The greatest fantasy novel ever written | Gone with the Wind by Margaret Mitchell

[00:00:00]Hello, I'm Ollie and this is Criminaly where I talk about crime, pop, horror, that kind of thing. Today, the greatest fantasy novel ever written. Here's my review of Gone with the Wind by Margaret Mitchell.

[00:00:25]So, I haven't done what I would call a difficult review for some time. And by difficult, I mean a review of a book that has many good qualities, but also has many bad qualities. A book that is troubling and and because of that difficult to talk about. But, I think that is definitely the case with Gone with the Wind. And I did question to myself when I finished reading it whether I wanted to make a review video of it or not because I think this is a book that is much loved by many people, but is also a book that I think definitely doesn't, you know, necessarily deserve that love. Let's put it that way. There are many things about this book that I think are absolutely fantastic. There were other things about this book that I found to be completely abhorrent.

[00:01:12]And I'll talk about both in this video and give my opinion of it. And I guess I wanted to start as well by saying that I consider this to be, I suppose, an outsider's opinion. When I've looked, and I did something I don't normally do when I'm going to review a book, I actually looked at other people's reviews of this book on on YouTube. And what I discovered was that the vast majority of the of the reviews that came up when I searched for Gone with the Wind book reviews were reviews from Americans, and in particular Americans from the Southern States.

[00:01:48]I don't know, you know, why that is. I suspect this book is probably Well, definitely more read in America and almost certainly, you know, I guess more read in in the southern states because of its southern setting.

[00:02:00]Um but I found that interesting. So I So I think of, you know, as someone who is coming from completely outside of that um of that area um with a very different view, a British view of of of the book.

[00:02:13]Um where And this is a book that is like absolutely cemented in American popular culture, both the book and the movie.

[00:02:22]And it is, you know, to an extent over here as well. It's certainly a book and movie that many people will have heard of, but it's not like nearly so big a part of our popular culture as I think it is in the US. So an an interesting book just because of its popularity. And what I have to say about it to an extent comes down to that. It comes down to how this has become an important book because it's so popular, as much as anything else. And as someone who really enjoys popular fiction and the impact of popular fiction, I thought it was an would be an interesting book for me to to talk about. And a book that I wanted to talk about because of that, despite the fact that it's not necessarily going to be easy to talk about. Anyway, you can be the judges of how I do. Um so, this is a book that was originally published in the 1930s. And it was, I think, you know, immediately quite successful or very successful. The movie version followed not that much later, a few years later. And, you know, with that movie version as well, it really has become, as I said, part of American culture.

[00:03:28]Um to the extent that as as recently as 2014, in a survey I'll forget who did the survey now, but there was a survey of American households, uh Gone with the Wind was named the second favorite book in America after the Bible. So 2014, not long ago to to all 12 years ago.

[00:03:47]And, you know, 80 odd years after the publication of the book. So, you know, that shows what a a a a big book in terms of its impact this is as well as clearly being big in terms of its pages.

[00:03:59]This This edition has over 1,000 pages.

[00:04:03]Um So, let me summarize very quickly the plot um in case you don't know it, un- unlikely as that may be. Um but there were certainly details of the plot that that I didn't know. I had kind of a rough idea of what this book was about, but I didn't know some of the detail. Um one of the things I didn't know is how young Scarlett O'Hara is at the start of the book. She's either 15 or 16, I forget now, but she is you know, she's young. So, it starts with Scarlett O'Hara in pre-Civil War or antebellum, as it tends to be called, um Georgia.

[00:04:33]She lives on a plantation, so her father, who is Irish, is a plantation owner. They have slaves who work on the plantation um and slaves who work in in the household as well. Um And she lives a very blessed life. All All she has to worry about basically is who who she's going to try and marry.

[00:04:52]And there's one boy in particular, Ashley, who she's particularly taken with, but she's um you know, she's being courted by um by, you know, a number of different guys and up from, you know, kind of local families and things like that. So, her family are you know, very much part of the establishment where she is. The The plantation they live on is is called Tara. Um and she is, you know, she's kind of a like a kind of society girl almost. Um And And she is also, it must be said, you know, very selfish, quite shallow at the start of the book.

