本科毕业设计-她会永存于世—《飘》

Abstract
Gone with the wind is a famous work that created with the history background of Civil War by Margaret Mitchell. It is not only a romantic novel, but also a great work of discussing the changes in 1860s’ America. It reflects preferably great historical projects such as the southern situation, social problem, disintegration of the southern plantation, feminism, etc. It has a deep literary value.
The topic focuses on the times that women were in a very low position and in the story, the women’s wisdom and courage were no less than men, and even beyond the men. Based on the theoretical foundation and through the exploration of Gone with the Wind in detail, the author attempts to study the close relationship between feminism and society.
This thesis consists of two chapters with one introduction and a conclusion. The introduction scans the historical background and the women’s characteristics and position in that society. Chapter One mainly analyzes the pre-war social system and slavery in the south America, and Scarlett, Melanie and other women’s changing characteristics and struggle in the war. And then it leads out Chapter Two which explores the process of Feminine consciousness wakening and women’s movements.
The conclusion summarizes the views of this thesis and suggests that Gone with the Wind should be taken as a potential target of feminist studies.
Key words: Scarlett; Melanie; feminism; self-wakening
中文摘要
《飘》是玛格丽特·米切尔以美国内战时期的南方为历史背景创作的一部名著，它既是一部浪漫的爱情小说，也是一部探讨19世纪60年代美国南方所经历的种种变化的著作，它着实反映了较多当时的南方局势、社会问题、南方种植园经济的瓦解、女权主义等,具有重大历史意义的课题，具有深远的文学价值。

本选题着重在《飘》中所描写的在妇女地位十分低下的时代，故事中的女人所表现出的智慧和勇气丝毫不亚于男人，甚至超越男人。

由此，本论文试图从具体文本出发，试图展现和探讨女性主义与社会的关系。

本论文由两个章节和一个引言和结语组成。

引言部分主要是对《飘》的历史背景以及里面主要女性人物性格以及她们所处的社会地位概述。

第一章主要分析战前的美国南方以男性为主体的社会以及其奴隶制度，还有斯嘉丽、梅兰妮等角色在战争中挣扎求存以及她们性格的转变。

由此引出第二章具体探讨有关女性的觉醒及女性主义运动的发展过程。

论文的结语部分总结了本论文的主要观点并提出了《飘》中关于妇女觉醒的重要意义以及美国妇女的女性意识不断觉醒，她们不断地积累经验，努力争取自由和平等对社会起到的积极作用。

关键词：斯嘉丽；梅兰妮；女性意识；觉醒
1. Introduction
1.1 The Critical Reviews on Gone with the Wind at Home and Abroad
Even though Gone with the Wind broke the sales record and was awarded the Pulitzer Prize in 1937, it had been neglected by critics due to some controversial questions. And despite the lack of critical attention for the very beginning period of its publication, Gone with the Wind, has never lacked the attention of the readers’, it has sold 28 million copies since its publication in 1936 and has been translated into at least 30 languages worldwide. Moreover, since the 1960s, Gone with the Wind has become a focus of studies worldwide.
The latest studies of Margaret abroad are enormous and fruitful. These studies mainly focus on the following aspects: firstly, the books on the relationship between Margaret Mitchell and her works have become more fruitful, especially in the United States, Julian Granberry compiled all the letters of Margaret and published them under the title of Letters from Margaret (2006). All these letters will present readers with the real language and the real thoughts of Margaret, which will help us to deconstruct the false legends about Margaret Mitchell. Patrick Allen’s Margaret Mitchell, Reporter (2000), through compiling diverse columns, exposes to us the lively, knowledgeable, keenly-observed Margaret before Gone with the Wind won her fame. The books on Margaret Mitchell’s life also include Anne Edward’s Road to Tara: The Life of Margaret Mitchell (1983) and Finis Farr’s Margaret Mitchell of Atlanta: The Author of Gone with the Wind (1965).
