The Wrath to Come: Gone with the Wind and the Lies America Tells by Sarah Churchwell

‘Gone with the Wind provides a kind of skeleton key, unlocking America’s illusions about itself.’

I was intrigued. It’s been a long, long time since I read Gone with the Wind’, and even longer since I first saw the movie. How can a movie about a fictional antebellum South hold any key to America? I read on; I learned why Black is now capitalised:

‘The dehumanization of the enslaved included the stripping of African tribal, ethnic or national identities that people with European heritage can claim, identities that are customarily capitalized. This is one reason for arguing that Black should be capitalized whereas white should not (as it can be differentiated with capitalized national and ethnic identities).

I learned also that a ten-year-old Martin Luther King, Jr, was amongst the group of children of the black Ebenezer Baptists Church choir who sang for an all-white audience at a ball at a plantation the night before the Atlanta premiere of Gone with the Wind in 1939. I kept following the redefinition of slavery as harmless and the slaves as grateful. In some regards, the movie is different from the book, but neither makes for a comfortable look at the past.

And, just as I was settling into using Gone with the Wind as a key, the events of January 2021 brought my thoughts from fiction, the past and into the uncomfortable near present.

Ms Churchwell takes themes from Gone with the Wind to examine aspects of American culture. It is an uncomfortable read: I may not be American, but several of the themes apply here in Australia and elsewhere. Consider the plight of native peoples, the taking of their land, their subjugation and near genocide.

‘Slavery was abolished by the war, but white supremacism was not. The problem was that white Americans could abhor slavery, and fight a war to end it, and also abhor Black people.’

I kept reading. Ms Churchwell includes confronting information (including photographs) about lynch mobs, the Ku Klux Klan, the double standards applied. This is not a comfortable read. It is thought-provoking, a reminder that uncomfortable history is often ignored or rewritten to make it more ‘comfortable’. Yes, history should be revised as new facts are discovered but exclusion is not revision.

Anyone who has read the book (and most who have watched the movie) will know that Scarlett is not a nice person. Anyone who knows their history will appreciate Ms Churchwell’s distinctions between fiction and fact even if they question some of her conclusions.

Well worth reading.

‘In the end, Scarlett goes home to Tara. Because her deepest romance is with power, neither Ashley nor Rhett can ultimately supply it. Power comes from Tara, the plantation she is always fighting to save, the supposed survival of which justifies everything she does. But survival is a euphemism for ownership.’

Jennifer Cameron-Smith

Book 21 in my 2024 Nonfiction Reader Challenge. I’ve entered as a ‘Nonfiction Grazer’ and this book should be included under the heading of ‘Culture’.