especially liked to write stories about distant exotic countries, to which she ranked Russia. Her fantasies surprised and delighted with the creative gift of a talented girl. In addition, young Margaret Mitchell loved to draw, dance, and also ride horses.

She was well brought up, but she was a girl of character, a little stubborn and having her own opinion about everything in her environment. As a teenager, she was fond of reading cheap romance novels, but she also continued to read the classics. Probably, this mix contributed to the birth of a brilliant novel, which became one of the most sought after in the 20th century. After graduating from high school, she entered the Seminary. Washington, and after that she studied at Smith College (Northampton, Massachusetts) for another year. She dreamed of going to Austria for an internship with the great psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud.

growing up

However, her dream was not destined to come true. When she was 18, her mother died from the Spanish pandemic, and then she had to return to Atlanta to take care of the house and family. This important scene from her life later formed the basis of the tragedy of Scarlett, who learned about the death of her mother from typhus. During this period, Margaret Mitchell began to look at many seemingly ordinary things from a different angle. This period of her life greatly contributed to the writing of the novel.

Journalism and first marriage

In 1922, Margaret began her career as a journalist for the Atlanta Journal. She signed with her school nickname, Peggy. Like Scarlett, she had many admirers, because nature endowed her with appearance, charm, and fortune, which was also important in those distant times. It is said that before she accepted a marriage proposal from her first husband, Berrien Kinnard Upshaw, she was made about 40 proposals. However, her first marriage was short-lived, moreover, the young divorced just a few months after the wedding.

Berrien was a real handsome man, and an irresistible passion flared up between them, but soon, on the basis of all the same passion, they began to have terrible quarrels, and it was unbearable for both of them to live in such a difficult atmosphere, which is why they had to go through the humiliating divorce procedure. In those days, American women tried not to bring matters to a divorce, but Margaret was a different kind of berry, she was ahead of her time and did not want to be led by public opinion. Her actions sometimes shocked the conservative local society, but this did not bother her much. Why not Scarlett?

Second marriage

The second time Margaret marries John Marsh, an insurance agent. And a year after that, she injures her leg and leaves the editorial office of the magazine. Together with her husband, they settle in a beautiful house near the famous Peach Street. After that, she turns into a real provincial lady housewife. Her second husband is not as handsome and attractive as Ashpoe, but he wraps her in love, attention and peace. She devotes all her free time to writing stories about two brave girls, about war, about survival, and, of course, about love. Every day she comes up with more and more new stories, and there are more and more written pages. During that period, Margaret became a regular visitor to libraries, where she studied the history of the civil war, checked the dates of events, etc. This went on for 10 years - from 1926 to 1936.

Novel "Gone with the Wind"

According to legend, Margaret Mitchell, an American writer, created a book from the end. The first page she wrote became the final part of the novel. But the most difficult thing for her was writing the first chapter. She remade it as many as 60 times. And only after that sent the book to the publisher. In addition, until recently, her heroine was called differently. And the name Scarlett came to her mind already at the publishing house. Those readers who knew her personally, after reading the book, said that they see in Scarlett many features of the writer herself. These assumptions infuriated the writer; she said that Scarlett was a prostitute, a corrupt woman, and she was a lady respected by all.

Some readers have also speculated that she copied Rhett Butler from her first husband, Bjerren Upshaw. It also made Margaret nervously laugh. She asked that acquaintances not try to find similarities where there is none. In addition, she liked to repeat that the main theme of the novel is not love, but survival.

Confession

When the book was published, the clan of "literary professionals", consisting of authoritative critics, did not want to recognize the hitherto unknown writer Margaret Mitchell, whose works were published only in a newspaper. Readers had a completely different opinion about the novel. His fame was passed from mouth to mouth, and people were in a hurry to buy a book to enjoy reading and learn the details of the story of the heroes. From the very first days of sales, the novel became a bestseller, and exactly a year later, an unknown writer received the authoritative Pulitzer Prize.

The book has been reprinted seventy times in the United States. It has also been translated into many languages ​​of the world. Of course, many were interested in who Margaret Mitchell was, books, a list of works written by her. They could not even imagine that the author of this magnificent novel is a beginner, and "Gone with the Wind" is her first serious work, on which she spent 10 years.

Popularity

Margaret Mitchell was very burdened by the sudden surging of her fame. She almost did not give interviews. She turned down an offer to make a film about her life. She also did not agree to write a sequel to the novel so beloved by everyone. The writer did not allow the names of the characters in her novel to be used in the advertising industry. There was even a proposal to create a musical based on the work "Gone with the Wind". She did not consent to this either. She has always been a closed person, led a rather quiet life, so the popularity that fell upon her brought her out of her usual balance for her and her family.

Nevertheless, many fans of her work were looking for a meeting with her, and from time to time she still had to attend creative evenings, where lovers of her novel gathered and wished to meet the author - Margaret Mitchell. The books they bought were immediately signed by the author. At these meetings, the question was often asked whether she would continue her artistic career. Margaret didn't know what to say to that. However, the novel "Gone with the Wind" was the only one in her life.

Screen adaptation

Yet Ms. Mitchell allowed her book to be made into a feature film. This happened in 1939, 3 years after the publication of the book. The film was directed by Victor Fleming. The premiere of the picture took place in the homeland of the writer, in Atlanta. This day in the state of Georgia was declared a non-working day by the governor. After a long search (1,400 girls participated in the casting), British actress Vivien Leigh, who was very similar to Margaret in her youth, was chosen for the role of the main character, but the magnificent actor Clark Gable was invited to play the role of adventurer and heartthrob Rhett Butler. It is believed that the choice of the main characters in the film was just perfect and that it was impossible to find more suitable candidates. 54 actors and about 2,500 extras played in the film. The film "Gone with the Wind" was awarded 8 statuettes "Oscar". It was a record that lasted for 20 years, until 1958.

