Gumption and Nostalgia In Margaret Mitchell’s Gone With The Wind

“Nostalgia is an illness for those who haven’t realized that today is tomorrow’s nostalgia.” 

Zeena Schreck

Nostalgia is defined as the wistful or excessively sentimental yearning for return to or of some past period or irrecoverable condition. The word is a compound of the greek words nostos, meaning “return home” or “homecoming,” and algos, meaning “pain” or “ache”.

It was coined in 1688 by a Swiss medical student named Johannes Hoffer, who noted signs of anxiety and melancholia in a handful of Swiss soldiers who were fighting away from home. He called it a “neurological disease of essentially demonic cause.”

Early sufferers claimed to hear voices and see ghosts, and in addition to the feelings of homesickness, other symptoms of the so-called “disease” included malnutrition, brain inflammation, fever, and cardiac arrest.

Physicians of the day theorized that the phenomenon was due to ear and brain damage caused by the clatter of the cowbells in the pastures of Switzerland.

Modern theories however, suggest that the emotion could be a sort of coping mechanism for psychological threats, such as existential dread, despair, or loneliness.[1]

And far from being the net negative “disease” that it was once considered to be, recent studies are now linking nostalgia to beneficial feelings of social connectedness, self-esteem, positive mood, and optimism for the future.

But most of these studies rely on the flawed and unreliable data of an individuals subjective experiences as opposed to something objective and measurable. Who’s to say a study’s participant is telling the truth, or not exaggerating certain feelings or memories?

That’s also what makes nostalgia such an interesting emotion. Because we’re really good at convincing ourselves that our past was more pleasant than it really was. We might look back with rose coloured glasses on a fond memory and ignore everything else except the warm and fuzzy feeling we associate with it.

For example, just the other day I was driving home with my windows rolled down. The warm air was blowing through my hair, I had the music turned up, and I had just finished work for the day. Each of these things combined to inspire in me an eerily familiar sensation. I felt this unmistakable recollection of my youth that I remembered feeling so often before; back to a time when I was ignorant of so much, and responsible for so little, when I was just a tiny speck of dust staring into the massive potential of life. The whole experience felt so vivid and surreal. My heart was beating faster as I tried to search for things that defined that feeling in order that I might preserve it, or understand why it was happening.

Then it was gone in an instant.

Something had drawn me back to the present. I felt like I had time traveled only to be forced back into my regular trajectory, stinging with the subtle pain of losing those feelings of freedom and potential.

This is how nostalgia plays tricks on us. Because the truth is, that none of our memories are as good as we remembered them to be. I was not always a happy person at the age. The chaos of too much choice and freedom were overwhelming to me. I was single, broke, unsure of my future, and I was still trying to discover who I was.

In the particular memory I was remembering, I might have been happy, sure, but overall, I was lost, lonely, and ignorant. And I can say now, from having experienced them both, that the sense of order and security I feel in this moment are much more preferable to the unbounded independence of my youth, however carefree it might have been.

This is something the research professor Brené Brown discovered as well:

“Nostalgia is also a dangerous form of comparison. Think about how often we compare our lives to a memory that nostalgia has so completely edited that it never really existed.”

Brené Brown

Furthermore, when I get together with old friends, I’ve often noticed that our conversations will inevitably turn to the “good old days” of nostalgic recollection — and with some friends, it’s the entire conversation.

It’s like we have grown apart in the present, and our past and our memories are the last bits of thread holding our fading friendship together. Maybe we are both reluctant to accept this painful severing by acknowledging the emptiness in the present moment, or by realizing that we’ve planned a future that doesn’t include one another.

That’s why I’ve often felt nostalgic musings are largely negative. Reminiscing with friends about “the good old days” can be fun occasionally, but it’s the malignant longing to live that life over again that can be so insidious. Not to mention I always feel so sad afterwards.

So what does any of this have to do with Gone With The Wind you might ask?

