The Klansman and the self-pity of Ashley Wilkes, Part One

(This is a follow-up to Friday's post, Tara.)

The racism and Confederate sympathizing in Gone With the Wind are off-putting and---see Idyllopus' comment about how the figure of Mammy is still alive, and mourned, in the minds of people who ought to know better---worrisome.  But the movie is not about its racism or nostalgia for the Cause.  It is about Scarlett O'Hara, and Scarlett is so busy taking care of Scarlett that she barely has time to notice slavery, the War, or Reconstruction as ideas or political and cultural constructs.

They are just obstacles or tools to her.  She is too practical and selfish to care one way or another, except in how they cause her trouble or are useful to her.

There was a time when her family owned slaves, and that was good for Scarlett because it allowed her to live the life of a princess.  Then there came a time when the family was nearly destitute and that was bad because she had to dig for turnips.  But since there's no bringing back slavery, Scarlett sets out to make her own way back to the life of a princess and that requires her to use people, white and black, in a different way than slavery let her use people.   She has moments of self-pity when she gives in to a longing for the way things used to be, but those are moments of very human weakness brought on by exhaustion and fear.  For the most part, she never looks back. 

Neither does Melanie, who is also very pragmatic, although self-less rather than selfish.  In fact, in her own way, Melanie blossoms and thrives in the new Reconstructionist South just as surely as Scarlett does.  You could even say that the end of slavery is the making of their careers.  Instead of being waited on hand and foot, which you could say is the life of a princesss, but which you could also say is the life of a spoiled child, both women, in having to fend for themselves, and take care of and support their families, including the men in their lives, grow up and take their place in life as full fledged adult human beings for the first time.  The end of slavery liberates them.

I wouldn't be surprised if feminist historians have made the case somewhere that the end of slavery was the beginning of a movement towards women's rights in the South.   This is something like the argument that anti-slavery Northerners like John Quincy Adams made against slavery at the time---that it corrupted slave owners as surely as it debased the slaves themselves, and one of its corruptions was the way it kept the owners in a state of child-like dependency.  The rhetoric of Sesesh sounds like the boasting and whining of spoiled adolescents because the men of the slave owning class never advanced past being spoiled adolescents.

Leaving all that aside, it's funny that while the movie in its tone and in the effect of its lush photography, gorgeous costuming, romantic score, and the portrayals of secondary characters is nostalgic for the Antebellum South and casually racist, its attitudes are not shared by its two heroines or its main leading man.

In other words, the racism and Confederate sympathizing are background to a story that is about three dynamic characters who either reject or ignore everything that Tara stands for (except family bonds).

Even the one main character who misses the Old South, Ashley Wilkes, seems to hate himself for not being able to adapt and move on more than he longs for a return of the way life used to be.  His inability to lift himself out of the past is proof to him that there must have been something seriously wrong with the way life used to be and, since he is nothing but a perfect product of the way life used to be, proof that there is something seriously wrong with himself.

When you get down to it, Ashley is the only character who thinks about politics and when he does he is mostly highly critical of his own.  This is, of course, part of what makes poor Ashley so despicable.  He can't give up attitudes he knows are wrong, just as he can't give up his infatuation with Scarlett, which he also knows is wrong.

I should say he can't give up his infatuation with Scarlett's infatuation with him.

So, when all is said and done, despiste its racism and Confederate sympathizing, which as Exiled in NJ and Kathy Flake pointed out are artifacts of the time when the movie was made and show up in countless movies of the period, Gone With the Wind is not a piece of racist or Southern propaganda---although that hasn't stopped countless Southerns from embracing it as if it was.

It does not make the case for its own racism and Confederate politics, unlike the first great epic Civil War film, Birth of a Nation.

End of Part One.  Part Two is here.
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Comments

[Nance]

Most people who've seen GWTW haven't read the source material. As one who has studied it more than I'd like to admit, I can tell you you're absolutely correct, Lance. While racism is undeniably part of the fabric of the book, it's by no means its point. In fact, the pre-Civil Rights Movement south of Margaret Mitchell's era wasn't all that different from the post-Civil War atmosphere Scarlett lives in.