[00:05:25]Um What then happens is, you know, we you kind of get them rumblings of the of the Civil War um and of, you know, as the as the Southerners see it, you know, the Yankees trying to impose their their rules on the Southern way of life. Um And the Civil War, you know, eventually erupts. Um you do get to meet Rhett Butler, you know, fairly early on in the book as well, before before the war. Um, he's a lot older than Scarlett, he's in his 30s. Um, and you get her, you know, her kind of sense of him. But really she's, you know, she doesn't really consider him as a as a possible suitor or anything like that at at that point.

[00:06:00]She's only interested in Ashley.

[00:06:02]Um, and she does end up marrying, um, fairly early on in the book, in fact, and and and has a child. Um, and Ashley ends up marrying someone else, a a friend of Scarlett's, and she's kind of a bit cut up about that.

[00:06:16]Anyway, the war then starts, um, and Scarlett's world is is shattered, and as as the war progresses, things become more and more desperate for her. And you end up with this long sequence, which I thought was the the best sequence of the book, um, where she's just trying to survive. She's trying to, you know, maintain the the the plantation, maintain Tara, where she lives, and cope with all the things that are, uh, you know, all the devastation around her.

[00:06:43]Um, and then you then come through the war period and into the reconstruction period, where, you know, there there's an attempt to to rebuild, um, the South.

[00:06:53]Um, and through all of this, you've got this kind of, you know, romances.

[00:06:56]There's kind of this love love triangle going on in the All all Scarlett wants is Ashley. She's devoted to this this young guy, Ashley, um, who as I said is married someone else, but Rhett is kind of always on the scene, and you know that something's going to happen with Rhett in the end.

[00:07:14]Um, so that's kind of the plot. Let's talk about the characters a bit, because I thought Scarlett and Rhett were absolutely fantastic characters, both of them. So Scarlett, as I said at the start of the book, is quite annoying, like deliberately quite annoying. She's very shallow. She only cares about herself. And as things progress, she comes becomes more and more determined to, um, you know, to to to resist, to maintain her her her family home, basically. She becomes completely committed to that. As a mother, she's a bit of a disaster.

[00:07:49]Um she's definitely an interesting female character, particularly for a book from the 1930s, in that she doesn't have any of the the traits that you would probably think that would be, you know, considered to be um appropriate for a woman to have in the 1930s. She's like she's very flirty, for example. And when she does have a kid, she pretty much ignores the kid. She's a She's a pretty awful mother. Um and but but she also has this huge amount of grit and determination. And she's, you know, she grows impressively and changes a lot as a character, you know, through the course of the book. Um in in ways that I thought were were interesting and I I guess realistic as well, in that, you know, you really feel like you go on a journey with Scarlett as a character.

[00:08:35]Rhett is a very interesting character as well. He's kind of a He's a bit of a rogue. Um he reminded me a lot of of Han Solo. I suspect that Han Solo was in some ways based on on Rhett, in that he's, you know, he's a he's a little bit dodgy. And through the kind of Civil War period, he's a blockade runner. So, he's someone essentially a smuggler like Han Solo, who is smuggling trying to get stuff through the um the Yankee blockade to bring stuff into the Southern States that people want. Initially, it's like luxury goods, but it ends up being, you know, more um kind of staple goods as as the book progresses.

[00:09:12]And he is someone who is completely unashamed about the fact that he's making a lot of money out of doing this as well.

[00:09:19]Um So, he was a also a fascinating character. And then there's a whole cast of other characters as well, as you'd expect for a book this long.

[00:09:28]All of whom are interesting in [clears throat] in different, you know, in different regards.

[00:09:33]So, let's talk now quickly about Let me talk quickly about the problems with the book. Um and then I'll talk about the kind of three different types of reviews of this book that I found when I was searching for reviews of it.

[00:09:45]So, the problem with this book, and it's a it's not like this is a little problem, it's a huge problem, it's a glaring problem, is that this book is it founded on the on the belief that slavery was effectively a natural order, that black people are less intelligent, less capable than white people, and that black people are better off if white people are telling them what to do, if if they are enslaved.