Margaret Mitchell: interesting facts about the novel "Gone with the Wind"

• Initially, the novel was called - "Tomorrow will be another day." However, the publisher asked her to change the title, and then she chose the words from Horace's poem: "... carried away by the wind, the aroma of these roses was lost in the crowd ..."
• On the first day of the book's sale, 50,000 copies were sold. For the first year it had to be reprinted 31 times. During this period of time, she earned $ 3 million.
• Having written one chapter, Margaret hid the manuscript under the furniture, where it lay for two weeks. Then she pulled out the sheets, reread them, made corrections, and only then wrote further.
• When it was decided to make a film adaptation of the novel, producer D. Selznick bought the film rights from her for $50,000.
• Margaret first named the main character Pansy, then decided to change everything at once, but in order not to mistakenly leave the old name in the manuscript, she had to re-read the novel from cover to cover several times.
• Margaret was essentially an introvert, she simply hated to travel, but after the release of the book she had to travel a lot around the country and meet readers.
• The phrase "I won't think about it today, I'll think about it tomorrow" has become a motto for many people around the world.

Epilogue

Margaret Manerlin Mitchell, the famous American writer, author of the only but legendary book Gone with the Wind, passed away in the most ridiculous way. On a warm August evening, she was walking down the street of her native Atlanta and was suddenly hit by a car driven by a drunk driver, a former taxi driver. Death did not come instantly, she suffered for some time from severe injuries received in a car accident, but was unable to recover from them and died in the hospital. August 16, 1949 is considered the day of her death. She was only 49 years old.

Terentyeva Tatyana Vitalievna

Faculty of Philology of Moscow State Pedagogical Institute M. E. Evsevyeva Saransk, Russia

Resume: The article examines the novel Gone with the Wind by M. Mitchell from the position 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.

Keywords: M. Mitchell, American myth, popular 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 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 widely read books for more than half a century, successfully rivaling 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.

At the center of the novel was the legend of the heroism and valor of the Southerners in the 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 happiest 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 become a moral support that would allow opposing the heroic past to the vague present, and, relying on it, to build a new system of 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 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 scientific studies she read, the 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 bragging of the southern society collide 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 commit a 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 drawn 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 troops 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 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 subjugate 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. The American historical novel Gone with the Wind corrects and 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".

Bibliography:

1. Dergunova, N. A. The myth of reality in the apocalyptic novel by A. A. Trepeznikov "The Adventures of the Damned" / N. A. Dergunova // Humanitarian sciences and education. ‒ 2012. ‒ No. 2. ‒ P. 92–95.

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.

4. Mitchell, M. Gone with the Wind. Novel: in 2 vols. Vol. 2 / M. Mitchell. ‒ Saransk: Mordov. book. publishing house, 1990. ‒ 576 p.

5. Prokhorets, E. K. Foreign literary text as a means of developing socio-cultural competence among students of non-linguistic universities / E. K. Prokhorets // Humanitarian sciences and education. ‒ 2012. ‒ No. 3. ‒ P. 37–41.

6. Faulkner, W. Works: in 6 vols. T. 3 / W. Faulkner. ‒ M.: Art. lit., 1986. ‒ 475 p.

Biography

American writer. Margaret Mitchell was born on November 8 (in some sources - November 9) 1900 in Atlanta (Georgia, USA), in a wealthy family. Paternal ancestors were from Ireland, maternal - French. During the years of the Civil War between North and South (1861-1865), both of Margaret's grandfathers fought on the side of the southerners; one received a bullet in the temple, only accidentally not hitting the brain, the other hid from the victorious Yankees for a long time. The father of Margaret and her brother Stevens, Eugene Mitchell, a prominent lawyer in Atlanta, a real estate expert who dreamed of becoming a writer in his youth, was chairman of the local historical society, thanks to which the children grew up in an atmosphere of stories about the amazing events of the recent era.

Margaret took up literature at school: for the school theater she wrote plays from the life of exotic countries, including from the history of Russia; she loved to dance and ride horses. After graduating from high school, she studied at the Seminary. J.Washington, then for almost a year she studied at Smith College in Northampton (Massachusetts), dreaming of going to Austria for an internship with Sigmund Freud. But in January 1919, her mother died of the flu, and Margaret stayed at home to care for her sick father. In 1918, in France, in the battle on the Meuse River, Margaret's fiancé, Lieutenant Clifford Henry, died; every year on the day of his death, she sent flowers to his mother. From 1922, Margaret took up journalism, becoming a reporter and essayist for the Atlanta Journal, specializing in historical essays. What is known about Margaret's first marriage is that she did not part with a gun until she filed for divorce in 1925. After the divorce, her ex-husband (Berry Kinnard Upshaw, nicknamed Red) was found murdered somewhere in the Midwest. In 1925, she remarried - to insurance agent John Marsh, at the request of her husband, she left her job as a reporter and settled with him not far from Peach Street, famous for her. The life of a typical provincial lady began, although Margaret's house differed from other provincial houses in that it was full of some kind of papers, which both guests and herself made fun of. These pieces of paper were the pages of the novel "Gone with the Wind" (Gone with the Wind), created from 1926 to 1936.

