Reading the Chunksters discussion

Rhett returns. I'm enjoying their irritable friendship. It seems that he has a lot of admiration, if not respect, for Scarlett. I don't think she feels the same way.

I am just starting this section. I've had terrible bronchitis this last week. I was so exhausted from it I couldn't even read, I would wake up long enough to sip tea, and fall back asleep. Hopefully after I get my house cleaned up tonight I will have time to sit down and enjoy a book!

Oh man, bronchitis is the pits. And actually any sickness where you can't even read your books is bad. Hope you're feeling better.

I'm feeling much better, though this lingering cough has me behind at work and totally pooped out. Thanksgiving and some time off cannot come soon enough.

I'm partially through chapter 37 now and this book is starting to make me feel uneasy. I know in thee earlier chapters we had discussed Mitchell's presentation of the slaves, which at the time, I stated that some of the conversation could have been realistic given what I had read in actual slaves autobiographies, how some of them loved the family they worked with, looked down on smaller white trash and country slaves, etc. But here we are more than half way through the book and no opposing view point to the slaves that were treated well has come into the story.

Worse than that, that there may have been legitimately poorly treated, or even cruelly treated, slaves isn't even considered.

Recently on Bookriot one of the writers discussed how she could no longer read GWTW because of its inherent racism. A lot of people stated "Of course there is going to be racism, its a book about the Reconstruction South." Okay. I get that. THey have a point, it would make sense for the CHARACTERS to be (what we today call) racist. But I am starting to feel that Mitchell herself is actually racist. Scarlett cries about what Reconstruction means- that the Yankees have turned the blacks against the Southerners, that she can be raped, and anyone that defends her could be hung, that lazy, shiftless black men could vote, open a business, and act human. But does she, or the author through Scarlett, Mammy, or any other character consider how white men had treated black women? Or how, if a salve defended his wife against the Master, he would be beaten, hung up, or sold? No. And that makes me feel like Mitchell herself is a racist, and its distancing me from the narrative.

Its not that I wouldnt feel bad for Scarlett. Its post war, its martial law, that is scary. No woman deserves to be raped, no matter if her friends, relatives, or ancestors perpetrated evil, because two wrongs don't make a right. And I am sure that terrible things happened to all sorts of people in the ante bellum period. The Yankees DID do terrible things. But that isnt the point that Mitchell is making. She glosses entirely over ANY wrong Southerners could have done. They were perfect, the old South built on the blood of others, was perfect, and now they area being mistreated for having done nothing but stood their ground.

It leaves me with a decidedly poor taste in my mouth.

That's an interesting viewpoint, Becky, and one definitely worth pondering. I have been wondering if she's merely presenting the prevalent viewpoints of the day, at least of that class of white Southerners, or if that really is the viewpoint she took herself? Or is she playing devil's advocate, pointing out that so much has been told of the oppression of blacks at the time, that maybe the other side needed to be told as well? I can't decide what I think about the whole scene with Uncle Peter: Scarlett is decidedly outraged at the northern women's treatment of him and is appalled at even the idea of not trusting her own children with him or other former slaves. At the same time, though, Peter is right when he points out that she never stands up for him, because she cares more about money than she does about the honor of the man who has done so much to take care of her and her own. Scarlett THINKS she's being supportive, but she's certainly racist, even if she doesn't see it that way. She's equally appalled at the idea of blacks having the right to vote...although she herself doesn't appear to have any desire to have that right herself, regardless of her desire to do business in a "man's world."

It's hard to tell at this point exactly WHAT Mitchell's views were. It's been so long since I read it that I don't have any lasting impressions on that subject, but I'm curious what my thoughts will be closer to the end of the novel.

My heart broke for the family about Mr. O'Hara though! Her selfish, foolish sister! (Although the fact that Scarlett doesn't love her father enough to realize that the very idea of what she was having him do would be against everything that is important to him is absolutely disgusting). Oh, that everything in life didn't always boil down to money!

Alana wrote: "That's an interesting viewpoint, Becky, and one definitely worth pondering. I have been wondering if she's merely presenting the prevalent viewpoints of the day, at least of that class of white Sou..."

(Disclaimer: I am from the North and I am not black skinned. I am actually brown skinned and I spent about a month in the South and was a little scared the whole time because of all the stories you hear but it was fine and nothing happened. I pretty much live by the words of Eleanor Roosevelt “No one can make you feel inferior without your consent.”)

I actually thought that back history was super interesting. It kind of felt and looked a lot more to me like what happens every time the US sticks their nose in somewhere it doesn't necessarily belong. But in this case it was far more complicated because this is US against US.