If you want to make a list, the story's white characters rate far higher on Scarlett's enemies list than the black ones. She reserves her sharpest scorn for the O'Hara's "white trash neighbors," the Slatterys. They're followed by dreamy southerners who can't stop talking about the good ol' days (excluding Ashley) and the Old Guard who won't celebrate Scarlett's good fortune, after she returns to wealth and comfort. (This includes Mammy, with her famous "mule in horse harness" summation of her mistress and master.)

The book's middle section, after Scarlett returns to Tara in the confusion of the war's last days and into Reconstruction, is the best, in my estimation. Here we see Scarlett toughen from giddy girlhood to gimlet-eyed womanhood, and tries to bring her family and servants with her:

Time and again, Ellen had said: "Be firm and gentle with inferiors, especially darkies." But if she was gentle the darkies would sit in the kitchen all day, talking endlessly about the good old days when a house nigger wasn't supposed to do a field hand's work.

That's a pretty typical passage for that section.

Unfortunately, the movie dispensed with the character of Dilcey, a half-Indian slave who's the mother of Prissy. Their mother-daughter relationship mirrors Ellen and Scarlett's, and Dilcey's loyalty and character through the hard times is often noted and praised.

I can't believe I know this much about a crappy book. But it's a great crappy book, so it's worth knowing.

[Ginger Mayerson]

Two things, then I'll stop haunting your comments, Lance.

I'll probably lose my license as a feminist because I kind of like Scarlett O'Hara, but when Scarlett has her big "As God is my witness, I'll never go hungry again" speech, it includes "nor none of my kin (will ever be hungry again)," and she makes this come true. She and Melly, that is. So, she's not totally selfish. She's still a jerk, a bitch and a very determined one at that, but she does drag them all, with Melly's help, into better days. And Reconstruction, an occupation, was ugly; losing was bad, but Reconstruction was worse for the South.

Second, somewhere in the film or book (I will not buy the book, I will not buy the book), Ashley says he was going to free all his slaves after he inherited 12 Oaks. Okay, it's Reconstruction, who knows what he would have really done. I also seem to recall from reading the book that Ashley wasn't so hot on the war, but wasn't as vocal about it as Rhett, and went out of class/local loyalty more that ideology, which was stupid, but, hey, GWTW was only ever meant to be entertaining.

Just my take.

Speaking of racism, ABB feels King Kong is more racist than GWTW, here's her take: http://angryblackbitch.blogspot.com/2005/12/king-kong.html And a follow-up above it (I think I only get one hyperlink per post on Typepad). Interesting stuff. For the record, I like GWTW better than King Kong, but like neither as much as Young Frankenstein.

[Pepper]

So, if Ashley is the one who is unhealthily fixated on the supposed "good old days," what do you make of Scarlett's unhealthy fixation on him, if anything?

Just curious, because Scarlett's passion is also rooted in something that she thought existed but never really did. In a way, that world Ashley wishes for didn't exist either - but he has convinced himself that it did.

[harry near indy]

ms. mayerson,

ah, young frankenstein. HIGH-larious movie.

btw, cbs sunday morning had a story on terri garr. she has ms, which i knew and i don't you know if you did. it showed the scene where gene wilder's character says "what knockers!" and terri garr's character says "vell, sank you, doctorr!"

that reminds me -- i have the movie here. think i'll watch it soon.

and lance,

very, very interesting first part of the gwtw continuing essay. i truly look foward to reading part 2.

[Nance]

Ashley isn't fixated on the good old days. He is, as Ginger points out, a secret abolitionist -- he does say that if there hadn't been a war, he'd have freed all his slaves as soon as he came into his inheritance. He also knows exactly what he is: A weakling bred for one way of life who simply can't adapt to another. He refers to the war as the gotterdamerung, and is always telling Scarlett how incompetent and inept he is at dealing with his reordered world, which she is always denying. Melanie is the one thing from the old world he thinks is worth holding onto.

The only time he speaks warmly of the good ol' days is that time in the mill where he ends up holding Scarlett, innocently, in his arms, and the old biddies walk in, leading to the Best. Dress. Ever. scene in the movie.

[aldahlia]

Oh, good grief.

You wouldn't be surprised... the war movement started out on the platform of freedom for women AND blacks. Who the hell do you think wrote "Uncle Tom's Cabin?"