The Myth Of The Happy Slaves In Southern Plantation Fiction: A Historical Study Of Margaret Mitchell’s Gone With The Wind

The Myth Of The Happy Slaves In SouthernPlantation Fiction:

A Historical Study Of Margaret Mitchell’s GoneWith The Wind

A TERM PAPER SUBMITTED IN PARTIAL FULFILMENT OF THEREQUIREMENTS

(Paper XII-B)

For the

MASTERS DEGREE

In

ENGLISH

Supervisor: Submitted By:

Prof. Nishi Pandey Fatima Siddiqui

Department of English and M.E.L.

University of Lucknow, Lucknow

DEPARTMENT OF ENGLISH AND MODERN EUROPEAN LANGUAGES

UNIVERSITY OF LUCKNOW

LUCKNOW

2013

The Myth Of The Happy Slaves In SouthernPlantation Fiction:

A Historical Study Of Margaret Mitchell’s Gone With The Wind

Introduction

Margaret Mitchell’s Gone With The

Wind is based on the backdrop of

slavery, the American Civil War

(1861-1865) and the subsequent era of

Reconstruction (1865–1877). It

belongs to the genre of Southern

Plantation fiction (also known as

Anti-Tom literature) where the novel is written from the

perspective of the slave-owners and presents the slaves as

living happily under the institution of slavery. The novel was

a huge success and sold over 50,000 copies when on the first

day of its release on June 30th, 1936.

Mitchell was a Southerner herself, being born in Atlanta,

Georgia, in a wealthy and politically influential family. A

close study of Mitchell’s family and background reveals that

characters in her novel are based on real men and women who

were a part of her life. The characters of Frank Kennedy,

Gerald O’Hara, Ellen O’Hara and other Southerners in the

novel, can easily be identified as

portraits of the members of her own family. Her grandfather

was a Southerner who belonged to Atlanta. He fought and was

wounded in the Battle of Sharpsburg as a Confederate and made

a large fortune by engaging in the lumber business during the

Reconstruction. The character of Frank Kennedy in the novel is

clearly an image of Mitchell’s grandfather as Frank also made

a fortune in the lumber business after he was wounded in the

army. In the same way, the character of Gerald O’Hara is based

on Mitchell’s maternal grandfather who emigrated from Ireland

and settled on a slaveholding plantation in Georgia.

Not only characters but also many of the incidents in the

novel are based on real life and events. Shantytown in the

novel, a place where the poor and freed slaves lived, is based

on Darktown which was once an area of African-American homes

Figure 1: Cover of the First Edition of the novel

and businesses at the bottom of Jackson Hill in Atlanta. In

the same way, the Ku Klux Clan (an association which advocated

the notion of white supremacy) and the Freedmen’s Bureau (a

government agency that aided freed slaves) were organizations

that were real and actually functioned in America in the

1860s. One of the incidents in the novel where Scarlett, the

protagonist, is forced into intimacy by her husband might also

have been influenced by a real event which took place in the

author’s life. Mitchell’s husband was an alcoholic and she got

a divorce from him on the grounds of marital rape in 1924. In

the novel, Scarlett’s husband Rhett, also an alcoholic, forces

himself on her one night under a fit of anger and drunkenness.

This and many other incidents and events in the novel are said

to have been inspired by incidents in Mitchell’s own life.

Mitchell had grown up listening to the stories of bravery

and glory of the old South and this was the image that was

fixed in her mind while writing this novel. She heard stories

of the Civil War from her relatives who had survived the fall

of the Great South. She was very creative and imaginative and

this is manifested in all her writings. She began writing at

an early age and her first stories were about animals, fairy

tales and adventures. She even designed the covers and artwork

for her stories. Some of her popular stories were The Knight and

The Lady (1909), The Arrow Brave and the Deer Maiden (1913) and Lost Laysen

(1916). She left her job at the Atlanta Journal, where she wrote a

column called Elizabeth Bennet’s Gossip in 1926, due to an ankle

injury and it was while she recuperated from her injury at

home that she wrote her iconic novel Gone With The Wind (published

in 1936) a Civil War-era novel which went on to win the

Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1937.

