THE PORTRAIT OF THE AMERICAN WOMAN IN MARGARET MITCHELL'S NOVEL "GONE WITH THE WIND"

This theme, The Portrait of the American Woman in Margaret Mitchell's Novel " Gone With The Wind " is broad, challenging, interesting and among many contradictory to one another's point of view, at different social grounds , periods of time simply or merely of the fact that a female writer of this tremendous saga read mostly by women represents multi dimensional themes. It is an interweave of tradition, history , war, social classes, Reconstruction, transition and more. All these and many other themes written with a masterful disciplined imagination put in the longest novel in history. A masterpiece of 1037 pages published in 1939 and subsequently in the greatest and longest motion picture on screen. Piling up records and building it's own history and legends. The novel has sold in more than 25 million copies in at least 27 languages in thirty countries and in more than 185 editions according to the research conducted in 2004. These figures continue to increase, not to mention that the film is seen by more individuals than the total population of the USA. GWTW has grown and conflated into a phenomenon of American and later into a phenomenon of levels of basic appreciation after international popular culture. Thus criticism was attested at the levels of basic appreciation , often in the opposite poles of love and /or hate , the evaluation again in bipolar terms of praise and / or scorn. On the popular level the book was lauded and in the literary world it was defamed. Mitchell's novel " Gone With The Wind " was seen as important symbols of American culture forces. A serious biography in 1965 sparked reconsiderations simply by the assumption of Mitchell's importance as a writer. Other re- evaluations followed which asserted the literary quality of the work, notably in feminist terms. Attesting the qualities that critics wrote such as Michener who said: " The spiritual history of a region". Many other scholarly papers have been undertaken to attack it and completed to praise it. Because of the enormous popularity , readability , embodiment of the heroine woman character Scarlett O'Hara with many other women who saw themselves in those situations or experienced the same then or even nowadays. These multi themes to discuss about, issues primarily of women, the novel is defined as a woman's literary artistic achievement, seen through the eyes off a woman Scarlett herself and many other women characters. Is seen the distinction of the past and present of the old and new society. Mitchell herself says it is about courage and gumption to change as a necessity in order to survive war, reconstruction and transition. The search of survival by poor and nearly defeated young women who had no control or capacity to understand these tensions. Indeed this novel has become an icon of the US culture.