GWTW Blog Post

My View on Gone With the Wind

After watching Part I of Gone With the Wind, I took notes on what I thought about the female characters in the movie. 

Mammy, who is played by Hattie McDaniel, is a slave that works in the household of Scarlett's family.

Although she was a side character in the story, she definitely was not a forgettable character. Mammy has a strong voice in the house and actively ordered people around to make sure they should be acting how they are supost to, especially Scarlett. For example, when Scarlett runs away from her house in the beginning of the movie after finding out Ashley is getting married, Mammy shouted at Scarlett to come back inside. 

Throughout the movie, I noticed the progression of the Civil War. In the beginning, I was surprised that the people in the South were excited to start a war instead of people fighting to prevent wars like in today's society. I think that Gone With the Wind did a good job presenting what life was like for women during the war. In the movie, we see Scarlett struggling to be away from her mom and having to work in a church where she treated soldiers that got hurt from battle. 

Scarlett had a hard time mentally being surrendered by the overwhelming amount of deaths and the brutal procedures being performed on the soldiers. She often became homesick and wanted to leave the church to see her mother. 

I think Scarlett's experience shows that although men endured the hardships of war, women had to deal with the struggles as well. The war opened up opportunities for women to work as nurses, which was once seen as a man's job.  Women were now able to show what they are capable of, saving thousands of soldiers in the process. An example of this would be Kate Cumming and Phoebe Pember who saved hundreds of soldiers in the South during the Civil War. 

I think the one thing that I thought was a little inaccurate during this movie was the fact that Scarlett was a nurse. Scarlett is known to be a young and very attractive girl that is able to charm her way into any mans' heart. Due to her character it is not likely that she would have been a nurse because the women that were hired in this time period were known to be on the older side and unattractive. They would hire women like this because they thought that attractive nurses would distract the soldiers from getting back on the battle field to win the war. 

While many men fought in the war, other men chose to profit from it. We see this through the character

Rhett Butler in the movie. I believe it is wrong for men like Rhett Butler to profit from the war because it shows they do not care about the effects the war will have on others, they only focus on how they will benefit from the war. 

In today's society it is still very common for people to profit from the war instead of fight. For example, in the last war in Iraq, many criminal groups like militias and insurgent organizations profited from the war by "oil smuggling, extortion and protection racketeering, kidnapping for ransom, human trafficking, the illicit cigarette trade" etc. It is unfortunate because many people try to stop wars from starting but often get ignored by people like this because they want to keep profiting of them.