Gone with the Wind is one of the most popular American novels in China. From 1940 when its first edition of the Chinese version was published, Gone with the Wind has gained an enthusiastic reception and has been the focus of study of many scholars. In China, in the past decade, the studies of the novel have become even more prosperous and covered even wider scopes. These studies are concerned with various topics, such as the glamour of the novel, its themes, characterization, images and archetypes. These studies are conducted from different perspectives such as feministic perspective and archetypal views are going to be discussed in the coming section.
The aspect which attracts the most focus is the study on the female protagonist of the novel—Scarlett O’Hara. Due to the complexities of the character of Scarlett, scholars study her from different aspects with various focuses. Some scholars (徐振忠, 2004) deal with the characterization and the aesthetic values of this female protagonist, while others (孙宇, 2003) try to focus on the realistic aspect of this character. Some articles (邹晶明, 2003) focus on the traditional consciousness of Scarlett while others (陈晓红, 2004; 李艳波, 2006) try to explore the rebellious aspect of her. Through reading these studies with the diversified focuses, the readers will benefit a great deal since they will be able to master a comprehensive view of this
protagonist. In turn, this will greatly decrease the reader’s chances of forming biased opinions against this protagonist.
1.2 The meaning and the development of feminism
When I finished reading Gone with the Wind, a feeling came to me that the female roles in the novel were so great and impressive. Through the ages,masculinity is the main part of the society development from the beginning to the end, but femininity is just the second sex of the society and always in the edge of the history. The Bible told the world: the God creates Eve by using Adam’s rib. From that time it seems the women were fated to be a part of men. Under the imprisonment of the paternity culture, women only have to be in a subsidiary position. Along with the progress of the society, women became awaken, they were eager to fight a place of their own in the practice of history.
The development of feminism was not a continuous process. In the West, the position of women experienced a series changes. In the early time of ancient Greek, wives were just limited to the family as managers. After that, the time of “managers of family” occupied a very long time of history. Until the French Revolution in the 18th century, the bourgeois women held the revolutionary slogan “freedom, equality, fraternity” to declare war to the masculinity society. And all these began to open the curtain of feminist movement. Along with the development of the feminist movement, more and more women images with feminist color appeared in the literature. And the theory of feminism was initially appeared in the gradually thorough and develops process of the feminist movement. It is obviously a result of the political movement went deep in the literature area. Since 1830’s, the West began a feminist movement which fought for the rights of education, politics, laws and economy for the women.
The historical implication of “feminism” usually means “movements for recognition of the claims of women for rights (legal, political, familial, act.) are equal to those possessed by men.”(邹晶明，2003：117)Women have never ceased to fight for their rights, though the feminist movement in the West did not take any visible shape till the 19th century in the name of women’s liberation movement. Darwomos shook the self-importance of man/male, Marxism further questioned the legitimacy of capitalist man, and Nietzsche denounced the validity of (the male) God. In this context women’s liberation movement took a definite shape and made major progress in women’s suffrage and property rights. Women became medical doctors; lawyers, or journalists, and women students went into Harvard, Oxford and Cambridge.
2. The background of Gone with the Wind
2.1 The Social Background
As we have seen in the first chapter of Gone with the Wind, before the war, Tara was affluent and with venerable air. Vast field was full of vigour.The people and their servants were getting along. There were affluent and lively scenes everywhere and the rurality was unconstraint and leisurely, one clue comes from the rich life in the Twelve Oaks.
In those times, slaves can be bought and sold freely. In the plead of a black cattle named Polk, Scarlett’s father Gerald bought Dicey and Prissy with 3000 dollar. Gerald’s won his first black cattle even through gambling. Black cattle didn’t have a ny political rights. The white race can punish their slaves at will.
