Tomorrow Is Another Day in Court

The psychic stakes in the battle over Gone With the Wind

Nick Gillespie from the July 2001 issue

(Page 2 of 2)

In other words, even as it might prompt more readers to turn their attention to Gone With the Wind, The Wind Done Gone has the potential to significantly change how they understand and appreciate Margaret Mitchell’s novel. To be sure, this revisionary process has been underway since the book’s appearance as a product of the Southern cultural revival of the 1920s and ’30s. Certainly, in the wake of desegregation, the Civil Rights era, and a keener appreciation for the legacy of institu- tionalized and state-sponsored racism, Gone With the Wind has been read by most Americans on vastly different grounds than it must have been in its first few decades. Today, even as we can appreciate the text’s odd and undeniable ability to affect us -- the left-leaning literary critic Leslie Fiedler once admitted the book moved him to tears every time he read it -- we are repulsed by the world it describes and the values it articulates.

In a deep sense, the copyright drama playing out in Atlanta -- the City Too Busy to Hate -- is really about how Gone With the Wind should be read 65 years after its publication and 136 years after the society it romances surrendered at Appomattox Courthouse.

In this latest episode, the Mitchell Trusts is cast in the role of Rhett Butler, turning away from the new and the "raw," even though -- or perhaps because -- it represents the best chance for a robust, vital future. The Trusts may ultimately prevail in court, but it would do well to remember that it is Scarlett who is the hero of Gone With the Wind. She alone -- at least among the novel’s white characters -- recognizes that "tomorrow is another day" and is thus able to flourish in post-Civil War America.