Gone With The Wind - An Opinion Piece

Scarlett in the beginning of the movie.

For my Talking About Freedom class I was required to watch the first half of the movie Gone With The Wind. The movie was directed by Victor Fleming, but the movie was inspired by the novel written by Margaret Mitchell. The movie came out in 1939 and is set in the American South during the Civil War and Reconstruction era.

My first opinion of the movie was that it was highly dramatized for the sake of television, it was made to be a good watch that made money, not a documentary meant to instruct or teach. However, I do think there were nuggets of truth through the movie. One of these examples is in Scarlett O’Hara played by Vivien Leigh.

Scarlett O'Hara

Scarlett is a very interesting character to watch, in the beginning we see a pompous and spoiled girl who believes it’s her way or the highway, we can see this attitude shine through much of the movie. Scarlett remains quite headstrong and set in getting what she wants. However, two nuggets of truth we get from the movie revolve around Scarlett.

The first is the reality that many soldiers didn’t come home from the war and many wives were left widowed. Out of approximately 3 million men, 750,000 never returned, approximately 200,000 of those men were married, meaning 200,00 women were widowed due to the Civil War. We see this with Scarlett, whose husband, Charles Hamilton, dies early on in the war.

Sarah Osborne Benjamin

Another nugget of truth we get surrounding Scarlett is how women played a role in the Civil War. Many joined the military and took on roles such as nursing, doing laundry, and gathering supplies. We see Scarlett doing this when she helps tend to injured soldiers. Two examples of women who played a role in the Civil War are Sarah Osborn Benjamin and Deborah Sampson.

Sarah Osborn Benjamin was a soldier's wife who often brought food and coffee to the men in the trenches. When asked by George Washington if she was scared, she responded with “No, the bullets would not cheat the gallows… It would not do for the men to fight and starve too.” Now, Deborah Sampson is a different example of a woman who stepped up in war, she disguised herself as a man and actively fought in the Civil War in the Fourth Massachusetts Regiment. It was only when she got very ill that she was discovered, and after that Deborah was honourably discharged and later received a military pension. 

Rhett Butler

Another character that we see that adds nuggets of truth is Rhett Butler, played by Clark Gable. Rhett is a wealthy but cunning man who used his skills to profit off the war. Rhett was a blockade runner as well as a speculation. This is a nugget of truth because war speculation and profiteering were huge. 

War speculation and profiteering created a new class of millionaires and added fuel to severe class tensions, it also caused strain for military readiness. Some famous profiteers are now big name brands like J. Pierpont Morgan-JP Morgan, or Henry Brooks-Brooks Brothers Clothiers, and many more like the Vanderbilts, the Rockerfellers, the Colts. 

The last character I want to talk about is Mammy, and I want to talk about my own experiences. Mammy, played by Hattie McDaniel, is the house maid at Tara. We see her mainly with Scarlett and Mammy is a very important character. She is the glue that helps hold the family together, Mammy knows the family and knows exactly what they need and when they need it. She knows when to be tough, when to be loving, when someone needs a reality check.

Ruby and I years after she retired still very close

How I relate to this is growing up I had two nanny’s, Ruby and Genesis, both of them are Filipino and I loved them dearly. They almost reflect Mammy and when I watched Gone With The Wind every time I saw Mammy I thought of them. They both always knew exactly what I needed as I grew up with them. They knew when I needed a kick in the ass but they also knew when I needed comfort. 

All in all I thought Gone With The Wind, albeit a bit dragging sometimes, was an overall good movie. It was filled with lots of dramatization of what the civil war was like, but it mixed little nuggets of truth. It isn’t a movie I think I’d watch again, but it is a movie I appreciated watching the first time.