Gone with the Wind began in 1926 when Margaret Mitchell wrote the main line of the last chapter: "She failed to understand either of the two men she loved, and now she has lost both." In December 1935, the final (60th!) version of the first chapter was written, and the manuscript was sent to the publisher. The name of the main character of the novel was found at the last moment - right at the publishing house. It is believed that the main characters of the novel had prototypes: for example, the image of Scarlett reflects many of the character traits and appearance of Margaret Mitchell herself, the image of Rhett Butler may have been created with Red Upshaw, Margaret's first husband. According to one version, for the title of the book, words were taken from Horace's poem, arranged by Ernst Dawson: "I forgot a lot, Cinara; blown away by the wind, the aroma of these roses was lost in the crowd ..."; the estate of the O'Hara family began to be called the same as the ancient capital of the Irish kings - Tara. Margaret herself defined the theme of the novel as "survival".

The clan of "professionals from literature", which consisted of authoritative critics, did not recognize the novel by Margaret Mitchell, an unknown author at that time. The general opinion of the "professional" critics was De Voto, who said that "the number of readers of this book is significant, but not the book itself." A different assessment of the novel was given by Herbert Wells: "I'm afraid that this book is better written than other respected classics." There were rumors from the world of professional writers that Margaret copied the book from her grandmother's diary or that she paid Sinclair Lewis to write the novel. Despite all this, the novel became a bestseller from the first days of its publication, received the Pulitzer Prize (1938), went through more than 70 editions in the United States, and was translated into many languages ​​of the world.

Margaret Mitchell flatly refused to continue the novel, saying jokingly: "Brought by the Breeze" - a novel in which there will be a highly moral plot in which all the characters, including Beauty Watling, will change their souls and characters, and they will all wallow in hypocrisy and stupidity " She also refused to shoot a "film about the author of the novel", refused to give interviews, did not agree to the use of names associated with the novel in the advertising industry (there were applications for the appearance of Scarlett soap, Rhett men's travel bag, etc.) , did not allow to make a musical out of the novel.

In 1939, Gone with the Wind was filmed by director Victor Fleming (Metro Goldwyn Mayer). In 1936, David Selznick, who wanted to bring the novel to the screen, paid a record $50,000 for that year to win the film rights from the Warner brothers. Margaret, fearing the failure of the film, refused to take any part in its creation, including the selection of actors for the main roles and help in preparing the script. As a result, the script was rewritten by many people, going in circles from one screenwriter, writer, director to another, including Salznick himself, until he returned to Sydney Howard, who offered the script that served as the basis for the film adaptation of the novel. The search for an actress for the role of Scarlett lasted about two years. The problem of the "actress" was resolved when the shooting of the film had already begun - in 1938, a beautiful Englishwoman, a pupil of Catholic monasteries, Vivien Leigh, very similar to Margaret at the age of 20, appeared on the set. Although Margaret Mitchell often reminded at the time that Melanie was the true heroine of Gone with the Wind and Scarlett could not be, Scarlett was the film's key figure. The film premiered on December 14, 1939 in Atlanta. The film stars Vivien Leigh (Scarlett O'Hara), Clark Gable (Rhett Butler), Olivia de Haviland (Melanie Wilks), Leslie Howard (Ashley Wilks), Thomas Mitchell (Gerald O'Hara, Scarlett's father), Barbara O'Neal (Elyn O "Hara, Scarlett's mother), Hattie McDaniel (Mammy). In 1939, Gone with the Wind won eight Oscars: Best Film of the Year; Best Director (Victor Fleming); Best Actress (Vivien Leigh); Best Supporting Actress (Hattie McDaniel); the best adaptation of the novel to the screenplay; best cinematography; best artist; best installation. Nominated for an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress (Olivia de Haviland).

Scarlett's popularity grew at an incredible rate. Attempts by reporters to ask Margaret if she wrote off this woman from herself infuriated her: "Scarlett is a prostitute, I am not!" "I tried to describe a far from delightful woman about whom little good can be said, and I tried to withstand her character. I find it ridiculous and ridiculous that Miss O" Hara has become something of a national heroine, I think it's very bad - for the moral and mental state of the nation - if the nation is able to applaud and be carried away by a woman who behaved in this way ... " Over time, Margaret gradually warmed to her creation. At the premiere of the film Gone with the Wind, she already thanked for the attention "to me and to my poor Scarlett."

Margaret Mitchell died on August 16, 1949 in Atlanta (Georgia), having died from injuries received in a car accident thanks to a drunk taxi driver.

Sources of information:

• Margaret Mitchell. "Gone With the Wind". "Margaret Mitchell and her book", introductory article, P. Palievsky. Ed. "Pravda", 1991.
• Reviews of the film "Gone with the Wind" and the TV series "Scarlett".
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No region of the United States has given rise to as many legends as the South. Disputes about its features have not stopped for more than a century. "Mystery of the South", "Mystic of the South", "South. Main topic?" - these are the titles of some American works. Some emphasize the exclusivity of the South, which before the civil war was a different civilization compared to the North. W. Faulkner believed that at that time there were two countries in America: the North and the South. The greatest historian of the South, K. Van Woodward, saw the difference between the South and the North not only in geography, climate, economy, but also in history - the collective experience of the people of the South, who experienced something unknown to the North - defeat in the war, devastation, poverty. However, in modern American historiography, voices are increasingly heard in favor of the proximity of the two regions (common language, political system, laws, etc.). Historians believe that the dramatization of dissimilarity is more the fruit of minds excited before the civil war than reality.