I saw it as basically the South had the same rights as the rest of the US. Then the war happened which I honestly still don't fully grasp what happened there but the aftermath seems to boil down to the Northerners came down and stripped the South of all of their rights. But then they also freed the slaves and gave them rights.

So the Southerners were all upset because now they are being told that their whole way of life is invalid and that the former slaves will now be getting more rights than the members of the former Confederacy.

But when you think about it the North is super racialist actually.

The North lived with free blacks (as they were called) but they don't want to touch them or be near them. And the Northern free blacks had just as few rights as the slaves with the exception that they weren’t owned by anyone. They had to carry papers that said they were free and they if they didn’t have those papers they could be bought and sold based solely on their skin color if they ended up in a slave state. (link)

The Northerners in the book are disgusted when Scarlett, a Southerner, mentioned that the Northerners could hire and cohabitate with the Southern free blacks. Not only that but when the Northerners are confronted with Uncle Peter in the buggy, they do not address him directly, call him the n-word and treat him like he’s deaf and dumb.

Scarlett does actually stand up for him. She says Uncle Peter is part of our family. And the Northerners look at the color of his skin and say wow he can’t really be a relative, look how black he is (judging him solely on the color of his skin.)

The Northerners could not wrap their heads around the fact that Uncle is a term of endearment and by calling him Uncle and saying he was a part of the family Scarlett was actually showing Uncle Peter respect.

The conflict here is that Uncle Peter was all upset with Scarlett for not standing up for him when she in fact did in the only way she could.

First of all, she is not feeling the shock that Uncle Peter is because she is not a former slave so she can just brush these people off as rude, while he is feeling disrespected (as he well should).

Secondly, she needs their money right now so she has to be civil and she is lucky as a woman in those times to be making any money at all. He is a male who has never worked for a salary so he doesn’t get that. If he did his work he was provided for, someone would make sure to feed him and clothe him (I am not saying this is okay or the way it should be just that this was his reality).

Third, he punishes her by saying he will tattle and not drive her around anymore, well again fair enough for him, lord knows that he was probably punished for some asinine reason in the past. But what he is saying here is “Hey I feel that you don’t treat me right so I won’t treat you right either.”

So what I am getting from the book is it that the South had a certain role or space in their daily life for the black skinned people while the Northerners did not want to make any room for them at all, that was just unthinkable to the Northerners in any way shape or form.

It seems to me (based on this author's description anyway) that the South didn't turn on the former slaves because the former slaves were black skinned. It just pissed them off that the former slaves were being handed things that the people of the Confederacy were fighting to hold on to. The Southerners in general are all like "okay well so you don't even like these guys, we do (in the role as slaves or workers anyway) and you took away all our rights and gave them to our former slaves. WTF?"

It also pissed them off that the Northerners were preaching all kinds of things to the former slaves which would directly threaten what little the Southerners had left of their former way of life.

So instead of turning on the North because they had already tried that with the war and failed, they misplaced their anger and took it out on the former slaves. They adopted the Northerners attitude toward black skinned people in general and even kicked it up a notch as to form the KKK so they could organize threats, maim and kill the black skinned people to keep them from “rising up” against them.

And that continued on pretty much uncontested for another century before Malcolm X, a self-described "northern Negro,” and Martin Luther King who was from the South started making headlines. Malcolm X didn't care much for Martin Luther King at first and they had very different approaches.

Malcolm X choose to try to appeal to the logical thinking of the Northerners and riddled it with holes to make them see the hypocrisy of their racism. Martin Luther King took a non-violent approach in order remind the South the blacked skinned people are humble humans that mean them no harm and just want to live among them and be treated with some modicum of respect.

Both men wanted to have equal rights which neither the North nor South had ever really given to black skinned people before. And as far as I can see that fight is still really an ongoing one.

As far as the book goes though. I feel for these girls.

Scarlett is doing everything she knows how to hold on to Tara by any means necessary.

Suellen’s world is so small and she was so used to being pampered that she has focused her efforts on keeping herself in luxury instead of trying to process the realities of her new life.

Careen is also a bit small minded, her whole world seemed to center on this one boy and now they he is gone she seems to be falling back on her mother’s lessons and chosen piousness as the way to go. But at least that end would possibly benefit someone other than herself.

I don’t care for either Scarlett or Suellen too much right now but I can see how they were sort of set up to fail because they were raised to live in a world that no longer exists.

Scarlett has been ruthless but she is surviving, thriving and helping Tara, Suellen is truly the selfish one in this story so far.