Evaluation of Gone With the Wind
ENG 105
7 October 2013
Evaluation of Gone with the Wind A lot of people wonder what it would be like to live in the past. Some fantasize about 16th century England; others daydream about the roaring 20’s or even the Great Depression. I personally daydream about living in the South in the 1860’s. That is why I fell in love with the classic novel Gone With the Wind. Written by Margaret Mitchell and set in the county of Clayton, Georgia, a tale of a 16-year-old girl named Scarlett O’Hara unfolds. Filled with moments of despair, anger, heartbreak, and unrequited love, Gone With the Wind provides an accurate interpretation of how life was in Georgia during the Civil War, as well as how women were supposed to behave and act, and stipulates an unexpected ending to the love story of Rhett Butler and Scarlett O’Hara. Life in 1861 was much harder than it is now in 2013, both for men and women. It was physically taxing, as well as mentally. Men were expected to work day in and day out, while women did little housework jobs if they didn’t have slaves to do it. Some women still did little housework jobs, even if they had the slave labor to do it instead, to keep themselves busy. Women were also expected to wear dresses with corsets, which were uncomfortable as well as painful. Women would lose consciousness due to lack of oxygen everyday, as well as cases of broken ribs because women wanted to be smaller than they really were. Those oh-so-popular fainting spells that would happen to women literally happened because they lost their breath. Not because of the man of their dreams proposing to them, but because they could not breathe.
Scarlett was seen as an object of envy in Clayton County, Georgia. With a seventeen-inch waist and an energy that made all of the men want her, other women could hardly stand to be near her. This never seemed to bother Scarlett on the outside; she was tough as nails. Yet on the inside she wanted friends. She would rarely admit that, even to
7 October 2013
Evaluation of Gone with the Wind A lot of people wonder what it would be like to live in the past. Some fantasize about 16th century England; others daydream about the roaring 20’s or even the Great Depression. I personally daydream about living in the South in the 1860’s. That is why I fell in love with the classic novel Gone With the Wind. Written by Margaret Mitchell and set in the county of Clayton, Georgia, a tale of a 16-year-old girl named Scarlett O’Hara unfolds. Filled with moments of despair, anger, heartbreak, and unrequited love, Gone With the Wind provides an accurate interpretation of how life was in Georgia during the Civil War, as well as how women were supposed to behave and act, and stipulates an unexpected ending to the love story of Rhett Butler and Scarlett O’Hara. Life in 1861 was much harder than it is now in 2013, both for men and women. It was physically taxing, as well as mentally. Men were expected to work day in and day out, while women did little housework jobs if they didn’t have slaves to do it. Some women still did little housework jobs, even if they had the slave labor to do it instead, to keep themselves busy. Women were also expected to wear dresses with corsets, which were uncomfortable as well as painful. Women would lose consciousness due to lack of oxygen everyday, as well as cases of broken ribs because women wanted to be smaller than they really were. Those oh-so-popular fainting spells that would happen to women literally happened because they lost their breath. Not because of the man of their dreams proposing to them, but because they could not breathe.
Scarlett was seen as an object of envy in Clayton County, Georgia. With a seventeen-inch waist and an energy that made all of the men want her, other women could hardly stand to be near her. This never seemed to bother Scarlett on the outside; she was tough as nails. Yet on the inside she wanted friends. She would rarely admit that, even to