Back in the middle of the last century, a stereotype of the American South was formed as predominantly plantation, aristocratic, slave-owning with a polarly simple structure: planters-slave owners and slaves, the rest of the population are poor whites. In the mass consciousness, this was complemented by the endless fields of cotton, flooded with the sun, the sounds of the whip on the backs of slaves, the evening melodies of the banjo and spirituals. This image was propagated by the region's fiction, which since the time of J. P. Kennedy has created an idyllic picture of the plantation old South and laid the foundation for the southern version of the legend about it. The northern version arose under the influence of the impressions of travelers, opponents of slavery, and abolitionist literature, primarily the novel by G. Bncher Stowe "Uncle Tom's Cabin" (1852).

Few books in America can match this popular novel, which denounced slavery as the most degrading form of human treatment. The work, openly abolitionist, tendentious in spirit, demanded the immediate abolition of slavery. Mrs. Beecher Stowe had lived all her life in the North, spending only a few years on the border with the South, in Cincinnati, Ohio, and did not know the details of life in the lower, plantation South, which, however, did not interest her. “Uncle Tom’s Cabin,” wrote W. Faulkner, originally from the deep South, although of a later time, “was inspired by an active and misdirected sense of compassion, as well as the author’s ignorance of a situation that she knew only by hearsay. However, this was not the product of cold reflection. The book is written with temperament, it is warmed by the warmth of the writer's heart.

The novel Gone with the Wind by M. Mitchell can be considered a southern interpretation of the legend. He, too, enjoyed considerable success. Published in 1936, the work of an unknown author immediately became a bestseller: the circulation of the book, almost 1.5 million, is an unprecedented figure in America for the first edition. The following year, the novel won the Pulitzer Prize, and two years later it was filmed by Hollywood. It has been translated into many languages ​​of the world and was published twice in the USSR in the 1980s.

The main thing in Mitchell's book is not the problem of slavery, although it gets its place in the novel, but the life and fate of the planters, and more broadly, of the South itself. The novel is interesting as a depiction by a southerner of events that until then were known mainly in the interpretation of northerners - the Civil War and Reconstruction. Mitchell knew the South from the inside and wrote about her native places - Atlanta, Georgia. Both her grandfathers had fought in the Confederate forces, and the events of the long-past war were hotly discussed in her family, as in many southern families, as Faulkner noted more than once. Another southerner, T. Wolf, noticed the absence of a sense of defeat in the war in the South. “They didn't beat us,” the children said. “We beat them until we exhausted all our strength. We weren't beaten. We have been defeated." In the atmosphere of the past, which, as it were, has become a permanent present, southerners have been from childhood. Perhaps that is why the story in Mitchell's novel retains the liveliness of modernity, as if the book was written by a participant in the events, and therefore it can be considered almost as a historical source. Even the tendentiousness and conservatism of the author are "documentary": they express the position of a southerner, his view of the past. Mitchell's work, in addition to her intentions, allows us to clarify the features of the historical development of the South, to understand the problems that are still causing controversy. The task of this work is to look at the historical South through the South, recreated in fiction - the “South of fiction”. Therefore, we will not be talking about the literary merits or weaknesses of the novel, not about characters as such, not about literary images as historical types. However, it should be remembered that this will be a story, nevertheless considered through a work of art.

Already before the civil war, the southerners opposed the prevailing stereotype of the South, trying to show the true picture of their region. Such is the work of D. R. Hundley, Social Relations in Our Southern States, almost the first sociological study of the old South, long forgotten during the turbulent years of the war. Since then, the southerners have felt an urgent need to speak out, to show the North, the whole world the real South, to correct distorted ideas about themselves. This partly explains the renaissance of the literature of the South, its heightened sensitivity to the past in comparison with the fiction of the North. Southerners, according to W. Faulkner, write more for the North, for foreigners, than for themselves.

The 30s of our century, when Mitchell's book was published, is the time for southerners to rethink their history: the dithyrambs of the "new", bourgeois South, nostalgia for the bygone South were replaced by a desire to objectively look at the past, understand it and understand it. In those years, an intensive study of the history of the region began. The works of F. Owsley and his students, C. Van Woodward and others have refuted many of the legends about the South. The researchers showed that the region was not at all homogeneous and the main part of its population, as in the North, was made up of small farmers-landowners; 2/3 of the whites did not have slaves, and most of the slave owners are not planters, but farmers who work the land with their family and a few slaves. Other legends were also destroyed - about the supposedly conflict-free society of the South, about the aristocratic origin of the planters, etc.

Mitchell's novel is written in the traditional literature of the South of the 19th century. manner of romanticizing plantation society. However, according to the just remark of the Soviet literary critic L. N. Semenova, in the book, along with the features of the southern novel of the last century, there are certain motifs of the “new tradition” of the 20th century, represented by the works of W. Faulkner, T. Wolfe, R. P. Warren. This is, first of all, the writer's awareness of the impotence and degeneration of the plantation class, of the entire way of the slave-owning South.

The life of the plantation community on the eve of the Civil War is depicted in the novel as far from attractive: balls, picnics, secular conventions. Men's interests are wine, cards, horses; women - family, outfits, local news. A picture of "light" familiar from European literature. Many planters are ignorant people, like Gerald O'Hara, the Tarleton twins, who were expelled four times from different universities, and finally, the main character Scarlett, whose education lasted only two years. A definition thrown by one of the characters fits them: "the breed is purely ornamental." They are not fit for any activity, they lead a lordly life - a direct consequence of slavery. Slavery paralyzed the vitality of masters, brought up an aversion to work. The corrupting influence of slavery was recognized by the planters themselves, thinking southerners saw it as a serious problem for the region, as evidenced by F. Olmstead, a northerner who traveled in the 1850s in the South and wrote several works about it. Figuratively speaking, slavery "spoiled the breed of masters", and the novel shows with artistic objectivity the historical inevitability of the death of the slave-owning South. Rhett Butler remarked: “The whole way of life in our South is as anachronistic as the feudal system of the Middle Ages. And it is worthy of surprise that this way of life lasted so long” (T. 1. S. 293-294).