The novel is most often perceived as merely a love story,

set in the time period of the American Civil War. However, a

close reading of the novel reveals the true picture of the

early 19th century society and its ways. Slavery, class

distinction, racial supremacy, love of land and women

empowerment are few of the major themes in the novel. The

novel does not discourage the institution of slavery rather,

encourages the Myth of the slaves as happy and content in

their surroundings created by the Southern writers.

The novel received, along with many prizes, a lot of

criticism against the notion of racial supremacy that was

deeply embedded in the story. Scarlett, the protagonist, goes

on to call the slaves “black apes” and “stupid negroes” many a

times in the novel. Mitchell was criticized for her outdated

racial point of view, her false depiction of slavery and for

putting the biased Southern ideology on a pedestal.

This paper is an attempt to examine and argue the reality

behind the belief of the Southerners, that slavery was

beneficial to the African-Americans. It is an attempt to find

out if the Southern states actually cared for their slaves’

welfare or was it only a ruse in order to continue making

profits by using the slaves as cheap labour.

In order to study and analyze the novel in a historical

context, it is necessary to understand the history of

Colonialism and slavery in the Americas. It was in the year

1492 that a Spanish expedition, commanded by Christopher

Columbus, inadvertently discovered the American continent on

their way to find a trade route to India. It was after

Columbus’ discovery that large-scale explorations and

colonization ventures began on the American lands. Spain was

the first European power to settle in the Americas, followed

by Portugal, Netherlands, France and England. European

colonizers came to the New World with a desire to expand their

entrepreneurial activities and in search of the riches that

the new land offered.

England began its colonization of the Americas in the 17th

century. England’s unstable economy and the constant threat of

poverty and

inflation led many

people to believe

that moving to the

American Colonies

was a better

option. Growing

sugar, tobacco and cotton was a very profitable business as it

required less

input and gave a much higher output of wealth. The constant

threat of persecution by the Catholic Church of England also

prompted a significant number of Protestants to flee from

England to the American colonies. After 1700, most immigrants

to colonial Americas were either indentured servants (poor

teenagers who were given free passage to the Colonies in

exchange for their services on farms for a fixed number of

years and after their tenure was over, they were free to work

Figure 2: A sketch by william sheppard showing slaves picking cotton

on their own) or convicts who were transported to America as a

form of punishment. These convicts were sold as cheap labour

either for life or for a fixed number of years depending on

the gravity or their crime. If their sentence was not for

life, they could return home if they wished but most of the

offenders chose to stay in the colony and establish their own

farms and business out of whatever little savings they made.

These colonists disdained the natives and regarded them

as “lazy heathens who did not recognize their private property

and did not exert themselves to cultivate the land.” (Bentley

and Ziegler). Since they were unable to ‘tame’ the natives to

work for them on their farms and plantations, they turned to

Africa as a source of labour. Slaves were being imported in

the Americas by the Portugese as early as 1530s but it was in

the 1580s that large-scale import of the slaves began. The

mistreatment, malnutrition and sordid living conditions of the

slaves led to high rates of diseases and deaths, thus,

maintaining a constant demand for slaves from Africa. The

British first imported slaves in around 1610 at Virginia.

Soon, indentured servants were replaced with African slaves as

they could be bought at a much lower cost.

The question which is asked most often is what prompted

the African nation to export its people all over the world to

live a life of drudgery? The answer to this can be found in

the examination of the history of slavery in Africa. It was in

1483 that the Portugese kingdom initiated commercial relations

with the African kingdom of Kongo, owing to the rapid growth

of trade links and networks. The King of Kongo converted to

Christianity in order to gain more riches but soon was

overturned by the Portugese who established their colony in

Angola. In exchange for textiles, weapons and artisans they

sought high-value goods from the African markets such as

copper, ivory and slaves. Dutch and other European colonies

soon followed the example and started trading with African

kingdoms. Most of these slaves were war captives, criminals or

individuals expelled from their clans.

