The Movie, the Book,and Reality

Rating: 10/10 (14 February 2015)

Most movies can be discussed without comparing them to reality, but not so "Gone With the Wind," owing to its paternalistic depiction of slavery as something benign, in which the slaves are so well-treated that you would almost think their Southern masters were doing them a favor. The closest thing to slave beating is when Scarlett slaps Prissy in exasperation. And an unnamed Ku Klux Klan is subtly presented (without sheets) as a force for good. Indeed, this movie is to slavery what "The Godfather" (1972) is to organized crime: a glorification of something despicable, a beautification of something ugly.
And yet the movie is tame compared to the book, which required a great deal of sanitizing to make it suitable for a Hollywood production. As an example of the sort of thing that had to be excised in the process of turning this book into a movie, there is the passage where Rhett Butler admits to Scarlett that he shot a black man for insulting a white woman: "He was uppity to a lady, and what else could a Southern gentleman do?"
In comparing the movie first to reality and then to the book, we get something of a paradox. By avoiding much of the really offensive material in the book, the movie becomes less realistic than its source, because the racist sentiments expressed in the book accurately reflect the racist sentiments of the white South at the time. However much we might deplore Rhett's murder of an African American, such things undoubtedly happened in those days.
What is less clear is whether "Gone With the Wind" is feminist or traditionalist in its attitude toward women. On the one hand, Scarlett is portrayed as strong, resourceful, and shrewd, a woman who chafes at the ridiculous restraints placed on women during those times, and who breaks those restraints one by one as the story progresses. On the other hand, she is portrayed as wrong-headed. Three men, her father, Ashley, and then Rhett, seem to know better than she does what will make her happy (i.e., marrying someone who is like her), but she simply will not listen.
She is so wrong-headed, in fact, that she needs to be raped. In the movie, we see Rhett carry her up the stairs against her will, followed by a scene the next morning where she is happily reflecting on the night before. What is ironic is that the book was written by a woman. In "The Forsyte Saga," on the other hand, another man rapes his wife for similar reasons, being frustrated by his wife's love for another man. But in that case, the rape is so traumatic that it not only ruins their marriage, but also ruins things for the next generation. And this novel was written by a man, John Galsworthy, also in the early part of the twentieth century. In short, the novel written by a man was more feminist than the one written by a woman.
Back before the movie version had been made, when people read the novel without knowing how it would end, they probably thought Scarlett would eventually realize how much she really loved Rhett, and they would live happily ever after; or, failing that, she would be punished for her stubbornness. And indeed she is. She realizes just how much she loves Rhett only at the point where it is too late. To this extent, the movie is faithful to the book. But what those who read the novel did not expect was the destruction of Rhett. And this difference in what was expected and the actual outcome is the biggest difference between the movie and the book.
At the end of the movie, when Rhett leaves Scarlett, we feel relieved. He is through with her, and it is as if he has finally been cured of a sickness. There is the hint of a sneer when he tells her that he does not give a damn what happens to her, and there is a spring in his step as he heads out the door. But the depiction of Rhett in the novel is very different: "He looked at her steadily with dark eyes that were heavy with fatigue and there was no leaping light in them . He was sunken in his chair, his suit wrinkling untidily against his thickening waist, every line of him proclaiming the ruin of a fine body and the coarsening of a strong face. Drink and dissipation had done their work ."
When Scarlett finally accepts that Rhett is leaving her, she says, "Oh, my darling, if you go, what shall I do?" Unlike the movie, where the tone of Rhett's voice and the look on his face as he makes his parting remark is almost triumphant, making us want to say, "Good for him," in the book, he is defeated, and his words are full of resignation and regret: "For a moment he hesitated as if debating whether a kind lie were kinder in the long run than the truth. Then he shrugged. ' I wish I could care what you do or where you go, but I can't.' He drew a short breath and said lightly but softly: 'My dear, I don't give a damn.'"
Whereas the movie stays with the notion that Scarlett is wrong-headed and gets what she deserves, the ending of the novel makes us realize that it was actually Rhett who was wrong-headed, and that he is the one who really pays the price for it. If Scarlett was foolish in thinking she could change Ashley regarding his tendency to spend a lot of time reading books and listening to music, how much more foolish was it for Rhett to think he could marry a woman who loved another man and somehow change that?