The contempt for work is one of the differences between the southerners and the Puritan tradition of respect for any work in the North. Scarlett declared: "For me to work like a black woman on a plantation?" (T. 1. S. 526). Caste, characteristic of the society of the South, penetrated even among the slaves: "We are domestic servants, we are not for field work" (T. 1. S. 534). However, neglect of work is not the only essence of a southerner who began in America, like a northerner, with the difficult development of a world alien to him, the colonization of the West. The spirit of pioneering is no less strong in the South. The American historian W. B. Phillips noted two factors that influenced the formation of the region: the plantation and the frontier. Contempt for work among southerners is secondary, brought up by slavery, and even under these conditions, not everyone took root.

In such a contradictory attitude to work, the inconsistency of the South itself was realized, its essential dualism, the split within the southerner. The nobility turned out to be short-lived, it disappeared along with the institution of slavery, but a more stable all-American layer was preserved both in the society of the South and in the souls of the southerners. This historical evolution is seen in the novel in the example of Scarlett. Mitchell in her character showed an outcast of plantation society, a figure atypical for him. Scarlett is a half-breed, the daughter of a French aristocrat and a rootless Irishman, who has reached a position in society through a profitable marriage. But it was Scarlett, and not her mother, who was typical of the American South, where only a small group of descendants of English gentlemen, French Huguenots, and Spanish grandees were aristocrats. The main part of the planters are from the middle strata, like Scarlett's father, D. O'Hara, who won the plantation in cards and the first slave. Mother raised Scarlett in an aristocratic spirit, but when the civil war broke out, everything aristocratic, which had not yet had time to become a quality of nature, flew off her.

Survival - this is how the writer herself called the main theme of the novel. Of course, people of the "ornamental breed" could not bear the death of their former way of life. Scarlett survived thanks to the resilience, the fierce tenacity characteristic of European settlers in the New World. Since the civil war, the southerners have faced a dilemma: adapt to new conditions, survive like Scarlett, or turn into a fragment of the past, forever blown away by the wind. Although the heroine Mitchell has a lot of negative traits - soulless practicality, narrow-mindedness, the use of any means if they lead to the goal - nevertheless, it was Scarlett who became the image of not only a southern woman, but an American woman who survived in disastrous circumstances mainly because she was stronger than the southern caste in it were the collective features of an American woman. In general, she became a symbol of individuality, triumphing over the most unfavorable conditions - otherwise it is impossible to explain the unprecedented popularity of both the character and the novel itself in the United States.

‘On the other extreme were those southerners who could not or did not want to accept changes, who resisted history. The symbolic figure of these once-living, but doomed forces of the South became under the pen of Mitchell Ashley Wilks. Educated, well-read, possessing a subtle, analytical mind, he perfectly understood the historical doom of the old South. In the novel, Ashley remained alive, but his soul is dead, because it is given to the outgoing South, it is one of those gone with the wind. Ashley did not want to win, like Scarlett, at any cost, preferring to die along with what was dear to him. He survived without striving for this, and simply lived out his term. Being an opponent of slavery, he nevertheless went to war, but he did not defend the “just cause” of the slave owners, but the world dear to him from childhood, which was leaving forever. Ashley fights on the side of those forces, the collapse of which he has long guessed.

In Wilkes, another feature characteristic of a southerner is important - the rejection of material prosperity at any cost: the principle of the North "money is everything" in the South did not have absolute power, honor as a rule of caste ethics was often stronger than money.

Ashley Wilks, by a completely conscious inner decision, does not want to get used to the atmosphere of entrepreneurship and leaves his homeland: if it is impossible to keep the South in life, the hero keeps it in his soul, just not to see how reality destroys his ideals.

The most controversial character in the book is Rhett Butler, in many ways the opposite of Ashley. Even in his youth, he broke with the plantation society, and it is the subject of his constant malicious ridicule. Rhett is a prosperous businessman, merchant, speculator - the most unprestigious professions in the South. In terms of his views, he is close to the southern reform movement of the 1840s-1860s, which advocated the all-round economic development of the region, which could ensure complete independence from the North and Europe. Its representatives clearly saw the temporary nature of the prosperity of the South associated with the cotton boom. Rhett was well aware that a weak industry could not provide an advantage in the coming war against the North, and he openly laughed at the boastful speeches of his compatriots. True, those who hoped to win this war had some reasons: the South was a rich land, it provided the main part of the US export products; he owned political leadership in the Union - the southerners dominated the congress, executive and legislative bodies, traditionally supplied the country with leading political figures and military leaders. However, all this meant little to those historical opportunities that the North had and which the South was almost deprived of. Far-sighted people (including Rhett Butler) soberly assessed the situation.

Yet Rhett turned out to be more southern than Scarlett. In the last months of the Confederacy's existence, he did join its army, fought bravely for a cause whose doom he had predicted in advance. It is difficult for the reader to understand the motives for such an act in a person of such a sound mind and calculation, however, the image created by the author leaves an impression of authenticity. Over the years, Rhett began to appreciate in the South what he had rejected with contempt in his youth - “his clan, his family, his honor and security, roots that go deep ..” (T. 2. P. 578).