African society did not recognize private property,

rather ownership of land was vested in communities. Wealth and

power in Africa came from the ownership of labour rather than

land. Slaves were a form of private property that was

heritable. The institution of slavery existed in Africa long

before their export to the American colonies. Earlier, the

African kingdoms use to sell slaves to Mediterranean, Indian

basin and China as well. The slave trade, however, expanded

drastically after European interference. Most of these slaves

worked on sugar, tobacco or cotton plantations.

Figure3: A scene of a Slave Market in Africa

Slavery was practiced throughout the United States in the

17th and 18th centuries and the growing popularity of cotton

solidified the importance of slavery in the Southern states.

It was only after the United States Declaration of

Independence in 1776 that the Northern states began supporting

Abolitionism. Slavery polarized the nation into two and the

institution of slavery was abolished, finally, after the

American Civil War (1861-65). More than four million slaves

were freed after the war but the freed slaves continued to

face turmoil and conflicts throughout the years of

Reconstruction and recently until the 1960s.

The period between 1930 and 1940 saw the rise of creative

writers who helped the people of America to rediscover and

celebrate their past. The past events of the nation found

their way into the writing of historical novels. Mitchell,

influenced by this patriotic fervor wrote this novel following

the stories of her ancestors who exaggerated the glory and

romanticized the life of the South. She was raised on the

names of the Battles of the Civil War and sang the

Confederation’s songs which later appeared in her novel. In

this paper, we will examine and argue the conditions of the

slaves before, during and after the American Civil War, as

portrayed in the novel.

The state of the Slaves before the War

The novel begins on a late afternoon before the war and

the first African-American character we are introduced to is

Jeems, who works at the plantation of the Tartleton family.

Although, nothing significant except a conversation takes

place between Jeems and his masters at this point of time, but

it is one of the remarks Jeems makes during this conversation

that gives us the first glimpse of one of the many aspects of

a slave’s life. During this afore-mentioned conversation, it

is said about Jeems, “like all slaves of large planters, he

looked down on small farmers whose slaves were few.”

(Mitchell). He further says that he is way better than the

slaves who work on the small farms because he has been taught

and raised by his mistress who treated him like a son.

This conversation reveals two things. First, the division

that existed between the different classes of slaves and

second, the image of a benevolent mistress who treats her

slaves like her children. The character of the benevolent

mistress is common to all the works of Southern Plantation

Fiction. She was the pure wife of a benign master who presided

over the childlike slaves in a big happy interracial family.

“She supervised the domestic duties, superintended the

household industries, was head nurse for the sick and

instructor in religion and morals for the family and for the

slaves.” (Hunter) Another thing that Jeems reveals is that he

considers himself superior than those who worked on small

farms. He says that he is treated in the same way as his

master’s sons. This immediately paints in the reader’s mind,

the picture of a happy slave who is well adjusted in the

family of his owner whereas in reality, the picture was far

from the same. The family life of the slaves was regulated by

their masters. There was no one whom they could refer to as

family, for they could marry with their master’s permission

but only for the sake of breeding more slaves. The children

born to slaves were sold elsewhere as soon as they grew up.

There was also, as the statement reveals, different

classes amongst the slaves. House slaves were the highest in

slave hierarchy and field hands ranked the lowest. House

slaves were depicted in the novel as loyal and faithful, who

stayed on with their masters even after they were freed.

Mammy, Pork, Prissy and Uncle Peter belonged to this class in

the novel. About the various classes of the slaves and how

these classes were created, it is mentioned in the novel,

“After they had passed their tenth year, they were sent to old

Daddy, the plantation cobbler to learn his trade, or to Amos

the wheelwright and carpenter, or to Philip the cow man, or

Cuffee the mule boy. If they showed no aptitude for any of

these trades, they became field hands and, in the opinion of

the negroes, they had lost their claim to any social

standing.” (Mitchell 48) Unlike the whites, the class system

of the blacks was based on the profession of man rather than

his family of birth. The reason for this was that most of the

slaves never knew their real parentage for they were sold

almost as soon as they were born. And those who were lucky

enough to know their mother, were never sure about who their

father was because there did not existed any proper marriage

system amongst the slaves on a plantation.

