Gone with the Wind

The necessary countertext -- Morrison writes the Civil War and its aftermath from the perspective Mitchell erased. Reading both together is the only honest way to engage with this period.

The structural model -- both novels follow a willful woman through national catastrophe, mixing intimate domestic drama with epic historical sweep.

Another novel about a society that destroys anyone who defies its conventions -- Wharton writes about New York's old money with the same insider's clarity Mitchell brings to Atlanta.

Becky Sharp is Scarlett's literary ancestor -- an ambitious, manipulative woman navigating a society that rewards men for the same qualities it condemns in women.

A Civil War novel that takes Mitchell's home-front perspective and applies it without the Lost Cause mythology -- the war as experienced by the people left behind.

A Pulitzer-winning novel about Black slaveholders in antebellum Virginia -- a story that explodes every simplification about race, power, and the Old South that Mitchell's novel depends on.