Two characters - Allyn O'Hara, Scarlett's mother, and Melanie, Ashley's wife - represent the aristocrats of the old South. Ellin is the standard of the hostess of the "big house" on the plantation of the South. She holds an estate in her hands, brings up children, treats slaves, whom she treats as a continuation of her family - in a word, almost an evangelical model. The strength of the small and fragile Melanie lies elsewhere. A native of the South, she is faithful to her homeland, and she sacredly keeps those spiritual traditions that she considers essential, passing them on to her descendants. Both female images are written in the spirit of the traditional myth of the South, they are the ideal female types in the view of the southerner.

The novel focuses on the life of planters, but touches on other groups in southern society. As in the North, the most massive segment of the population of the South was farming, although this similarity of regions is external, because farmers are built into different socio-economic systems, they occupied an unequal place in the economy and society. In the North, small and medium-sized farmers played a leading role in production and therefore were an influential force. The farmers of the South, mostly small, did not lead the economy, therefore, their position in society was not very noticeable. The society of the South is more complex, more polarized than in the North, it has a sharper concentration of wealth, a wider layer of the landless. The farming of the South itself is heterogeneous: this includes the inhabitants of isolated areas of the Appalachians, leading subsistence farming; and the farmers of the upper South, the so-called frontier states, close in economic structure to the North and West; finally, the farmers of the plantation belt, about half of whom are slave owners. Such diversity in economic life served as the basis for differences in the system of values ​​and psychology of the agrarians of the South.

Mitchell portrays several farm types. One is Slattery, neighbors of the O'Hara family, owners of several acres of land. They are in constant need, eternal debt - in the cotton belt there was a steady process of ousting small farmers. Planters in the novel are not averse to getting rid of such a neighborhood. This type is described in the most gloomy colors, in the spirit of the historically real attitude of the planters themselves to it, who collectively called it “white trash” (white trash). Slattery is dirty, ungrateful, exudes a contagion from which Ellin O'Hara dies. After the war, they quickly went uphill. The bias of the author is obvious here.

Another type of farmer is Will Benteen, the former owner of two slaves and a small farm in South Georgia, who permanently settled in Tara. He easily entered post-war life: the planters, having humbled the prejudices of the caste, accepted him into their midst. There is no hostility to the planters in Will, he himself is ready to become one of them. This kind of farmer-planter relationship is historically true in the lower South.

Not at all the one-legged Archie, a farmer from the mountains - a slovenly, rude, independent person who equally hated planters, blacks, northerners. Although he fought in the Confederate army, he was not on the side of the slave owners, defending his personal freedom, like most farmers of the South.

The problem of slavery was not the main one for Mitchell, the novel does not even mention its abolition during the Civil War, but this topic is still present, otherwise it cannot be in a book about the American South. Ellin O'Hara serves as an example of the attitude towards slaves for the author: slaves are big children, the slave owner must be aware of the responsibility for them: take care, educate and, last but not least, their own behavior. It is possible that such a view was characteristic of compassionate Christians, but later it became the basis for the racist justification of the institution of slavery. Mitchell rejects the northerners' view of mistreatment of blacks. She handed the most convincing argument to Big Sam: "I'm worth a lot" (T. 2. S. 299). Indeed, the prices for slaves on the eve of the civil war were very high, as was the demand for them. The cost of slaves was the largest investment in the slave plantation economy. Therefore, cases of the murder of a slave, especially during the harvest, as described by G. Beecher Stowe, are rare; a decidedly mismanaged person could afford this. But, of course, the facts of cruelty, the killing of slaves, baiting with dogs, although they were not a system, but met in the South, which is confirmed by eyewitnesses.

Rejecting the legends of the North about the South, Mitchell herself was at the mercy of the legend of the southerners about her land. In the southern interpretation, images of aristocratic women, the problem of slavery, the characters of northern Yankees are given - people of a dubious past, money-grubbers who arrived in the South for easy prey. The writer portrayed the northerners almost in the same way as G. Beecher Stowe portrayed the southerners.

The picture drawn in Gone with the Wind allows us to draw some conclusions about the society of the South and compare it with the society of the North. Different forms of ownership and economy that have developed in the two regions have influenced the emergence of various social structures and relations. Having begun development on a capitalist basis, the South, as plantations and slavery spread, acquired features that were not characteristic of capitalism. Large-scale landownership and slaveholding were reflected in all aspects of the life of the South, making its society different. Capitalism and slavery merged, a special way of life arose in the South, which does not fit into the framework of only capitalism or only slavery. This symbiosis is recreated in the novel with that degree of living authenticity, which is not available to any historical and economic research. The writer revealed his features in the field of psychology.

A special way of life was swept away by the civil war, "carried away by the wind." Being so different, the North and the South could not get along within the borders of one state: their interests did not completely coincide, each aspired to leadership in the Union - the conflict was inevitable. With the defeat in the Civil War, a new historical phase in the development of both the South itself and the United States began. The South is gradually moving towards the path of purely capitalist evolution, the path of industrialization and urbanization. But the influence of slavery will remain for a long time in its economy, social relations, consciousness, and spiritual culture.

The material losses of the South in the war are great: houses are burned, ruined and overgrown with forest plantations. In the South Atlantic states, crop areas were restored only by 1900. The Scarlett estate, blessed Tara, turned from a large plantation into a squalid farm with two mules.