We are introduced to Mammy in the second chapter of the

novel. Mammy was an archetype created by the Southern writers.

She was a black woman who worked for the white plantation

owner’s family, raising their children as her own. Like all

the archetypal mammies, Scarlett’s Mammy was also a huge old

woman, who was the highest in authority among all the slaves

of the house. She was not only the children’s nurse but also

next to Ellen O’Hara when it came to making important

decisions in the household. “Mammy felt that she owned the

O’Haras, body and soul, that their secrets were her secrets…”

(Mitchell 19) Throughout the novel, we see Mammy supporting

her master’s family through any and all times. It is revealed

that she held a special position in the family, owing to the

fact that she had been Ellen’s Mammy and had been raised in

the bedroom of Ellen’s mother. The picture that the author

paints here is that of a servant who is so well treated by the

family that she ceases being a servant and becomes a family

member instead.

Critics

believe that the

Mammy caricature

was created to

portray the black

women as happy

and content, even

if they were

slaves. There are no hard evidences of their being a Mammy in

Southern families. There are records of black women managing

the households for white people but they were not treated as

well and like a family as

depicted in Gone With The Wind and other works of Plantation

Figure 4: Hattie McDaniels who played the role of Mammyin David Selznick's Cinematic Adaptation of the novel

Fiction. Abolitionists claim that the Mammy archetype was

created by Southern writers in order to hide the exploitation

of female slaves on plantations. There were many instances of

exploitation of black women by white men. These women,

regardless of their colour and age were vulnerable to being

sexually assaulted by white men.

The character of Mammy was created to suggest ugliness.

She was a fat, old woman who was desexualized. On reading the

novel the implicit assumption that the reader could make was

that “No reasonable white man would choose a fat, elderly

black woman…. The black mammy was portrayed as lacking all

sexual and sensual qualities.” (Pilgrim) The desexualization

of the mammy stereotype was an attempt to prove false the

reports of exploitation of black women at the hands of white

men. It encouraged the belief that white men did not find

black women attractive and would never have indulged in

physical relations with them, thus, immediately placing the

white men in an honourable position and highlighting the

exalted status of black women as portrayed in Southern

Fiction.

The next house-slave we meet in the novel is Pork, who

was the honest faithful valet of Gerald O’Hara. On his

intoduction, we see him thanking his master for purchasing his

wife from the neighbouring plantation so that he may live with

his wife on the same plantation. The aspect that Mitchell

highlights is that the master was such a good man that he was

moved by the plight of his faithful valet. He was so saddened

by the thought of Pork being away from his wife that he

immediately rushed to purchase his wife, thus, depicting the

master as kind and caring. In reality these lines highlight

the sad condition of the slaves. Few of them were in a

position to marry and those who did marry, remained in the

constant fear of being sold the next day, for little or no

fault, and be separated from their family forever. The very

notion of the master ‘purchasing’ his slave’s wife shows how

little value was placed on the lives of these slaves. They

were perceived not as humans but as commodities that could be

bought and sold for profit. Pork himself had been ‘won’ by

Gerald in a poker game. The very fact that a white man bet his

slave in a game confirms that slaves were nothing more than a

piece of wealth for their masters, to be used in whichever way

they deemed fit.

