Uzbekistan state world languages university

The purpose of my term paper is the purpose of the term paper - the biography and work of Margaret Mitchell "Gone with the Wind".
To achieve this goal, it seems necessary to solve the following tasks:
to study the prerequisites that influenced the writing of the novel;
to investigate the ideological and artistic content of Margaret Mitchell's novel "Gone with the Wind";
to analyze the specifics of the novel "Gone with the Wind" as a historical novel;
consider the place and role of the novel "Gone with the Wind" in American literature of the XX century.
The course work includes an introduction, 2 chapters, a conclusion and a list of references.


Chapter 1. Margaret Mitchell
Chapter 1.1 Biography of Margaret Mitchell
One of the talented and outstanding writers of her time, who lived and worked in the 20th century. She was writer, journalist, novelist Margaret Munnerlyn Mitchell Marsh. She wrote the acclaimed bestseller "Gone with the Wind" Margaret Mitchell was born in 1900 on November 8 In Atlanta, Georgia. Her family came from a fairly wealthy Scottish family. Mitchell grew up in a family of storytellers who regaled her with stories and accounts of her experiences during the American Civil War, which ended just 35 years before she was born. An active tomboy, she played in the earthworks that still surrounded the hometown of Atlanta, and often rode horseback with Confederate veterans. He was also an insatiable reader and wrote numerous short stories and plays throughout her youth. The father of Margaret and her brother Stevens, Eugene Mitchell, the most famous lawyer in Atlanta, a real estate expert who dreamed of becoming a writer in his youth, was the chairman of the local historical society, thanks to which the children grew up in an atmosphere of stories about the amazing events of the recent era.
From an early age, Mitchell loved to read. Her two favorite books as a child were "Phoenix and the Carpet" and "Five Children and This." She had the nickname "Jimmy", and until the age of 14 she behaved like a kid. Inspired by the books she read, she soon began writing stories in her notebook and even unofficially chose a name for her publishing venture² called "Urchin Publishing Co." In 1909 she wrote "The Knight and the Lady", the first of her short stories, and four years later she wrote, "The Brave Shooter and the Deer Girl". She grew up surrounded by typical Southern culture and witnessed a number of incidents that either traumatized her or inspired her to write later in life, such as the infamous "riot" in Jackson Hill. A riot forced the family to move in 1912. The following year, as a teenager, she wrote "The Greaser".
In 1916, at the age of 15, she wrote "Lost Laysen", which she dedicated to her boyfriend, who later died. The novel was published only after her death. She studied at Washington Seminary and was an active member of the drama club. Two of her stories, "Little Sister" and "Sergeant Terry", were published in the school almanac. She graduated from the Institute in 1918.Then in 1918 she entered Smith College, where she was an average student and received the nickname ‘Peggy'.
As in the novel, Scarlett's mother died the day before her arrival, and Margaret's mother Mabel Mitchell became seriously ill and died of the flu the day before her daughter returned. Quite a lot of events in the novel are connected with the life of Margaret herself, Margaret, like Scarlett, married for the first time not for love. Margaret Mitchell's first marriage lasted only 10 months. Of all the generations of wives in their family, Margaret was the first to allow herself a divorce. In Margaret's biography, there is a bit of rebellion towards all the rules and mores, like the main character of the novel Scarlett. As it often happens, the novel "Gone with the Wind" owes its appearance, in general, to a prosaic event. As a teenager, Margaret forced a horse to overcome an obstacle while riding - and fell out of the saddle. This led to damage to the ankle and the need to wear special shoes. Years later, the trauma made itself felt: Margaret was diagnosed with arthrosis³. Margaret couldn't walk for about a year. And it was then that she came up with the idea that writing novels on a love-historical theme is much more interesting than reading them. As a child, Margaret heard many stories from her grandmother about the war of the southern and northern American states, about Yankee soldiers and Confederate soldiers. Her mother showed her burnt chimneys and vacant lots-traces of families who had gone to war. Margaret's ancestors on both sides were veterans of this war. All these stories fit themselves into sketches for a future novel.
Since 1922, Margaret took up journalism, becoming a reporter for the Atlanta Journal newspaper, specializing in historical essays. In 1925, she married insurance agent John Marsh, at his request, she left her job as a reporter and settled with him near the famous Peach Street. The life of a typical provincial lady began, although Margaret's house was different from other provincial houses in that it was full of some papers that both the guests and herself made fun of. These pieces of paper were the pages of the novel "Gone with the Wind" (Gone with the Wind), created from 1926 to 1936.
From 1926 to 1933, Margaret wrote her book, absolutely unsure of her creation. Margaret had no idea when she would finish her work. But she had something else-a plot so formed in her imagination that she could put any word, chapter on paper at any time. She wrote sometimes from the beginning, sometimes from the middle, sometimes from the end. However, the first chapter she wrote was the last in the book.
Margaret was completely at a loss to know how readers accepted her Scarlett. When asked by reporters if she had written off the main character from herself, Margaret answered sharply: "Scarlett is a girl of easy virtue, I'm not!". And explained: "I tried to describe a far from delightful woman, about whom there is little good to say… I find it ridiculous that Miss OHara has become something of a national heroine, I think it's very bad for the moral and mental state of the nation - if the nation is able to applaud and get carried away by a woman who behaved in this way."
In August 1949, Margaret Mitchell and her husband went to the cinema. It's a kind of tradition to go to the cinema once or twice a week. When there were only a few meters left to the sidewalk, a car suddenly jumped out from around the bend. At breakneck speed. John managed to dodge, jump out from under the wheels, but Margaret did not have time. With severe injuries, she was taken to the hospital, where five days later, on August 16, 1949, she died.
The tragic death of Margaret Mitchell did not allow her to write new works. Therefore, in the history of world literature, Margaret has forever remained the author of Gone with the Wind. And there is no doubt that this work will be a success for a long time. Despite the fact that Margaret herself wrote about the novel as follows: "... it is, in fact, a simple story about absolutely ordinary people. There is no refined style, no philosophy, a minimum of description, no grandiose thoughts, no hidden meanings, no symbolism, nothing sensational- in short, nothing that made other novels bestsellers." The book and the movie "Gone with the Wind" will always be relevant. And even after many years they will be called classics and masterpieces of world literature and cinema.


