So, I read Gone With the Wind several years after my wonderful sister asked me to read it. It affected me deeply in many ways. Here are some of the moments (in reverse order) which moved me:
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"That's
not a vast age. It's a young age to have gained the whole world and lost your
own soul, isn't it?" Rhett to Scarlett
Scarlett’s
thoughts: "Only the new friends came calling.... all these 'new people,'
strangers every one! They didn't know her. They would never know her. They had
no realization of what her life had been before she reached her present safe
eminence."…
"Now in her loneliness, she would have liked to while away the afternoon with... any of her old friends and neighbors. For they knew."…
"Now in her loneliness, she would have liked to while away the afternoon with... any of her old friends and neighbors. For they knew."…
"Oh,
to be with her own kind of people again, those people who had been through the
same things and knew how they hurt -- and yet how great a part of you they
were!"
"Rhett,
worried but gentle (with his daughter), said coldly that if any spanking were
done, he would do it personally and to Scarlett."
"Wade
loved his mother very much, almost as much as he feared her."
"[Rhett]
knew how to play and swept her along with him. But he never played like a boy;
he was a man and no matter what he did, she could never forget it."
"[I]n
those two weeks in New Orleans, [Scarlett] learned everything about [Rhett]
except what he really was."
"The
mantle of spinsterhood was definitely on [India Wilkes’] shoulders now. She was
twenty -five and looked it, and so there was no longer any need for her to try
to be attractive."
Ignoring
the injustice of it all (if we can), chapter 37 of GONE WITH THE WIND gives the
best argument I've yet seen for the continuing dislike of Yankees in the South.
"Although
he was a prisoner and the Yankees were in the next room, it came to [Scarlett];
suddenly that Rhett Butler was a dangerous man to run afoul of.... There was something about this immobile man which
frightened her."
"[Frank]
saw that [Scarlett] understood entirely too well and he felt the usual
masculine indignation at the duplicity of women. Added to it was the usual
masculine disillusionment in discovering that a woman had a brain."
"When
such thoughts came [Scarlett] did not pray hastily to God, telling Him she did
not mean it. God did not frighten her any more."
In
Rhett’s face was "the surprise of a man who knows himself utterly, yet
discovers in himself unexpected loyalties and emotions and feels a faint self-ridicule
at the discovery."
"In
that night and the day which followed, [Wade] had been slapped by his mother
for the first time and had heard her voiced raised at him in sharp words....
Now, Yankees and a sharp voice were linked forever in his mind and he was
afraid of his mother." Damn.
"I'm
going to live through this, and when it's over, I'm never going to be hungry
again. No, not any of my folks. If I have to steal or kill--as God is my
witness, I'm never going to be hungry again." Scarlett’s famous
lines
"[S]omewhere
along the long road to Tara, [Scarlett] had left her girlhood behind her....
The clay had hardened, some time in this indeterminate day which had lasted a
thousand years. Tonight was the last time she would be ministered to as a
child. She was a woman now and youth was gone."
"All
wars are sacred... to those who have to fight them. If the people who started
wars didn't make them sacred, who would be foolish enough to fight? But, no
matter what rallying cries the orators give to the idiots who fight, no matter
what noble purposes they assign to wars, there is never but one reason for a
war. And that is money.... But so few people ever realize it. Their ears are
too full of bugles and drums and fine words from stay-at-home orators.
Sometimes the rallying cry is 'Save the Tomb of Christ from the Heathen!'
Sometimes it's 'Down with Popery! and sometimes 'Liberty!'" claims
Rhett.
"It
was awful for a man to know what women really thought about and talked about.
It made a girl feel positively undressed." Scarlett about Rhett
"[Scarlett]
did not care for the eager competition furnished by the sixteen-year-olds whose
fresh cheeks and bright smiles made one forget their twice-turned frocks and
patched shoes. Her own clothes were prettier and newer than most... but, after
all, she was nineteen and getting along and men had a way of chasing silly
young things."
"Men
were so easily stirred when they had been ill. They fell into a clever girl's
hand, just like the ripe peaches a Tara when the trees were gently shaken."
"What
a terrible thing it was to have to deal with a man who wasn't a gentleman. ...
this man seemed not to care for rules and evidently enjoyed talking of things
no one ever talked about."
"It
seemed such a terrible waste to spend all your little girlhood learning how to
be attractive and how to catch men and then only use the knowledge for a year
or two."
"Large
numbers of books always depressed [Scarlett], as did people who liked to read
large numbers of books."
"[Brent
Tarleton] realized that it was enough for a girl to be sweet and gentle and
beautiful, without having an education to hamper her charms"