Figure 5: Butterfly McQueen as Prissy and Oscar Polk as Pork

Uncle Peter, Dilcey, Prissy and Cookie are some of the

other house slaves at the plantation. The attractive and

glorious life of the South that Mitchell presents in the book,

was made possible only by the existence of slaves on the

plantations who were ready to run any errand on their master’s

beck and call. The masters, however, were far from like the

ones we find in Mitchell’s novel. In the novel, we find men

like Gerald O’Hara and John Wilkes, owners of the plantations

of Tara and Twelve Oaks respectively, who were as gallant as

they were compassionate. They treated their slaves as family

members and had never once taken a whip to them. They

consulted their slaves on matters, big and small, and it was

their primary concern that their slaves lead as good a life as

them. This was the reason, according to the novel, that their

slaves did not leave their masters even after they were freed

by the government.

The reality, however, was very unlike what is presented

in Mitchell’s novel. In real life, the masters were absolutely

despotic and enjoyed absolute control over their slaves’

lives. Rhodes, in his history of United States says that

slaves presented a picture of sadness and fear. They toiled

from morning till night, working for over fifteen hours a day.

(Hunter) The masters regulated the family life of their

slaves. Families of the slaves were fragmented for they were

married only in order to breed more slaves. Many planters

bought Negro women and used them as brood mares in order to

make a fortune by selling their babies. This might explain the

lack of love and intimacy between Negro women and their

children who most often did not know their parents. The cost

of living of the slaves was never high for it was in the

interest of their masters that they live at dirt cheap cost.

Slaves were never educated and planters went as far as to pass

laws in the states of Alabama, Georgia, North Carolina and

South Carolina which forbid the education of slaves.

(Hunter)The excuse they made for not letting their slaves

learn was that the plantations were sparsely spread and there

were not many schools where the children of their ‘people’

could go and study. Plus, wasting time in studying was not

very wise and it was better that they learn to work on the

plantations instead, for it was, they believed, their destiny.

The only consideration made was for the religious education of

the slaves who were usually baptized by their pious and

orthodox masters.

The planters believed that they were naturally superior

to the Negroes, who they believed to be savages, having lived

in savagery before they were taken captive. The argument was

that the Negroes had been given the same resources as the

white men but the fact that they remained in a barbaric state

whereas the whites progressed industrially, economically and

socially, is proof enough that the Negroes were inferior to

whites. As the Southern ‘Gentlemen’ were very religious and

pious, they followed their Lord’s commandment to protect the

inferior. They believed themselves to be the guardian of their

“people’s” (slaves’) welfare and believed that they were doing

well by “guiding” their slaves to their destiny. (Belin) They

defended their flogging and beating of slaves by saying that

it was the process of character building as it gives a chance

to slave to reflect upon what he has done wrong and to never

repeat the mistake again. The masters believed that it is only

by administering harsh punishments can a man improve his

people’s character. This was the state the slaves lived in

before the fall of the Great South and not in the happy and

content state as depicted in Mitchell’s novel. It was only

after the American Civil War that the lives of these slaves

actually began to improve.

The American Civil War and its Impact on Slavery

The second part of the novel takes us into the lives of

the people of the South after the war. We know how, before the

Civil War broke out, slaves were seen not as humans but as a

piece of property. This fact is made obvious by a line in the

novel where it says “the first two pages of the paper were

always devoted to advertisement of slaves, mules, plows,

coffins…” (Mitchell) This was the view endorsed by all the

whites of the South and Mitchell, consciously or unconsciously

(for many believe that she wrote the novel to scorn and

ridicule the way slaves were treated in a sarcastic manner),

has made us aware of this ideology.

During the course of the war, the condition of slaves was

far from better. There were the ‘loyal’ house-slaves who

preferred to stay with their masters and carry on with the old

ways because they believed that it was the life their fathers

and grandfathers had lived and that it was their duty to

remain serving their masters. It comes as no surprise that

there were many who worked for the confederate army on their

master’s order/request. When the war is about to end, Scarlett

goes back to Tara, her plantation and is devastated to find

that it has turned from a sprawling green plantation to a

ruined and deserted stretch of land. Most of the slaves and

field hands, she finds, have left the plantation except for

Mammy, Pork and Dilcey. Then came the field hands who, most of

them, left the farms and plantations they were working on in

search of better prospects. They were inspired by the

abolitionistic ideas and started believing in the ideas of

equality between the whites and the slaves. In the novel, we

see Big Sam who, the foreman at Tara being sent to dig ditches

for the Confederate army. He tells Scarlett, when they meet in

Atlanta, “Lawd, Miss Scarlett! Ain’ you heerd? Us is ter dig

de ditches fer de wite gempmums ter hide in w’en de Yankees

comes.” (Mitchell) So, we see that the condition of the slaves

wasn’t any better during the war than before.