[00:10:19]And this is a view that is held by all of the white people in the book, but also by many of the black characters. So, the you get this kind of idyllic image of Tara as a as a plantation in the pre-war period, where you've got all these happy slaves, happily working away in the house and in the fields. They're very grateful for Scarlett's father, who is a you know, a kind you know, a kind slave owner.

[00:10:48]Um and they are completely happy with their lot. And as the Civil War starts happening and they become freed, you get effectively two groups of black characters in this book. You either get black characters who can't handle the fact that they are no longer enslaved and go completely wild and commit crimes and you know, so on and so forth. You know, rape in particular being a kind of constant theme through the book.

[00:11:12]Or you get black characters who stay with their previous slave owners because they are happier just doing that. So, a lot of the kind of house slaves in in Tara, for example, stick around and continue to you know, to to help Scarlett out as she tries to to rebuild Tara.

[00:11:31]And that's just an an an appalling you know an an appalling assumption. It reminded me in a strange way of the Gor novels by John Norman. So if you don't know these, these are a series of fantasy novels that started in the 60s um and I think he's still I think he's still alive and still writing them now.

[00:11:49]They've been going for ages but they were particularly popular in the 1970s.

[00:11:53]And they were popular in the 1970s I think as part of kind of a backlash against the feminist movement. And the premise of the Gor novels is that they're like kind of fantasy books where this guy from Earth so a guy from 1960s Earth gets transported to Counter-Earth Gor which is this um planet where women are happily enslaved to men. Women are happily subservient to men in every single way you know sexually but in every every other way as well.

[00:12:22]And they're much much happier as a result of that than the women that that the hero Tarl Cabot has no not Earth.

[00:12:31]And you get this sense in you know that the sense in the Gor books is that this is the natural order. This is just the way things are supposed to be. And that's the sense I got in Gone with the Wind as well. That Margaret Mitchell believed that the natural order of things the way things should be is that black people should be enslaved to white people.

[00:12:52]Um worth mentioning as well the Ku Klux Klan feature quite heavily in this book in the reconstruction section of it and are a a basically applauded. They're certainly not criticized and where they do come in for any criticism of the book the way the book ends up positioning that the role of the Ku Klux Klan is that they are they are like they they're kind of quite noble guys who don't have any choice but to do what they do. And the reason they don't have any choice but to do what they do is that white women keep on putting themselves in dangerous situations and getting raped by black men. And so, the Ku Klux Klan have no option but to go and lynch those black men. I mean, it's just mind-bogglingly appalling.

[00:13:37]Um the level of racism in this book is off the charts. I made a video a while ago about another plantation book, Dragonar by Rupert Gilchrist, where I said that it was the most racist book I've never read I I'd ever read.

[00:13:48]That is no longer true. Gone with the Wind is more racist than that book.

[00:13:53]Um So, let me talk now then quickly about the the three different types of reviews of this book that I uncovered or just you know I watched when I searched on YouTube.

[00:14:04]And I'm not going to name any of the reviews or anything like that. I don't I'm not sure if it'd be appropriate to do that. But, basically it fell into into three camps. One, and this was probably the smallest camp, was people who really loved the book, who who acknowledged that there is problems with the language in the book in that you know like the N-word is used a phenomenal amount of times in this book.

[00:14:25]And uh there's a standing word that is used, um which is used even more than the N-word. That's kind of like the what the polite people That's the term the polite people use rather than the N-word.

[00:14:37]So, there's a huge amount of racist language in this book. And And there are at least some reviews where people say yeah you know it's a really great book, um and I recognize that there's language in it that would be offensive to some people nowadays, but that's just how things were in you know in the in the Civil War period. And And you know And even in the 1930s when Margaret Mitchell wrote this book, you know it's it's just language. It's It's a true depiction of um you know of the time.

[00:15:01]So, that's one type of review. The other type of review is people who hate the book. Um And I will mention someone here actually. So, Brian from Bookish did an excellent review of this book where he talks about how much he hates it.

[00:15:14]And he acknowledges that there are some good qualities to this book, but he says that he hates it because of the impact it's had on um on like American society and I'll come back to that at the end of at the end of the video at the close of the end of the video.