poker and horse racing, red-hot politics and the code duello, States’ Rights and damnation to all Yankees, slavery and King Cotton, contempt for white trash and exaggerated courtesy to women, all these are what Southerners concern about. In the south, the concept of “Man is superior to woman” in people minds is ineradicable. They thought women were passive, negative and flabby; they have to operate according to men's wishes, only in this way they would not be abandoned by men and be reviled by the society. The Southern society of the novel expects men and women to conform to specific gender roles. The narrator notes that the man owns the property but the woman manages it; the man take credit for managing the property and the women then “praise his cleverness.” Owning property gives men rights and power, but they share little of the reward that results from the women’s hard work. Women have all the work and responsibility of running the property, but enjoy only those rights that men deign to grant them. The narrator stresses the absurdity of these gender roles, sarcastically saying, “the man roared like a bull when a splinter was in his finger, and the woman muffled the moans of childbirth, lest she disturb him.” In this society, men expect women to suppress their needs and desires and focus attention on the men. Women are not even allowed to take credit for their own intelligence, bravery, and strength. Society punishes those women who put a toe over the gender lines.
The war totally destroyed the peaceful, calm life and material wealth in the south. Tara was ransacked of all its valuables and it became ruins. In July, 1864, Atlanta was trapped, and gunfire has been ringing through the streets. The slavery disintegrated, and the institution of freely purchasing slaves had gone with the wind. Except several personal black cattles, more than 100 slaves in Scarlett’s home were all away with the Northern army. Slaves of the past now became unusually lucky people, with help of the Yankee; those black people who were most lowly and ignorant have climbed to labour.Therefore, the vanish of the slaves institution promote the development of the domestic economy, it was an inevitable result of the development of the capitalist class. The war made the southern economy collapsed, there with its civilization and
customs fell apart.
Gone With The Wind is both a romance and a meditation of the changes that swept the America South in the 1860s.The novel begins in 1861,in the days before the Civil War, and ends in 1871,after the Democrats regain power in Georgia. The South changes completely during the intervening years, and Mitchell’s novel illustrates the struggles of the South people who live through the Civil War era.
2.2 Margaret Mitchell and Gone with the Wind
Margaret Mitchell, the author of the enormously popular novel Gone with the Wind (1936), was born in Atlanta. The social customs of South America and the relationship of her family made a direct impact on her novels. When Mitchell was born, her hometown in Atlanta was still immersed in the painful; and struggle of the Civil War.Mitchell grew up listening to stories about old Atlanta and the battles the Confederate Army had fought there during the American Civil War. At the age of fif teen she wrote in her journal: “If I were a boy, I would try for West Point, if I could make it, or well I’d be a prize fighter—anything for the thrills.”(Harwell, 1976:36) Mitchell graduated from the local Washington Seminary and started in 1918 to study medicine at Smith College. Under the influence of her grandmother, she began to accept the racial concept of the South and class prejudice, and she had a feeling of hatred and resentment. From 1926 to 1929 she wrote Gone with the Wind. The outcome, a thousand page novel, which was later compared with Tolstoy’s War and Peace, was published by the Macmillan Publishing Company in 1936.Today, the social effect caused by Gone with the Wind is still extraordinary. After its publication,Gone with the Wind was praised as well as criticized. The New Yorker praised it, and John Crowe Ranson, the poet and critic, admired “the architectural persistence behind the big work” (Robbins, 2000:79) but criticized the book as overly Southern, particularly in its treatment of Reconstruction. In his review, Malcolm Cowley’s disdain originated partly from the book’s popularity. John Peale Bishop dismissed the novel as merely “one more of those 1000 page novels, competent but neith er very good nor very sound.”(谭隧, 2003:55 )Despite the different comments,Gone with the Wind was awarded the Pulitzer Prize in 1937.And there is something can not be ignored, that is the impact of the novel is increasingly deep and irresistible. In the world of literature, Margaret Mitchell is one of the few writers whose fames are built on only one book. Since the publication of Gone with the Wind, it has become the focus of studies of many scholars.
3. The Study of Feminism in Gone with the Wind
3.1 Main Female Images in Gone with the Wind
There is a profound and rich connotation of Gone with the wind. Not only does it carry forward the spirit of the Southern noble’s indomitable struggle for survival, but also in praise of the earth, which is more permeated with rich female consciousness. Women are in subordinate position and subjected to many restrictions, their role is not being taken seriously, but the female described by Mitchell did not lose their luster and dazzling in the male group. This is a strong-women-leading novel, Scarlett, Melanie, Ellen, Mrs. Mead, black mummy. Mitchell tried to show the matriarchy under the southern patriarchy system.