It is only after the war is over that the real position

and condition of the freed slaves can be assessed properly.

The Yankees, as they are referred to in the novel, were men of

the Northern states where the institution of slavery was

either abolished or never existed. They were the ones who

started the Abolitionist Movement. Mitchell paints a very

mercenary picture of the Northern men. They are shown as

opportunistic men who instigated the slaves against their

masters for their own profit. There is an instance in the

novel which clearly represents the Southern view of the

Yankees. Ashley Wilkes in the novel, who is the archetypal

gentleman, says, “It isnt the darkies, Scarlett. They’re just

the excuse. There’ll always be wars because men love wars.”

(Mitchell) The Southerners were not ready to accept that they

were at fault for keeping slaves. They chose to believe

instead that the war was just an excuse in order to gain

political and economic power.

They did not believe that their slaves were capable of

thinking, of feeling and of wanting freedom. Scarlett remarks

quite often how her mother taught her that masters should be

gentle with their slaves for they were like ignorant children

who couldn’t do anything until they were told. The Southerners

thought that their slaves were instigated into rebellion by

the Yankees with the false promises of freedom and money. That

they were lead

astray by promises

of “silk dresses

and gold earbobs”.

(Mitchell)

After the

war, we see that the field hands left the plantations and

migrated to cities in order to assert their freedom. The

house-slaves who previously enjoyed the highest position among

the slaves and stayed back with their masters had to do all

the hard work. The slaves who had migrated from various

plantations all over the South were managed by the Freedmen’s

Bureau, a U.S. federal government agency that aided distressed

freedmen. However, Southerners saw it as a bureau organized by

the “federal government to take care of the idle and excited

ex-slaves.” (Mitchell) They believed that the bureau fed and

clothed the freed slaves while they loafed around and poisoned

their minds against their former owners. This organization is

constantly presented as an organization which encouraged

idleness and violence among the slaves whereas in reality this

bureau did a lot of good work after the Civil War. The Bureau

encouraged former plantation owners to rebuild their

plantations, urged the freed slaves to gain employment,

encouraged the freed slaves to gain education, kept an eye on

contracts between labor and management and pushed both whites

and blacks to work together as employers and employees rather

than as masters and as slaves.

The bureau is constantly criticized in the book for

encouraging the “cheap free issue country niggers.” (Mitchell)

Mitchell, in the novel, often shows her characters condemning

the acts of the bureau and supporting the Figure 6 : A sketch of the Freedmen’s Bureau issuing rations tothe freed slaves by Jas Taylor

“illiterate” free slaves in anything they wished to do. The

Southerners believed that the bureau was encouraging the freed

slaves to commit crimes like murder and rape of the whites.

There are many instances in the book when we see the

Southerners talking about freed slaves raping white women.

Scarlett herself is shown being molested by a couple of idle

slaves. The picture of the freed slaves as savages, in the

novel, is greatly exaggerated for historically there were but

a few such instances where the freed slaves engaged in

violence against the whites.

The other

historical

association mentioned

in the novel is the

Ku Klux Klan. It was

an organization which

advocated extremist ideas such as white supremacy, white

nationalism, anti-immigration, etc. It was established by the

Southern men, most of whom were veterans of the Confederate

Army, during the era of Reconstruction. It targeted the freed

slaves and their allies with the aim to restore white

supremacy by threats and violence. According to historical

reports, the Klan used violence against the freed slaves. They

burned their houses, murdered them and launched a reign of

terror amongst the freed slaves. Mitchell, however, has

painted this organization and members in the light of honour

and glory. The members of this group are described as men who

“ride around at night dressed up like ghosts and call on

Carpetbaggers who steal money and negroes who are uppity.

