LEESBURG - Was the best selling fiction novel of all time a thinly veiled autobiography of the author?
According to Dr. Elliot Engel, who spoke at the Kosciusko Literacy Services fundraiser Thursday, the answer is yes.
Engel spoke about "Gone With The Wind" and its author, Margaret Mitchell, explaining that many things happened in her life that made the best-selling novel what it is."'Gone With The Wind' is one of the most popular novels and motion pictures of all time, but you will be surprised when you learn the real story behind the novel and the glamorous Hollywood legends surrounding the film. Few know that the novel has little to do with the Civil War and the Deep South, but is really a glimpse into the real life and loves of Margaret Mitchell," said Engel.
Mitchell was a shy woman, Engel said, and "Gone With The Wind" is her secret autobiography. She wove important events of her life into the storyline.
Born into a wealthy family in Atlanta in 1900, Mitchell frequently was exposed to stories of the Civil War. When she was 3 years old, her parents would take her to elderly neighbors' homes and spend Sunday afternoons listening to tales of the war.
"By the time she was 14, she knew every significant fact about every battle of the Civil War," Engel said. "At age 16, she learned that the South lost the war."
When Mitchell was a teenager, she met and fell in love with a soldier, Clifford Henry. Henry always spoke of how he felt he was born in the wrong time and longed to live in an era where life was slower.
In her freshman year, Mitchell received a telegram informing her Henry had been killed overseas in the war. When she wrote her novel, he became the character Ashley Wilkes.
About a month after Henry's death, Mitchell received another telegram. This time, it was from her father, and it informed her that her mother was gravely ill with Spanish influenza.
Mitchell rushed home, found her father insane and learned that her mother had been dead for more than 48 hours. This scenario also can be found in her epic novel.
Like Scarlett O'Hara, the character she created, Mitchell never went back to school, choosing instead to stay home and care for her father.
A few months later, Mitchell's aunts persuaded her to attend the social event of the season in Atlanta, which was a ball hosted by the Sigma Alpha Epsilon fraternity. The party's theme was "Moonlight and Magnolias," and people were supposed to dress as if they were attending a prom in 1840.
Mitchell, ever the scholar, did her homework and discovered that in 1840, Atlanta was not a city and the girls who would have had the money to attend such an event would have been children of pig farmers. Such girls would have worn an ugly brown or black dress with patches.
So Mitchell crafted a black dress with patches and went to the dance, only to find girls dressed in pastel southern belle-type dresses. Mitchell was embarrassed and made a beeline to the back wall.
Later when Red Upshaw, the star football player, was asked to open the ball by choosing a lady for the first dance, he chose Mitchell and the pair danced a Virginia Reel. Of course, Upshaw became Rhett Butler and this event led to yet another famous scene from Mitchell's novel.
Mitchell started dating Upshaw, then met his roommate, John Marsh, and started dating him, too. She dated both men for a time and eventually married Upshaw.
However, on the second day of the honeymoon, Mitchell came to the realization that the only man she could ever love was the late Clifford Henry. And she told her new husband this, causing quite a rift between the couple.
The couple moved into Mitchell's parents' house, but eventually separated, with Upshaw living in a boarding house across the street. Two days after Upshaw moved into the boarding house, he knocked on Mitchell's door and told her that he had been offered a contractor's job in Asheville and would have to be there for three years with no breaks.
When Mitchell asked, "What am I supposed to do?", Red said nothing, got in his car, drove off and was never seen again.
Although the famous line was not there, "That became the single most famous scene in American literature," Engel said.
Eventually, Mitchell married Marsh, and shortly after, Mitchell broke her ankle and was forced to stay in bed for three months. Marsh brought Mitchell books from the Atlanta Library daily, and one day he ran out of books to get her.
"You have read everything in Atlanta," he told her, and said perhaps she should write her own book. So on Oct. 25, 1926, Mitchell started writing.
And she kept writing for seven years until the book was finished in September 1933.
However, Mitchell felt the book was not good and never intended for anyone to read it. Two years later, a woman in Mitchell's bridge club, who worked at a publishing company, said she was looking for a long fiction novel that was romantic and set in the Civil War period to show to an editor from New York.
Mitchell still did not intend to show her work, until another woman in the club suggested Mitchell didn't have it in her to write a novel.
So Mitchell went home, got the envelopes containing each chapter of the book, and gave them to the editor, who was ready to board a train out of town.
When Mitchell got home, she realized she had not given him the first chapter of the book and she and her husband promptly sent the editor a telegram saying, "Do not read manuscript. Return it."
The editor, however, already had read the book and wanted to publish it.
The book was published in its entirety in 1936 with only two changes: the name of the main character and the title of the book.
Originally, Mitchell wanted the main female character to be named Pansy O'Hara, but the name was changed when the editor explained the connotation of the word "pansy" in New York's slang. Mitchell then agree to change the character's name, and decided to name her Scarlett.
Mitchell originally titled the book "Baa Baa Black Sheep," but the editor told her it was the worst title ever. So she decided to call the book "Tomorrow Is Another Day." Unfortunately, a book by that name already had been published, and Mitchell was asked for another name. She opened a book of Victorian poetry and saw the line "Gone With The Wind" and that became the title of the book.
Engel originally is from Indianapolis and now lives in Raleigh, N.C. Engel earned his master's degree and doctorate as a Woodrow Wilson Fellow at UCLA. He has taught classes at North Carolina State University, the University of North Carolina and Duke University.
