To think that Scarlett's first 2 children are one of the most overlooked bits of Gone With The Wind?

[Jane379]

I was rereading it a few days ago and it struck me how at the end, Scarlett is totally focused on getting Rhett back, nothing else. What happens to poor Wade & Ella afterwards are anyone's guess - especially as Melanie has died and Rhett seems to have checked out, and they were previously acting as surrogate parents. I suppose Mammy would probably end up looking after them?
It's hardly Scarlett's fault that she was expected to have kids despite no desire to, but she should have treated them better once they were born. I think the film toned down her attitude to them a lot, probably because it was seen as too shocking and damaged her heroine sstatus.A retelling in retrospect by Wade or Ella would be an interesting spin-off idea...

Rhett seems a pretty negative parental figure too, I think he's often assessed too positively & romanticised. Unbelievable he had Bonnie jumping like that at only 4,..the whole thing with him & Bonnie was weird, at the end he essentially says he treated her as a substitute for Scarlett.

AIBU?

I always thought Scarlett's relationship with her children reflected her relationship with their fathers. She loves Bonnie and becomes excited about a second pregnancy because she likes Rhett. Charles and Frank annoy her, so her first two children annoy her too

The entire novel is blatant pro-slavery propaganda. Not to mention the appalling representation of the Reconstruction era. The Ku Klux Klan was a terrorist organisation with a white supremacist ideology, not some noble venture. We are invited to sympathise with the characters' viewpoints throughout the book, and they are never questioned or challenged. These perspectives no doubt faithfully represent the point of view of many white Southerners in the 1860s, but that doesn't mean that readers should just discount how deeply problematic they are (and were even in the 1860s, much less in the 1930s when the book was written).

It's impossible to ignore these issues in any discussion of GWTW. They are at the very heart of the novel (and the film). It would be like reading a novel set in Nazi Germany which glorifies the Nazi belief system and attempts to justify the Holocaust, and then dismissing any discussion of those key elements of the book by saying that everyone in 1930s/1940s Germany supported these views.

The entire novel is blatant pro-slavery propaganda.

I disagree. It’s highly sanitised for sure but to call it propaganda is to misrepresent it. It’s a fictitious account of the destruction of a way of life written from the vantage point of one side so it would always be biased. Where it is truthful is in showing the dependency of those rich white people on their slaves.

I find it really bizarre to judge Scarlett for her attitude towards her children

She didn't have a choice. I'm sure a lot of women in the 1860s felt like that about their children.

I don't normally hold with the "young and foolish" argument but when you go back as far as the 1860s, I do. How is she different than the young men rushing off to war and thinking of it as a good thing? She was 17 and had no education. Add that in with no choice and no options for women and what was she going to do? Why would she make an effort with the children she never wanted to have?

The novel is a classic example of an attempt to mythologise the past and rewrite history to suit ideological purposes. The Lost Cause nonsense is a key part of it, as though slavery was a benevolent system and the Confederacy was simply trying to preserve its heritage, and so on. GWTW has reinforced these myths, and its popularity has meant that many people (wrongly) view the novel and the film adaptation as historically accurate.

I know. It’s still not propaganda.

I would say it is. Not state propaganda, obviously. But it is certainly a deliberate attempt to sway opinion and endorse a specific political agenda by means of inaccurate representations, in this case of a particular time and place. Some of the most effective propaganda is in fictional form since it can so successfully appeal to emotions.

It was common in those days, both in the UK and the US, for wealthy parents to spend very little time with their children. Children of wealthy parents would often be brought up largely by a nanny or a servant (who in parts of the US may well have been a slave) and would pretty much only see their parents at breakfast and briefly in the evening before bed. And when they were older they were often sent away to boarding schools.

So it's very possible that someone like Scarlett wouldn't really have bonded with her children.

many people (wrongly) view the novel and the film adaptation as historically accurate.

It is historically accurate in its representation of the experiences and point of view of a particular class or group of people. It's not an academic critique of the whole Southern way of life or of the North vs South, federal vs state, dispute. It's fiction. Fiction explores different characters and how they react to events. The author, rightly, doesn't tell readers what to think about it all. She presents her story and allows readers to make up their own minds.

In any discussion of GWTW? The topic is Scarlett’s first two children. GWTW is racist, but that’s not all it is, and I think we can talk about two white child characters without having to issue disclaimers about race, slavery, the Reconstruction, the Ku Klux Klan, et cetera. We’re adults in the twenty-first century. Surely we’re past the point where we feel the need to announce we believe slavery is wrong and racism is bad, as if those are radical stances and someone might think we agree with slavery and racism if we don’t explicitly denounce them.

It is historical fiction which ought to at least attempt to recreate a particular time and place with some fidelity to reality (as far as that is possible). Slavery was never a benevolent system. Creating a fictional world in which it is presented as such is deeply dishonest.

As I wrote above, I am impressed by the characterisation of Scarlett in the novel and the film. She is a complex and flawed figure. It's possible to appreciate that element of GWTW (among others) and also reject its ideological underpinnings.

it was written in the late 1920s whilst MM had an ankle injury.
So its a 1920s perspective on the 1860s.