Well, as the novel’s title suggests, “gone with the wind” refers to the end of a part of America’s history; the culture of Antebellum south – meaning the period before the Civil War.

The narrative centres around a young southern woman and her experiences before, during, and after the war, and the subsequent period of Reconstruction that followed.

I should note here that some consider the book to be problematic today. It’s often criticized for white-washing and downplaying the horrors of slavery, while at the same time romanticizing and glorifying the pre-civil war way of life.

And last year, HBO sparked a controversy when they removed the popular 1939 movie of the same name from its platform. They commented that “the film’s depictions don’t align with the company’s values.” It was removed mainly due to its racist stereotypes, its heroic depiction of the KKK (although not explicitly named), and the way serious issues of plantation life and slavery had been glossed over.

That’s actually why I wanted to read the book in the first place, I wanted to see what all the fuss was about myself.

But I’m not going to get into that discussion here. I only want to dissect some bits of wisdom that this novel can give us, regardless of its subject matter.

I will say though, that I believe that censorship is not only wrong, but it’s foolish.

This is from the philosopher well aquatinted with the word “liberty”:

“The only freedom which deserves the name, is that of pursuing our own good in our own way, so long as we do not attempt to deprive others of theirs, or impede their efforts to obtain it.”

John Stuart Mill

Because despite the questionable nature of Gone With The Wind, It’s still a piece of art, and of history. And whether we look back on it with a lens of moral relativism or not, we can still discover aspects of humanity that transcend the changes in our culture and society.

For example, when asked what the book was about, the author, Margaret Mitchell, said this:

“If the novel has a theme it is that of survival. What makes some people come through catastrophes and others, apparently just as able, strong and brave go under? It happens in every upheaval. Some people survive; others don’t. What qualities are in those who fight their way through triumphantly that are lacking in those that go under? I only know that survivors used to call that quality ‘gumption.’ So I wrote about people who had gumption and people who didn’t.”

So what does gumption have to do with nostalgia?

I’ve collected some quotes from some of the novel’s characters; some who have ‘gumption’ and others who don’t. And I’ve found these quotes can help us understand nostalgia and its benefits and disadvantages by analyzing how Mitchell’s characters think about the past, present, and future.

One of the character’s, Rhett Butler, describes the people without any ‘gumption’ and what effect the war had on their lives:

“It isn’t losing their money, my pet. I tell you its losing their world – the world they were raised in. They’re like fish out of the water or cats with wings. They were raised to be certain persons, to do certain things, to occupy certain niches. And those persons and things and niches disappeared forever when General Lee arrived at Appomattox.”

Rhett is speaking to the main character, Scarlett O’Hara, both of whom would be considered chock-full of ‘gumption.’ They are talking about another character names Ashley Wilkes, who represents the gumption-less majority.

“…He is down and he’ll stay there unless there’s some energetic person behind him, guiding and protecting him as long as he lives.” He adds, “I’m no mind to have my money used for the benefit of such a person.”

Scarlett interjects, saying, “You didn’t mind helping me when I was down”

“You were a good risk, my dear, an interesting risk.” He responds, “Why? Because you didn’t plump yourself down on your male relatives and sob for the old days. You got out and hustled and now your fortunes are firmly planted on money stolen from a dead man’s wallet and money stolen from the Confederacy….They show you to be a person of energy and determination and a good money risk.

…But Ashley Wilkes-bah! His breed is of no use or value in an upside-down world like ours. Whenever the world is up-ends, his kind is the first to perish. And why not? They don’t deserve to survive because they won’t fight – don’t know how to fight. This isn’t the first time the world’s been upside-down and it won’t be the last. It’s happened before and it’ll happen again. And when it does happen everyone loses everything and everyone is equal. And then they all start again at taw, with nothing at all. That is, nothing except the cunning of their brains and strength of their hands. But some people, like Ashley, have neither cunning nor strength or, having them, scruple to use them. And so they go under and they should go under. It’s a natural law and the world is better off without them. But there are always a hardy few who come through and given time, they are right back where they were before the world turned over.”