Human losses are terrible: a quarter of a million people died in the South, and there are many disabled people among those who remained. Girls and women are doomed to celibacy or life with cripples

The south suffered not only from hostilities, but, perhaps, even more from the collapse of the entire economic system that had developed before the war. Plantation without slaves ceased to be the most profitable business. The planters divided their lands into small plots and leased them to former slaves - croppers. Now they invested more in industry, banks, railways, turning into capitalists. This evolution of the planter is shown in the novel on the example of Scarlett herself, who, not disdaining openly dishonorable means, acquired a hardware store and two sawmills. By the way, the path of W. Faulkner's great-grandfather, a real, not a romantic character, a planter, who invested in the railway business after the war, was similar.

Features of the new in the life of the post-war South are visible in the appearance of the capital of Georgia, Atlanta. A young city, the same age as Scarlett, even before the war turned into a major commercial and industrial center due to its favorable geography: it stood at the crossroads that connected the South with the West and the North. Almost completely destroyed by the war, Atlanta quickly recovered and became the most important city not only in Georgia, but in the entire South.

The South was going through a difficult period of transformation, when the features of the old and the new were inseparably intertwined - this is clearly seen in the novel by M. Mitchell. The new is connected with the abolition of slavery, the development of capitalism, however, the preservation of large landowners-planters, and with them semi-forced labor in the forms of share rent - croppership, debt slavery - peonatism interfered with the formation of an industrial society.

The fate of the South is the central problem of the novel, and Mitchell solves it in the same way as W. Faulkner. The Old South is dead, its way of life, its values ​​are irretrievably gone, blown away by the "wind of history". After the war, the South loses its former features, historical individuality, although such a view is incomplete. Not the whole South died, but the slave-owning South, the South as a special way of life, and this is not the same thing. After all, the American South has always been dualistic, and after the Civil War, its other, capitalist principle prevailed, which united the region with the whole country, although to the detriment of its originality.

The theme of the South, the homeland, is closely connected in the novel with the theme of the abundantly fertile land of Georgia, the red soil that attracts Scarlett so much, attracts more than family ties, gives strength in difficult moments. The descriptions of this land, the most solid and unchanging, that alone remained in place and was not blown away by the wind, are the most poetic in the book. This fertile land, giving birth twice, or even thrice a year, is the subject of special pride of the southerners, for it created the South as it is; it is the only sure guarantee of its continued existence.

Thanks to the novel by M. Mitchell, the reader comprehends not only the South as a kind of historical given, but also gets a more voluminous idea of ​​the United States of America: after all, the South is part of the whole country, is an important element of the whole, without it it would be incomplete and incomprehensible

Notes

Cm.: Faulkner W. Articles, speeches, interviews, letters. M., 1985. S. 96
Olmsted F.L. The Cotton Kingdom. N.Y. 1984. P. 259.
Phillips U.B. The Slave Economy of the Old South/Ed. by E. D. Genovese. Baton Rouge, 1968. P. 5.
Hundley D.R. Op. cit. P. 129-132.
Farr F. Margaret Mitchell of Atlanta. N. Y., 1965. P. 83.
12th Census of the United States, 1900. Wash., 1902. Vol. 5.Pt. 1. P. XVIII.

Text: 1990 I.M. Suponitskaya
Published In: Problems of American studies. Issue. 8. Conservatism in the USA: past and present. / Ed. V.F. Yazkova. - Publishing House of Moscow. University of Moscow, 1990. - S. 36-45.
OCR: 2016 North America. Nineteenth century. Noticed a typo? Select it and press Ctrl + Enter

Suponitskaya I. M. The American South in the novel Gone with the Wind by M. Mitchell (Observations of a historian)

Thanks to Margaret Mitchell's novel Gone with the Wind, the reader not only comprehends the South as a kind of historical given, but gets a more voluminous idea of ​​the United States of America: after all, the South is part of the country, an important element of the whole, incomplete and incomprehensible without it.

The author of the great novel Gone with the Wind, Margaret Mitchell, lived a not too long and very difficult life. The only literary work she created brought the writer world fame and fortune, but took away too much mental strength.

The film based on the novel by American writer Margaret Mitchell "Gone with the Wind" was released in 1939 - just three years after the publication of the book. The premiere was attended by Hollywood stars Vivien Leigh and Clark Gable, who played the roles of the main characters - Scarlett O "Hara and Rhett Butler. Away from the cinematic beauties stood a modest thin woman in a hat. The raging crowd almost did not notice her. But it was Margaret Mitchell herself - the author of a book that during the life of the writer became a classic of American literature.In the glory of her work, she basked in the glory of her work from 1936 to 1949 - until the very day of her death.

Sportswoman and coquette

Margaret Mitchell was almost the same age as the 20th century. She was born in the same Atlanta (Georgia), which became the setting for her immortal novel. The girl was born in a prosperous and wealthy family. Her father was a lawyer. Mother, although officially listed as a housewife, joined the movement of suffragettes - women who fought for their voting rights. In general, the author largely wrote off the green-eyed Scarlett O "Hara from herself. Mitchell was half Irish and a southerner to the marrow of her bones. But one should not think that the writer was a kind of old maid in a pince-nez and with a pen in her hand. Not at all.

The novel Gone with the Wind begins with the line: "Scarlett O Hara wasn't pretty." But Margaret Mitchell was beautiful. Although, apparently, she did not consider herself particularly attractive, since she began the novel with such a phrase. But she was clearly being modest. Her dark hair, almond-shaped green eyes and slender figure attracted men like a magnet. But contemporaries remembered Margaret not as a windy beauty, but first of all as a wonderful storyteller and an amazing listener of other people's memories. Both of Mitchell's grandfathers had served in the North-South Civil War, and the future writer was ready to listen to hours of stories about their exploits at the time.