[00:15:28]And then the the third type which is probably the most common type is somewhere in the middle.

[00:15:32]And this is people who really enjoy the book for the things that are good about it and as I said there are many good things about this book. It is incredibly readable. For a thousand page book it just flew by for me. It's a really interesting read. The characters are great. It's got some great set piece action sequences like that. It's you know it's a genuinely enjoyable book in many ways.

[00:15:56]So people who you know enjoyed it for that reason but acknowledge that it is a you know it is a racist book and there are many things not just the language but many things that are problematic about it.

[00:16:07]And interestingly quite a lot of those people and I've seen this in in comments as well said oh you know I read this book when I was a lot younger. I think at least one person said it was the first you know like grown up book that they read which is I'm kicking the leg to it it's quite impressive.

[00:16:22]Um and and when they read it when they were younger they didn't realize quite how you know quite how objectionable it is.

[00:16:30]Um but on rereading it they can they can see that. So people who and I to an extent I think I fall into this camp myself who have a lot of admiration for what Margaret Mitchell did with this book. It was her first novel and it is you know it's a real it's a real potboiler basically you know it really does suck you in and and the character work you know for for Rhett and Scarlett is fantastic.

[00:16:56]Um but there's just so much that's awful about this book. Um that it it's it's kind of impossible to walk by that.

[00:17:05]I couldn't put it down but I was glad when I finished it let's put it that way. Um >> [sighs and gasps] >> So So right we're nearly there. Let me talk now then So let me reflect back on what I said at the start of the of the video.

[00:17:18]That this is the greatest fantasy novel ever written. So, I think there's there's kind of three things I want to say. So, A, I think in many ways it is a great book. It's definitely a very well-written book. And it explores some um you know, it's got really interesting character work and explores interesting themes as well. It it's interesting as a book because it is written from the side of the losers because it is written very much from the Confederate point of view rather than the Yankee point of view. I think that makes it in itself an interesting artifact.

[00:17:50]Um it also, I think, is interesting in that it feels in some ways like the blueprint for many modern fantasy novels. If you think of kind of YA romance-y type books, a lot of them feel very similar to Gone with the Wind in terms of having a a central female character who's young at the start of the book, who grows throughout the book, who goes on a bit of a journey, who has to dig into her inner strength, who has a love triangle going on. So, you've got, you know, kind of the the good boy and the bad boy in in Ashley and Rhett. Um many of those things are still, you know, tropes that they are tropes that we see time and again in in modern fantasy novels um and romantic novels in particular. And this sense of, you know, conflict and and all of that kind of thing. I think I I I was really struck by that in this book.

[00:18:44]But the other reason I call it a fantasy novel is that, as I said, the premise of this book is that black people are better off everyone is better off if black people are enslaved. If the if the situation that we uh exist in is the antebellum situation, the situation before the Civil War. And if only the Yankees hadn't tried to, you know, hadn't hadn't you know, objected and hadn't freed the slaves, everything would be better. America would be better.

[00:19:11]Um And that is the the problem with that is well, there's lots of problems with it, isn't there? But the book paints that idyllic picture of pre-Civil War Tara.

[00:19:24]And and shows the negative impacts of being freed.

[00:19:30]Well, you know, Margaret Mitchell's perceived negative impacts of being freed on the slaves and all the turmoil that comes because of the Civil War.

[00:19:38]>> [sighs] >> And and all all Scarlett wants to do throughout the book by maintaining Tara, um you know, rebuilding Tara is to get back to that pre-war state. To get back to that happy blissful state where black people are once again enslaved to white people.

[00:19:57]And clearly that is well, a a and it's a it's an appalling concept, you know, for for the whole book.

[00:20:04]But also it's based on a complete fantasy because the you know, the the glorious pre you know, pre-Civil War Tara is not the reality at all. In In reality, slaves were subjected to appalling treatment. Now, there may have been some slave owners who weren't completely appalling and you know, uh Scarlett's father is depicted as being, you know, that kind of kindly slave owner.