I'm sure MM had stories of the war handed down to her but also the 1910/1920s definitely saw a revival of nostalgia of the Lost Cause (see also Birth of a Nation & Mildred Rutherford & Daughters of the Confederacy).

I think one of the most interesting elements of the book is how it shows the impact of the war on women and families.

Historical fiction is exactly that. The fidelity to reality is that it’s written from the perspective of wealthy white people, that was their reality.

It is historical fiction which ought to at least attempt to recreate a particular time and place with some fidelity to reality

It is reality for the particular set of people she was writing about.

What would you have had her do? Break off the narrative at intervals to insert authorial pronouncements about how bad slavery was? Introduce another character solely for the purpose of telling them all how wrong they were? It's not a novelist's business to tell her readers or her characters what to think. Or should she not have written the book at all?

Part of creating a fictional world set in an actual time and place is to represent it with a degree of accuracy, insofar as that is possible. Obviously, Margaret Mitchell couldn't know exactly what it was like to live on a plantation in the antebellum South or what living through the Civil War and its aftermath really felt like. Some of the details seem historically accurate and genuinely fascinating. But some are simply false and can't be explained as simply representing the characters' perspectives. Slaveowners were under no illusion about the institution of slavery. They may have believed that it was their right to enslave other human beings, but they were entirely aware of the brutality inherent in the system. It would have been interesting for Mitchell to explore the contradictions of the characters' belief systems and personal relationships, but she seems blind to them.

I would compare GWTW to a novel like Jonathan Littell's The Kindly Ones. In that novel, a former SS officer relates his experiences during the war, including his involvement in atrocities. The character is not a caricature of evil, he is a complex figure who is absolutely monstrous but also entirely human. To me he seems a convincing character. Although he is unrepentant of his crimes, nothing in the novel glorifies his actions. If there were a hypothetical novel about such a figure whose actions were entirely justified by the novelist, I would find it as problematic as I do GWTW.

They may have believed that it was their right to enslave other human beings, but they were entirely aware of the brutality inherent in the system.

And you know this how? I suspect wealthy white women in the 1860s were shielded from that brutality, as they were shielded from much else. Judging period pieces by contemporary standards never works well. Given that there were probably people still alive with first hand memories of the 1860s when GWTW was written, it’s not unreasonable that Mitchell was able to draw on those memories which inevitably would be one sided.

There is a great deal of archival material available if you are interested, including diaries and memoirs of former slaveowners. I think you're absolutely right that Mitchell would have heard a biased and skewed perspective of the 1860s, and that perspective obviously informed her work.

The Kindly Ones was written in 2006 and therefore almost certainly influenced by current sensibilities.

GWTW was written for the sensibilities of 1920s America (or a section of America at least).

Approximately the same amount of time had passed between the end of the Civil War and the writing of GWTW and the end of WWII and The Kindly Ones. That was one reason for my comparison. Although the view of the Civil War ("the war of Northern aggression") held by some white residents of the American South would have been similar to Mitchell's in the 1920s and 1930s, it was by no means the only perspective.

I dare say part of the reason you referred to the Kindly Ones will be linked to its modern outlook.

The reason GWTW was very popular when it was published will be because it reflected back some of what some Americans wanted to believe as regards the Confederacy. So it was in step with it's time and for its intended audience.

MM was writing for herself and her friends. She wasn't writing for 2026.

It's not a history book and shouldnt be presented as such. It's just an interesting window into a certain outlook from a person with perhaps a limited view on her history.

It survives perhaps because she crafted an interesting heroine and (IMV) because of the status of the film (the search for Scarlett, the cost of production, the picture quality, the costumes, the Oscars etc). I rather think the treatment of Hattie McDaniel by the Academy Awards committee is one of the most famous things about it now.

Part of creating a fictional world set in an actual time and place is to represent it with a degree of accuracy, insofar as that is possible.@everydayroutine
Why? Is that a rule for writing FICTION.

It would have been interesting for Mitchell to explore the contradictions of the characters' belief systems and personal relationships, but she seems blind to them.

It's not what she wanted to write about. Or possibly what she felt competent to write about. And GWTW is long enough as it is. She couldn't include everything.

Novelists write what they feel drawn to write, not what other people think they ought to write. I hate the modern buzzword 'authentic' (even autocorrect doesn't like it) but a novelist must believe in his or her work and characters or they won't come to life.

Although the view of the Civil War ("the war of Northern aggression") held by some white residents of the American South would have been similar to Mitchell's in the 1920s and 1930s, it was by no means the only perspective.

Nobody thinks it was.

Are they both her children ?

Yes. In the novel Scarlett had 3 children - Wade from her marriage to Charles, Ella from her marriage to Frank and Bonnie from her marriage to Rhett.

Wade was described as a sensitive child and an annoyance to Scarlett really, as was poor Ella. She didn’t love either of their fathers. And Poor Bonnie Blue Butler.