Tuulen viemää (1936)

Maybe 3.5 stars.

So, this book has an unlikeable narrator. Scarlett is a classic narcissist. I was warned about this when I started, I quickly saw that it was true. But it's not really an issue if you accept it. Then it becomes a bit of a fun ride about what incredibly selfish thing she will do next.

The best way to read this book is as a historical source about the mentalities that informed the construction of a memory of the Civil War south. It helps greatly in dealing with the racism and gender roles.

There are four principal characters to be concerned with here - Scarlett and Rhett, the two principal protagonists, and Ashley and Mellie, the two supporting protagonists.

Scarlett and Ashley are easy to hate. Scarlett is selfish, entitled and vindictive. Essentially she wants everything to revolve around herself, and if that does not happen, she makes sure that it does. She has three principal concerns - herself, her family plantation - Tara, and Ashley. She also cares a bit about her parents, and has a little bit of concern for others, but that is mostly in the context of how they can be of help to her. And yet, her selfishness drives her to great things, incredible feats of bravery and daring, excellent improvisation, and finally a heroic effort to overcome the restrictions of her gender. Scarlett is easy to hate, but also can be extremely entertaining. Its only when her selfishness becomes delusional that Scarlett is difficult to read. Her obsession with Ashley drives her life to ruin. Her indifference towards her children evokes genuine hate.

Ashley on the other hand is the definition of a 2-dimensional character. Always idealistic, always dreaming, and always useless. Throughout the book he is nothing but a burden - a mental and emotional one on Scarlett, and a physical one on Mellie and to an essence Scarlett. His idiotic inability to settle his awkward relationship with Scarlett leads to great misery for all.

Rhett is contradictory - he is too many things. At the beginning he is the worldly-wise realist who knows the Confederacy is doomed. Then he is the garish opportunist, indulging in greed and vulgar display, rousing anger and opposition. Then he is the sudden patriot. Then once again the opportunistand yet also a closet idealist and yet a collaborator. And then he is Scarlett's love, but always at a distance! Then he is the devoted father! Then the spurned husband. And lastly the disillusioned lover. But logic does not dictate his actions or transformations.

Why was he caught in Atlanta at all if he was so well informed and connected? Why had he not left the Confederacy before? His sudden bout of patriotism is presented as a noble act, and yet this ignores that he left three women, one of them dying, a child and an infant in a war ravaged area in the middle of the night. Why does he display his wealth and get arrested, when his money is in England and he has zero reasons to stay in Reconstruction Atlanta? If he truly loved Scarlett, always, like he claimed later, why did he not make this plain, or talk of marriage, ever? He demonstrated that he could change for his daughter, but never tried to change for Scarlett.

And finally Mellie. She is less a character, and more a caricature. Always loving, calm, trustful, well-mannered, quiet, believing - she is literally too good to be true. If Scarlett was delusional about Ashley, Mellie was delusional about Scarlett and Ashley. Her blindness severely strained credulity.

So overall, while the book is a fascinating read about the South, the characters are severely wanting. And please don't call this a romance novel. ( )

The reader is supposed to care whether two morally loathsome characters (one of them a philandering profiteer and the other a suggestion of Medea and succubus combined) find love together? The facile creed at the center of the novel (like suits like) just doesn't work without at least a glimmer of moral redemption. The drama kept the pages turning, but I suspect I was just aching for the moment one unscrupulous piece of work finally told the other that he didn't give a damn. ( )

This is a big book in every way, not just in its physical size, but also in its long term influence, and the range of issues it considers at length through its descriptive passages and the interactions over a period of years between its leading characters.

By modern standards, and even by the standards of the 1930s when it was published, this book has of course a strong racist element. The white Georgian characters who form the core of this story all clearly regard black people as inherently inferior; they do not for the most part treat them cruelly, but they regard them as wayward children or pets who cannot run their own lives and exist only to serve their white masters. Mammy, the main black character is the single exception to this rule, regarded with respect and affection by everyone, and indeed she is probably the strongest character in the book. But it is important for an understanding of the context to note that, inexplicably to us in the 21st century, Mammy and all the other black characters themselves also regard themselves as having no separate existence apart from service to their white masters, and black house servants (and yes they do use the "n" word to refer to themselves) regard black field servants as an inferior caste on whom they look down in the same way as the white people look down on the blacks as a race.

Modern discussion of this novel centres almost exclusively around its racial element, but there is so much more in here: the horrors of war and a city (Atlanta) under siege; the privations suffered by families trying to make ends meet in a situation of society tearing itself apart in the Civil War (I think perhaps we in Britain don't quite get the impact this had and still in some ways has on American society, as our own Civil War was much longer ago); the impact of what we now call post-traumatic stress disorder on the mental health and conduct of soldiers on both sides, and the ill treatment by both sides of their prisoners of war; and moral dilemmas over the lengths one can and should go to protect one's family and loved ones in a desperate situation, versus wider societal responsbility.

