Gone with the Wind, novel by Margaret Mitchell, published in 1936. It won a Pulitzer Prize in 1937. Gone with the Wind is a sweeping romantic story about the American Civil War from the point of view of the Confederacy. In particular it is the story of Scarlett O’Hara, a headstrong Southern belle who survives the hardships of the war and afterward manages to establish a successful business by capitalizing on the struggle to rebuild the South. Throughout the book she is motivated by her unfulfilled love for Ashley Wilkes, an honourable man who is happily married. After a series of marriages and failed relationships with other men, notably the dashing Rhett Butler, she has a change of heart and determines to win Rhett back.
The main idea of Mitchell's work is to laud the triumph of the human spirit and the human being's ability to adapt. Scarlett would represent both. At the outset of the novel, she is frivolous and completely consumed with trivial matters. This is a perspective that changes as the war alters many lives in the South in a permanent manner. Throughout these changes, Scarlett displays a condition where she adapts to the conditions around her, assumes a role of leadership, and defines her character as one which is driven with a sense of empowerment and internal strength. Through Scarlett, the reader understands what it means to have strength and courage in the most trying of times.
Gone With the Wind is a story about civil war, starvation, rape, murder, heartbreak and slavery. It is not necessarily a book one would associate with hope. And yet, at the novel’s heart lies Scarlett O’Hara, one of the most ruthlessly optimistic characters in literature.