Gone with the Wind

In 1936, the American National Book Award was awarded to Margaret Mitchell's novel «Gone with the Wind». Literary critics and ordinary readers had no doubt that this prestigious award was well-deserved for this outstanding female prose. American prose writers had written about the Civil War between the North and the South before. However, this new novel was fundamentally different from previously published works. The writer created her version of Southern history, which unfolds before the eyes of a beautiful Southern woman who energetically shapes her destiny and survives in an era of social upheaval. The plot of «Gone with the Wind» resembled an adventure novel with a love story, while at the same time, an epic picture of the collapse of planter civilization in the South unfolded before the readers. The novel, written during the «jazz age», was clearly «Victorian» in its style and spirit. The intrigue was that in the literary world, Mitchell was unknown until the publication of her novel. There was an impression that an ordinary housewife somehow created an epic from scratch, which some critics compared to «War and Peace» by Tolstoy.

In fact, Mitchell had writing experience. She began working on her novel in 1926. Before that, Margaret had worked as a journalist at the «Atlanta Journal», writing more than a hundred essays. Many of them were dedicated to Confederate generals and outstanding women of Georgia. While collecting material for her articles, Mitchell studied periodicals from the 60s, military memoirs of Southerners, and reports on military actions in Georgia. The writer had heard her relatives and acquaintances talk about the Civil War since childhood. Both of her grandfathers fought for the Confederacy, her grandmother told Margaret about the siege of Atlanta, and her father, being the chairman of the local historical society, openly despised the Yankees. The theme of the confrontation between the North and the South was deeply absorbed and experienced by Mitchell. Therefore, when reading her novel, the «sense of presence» arises. It creates the impression that the author was a witness to all the events described.

When Mitchell started working on the novel, she did not rush. By that time, she was married to an insurance agent and led a quiet life as a housewife. However, it was precisely her position that allowed her to repeatedly revise individual parts of her future novel, perfecting the text. Mitchell wrote only about what she knew well and was familiar with. As a result, she produced a timeless masterpiece that has forever entered the history of literature.