50. GONE with the WIND

Margaret Mitchell 1936

A historical romance of epic and dramatic proportions, set in the South during the Civil War. This classic gave us the two most unforgettable and adored characters in American literature: Scarlett O'Hara and Rhett Butler. Scarlett is a Southern Belle who is charming and attractive but is also selfish, self-centered and relentless who loved a man already taken, married three men: two she didn't love, and the third, she didn't know she loved. Rhett, Scarlett's dashing rescuer, intelligent, utterly confident and a self-made man who truly loved Scarlett until it was too much to bear.

"Scarlett O'Hara was not beautiful, but men seldom realized it when caught by her charm as the Tarleton twins were."

"For Ashley was born of a line of men who used their leisure for thinking, not doing, for spinning brightly colored dreams that had in them no touch of reality...He looked on people, and he neither liked nor disliked them. He looked on life and was neither heartened nor saddened. He accepted the universe and his place in it for what they were and, shrugging, turned to his music and books and his better world."

"Beneath his choleric exterior Gerald O'Hara had the tenderest of hearts...It had never occurred to him that only one voice was obeyed on the plantation--the soft voice of his wife Ellen. It was a secret he would never learn, for everyone from Ellen down to the stupidest field hand was in a tacit and kindly conspiracy to keep him believing that his word was law."

"Let's don't be too hot headed and let's don't have any war. Most of the misery of the world has been caused by wars. And when the wars were over, no one ever knew what they were all about."

"What Melanie did was no more than all Southern girls were taught to do--to make those about them feel at ease and pleased with themselves. It was this happy feminine conspiracy which made Southern society so pleasant. Women knew that a land where men were contented, uncontradicted and safe in possession of unpunctured vanity was likely to be a very pleasant place for women to live."

"Scarlett had thrown herself on the bed and was sobbing at the top of her voice, sobbing for her lost youth and the pleasures of youth that were denied her, sobbing with the indignation and despair of a child who once could get anything she wanted by sobbing and now knows that sobbing can no longer help her. She burrowed her head in the pillow and cried and kicked with her feet at the tufted counterpane."

"The Cause didn't seem sacred to her. The war didn't seem to be a holy affair, but a nuisance that killed men senselessly and cost money and made luxuries hard to get."

"He looked, and was a man of lusty and unashamed appetites. He had an air of utter assurance, of displeasing insolence about him, and there was a twinkle of malice in his bold eyes as he stared at Scarlett, until finally, feeling his gaze, she looked toward him."

"When I first met you, I thought: There is a girl in a million. She isn't like these other silly little fools who believe in everything their mammas tell them and act on it, no matter how they fee. And conceal all their feelings and desires and little heartbreaks behind a lot of sweet words. I thought: Miss O'Hara is a girl of rare spirit. She knows what she wants and she doesn't mind speaking her mind--or throwing vases."

""Mrs. Charles Hamilton--one hundred and fifty dollars--in gold."
A sudden hush fell on the crowd both at the mention of the sum and at the name. Scarlett was so startled she could not even move."

"There was something exciting about him that she could not analyze, something different from any man she had ever known. There was something breath-taking in the grace of his big body which made his very entrance into a room like an abrupt physical impact, something in the impertinence and bland mockery of his dark eyes that challenged her spirit to subdue him."

"Scarlett, our Southern way of living is as antiquated as the feudal system of the Middle Ages. The wonder is that it's lasted as long as it has. It has to go and it's going now."

"But, Scarlett, you need kissing badly. That's what's wrong with you. All your beaux have respected you too much, though God knows why, or they have been too afraid of you to really do right by you. The result is that you are unendurably uppity. You should be kissed and by someone who knows how."

"This was an inferno of pain and smell and noise and hurry--hurry--hurry! The Yankees are coming! The Yankees are coming!"

"Hunger gnawed at her empty stomach again and she said aloud: As God is my witness, and God is my witness, the Yankees aren't going to lick me. I'm going to live through this, and when it's over, I'm never going to be hungry again. No, nor any of my folks. If I have to steal or kill - as God is my witness, I'm never going to be hungry again."

"Why was Scarlett O'Hara, the belle of the County, the sheltered pride of Tara, tramping down this rough road almost barefoot? Her little feet were made to dance, not to limp, her tiny slippers to peep daringly from under bright silks, not to collect sharp pebbles and dust. She was born to be pampered and waited upon, and here she was, sick and ragged, driven by hunger to hunt for food in the gardens of her neighbors."

"For 'tis the only thing in the world that lasts...and to anyone with a drop of Irish blood in them the land they live on is like their mother...'Tis the only thing worth working for, fighting for, dying for."

"You wanted something from me and you wanted it badly enough to put on quite a show. Why didn't you come out in the open and tell me what it was? You'd have stood a much better chance of getting it, for if there's one virtue I value in women it's frankness. But no, you had to come jingling your earbobs and outing and frisking like a prostitute with a prospective client."

"She could talk to him about almost everything, with no care for concealing her motives or her real opinions and she never ran out of things to say as she did with Frank--or Ashley, if she must be honest with herself."

"The world can't lick us but we can lick ourselves by longing too hard for things we haven't got any more--and by remembering too much. Yes, Will will do well by Suellen and by Tara."

"We're not wheat, we're buckwheat. When a storm comes along it flattens ripe wheat because it's dry and can't bend with the wind. But ripe buckwheat's got sap in it and it bends. And when the wind has passed, it springs up almost as straight and strong as before. We aren't a stiff-necked tribe. We're mighty limber when a hard wind's blowing, because we know it pays to be limber. When trouble comes we bow to the inevitable without any mouthing, and we work and we smile and we bide our time. And we play along with the lesser folks and we take what we can get from them. And when we're strong enough, we kick the folks whose necks we've climbed over. That, my child, is the secret of the survival."

"He drew a short breath and said lightly but softly:
"My dear, I don't give a damn.""

"After all, tomorrow is another day."