Gone With The Wind

This is the epic novel written by Margaret Mitchell which was later made into a Hollywood blockbuster of the late 1930's. I read this novel 6 years ago and it has touched me so deeply that I still regard it as one of the best books I have ever read in my life.

The book revolves around the story of Scarlett O’ Hara who is the beautiful, arrogant and scheming daughter of a wealthy Southern family. It’s fascinating the way she steals her sister's fiancé and how she manipulates everyone around her for her and her farm's survival during the tough times of American civil war. Scarlett is a widow with a small child when she is seventeen years old. She is twenty when the Civil War ends. Single-handedly she rebuilds the family plantation, Tara, while she cares for her ailing father and sisters. In a few short years she goes from wealth to poverty --- from being a spoiled Southern belle to plowing fields and picking cotton.

Then there is Ashley Wilkes whom she loves dearly but whom she loses to a very unassuming and lovely lady called Melanie. Ashley Wilkes marries this woman and breaks Scarlett's heart. It should have taught her that love is something that can’t always be obtained through lies and cheating but Scarlett as she is, can never understand these aspects of life. To add insult to injury, Ashley asks Scarlett to take care of his wife when he joins the Confederate Army and goes off to war.

Then comes Rhett Butler who is as unscrupulous as Scarlett, the only man whose heart she could not capture --- and the only man she really loves. He manages to get married to her after falling desperately in love with her, though by means of a mutual agreement. Scarlett fails to realize the love he has for her till the end of the novel, until Melanie tells her before her death. But by then it’s too late. Rhett Butler, probably the only person who loved her even after knowing her nature fully, says that his love for her has died.

She was a woman who suffered heartbreak, who dealt with change, who did things women weren't supposed to do --- a woman like so many of us. What attracted me to the character of Scarlett were the sheer guts she had. The scene when she kills the people who barge in where her family was hiding during the war is quite fascinating.

It seems Margaret Mitchell took 10 years to complete this magnificent book. And I would say the outcome is worth each and every minute she has spent on it.