In the next few lines we get the perspective from Ashley himself. We get a glimpse into his character as how he uses his positive memories as a sort of coping mechanism to deal with the hardships of life. He is speaking to Scarlett here.

“I’ll always remember you as you were that day of our last barbecue, sitting under an oak with a dozen boys around you. I can even tell you just how you were dressed, in a white dress covered with tiny green flowers and a white lace shawl about your shoulders. You had on little green slippers with black lacings and an enormous leghorn hat with long green streamers. I know that dress by heart because when I was in prison and things got bad, I’d take out my memories and thumb them over like pictures, recalling every little detail– “

Clay Routledge, a social psychologist who spent over a decade studying nostalgia, echoes Ashley’s sentiment:

“If you’re feeling lonely, if you’re feeling like a failure, if you feel like you don’t know if your life has any purpose [or] if what you’re doing has any value, you can reach into this reservoir of nostalgic memories and comfort yourself…We see nostalgia as a psychological resource that people can dip into to conjure up the evidence that they need to assure themselves that they’re valued.”

Consider the conflict between the previous passage and the words from the great Italian poet Dante Aleghari:

“There is no greater sorrow
Than to recall a happy time
When miserable.” 

Dante Alighieri

Ashley continues:

“We’ve come a long way, both of us, since that day, haven’t we, Scarlett? We’ve traveled road we never expected to travel. You’ve come swiftly, directly, and I, slowly and reluctantly...He sat down on the table again and looked at her and a small smile crept back into his face. But it was not the smile that had made her so happy a short while before. It was a bleak smile.“

Here Mitchell includes the “bleak smile” that’s so characteristic of the bittersweet feeling of old, happy memories.

Ashley’s remarks subtly in the following lines about the connection between the lack of “greatness” and his stubborn clinging to the past:

“…the seeds of greatness were never in me. I think that if it hadn’t been for you, I’d have gone down into oblivion — like poor Cathleen Calvert and so many other people who once had great names, old names.”

He states outright his yearning for this irrecoverable condition of his old life:

“I want the old days back again and they’ll never come back, and I am haunted by the memory of them and of the world falling about my ears.”

He continues his conversation with Scarlett by encouraging her to remember their past together, but Scarlett, driven by her ‘gumption’, is reluctant to follow.

” ‘Do you remember,’ he said — and a warning bell in her mind rang: Don’t look back! Don’t look back! But she swiftly disregarded it, swept forward on a tide of happiness.”

The two share a beautifully descriptive memory together and Scarlett thinks to herself:

” ‘Now I know why you can’t be happy’ she thought sadly. ‘ I never understood you before. I never understood why I wasn’t altogether happy either. But — why are we talking like old people talk!’ she thought with dreary surprise. ‘Old people looking back fifty years. And were not old! Its just that so much has happened in between. Everything changed so much that it seems like fifty years ago. But we’re not old!...But when she looked at Ashley he was no longer young and shining. His head was bowed as he looked down absently at her hand which he still held and she saw that his once bright hair was very gray, silver gray as moonlight on still water. Somehow the bright beauty had gone from the april afternoon and from her heart as well as the sad sweetness of remembering was as bitter as gall.”

She regrets the bitter reminiscing and she captures perfectly how I feel when I’ve had too much nostalgic musings for my own good:

” ‘I shouldn’t have let him make me look back,’ she thought despairingly. ‘I was right when I said I’d never look back. It hurts too much, it drags at your heart till you can’t ever do anything else except look back. That’s what’s wrong with Ashley. He can’t look forward any more. He can’t see the present, he fears the future, and so he looks back. This is what happens when you look back to happiness, this pain, this heartbreak, this discontent.‘ “

Later on in the novel, Scarlett experiences moments of nostalgia herself, but note the difference is how she lets them go, with the”satisfaction” and fulfilment of “closing a door.”