3.1.1 Melanie
Melanie is a pure and simple nice person. She is a very traditional woman; she loves her husband and son, and takes care of everyone at her side. From the original work we can see that Men are just like babies who need women’s attention and care. Scarlett and Melanie are also men’s spiritual supporters; they have done their best to support their men and look after their family well when their men are fighting at the battle. Without their dear wive s’ or girl friends’perpetual invigoration, these men can not be so brave at the battle. All the honor which the men gain in the war will be consecrated to the women who fight with their common enemies but only in different place. And after war, they are still men’s supporters.
Melanie loves her husband very much. This kind of love comes from her heart and it is so sincere and great. From the time when she and Ashley are engaged, Melanie gives her whole heart to him. She takes Ashley as her child and momently keeps an eye on him. And she also knows how important herself is to Ashley. So she even could not peace her mind at her dying moment. See the following extract from the part in which Melanie was dying:
“Ashley.”
“You’ll look after him?”
“He catches cold so easily! Look after his business, you understand?”
“Ashley isn’t practical.”“Look after him, Scarlett, but don’t ever let him know.”
(Margaret, 1998:90) And at her last words, she still remembers to let Scarlett who she trusts so much promise to take care of her husband after she dies. From her last words, it is easy to understand that Melanie is very clear of Ashley’s living ability as well as how much that his life will have no sense if Melanie dies:
“If I’ve ever been strong, it was because she was behind me,” he said, his voice breaking, and he looked down at the glove and smoothed the figures. “And—and—all the strength I ever
had is going with her.”
“What will I do? I can’t—can’t live without her!”
(Margaret, 1998:132) Apparently, women use their particular ways to support men and change them. Sequentially, they change the world indirectly. Although women can not be mentioned in the same breath with men on physical aspect: Men’s bodies are so big, strong and powerful and their strengths awe women and make women seemingly submit to them, Men’s inner worlds are vacuous. They are men’s spiritual supporters. Once men lose their spiritual supporters, they will not find happiness in their lives any more. Women’s power is incontestable in the development of the world. But their power does not show in the way of fighting on the battle. Though their support to men is in the rear, they indirectly change the men and the world. They not only make their lives better, but also bring men courage and hope.
Besides, Melanie is kind hearted and considerate, thought she is thin and weak, she is definitely not flabby. She loves life and is willing to donate to the southern society. Although Melanie is a sweet and quiet woman who may be the weakest woman physically among these four female characters, when she meets difficulties, she behaves like a strong woman. When she faced her impoverished family, frustrated husband, little son, and the down and out Atlanta, she used her weak body, strong will and firm eyes to cheer up the people around. Even Scarlett, the woman who regarded Melanie as a rival, had to admit Melanie had a kind of endless appetency and can attract others. Sometimes Scarlett even felt that is the weak Melanie protecting her. Rhett, who regarded as a “rogue, villain, speculator” by the high class, also said Melanie was one of the greatest women. She even got trust and respect from a prostitute. After the Civil War, she returned to Atlanta and became leader and organizer of several Women’s Institute, to the extent that Doctor Meade who with a lofty virtue worthy of respect praised her, “You are the heart of all of us.”As long as we have such a heart, it doesn’t matter that the Yankee took all of the things. No expression of fear or dread can be seen on Melanie’s face. Braveness exists in her small body all the time. So difficulties could never decrease her patience and courage.
