Ugh. I finally managed to finish that horrid The Wind Done Gone piece of crap. Since I know at least one person who takes an interest, here’s what I got from the last half:
- I misread the bit about Prissy and Ashley. He didn’t have an affair with her, he had one with her brother. Homosexuality, miscegenation, murder… this book has it all.
- Scarlett was black. Yeah, that one threw me for a loop too. It all came to light in a series of letters between Mrs. O’Hara and her childhood sweetheart/cousin, Philipe. They wanted to get married, but her mother wouldn’t allow it. It turns out that Scarlett’s great-great-grandmother was “a Negresse”, and the family was terrified that if the two of them got together they’d have a dark child. The phrase “pour a little more milk into the coffee” was actually used. Philipe got killed anyway, and Mrs. O’Hara became, uh, Mrs. O’Hara. (I can’t remember her real name.) And she kept the whole thing secret.
- Well, not from Mammy. Apparently Mammy kept the letters and knew what happened. And when little Bonnie was born to Scarlett, I think she either started to get a little dark or else Mammy was worried that she was. Either way, Mammy would come into her room at night and scrub her with a lemon. Seriously. That’s why she was afraid of the dark. How dumb is that?
- Scarlett died. It was very anti-climactic. Do you need more proof that this woman can’t write than the fact that she killed off one of literature’s greatest female characters and I failed to care?
Seriously, here’s the whole book distilled into one paragraph: “My mother always preferred my half-sister to me, and I spent my whole life having huge issues because of it. To make up for it, I stole her husband and her house and her clothes. But wait, I guess I really did love my half-sister and my mom. I’m going to leave her husband and go bear a child for a black Congressman and then die of lupus.”
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It adds nothing to the idea of the Old South that the original book perpetuates. I wanted to hear the voices of the people that made Scarlett’s extravagant childhood possible. Instead of telling the real story of slavery, though, this mean-spirited author merely re-wrote the story to make herself win. She ends up with fine clothes, living in a fine house, and sleeping with Rhett Butler. She becomes Scarlett. Big friggin’ deal. If she needed to write that to be able to sleep at night, good for her. It’s like, hate Scarlett if you must, but don’t hate her simply because you envy her. It makes for a very boring book.
8 responses
i don’t know a thing about GWTW, and this still sounds horrible. my condolences, WG! i know how much it can suck to look forward to something and be disappointed. why did they call the book a parody? i thought parodies were supposed to be funny…
This might’ve been better if she’d taken a lighter-hearted approach. Instead it’s all deadly serious. Seriously, this woman writes things like, “I miss my Mama. Why didn’t my Mammy love me? Oh Mama, are you at peace?” PUKE.
and what was that crap about lupus? it sounds like she had this laundry list of what she was going to do:
hmm, i think i’ll leave my husband tomorrow, spend the next few weeks trying to get knocked up by some guy in DC, and then contract lupus so i can DIE. erg, you have more patience than i!
Whew–well, at least it’s over. And Ellen’s maiden name was Robillard or something like that. Let us never speak of this book again. 🙂
RIGHT! Robillard. I should’ve known that. Okay, I shall say no more.
Okay, one last one. B, I just realized what you meant by your comment. That paragraph I mentioned wasn’t actually from the book… That was just me distilling it down for y’all. So she never really said that. But it was still a stupid book. 🙂
:::heh:::
(now we’re done)
Why would you twist a legendery novel like Gone with the wind despite its racist overtones the love story is why it is a novel of legend so why try2 ruin it