Gone with the Wind
Margaret Mitchell (1936)
“A thousand-page monument to one woman's refusal to be destroyed -- and a deeply uncomfortable window into how America romanticized its own worst history.”
Short Summary
Scarlett O'Hara, the headstrong daughter of an Irish immigrant plantation owner in Georgia, navigates the destruction of the Civil War and Reconstruction by sheer ruthlessness and survival instinct. She marries three times -- first for spite, then for money, finally for passion -- while obsessively pursuing Ashley Wilkes, a man who represents the old South she's already outgrown. Her third husband, Rhett Butler, is the only man who sees through her, loves her anyway, and ultimately walks away when she destroys his capacity to care. By the end, Scarlett has lost nearly everything -- Rhett, her daughter Bonnie, Melanie's friendship -- but still believes she can get it all back tomorrow.
Detailed Summary
Katie Scarlett O'Hara grows up at Tara, a cotton plantation in northern Georgia, the eldest daughter of Irish-born Gerald O'Hara and the genteel Ellen Robillard. Scarlett is beautiful, manipulative, and fundamentally uninterested in the ladylike restraint her mother models. She is obsessed with Ashl...