Gone with the Wind

I didn't like Pride and Prejudice one bit. I know, I know, heads are turning. It was...charming. And also boring. Lizzy Bennet is not unlike many girls. A good person, a loving daughter and sister, albeit a bit quirky and a little too argumentative. She generally follows the rules of society, at least, as I see it. I think that the time period in which it was written may affect my perception of the novel itself. Austen assumes that her audience understands the strict societal constraints placed upon Lizzy, and therefore that Lizzy is particular and special...whereas I just see her as a women who won't be considered an object of trade. But if she has the support of her family in that aspect (for the most part), what's so special about it? The novel didn't capture me, in any case. And I apologize to my Austen fanatic friends. Maybe you can explain what I'm missing.

You know what book did capture me, completely? The book I read directly after, Gone with the Wind. When they call this a "sweeping novel" they mean it...that's the only two word phrase that I could think of that actually describes the book. Scarlett O'Hara may have been a selfish bitch and Melly may have been a little too simpering, but they were both revolutionary women. They weren't revolutionary because they were attention whores or particularly hated the restrictions that society placed upon them. They were revolutionary because they had to be, because a war broke out around them and the men that they so often deferred to were gone and they were left to forge new paths for themselves...to survive fire and theft, disease and hunger, the assault of their person and their land. They were survivors. The novel is about two women who are essentially preservationists (upholding the Survival of the Fittest theory) and come out of their topsy-turvy world on top again. Scarlett not only fights her position in society, she uses it to gain status and ensure the health and survival of not only herself, but of her family. It's very human, and quite captivating. I highly recommend it.

It also made me feel closer to my late Granny, who kept a copy of Gone with the Wind and the Bible in her living room at all times, it seems like. Funny enough, Pat Conroy, in his introduction the the paperback version I read, cites this as one of the tenants of our grandparent's generation (well, mine, they were a bit older. Grandfather born 1917, Granny born 1921)...that is, a generation almost forgotten now, a generation gone with the wind.