Sometimes they just scare them and warn them to leave Atlanta…

sometimes they kill them and leave them where they’ll be

easily found with the Ku Klux card on them…” (Mitchell). The

activities of the Klan are justified in the novel as noble. In

the novel, the members of the Klan form a party and go out in

the night to defend the honour of Scarlett who was molested by

a couple of freed slaves when she went out on a ride, by

setting Shantytown on fire. Their cruel act of killing

innocent people is justified in the novel by portraying it as

an act of protection of the honour and dignity of women.

The Yankees, as they are referred to in the novel, are

also portrayed in a negative light. Not only did the

Southerners held them responsible for breaking up their nation

and destroying their way of life but also believed them to be

mercenaries at heart who did not care for the welfare of the

slaves at all. They are constantly criticized for encouraging

the slaves to remain idle instead of doing the hard work, for

letting the freed slaves vote and all the activities they

engaged in for the welfare of the freed slaves. The

Southerners believed that the Northern States wanted to

increase their influence in the political sphere and this was

the reason they lured the slaves, to vote for them, by

offering them independence and wealth. This might have been

partially true but historical facts prove that they did more

good in the interest of the freed slaves than the Southerners.

Conclusion

It is easily understood that the condition of the slaves

improved, but only partially, after the Civil war. It was only

after the 1900s that the improvement was effective for after

centuries of enslavement, it could not be expected for them to

rise to understanding and equality within a day. The rosy

picture that Margaret Mitchell paints in the book is all a lie

for it cannot be expected that any man will remain happy as a

slave. Even if slaves haven’t know a better life and for

centuries have been expecting slavery to remain their destiny,

it cannot be denied that somewhere in the corner of their

hearts they would have wanted to be free for independence is a

basic human right.

The “myth” of the slaves as happy is actually a myth for

the word ‘slave’ literally means a person who is the legal

property of another and is forced to obey them. And under no

circumstance can a man who is ‘forced’ remain happy. A slave

might be reconciled to his fate if he sees no way out of his

miserable state but if there is a way for him to leave the

life of slavery and drudgery, he will always choose to live

free.

The Southern writers worked hard to present the slaves as

being happy with their lot and many of them succeeded to quite

an extent for novels like Mitchell’s Gone With The Wind went on to

become bestsellers and established in people’s mind all over

the world, the sunny picture of plantation life. The biggest

hurdle in the slaves’ way of presenting their true story was

the lack of education. The whites had very carefully and

successfully kept the slaves from being educated and it was

only after the Civil War and the abolition of slavery that the

slaves started gaining education. It was then that minority

discourses and true accounts of the slaves’ lives began to

circulate and the world got to know the ugly face of reality.

It can easily be established now that literature holds

great power. The most powerful tool of change is the creation

of discourse for one powerful text can influence readers for

decades and can create images that appear real but in fact are

only a way of manipulating the minds of readers. Mitchell’s

novel did just this; it created such a lifelike picture of the

slaves as happy that for a long time, it was believed to be

true until the reality came to the front.

Bibliography

Belin, H. E. "A Southern View of Slavery." January 1908. www.jstor.org. 18 October 2013 <http://www.jstor.org/stable/2762700 .>.

Bentley, H. Jerry and F. Herbert Ziegler. Traditions & Encounters: A Global Perspective on the Past. Vol. B. New York: McGraw Hill, 2003.

Hunter, Frances L. "Slave Society on the Southern Plantation." The Journal of Negro History 7 (1922): 1-10.

Mitchell, Margaret. Gone With The Wind. Pan Books, 2009.

Pilgrim, Dr. David. October 2000. www.ferris.edu. 15 October 2013 <http://www.ferris.edu/jimcrow/mammies/>.

Note : Neither of the pictures used in this paper are

property of the writer. They have all been taken from the

web.