The central character Scarlett O'Hara is often irritating, shallow and selfish, but also capable of strong love and loyalty, strong-willed and resourceful, and very willing to challenge the rigidly stereotypical standards of a society that believed it wrong for women to assert themselves in personal relationships or economic terms. When the former characteristics were to the fore, she reminded me rather of Becky Sharp in Thackeray's Vanity Fair, but Scarlett has more positive features (by the same token, Melanie Hamilton was much like Amelia Sedley in the Thackeray classic, looking for love and security and easily duped). Rhett Butler is the ultimate cynical character and epitome of the man determined to preserve his freedom of action in all circumstances by not committing himself, but also refreshing in his lack of tolerance of the cant and hypocrisy that dominates society's mores. It is ironic that Scarlett and Rhett, while being the central heroes of the novel, regularly flout the conventions and rigid morals of a society with which the author clearly totally identifies. Meanwhile, the other main male character, the cultured and well travelled Ashley Wilkes, with whom Scarlett is in love for almost the whole of the novel, pales into watery insignificance next to these central pairing.

There is much more that could be written about this novel, such as the author's very partial political views of the Reconstruction period after the Civil War, and her seeming complete lack of recognition that slavery was in any way wrong. This will always be a controversial novel, but overall it deserves its reputation as a sweeping epic and flawed masterpiece of American and world literature. ( )

I have decided, after much consideration, to simply leave this book without a star rating.

GWTW played a pivotal role in my youthful desire to be a writer - not, of course, for its literary merits but for its broad storytelling power. I remember watching the film in the late '90s with an elderly great-aunt who had seen it at the cinema in 1939. I remember subsequently finding the doorstop of a book at a small-town fête, and devouring it over a summer on a houseboat drifting through the Straits of Malacca. My pre-teen self had poured my narrative desires into writing cheap adaptations, usually borrowing a Tintin album from the local library and rewriting it into a screenplay, annoyed by what I somehow perceived at 10 years old as a pitiful gender imbalance in that series' characters, but rarely noting the racially problematic elements of the early albums. But GWTW was one of a tranche of works that replaced the Belgian reporter in my mind. Somehow, when I was reading this novel, I was both imagining the scenes as they appeared in the Hollywood masterpiece and also restaging them, sometimes even rescripting them, to suit my viewpoint (surely a superior one, I could assure myself). And at that pivotal halfway point, with that fantastic line ("After all, he's her husband, ain't he?"), Mitchell the soap opera queen had me.

It has been a few years since I watched the film. I can't say I will ever read the novel again. What was once found has now been lost; what was once unclear about the text now seems glaringly evident. Because of course like all young writers I quickly outgrew my misplaced connection to texts. Perhaps sadly, as we all do, I lost the childish ability to find equal critical merit in Thomas Hardy and Sesame Street. GWTW's swirling narrative came to represent all of the excesses of romance, of "historical fiction", of the self-proclaimed epic; all the genres which still delight film producers but which set the tongues of literary snobs aflame. (I'm not saying it's a good thing, but I've given up fighting my pretensions. I'll let you live, you let me live, okay?) Finally, many years removed from its moment, my paperback copy of GWTW, held together with sticky tape, found itself in a box of books being dumped at a take-a-book-leave-a-book cupboard in my neighbourhood.

And still there was more. My 12-year-old self was aware of bigotry, but really only within an Australian context. To me, events in 1860s USA were as obscure as medieval Japan, ancient Rome, or - indeed - 1990s USA! (Yes, Americans, I hate to be the one to break it to you, but the rest of the world finds your culture just as alien and absurd as you do theirs. I'm just the messenger!) I don't remember when I was first told that GWTW was problematic; probably no-one told me, and I discovered it for myself on the interwebs. To a small-town kid on the other side of the world, this was of sociological interest, perhaps even some sympathy as I dealt with my own minority experiences in a very different time and different place. It would be a long time before I could grasp the awesome power of the long hand of history.

Many of the answers to the questions raised by the issue of racism are so fixed in the minds of people. If a work wasn't considered racist by the mainstream 90 years ago, should we demonise the author now? What if there were voices back then (as there were) who called out the book and the film for their portrayals of slavery and the black experience? What if those voices, as in all cases of social change, were initially not loud enough to get past the white noise (pardon the pun) that makes up so much of the majority's cultural understanding of the world? Can an American be forgiven for still enjoying this book despite its historical context? If a work's crime is not so much its content as its potential for prejudice and historical omission, is it fair to take it from the hands of individual readers who may be able to parse the text intelligently? Then again, is it fair to the groups being prejudiced against if the work is available for any old so-and-so? And how do we factor in the experiences of those for whom contemporary America is nearly as distant as America past? The young reader in Malta or Morocco or Malaysia for whom the work will seem as fantastical, as purely fictional, as it did for me on that halcyon summer at the close of the last century?

I am tired of people who claim to have all the answers, yet it is clear that some have more answers than others. My own view is that, in the year 2020, there is just so much other good stuff to enjoy that I can leave GWTW to the side for the rest of my life. It will no doubt remain a part of the tapestry of American culture for decades ahead, and the sheer length of both book and film have propelled it into that "inexhaustible classic" category the world over. I think we must keep the past, if only as a warning sign to the present. But, as the man once said, we may be through with the past but the past ain't through with us. To say that GWTW is purely a good read, to say that it's simply historical guff with no bearing on modern life, to say that it just doesn't take on the same sinister meanings in your household as it does in the greater world... well, I'm not sure we can use those excuses any more. Read it, enjoy it, perhaps even cherish it (perhaps not). But let us never again say we don't know or that we don't notice.

My absolute favorite book of all times. One to be read over and over. ( )