As a Yankee slips into their house to steal their fortune, Melanie, at that moment, disregarding of her health condition that she is almost dying, intends to hold up a heavy saber in order to protect her friends and babies’ lives. The author describes what Melanie looks like at that time in the eyes of Scarlett:
With a thrill she looked up at the frail swaying girl for whom she never had any feelings but disl ike and contempt. Now, struggling against hatred for Ashley’s wife, there surged a feeling of admiration and comradeship. She saw in a flash of clarity untouched by any petty emotion that beneath the gentle voice and the dovelike eyes of Melanie there was a thin flashing blade of unbreakable steel, felt too that there were banners and bulges of courage in Melanie’s quite
blood.
(Mitchell, 1964:88) What Melanie does even makes Scarlett who is always hard and firm shocked? It means that Melanie is considerably great. And after Scarlett kills the Yankee, Melanie makes up a very cool and perfect lie to cheat the others avoiding the unnecessary trouble. Then she arranges Scarlett what should be done next calmly. There is no suggestion to show that Melanie winces at that time.
In the hard times, Melanie has never complained about the simple and crude life as well as up the unfair fate, she endures starvation, illness and the torture and makes up her mind fighting with the hard time and misfortunes without retreating. Hand in hand, with Scarlett, facing these misfortunes and catastrophes bravely.
3.1.2 Scarlett
The novel’s protagonist, Scarlett is a pretty, coquettish Southern belle who grows up on the Georgia plantation of Tara in the years before the Civil War. Selfish, shrewd and vain, Scarlett inherits the strong will of his father, Gerald, but also desires to please her well-bred, gentle mother, Ellen. Although initially she tries to behave prettily, her instincts rise up against social restrictions. Determination defines Scarlett and drives her to achieve everything she desires by any means necessary. And Scarlett’s stubborn and self-confidence throughout the entire literary works. In Scarlett’s heart, she is more attractive and charm ing than any other woman and she never cares about the rival in love and the men that pursuit her, but she kept the persistent love for Ashley. After Rhett left her to join the army, she was alone to take the weak and helpless Melanie to escape the terror. She shouted “I’m going to live through this, and when it’s all over, I will never be hunger again”(Margaret Mitchell, 1964:92) on the red clay ground. She believed that she can operate the store and timber factory better than men; she can do what men can do, and even do better than them.
After Scarlett takes charge of the saw mill, she begins to do business with the Yankees. Therefore, most of the southerners are exasperated against her business manner. They feel that Scarlett has no feeling.
Mrs. Merriwether and many other Southerners were also doing business with the newcomers from the North, but the difference was that they did not like it and plainly showed they did not like it. And Scarlett did, or seemed to, which was just bad. She had actually taken tea with the Yankees officer’s wives in their homes! In fact, she had done practically everything short of inviting them into her own home, and the town guessed she would do even that, except for Aunt Pitty and Frank.
(Pauline, 1989:77).
The thesis disagrees with this standpoint completely. In faith, Scarlett is too sanguine and practical. Furthermore, Scarlett is not a sensitive person in nature. Yet only based on these two reasons, we can not conclude that Scarlett has no typical southerners’feeling. Before the war starts, her life is peaceful and happy and nothing could stimulate her to generate the feeling that sentimental Ashley has. After all, Ashley was an exception. He could not represent the whole southerners who belonged to the upper class of society. Scarlett, at that time, like other Southerners, is happy and has nothing to worry about. After the war, Scarlett is forced to support the whole family; her earthbound character gives her no time to enjoy the sentimental feeling which most Southerners have. To her, the most important thing is to live, having food to eat and place to reside in. No time can be wasted by her to lament the downfall of the South, like the other Southerners when they are still under the situation of food scarcity. Scarlett’s notion that recalling of the past can only decrease her courage which essentially is not so excessive for her to face the hardship is right. However, when everything is sufficient and the hard time is over, she begins to mourn, like other Southerners, for the downfall of the South and the lost civilization. Although she has business relationship with the Yankees, in her heart, she hates them:
“All these new people, strangers, everyone! They didn’t know her. They would never know her. ‘these people from God—knows—where who seemed to live always on the surface of things, who had no common memories of war and hunger and fighting, who had no common roots going down into the same red earth.”
“Oh, to be with her own kind of people again, those people who had been through the same things and knew how they hurt—and yet know great a part of you they were!”