“And when Atlanta was covering its scars and buildings were going up everywhere and newcomers flocking to the town everyday, she had two fine mills, two lumber yards, a dozen mule teams and convict labour to operate the business at a low cost. Bidding farewell to them was like closing a door forever on a part of her life, a bitter, harsh part but one which she recalled with a nostalgic satisfaction.”

In the next passage, Scarlett doesn’t look back fondly on happy times but instead chooses to reflect on her hardships and thinks about how far she has come:

“It would be a comfort to sit with Maybelle, remembering that Maybelle had buried a baby, dead in the mad flight before Sherman. There would be solace, in Fanny’s presence, knowing that she and Fanny both lost husbands in the black days of martial law. It would be grim fun to laugh with Mrs. Elsing, recalling the old lady’s face as she flogged her horse through Five Points the day Atlanta fell, the loot from the commissary jouncing from her carriage. It would be pleasant to match stories with Mrs. Merriwether, now secure on the proceeds of her bakers, pleasant to say: ‘Do you remember how bad things were right after the surrender? Do you remember when we didn’t know where our next pair of shoes was coming from? And look at us now.’ “

That’s the difference between Ashley’s unhappy yearnings and Scarlett’s hopeful remembrances.

“Now she understood why when two ex Confederates met, they talked of the war with so much relish, with pride, with nostalgia. Those had been the days that tried their hearts but they had come through them.”

Throughout the novel, Scarlett repeats the phrase, “I’ll think about it tomorrow,” which gives her strength during her numerous trials. She doesn’t rely on the lost days of her youth like Ashley does, rather, she uses something like the serenity prayer as a maxim to encourage her to move forward, and to embrace the future.

“I’ll think of it all tomorrow, at Tara. I can stand it then. Tomorrow… After all, tomorrow is another day.”

Conclusion

After spending some time on the internet these last few years, and thinking about the rising levels of depression and anxiety among young people, I can’t help but feel there might be a connection between those trends and our current inability to let go of the past.

On social media, everything is laid bare for the world to see, at all times. Nothing is hidden behind a succession of doors that are laid out in a row like dominoes. Instead, our doors are placed side by side, all eagerly displaying our online personas in one glance. “Throwback Thursday”, the ubiquitous “take me back,” and some variation or other of the “90’s starter packs” are a few of the common nostalgic triggers that I see so much of.

And now, with Covid-19 especially, everyone is longing for life to go back to normal, to the way it used to be. But what if life never goes back the way it used to be? What are you going to do about it? Are you going to be an Ashley Wilkes? Or a Scarlett O’Hara? Are you going to be a survivor and show ‘gumption’? Or are you going to ‘go under’?

But I should be clear here, I’m not necessarily saying that nostalgia is either good or bad, I just think it depends on the individual and how they think about it. Perhaps we can think of nostalgia as a tool, just like a tool can be used to build a house, it can also be used to kill your neighbour. Are you letting nostalgia bring you down, or are you using it to push yourself forward?

We’ve come along way from the initial diagnosis of the “disease.” And back then, the diagnosis and symptoms were just as questionable as the supposed cures. Leeches, the purging of the stomach, and scaring it or shaming it out of patients, were just a few of the barbaric and outdated methods used for treating the “victims.”

But among them, a few relevant pieces of wisdom survived.

This is from the 19th century french doctor, Hippolyte Petit, who inspires us to let go of our pasts and to search for meaning and purpose in our futures: “Create new loves for the person suffering from love sickness; find new joys to erase the domination of the old.”

“The past is for learning from and letting go. You can’t revisit it. It vanishes.” 

Adele Parks

Thanks for reading.

Featured image is a still from the 1939 film, Gone With The Wind. “Gone With The Wind – Victor Fleming (1939) by The Film Sufi 18 Jan. 2020, FilmSufi.com, http://www.filmsufi.com/2020/01/gone-with-wind-victor-fleming-1939.html