Here is how one of her friends later recalled Mitchell: “It is difficult to describe Peggy (Margaret's childhood nickname. - Approx. Aut.) With a pen, to convey her gaiety, her interest in people and a thorough knowledge of their nature, the breadth of her interests and range of reading, her devotion to friends, as well as the liveliness and charm of her speech. Many southerners are born storytellers, but Peggy told her stories in such a funny and skillful way that people in a crowded room could freeze and listen to her all evening.

Margaret combined a passion for coquetry and sports entertainment, outstanding learning abilities and an interest in knowledge, a thirst for independence and ... a desire to create a good, but quite patriarchal family. Mitchell was not a romantic. Contemporaries considered it practical and even stingy. About how methodically she - cent by cent - knocked out royalties from publishers, later there were legends ...

Even at school, the daughter of a lawyer wrote simple plays in a romantic style for the student theater ... After receiving her secondary education, Mitchell studied for a year at the prestigious Massachusetts College. There, she was literally hypnotized by the ideas of the founder of psychoanalysis, Sigmund Freud. It is quite possible that the American would have become one of his students and followers, if not for the tragic event: in 1919, during the Spanish flu pandemic, her mother died. And shortly before that, Henry, Margaret's fiancé, died in Europe.

Desperate Reporter

Mitchell returned to Atlanta to take over the running of the house. The girl was too young and energetic to sink into despondency. She did not fussily look for a new party for herself - the suffragist "part" of her nature had an effect here. Instead, she chose to do what she loves, becoming a reporter for the Atlanta Journal. Margaret's light and sharp pen quickly made her one of the publication's leading journalists. It was difficult for the patriarchal southern society to "digest" a female journalist. The editor of the publication at first bluntly told the ambitious girl: “How can a lady from a good family afford to write about the inhabitants of the city bottom and talk with various ragamuffins?” Mitchell was surprised by this question: she could never understand why women are worse than men. Perhaps that is why her heroine Scarlett was one of those about whom in Russia they speak in the words of the poet Nekrasov: “He will stop a galloping horse, enter a burning hut.” The reports from the pen of the journalist came out crisp, clear, leaving no questions to the reader ...

Residents of Atlanta recalled: her return to her hometown made a splash among the male part of the population. According to rumors, an educated and elegant beauty received almost four dozen marriage proposals from gentlemen! But, as often happens in such situations, the chosen one was far from being the best. Miss Mitchell could not resist the charms of Berrien "Red" Upshaw - a tall, handsome handsome man. The bridegroom's witness at the wedding was a modest, educated young man, John Marsh.

Family life was seen by Margaret in the form of a series of entertainment: parties, receptions, horseback riding. Both spouses from childhood adored equestrian sports. The writer also endowed Scarlett with this trait ...

Red became the prototype of Rhett - their names are consonant. But, unfortunately, only in external manifestations. The husband turned out to be a man of a cruel, violent disposition. Slightly that - was grabbing for a pistol. The unfortunate wife had to feel the weight of his fists. Margaret and then showed: she is not a bast of a shield. Now there was a gun in her purse too. Soon the couple divorced. All the city gossips watched the humiliating divorce procedure with bated breath. But even through such a test, Mitchell went with her head held high.
Margaret did not stay long with Mrs. Upshaw. And then - and the year did not stay divorced!

In 1925, she married the modest and devoted John Marsh. Finally, quiet happiness settled in her house!

book for husband

The new Mrs. Marsh has retired from the magazine. Why? Some say: because of the injury received when falling from a horse. Others say: Margaret decided to devote time to the family. In any case, she once said: “A married woman should be, first of all, a wife. I am Mrs. John R. Marsh.” Of course, Mrs. Marsh was acting out. She was not going to limit her life to the world of the kitchen. Margaret was clearly tired of reporting and decided to devote herself to literature.

She introduced only her husband to the first chapters of Gone with the Wind. It was he who from the first days became her best friend, critic and adviser. The novel was ready by the end of the 1920s, but Margaret was afraid to publish it. Folders of papers were gathering dust in the pantry of the big new Marsh house. Their housing became the center of the intellectual life of the town - something like a literary salon. One of the editors of the Macmillan publishing house somehow looked into the light.

Margaret could not make up her mind for a long time. But still gave the editor the manuscript. After reading, he immediately realized that he was holding a future bestseller in his hands. It took six months to finalize the novel. The final name of the heroine - Scarlett - the author came up with right in the editorial office. The name Mitchell took from a poem by the poet Dawson.

The publisher was right: the book became an instant bestseller. And the author in 1937 became the winner of the prestigious Pulitzer Prize. To date, the total circulation of her book in the United States alone has reached almost thirty million copies.

But neither fame nor money brought happiness to the writer. The peace of the house, which she and her husband so guarded, was disturbed. Margaret herself tried to control the cash receipts in her own budget. But financial affairs brought only fatigue. There was no longer any energy for creativity.

And then the faithful John fell ill. Mitchell has evolved into a caring caregiver. And it turned out to be difficult, because her health began to deteriorate rapidly. By the end of the 1940s, the couple's health began to improve. They even allowed themselves small "cultural" outings. But the returned happiness was short-lived. In August 1949, a car driven by a drunk driver hit Margaret, who was walking with her husband to the cinema. The author of Gone with the Wind died five days later.