Gone With the Wind - Margaret Mitchell (Week 1)

I decided that my progress has been so slow in reading this book, that I had better do weekly updates, just to make myself feel productive. Please don't get the wrong impression. I am thoroughly enjoying this novel. It is extremely well-written, filled to capacity with rich historical detail about the South in the 1860's, and tops it off with the guilty pleasure of Scarlett's histrionics and drama. But the words are teeny tiny, and the book is over 1,000 pages long, and I've been distracted. So here I sit a week later, with only a hundred and fifty pages under my belt.

Just a few observations thus far. First, for all you movie fans (myself included), this will be a delightful treat for you. There are many similarities between the book and the movie, but there are little nuggets of fun in the book you didn't get on the silver screen. You find out that Gerald O'Hara acquired Tara through a card game. You learn about the courtship of Gerald and Ellen, the wild Irishman and the well-bred French woman. You find out that Scarlett had a child by her first husband, Charles Hamilton. But the most rewarding bonus for me was getting real insight into Scarlett. In the movie, I just wanted to smack the girl. On the written page, we have the benefit of knowing her inner thoughts.

Which brings me to my second observation. I have alot more empathy for Scarlett than I did before reading the book. She is a 16 year old, and like most girls this age, she is self-centered and dramatic. I can't fault her for that. I was the same way at that age. She is also feisty, independent, outspoken, and prefers to buck tradition and go her own way. I like that. The expectations of unmarried females during this era would have driven me up the wall too. If you are unmarried, you can't eat in public, you should faint now and again to appear in need of saving, you should never appear too intelligent, and there are strict rules of attire, depending on the time of day. Ugh. I also found quite touching her devotion to her parents. Here is a line that struck me, when the O' Hara family was doing their evening prayers:

"As always since childhood, this was, for Scarlett, a moment for adoration of Ellen, rather than the Virgin".

There are some amazing quotes from this book that have stood the test of time. I have many many favorites that I will repeat in the course of a day, even now. Each week, I will leave you with my favorites that I've read so far. This week's is a classic, but it always gets to me, perhaps because I was raised on a farm, where land is king. This was a lecture that Gerald O'Hara gave Scarlett, who didn't quite get it:

"Land is the only thing in the world that amounts to anything", he shouted, his thick, short arms making wide gestures of indignation, "for 'tis the only thing in this world that lasts, and don't you be forgetting it! 'Tis the only thing worth working for, worth fighting for - worth dying for."