(Margaret, 1998:14) So from the above paragraphs, we know that Scarlett has the same feeling as the other Southerners of the upper-class society. In fact, the inner world of Scarlett is very complicated and colorful. Scarlett who looks ignorant, unfeeling and brusque has vehement conflict lurking in the deep level of her mind. There are two kinds of strong and clinging desires co-existing in her mind: one desire is the pursuit of material, hoping to be satisfied by the comfort which is brought by adequate material; the other is spiritual level, longing for the closeness of truth, kindness and beauty, which is coming from the consciousnesses of human nature.
Though advocating sexist, the women in the novel take practical action to prove their value and in fact they can do better. Mitchell praised the charity, wisdom and adamancy of the women in the novel with a woman’s fine and smooth psychology. Mitchell expressed such a point that “Women are not inherently weak. Men and women are equal, and women would even stronger than men.” (Harwell, 1976:3)The critic said this feminist novel written by Mitchell “never and would not put the nature of womanly and gentle into such an unimportant position.” (Alexandra,
1991:65) Besides, she also exposed the southern patriarchy which required women to defer to men in everything, no matter how ill-time it seemed.
This determination manifests itself in her narcissistic and sometimes backstabbing efforts to excite the admiration of every young man in the neighborhood. When hardships plague Scarlett, she manages to overcome adversity through brute strength of will. She merges as a feminist heroine because she relies on herself alone and survives the Civil War and Reconstruction unaided. She rebuilds Tara after the Yankee invasion and works her way up in the new political order, taking care of helpless family members and friends along the way. The article analyses Scarlett’s (a South Great Garden’s daughter) mentality development in the American Civil War according to the time (before the war, during the war and after the war). It is the process that a naïve and willful girl before the war; a sagacious and efficient, responsible, and greedy housekeeper during the war; and at last transmuting a capitalistic industrial and commercial owner after the war.
Brave Scarlett has never been beaten down by any difficulties. She can tackle any trouble in the end. She does not yield to any misfortune which her fate brings to her. To struggle against unfair fate with all efforts is the way she treats fate. When confronting the challenges of the difficulties, Scarlett does not wince. Although she is very young, she has already undergone lots of hard experience. She comes across the thorniest difficulty in her life when she returns home from Atlanta. The process of her journey to home is exceedingly hard and dangerous. At that time, people in Atlanta on their way home may come across the soldiers of the South at anytime who would rob Margaret Mitchell creates in Gone with the Wind. She dares to go against the tradition and the treatment of females as inferior to males, and she dares to go out of the family and enter into the patriarchal world in order to obtain the female’s independence in economy and personality. Meanwhile Scarlett is also indecisive and perplexed in her love life; the meaning of her struggling for herself can’t be ignored.
3.2 Feminism and Gone with the Wind
Gone with the Wind described the renaissance of feminine consciousness of Scarlett by dominant technique. As a woman, when Margaret Mitchell recalled the memory of the Civil War, she was deeply concerned to the women’s fate and praised the women to pursue their liberties. Though the women in the novel were pinned for a long time, they were uneducated and disadvantaged group. They supported the southern civilization and plantation economy with their wisdom and charity. This proved that they can completely go out of the family and get rid of the position that was attached to the men. The novel mainly described the women’s life, emotional experience, and inner experience. But differed from many other works, the heroine Scarlett appeared no more with an image of a doll, she broke through the traditional sex role of “wife”
and “mother” and found her personality and position. She never follows blindly and sets aside the ways of the world. She realized herself by free love and independence, and she never acts as the men’s doll and appendant, she wants to share the men and women’s mutual things in the society, and shows her talent as well as a man. All these bring out dense feminine consciousness. The author gave a central position to the women. Scarlett’s revolt to the sexist male society, and women became the leader of the sexist male society; all these reflect the feminine consciousness in the society. The work pointed out the feminine consciousness came from self-wakening and the crucible of life. The women gained the independent consciousness reflected in the existent value of their own.。