[00:20:29]But regardless of how they treated people, they owned other human beings, which is in itself appalling. Um so you have this fantasy that Margaret Mitchell keeps on harking back [laughter] to of how things would be better. And I think the problem with this book being as popular as it as it is and and Brian touches on this in in his video. It's kind of one of his central arguments is that that notion of the happy slave, the contented slave, that this is the bright way to do things has kind of to an extent become embedded in American society. Along with this other notion of the kind of gallant southerner, that you know, that that southern gentleman who is fighting against the oppression, you know, the Yankee oppression. And who is honorable and is just trying to protect his womenfolk and and so on and so forth. And as one of my one of my patrons Dallas pointed out as well, this book also completely ignores the fact that essentially the Civil War was a lot of working-class men dying to protect the wealth of rich men. Which you know, but is basically the case for every every single war ever.

[00:21:46]Um but this book doesn't touch on that at all. It doesn't touch on the you know, it doesn't ever question the the right, you know, that that southern that that white southerners have the right to to own slaves. It's never even debated. It's all just about this idyllic southern experience. Um and how Scarlett wants to get back to that and how that is you know, how that is the right way for things to be. And if you think about the history of the United States in all the years since the Civil War, so all the decades that have passed since then and all the things that have happened, there has been continuously, I think underlying everything else, this sense of racial tension. As people of color in the states have gradually got more rights over the years through the the Civil Rights period and and you know, beyond that. Albeit some of those rights seem to be being eroded at the moment.

[00:22:41]Through all that time, there's been at least a portion of the white population that feels like in order for for people of color to have more rights, white people need to have less rights. That in some way their rights are being taken away by them taken away from them in the same way that the characters in in Gone with the Wind feel like their rights are being taken away from them. And I I think there's this this sense of this idyllic antebellum past as something that, you know, at least some people, hopefully a very small proportion of the population, want to get back to. But the thing that that that Gone with the Wind does, and I think maybe this is why in some ways it is a [clears throat] comforting book to people, and a book that, you know, many people still love. And I think you know, as I said earlier, a lot of the people who I've seen who said, you know, they they read the book when they were younger and they really loved it. When they've read it later on in life, they've realized that there are some some problems with it.

[00:23:41]I think though there's a there's a comfort here in this depiction that Gone with the Wind gives of black and white people living together harmoniously in that antebellum period.

[00:23:52]Now, clearly that is, you know, based entirely on fantasy, on a very offensive fantasy, um but it, you know, it's nevertheless there. So, this is a book that um you know, that that ignores all of that racial tension by saying that there is a way for black and white people to live together happily. Now, clearly its answer to that problem is an appalling answer because the you know, its answer is slavery, but I think it is there, and there's this, you know, this sense throughout, particularly with the character um of Mammy, who's the, you know, a maid who works at Tara, and who has been, you know, who who um who's known and known throughout her life. It's really the relationship between her and Scarlett that embodies this in the film. That sense of of harmoniousness, but that that harmony only exists because Mammy is quite happy to continue being a slave to to to Scarlett's family. Um so, I think that's the, you know, that is the great fantasy of this book. Is that is this you know, this this happy antebellum period and I think that is something you know potentially in this book that has become embedded in American society over the years. This sense that you know maybe things were better better back then in some ways.

[00:25:13]You know people talk you know don't they about you know making America great again and I saw Brian Cranston the the actor being interviewed about it a while ago and saying you know for for people of color in the United States when was there ever a better time for them to be alive than now? When was there ever a time in the history of the states when they had more rights than they do now? So any hawking back any nostalgia and this book is you know this is like plantation nostalgia.

[00:25:44]Any book that hawks any movement that hawks back to a previous period of as being better is in doing so saying that people of color in the states deserve less rights.

[00:25:57]And I definitely think that that is the you know the overall message of this book.

[00:26:02]Anyway I will leave things there.

[00:26:04]Um do let me know your thoughts in the comments. I know a lot of people have very fond memories of this book but I wanted to make this video talking about you know my personal reaction to it. So do let me know what you think in the comments and as always thank you very much for watching. Have you safe and well out there. Hope you're reading good stuff and I'll speak to you again very soon.

[00:26:22]Cheerio.

[00:26:29]>> [music]