Autobiographical Aspects In Gone With The Wind By Margret Mitchell

Every great literary work starts with a story that is worthy to be written about. For Margret Mitchell’s world famous novel Gone with the Wind, everything started with her own story, her own beliefs, and character. Certainly, Gone with the Wind could not be called fully autobiographical yet it is difficult to ignore some similarities Scarlett O’Hara and Margaret Mitchell had.

Just like her creation, Mitchel was fun-loving and very charismatic. She was strong-willed and wanted to be independent. Mitchel was one of the first female reporters in the state of Georgia who was running around town in a search of a worthy to write about kind of story. Through her protagonist, she rebelled against the old-fashioned social norms which American society and the South, in particular, bestowed on women of hers and multiple previous generations. Margaret Mitchell creates Scarlett O’Hara and the narrative about her by conveying some of her own qualities, the personalities of her friends and family as well as the life events and experiences of her own.

One of the main similarities connecting Margret Mitchell’s life and Scarlett O’Hara is their families. Margaret Munnerlyn “Peggy” Mitchell was born and lived in Atlanta, the same city Scarlett spent most of her life at. All of her family moved to Atlanta at different times. Just like Scarlett’s mother Ellen, Maybelle was of French descent and a strict Catholic. Maybelle’s side of family first moved to Charleston, SC, and then to Georgia after the Revolutionary War was over. Her grandmother Annie Fitzgerald Stephens “would sit on the front porch with baby Margaret on her lap and point out where a line of Confederate entrenchments had passed through the backyard”. Then Annie would tell Margaret about the terrible night when Atlanta was set on fire and “the vast sheets of flame devoured the city and everywhere you looked, a strange indescribable glare lighted the sky”. This event has become one of the most intense moments of Margaret’s future book when Scarlett with Melanie and her newborn baby had barely escaped Atlanta to go to Tara.

Annie’s father Philip Fitzgerald moved to America from Ireland. He owned “2, 375 acres and thirty-five slaves” who were baptized in the Catholic faith under the insistence of Eleanor, his beloved wife. This is another similarity connecting Margaret Mitchell’s family history with the storyline of Gone with the Wind: “In her face were too sharply blended the delicate features of her mother, a Coast aristocrat of French descent, and the heavy ones of her florid Irish father”. Margaret’s father Eugene Mitchell admired his wife and loved her dearly. “Maybelle seemed to possess the strength, the intuitive wisdom that he did not”. This is very similar to the way Scarlett’s family was functioning – important decisions were made by Ellen, the strong and spirited woman. In January 1919 Margaret received a letter from her mother where she told her about being sick with pneumonia and feeling the loss of her life was close. Mitchell came home from college she was attending at the time to find her mother dead and her father in despair: “there were times during the next few weeks when her father would fall back into unreality, and she feared he might be losing his mind”. This situation became the foundation for one of the most tragic moments in the novel.

Scarlett finally gets to Tara after going through terrible times just to find out her mother Ellen died the day before she could make it home, without a chance to say goodbye. Scarlett’s father Gerald was going through his wife’s loss with immense difficulty and never got better: “He was only a little old man and broken, ” “there was none of the virility, the restless vitality of Gerald”. Just like the protagonist of her legendary novel Mitchell had to take care of her father and her family’s state. Margaret dropped her education at Smith and returned home, after her mother’s death she became the woman in charge. After looking into the family’s financial situation she discovered that they were not as rich as she thought they were. This made her cut down the expenses and fire the majority of their servants.

The similarities can also be traced in Margaret’s and Scarlett’s relationships with men. In October 1918 Margaret lost her first sweetheart – Clifford Henry who was injured in the battle of Saint-Mihiel and eventually died in the hospital. “Margaret was deeply grieved over Clifford Henry’s death”. Her brother claimed that he was the greatest love of his younger sister’s life, and Margaret could not fully open up to anyone else after. This situation can be connected to some events in the novel: Scarlett was in love with someone who she could never be with. Surely, Ashley Wilkes was alive, but the remnants of her first love would not let her move on with her life. Another similarity between the real person and a created personage was the flirtatious nature of these two women: “the wild debutante Peggy Mitchell thrived on men, and she treasured every masculine heart she humbled”. Margaret just like Scarlett in her young age would keep multiple suitors, not really caring about anyone in particular: “In the crazy years that followed, she ensnared half of male Atlanta with her beguiling mix of innocence and worldliness”.

Another similarity with Mitchell’s life, when it comes to the real people surrounding her, was Red Upshaw, who was believed to be the one who inspired her for creating Rhett Butler. The likeness of the first names was not the only feature in common between her first husband and the man who only lived on the pages of her book, but stole the hearts of millions of readers around the world. When describing Red, close friends would use such words as masterful, brilliant, sexy, dashing, and unstable. He also fabricated a story about being a big part of espionage and secret operations in the time of war. Some of the qualities and the part about an active participation of Rhett Butler in breaking the blockade must have been inspired by Upshaw and his tales. Peggy’s and Red’s relationship was fiery and unstable. They would argue all the time, and Red would leave home unexpectedly. One of the times he told her “she could go ahead and get a divorce if she wanted because he was never coming back to Atlanta. There was an indifference in his attitude that was to disturb Peggy for years to come”.

All this sounds very familiar and reminds a lot of the final scene between Scarlett and Rhett at the end of the novel. The resemblance between Margaret and Scarlett that is of the highest importance is their independence, their desire to be themselves and to do what they want regardless of what the society would think about them. Peggy was a “curious mixture of emancipated woman and Southern Belle”. She strived to be freed and liberated from the social norms, not a typical Southern housewife, but a reporter running around in the search of an interesting story. Even in college, her classmates would admire her daring, her success at swimming and horseback riding, her jokes, and her colorful language. Scarlett with her own business, with the desire to succeed, and never be poor or hungry again, with her strength, and tireless nature sounds a lot like a woman fighting the social norms of the age she lived in.

Created by Mitchell Scarlett was a woman and she was very strong and definitely inspiring. When the book was published in 1936 America needed that inspiration. The Great Depression was almost over and people needed someone durable, energetic, and vigorous to look up to. That is what Mitchell created and “her narrative of survival had obvious appealed to a country in the midst of the Great Depression”. In Scarlett O'Hara, the talented Margaret “Peggy” Mitchell had created one of the most memorable, captivating, and enduring heroines of fiction and cinematography of the beginning of the past century, that is still relevant and remembered nowadays. This would not be possible if Scarlett and the world around her were not as vivid and real as Mitchell had made it. In my opinion, the reason for it is that she used so much of her personal qualities and memories in creating her story. She breathed life into the stories she would hear from her grandparents and parents and created a masterpiece that cannot be gone with the wind. This novel will stay with us for a long time because it tells the reader the other side of the story, the one that some may not like but cannot deny it existed. It also tells the reader that some people continue to live in the past, and some move on and achieve great heights. It reminds the world that another day will come and there is always hope.