1.2 The work of Margaret Mitchell and the "Southern Tradition" in literature
The work of the American writer Margaret Mitchell 1900-1949, as it turned out, has been little studied both abroad and in domestic literary studies. When her work "Gone with the Wind" was published, it became the subject of many disputes among critics, various explanations and arguments were expressed about the novel, which contain mutually exclusive characteristics. American critics of the 1930s considered Margaret Mitchell's novel mainly from the point of view of the author's historical concept and the authenticity⁴ of the events described in it. It should be noted that many "southern" critics and writers ignored the appearance of "Gone with the Wind". At the same time, they were very attentive to each other and responded to the appearance of the most insignificant works of their colleagues. German literary critic A.D. Linhouts, in this regard, suggested that the excessive popularity of the novel by M. Mitchell was the very reason why he was silenced by "southern" intellectuals.
After the death of the writer in 1949, all documents related to the history of the creation of "Gone with the Wind" drafts of the novel itself were destroyed, according to the will of the author. Published in 1976 in the Macmillan publishing house, the writer's letters became the only documents, apart from the novel itself, from which one can learn something about M. Mitchell-about her penchant for mystification, a sense of humor, a desire to remain mysterious and incomprehensible to others. However, no document can tell more about the author of Gone with the Wind than the novel itself.
The first works in our country in which the work of M. Mitchell was considered without the usual ideological cliches⁵ were the article by L.N. Semenova "The South in US literature" and her PhD thesis "The Problem of the "window tradition" in American criticism In the 60s of the XX century," Semenova comes to the conclusion that the novel by M. Mitchell was a transitional stage from the "plantation" to the so-called "new tradition". Among the representatives of the "new tradition", the critic names A. Tate, W. Faulkner, R. P. Warren. Of undoubted interest is the article by E.A. Stetsenko "History in mass literature" (M. Mitchell "Gone with the Wind"), in which the critic does not limit himself to stating that M. Mitchell's work occupies a middle position between mass and "serious" literature, but also gives a deep analysis of the poetics of "Gone with the Wind". Noting the presence in M. Mitchell's novel of many cliches and stereotypes characteristic of both "southern" and mass literature, E.A. Stetsenko argues that "Gone with the Wind" goes beyond the "Formulaic Literature".
Despite the presence in "Gone with the Wind" of genre signs of melodrama, an adventurous novel that reflected the clash of North and South, tradition and antitraditional, individual human fate and historical process, as well as the role that historical time plays in it, we come to the conclusion that we have a historical novel in front of us.
The historical time in "Gone with the Wind" sometimes flows in parallel, then intersects, then merges with the biographical. These two times have the same rhythm and the same direction of movement. The fate of the heroine of the novel, Scarlett O'Hara, is constantly dependent on the main events of the story. The serene life of the pre-war South coincides with the happy days of Scarlett's girlhood, and her unexpected and accidental marriage is as scary and ridiculous as the beginning of the war.
The heroine's widowhood comes in the tragic days of the war. The loss of her loved ones, the ruin of the ancestral nest personify in "Gone with the Wind" the death of the "old South" during the Reconstruction period. The open final makes you think not only about the specific fate of women, but also about the future of the entire American South.
Scarlett resists the pressure of "historical destiny" on her. Her constant struggle with circumstances, unwillingness to submit to the influence of external events and the behavior prescribed by society reveals the unconventionality and originality of the heroine, but at the same time the author shows how time determines her character. How M. Mitchell managed to show in "Gone with the Wind" the interaction of human fate and the epoch is her skill as an artist and genuine historicism.
"Gone with the Wind" became the most famous counter-version of the novel by G. Beecher Stowe "Uncle Tom's Cabin". Like all Southern writers, M. Mitchell tried to refute the facts set forth in the novel by G. Beecher Stowe, entering into an open polemic with her. According to the American critic L. Fiedler, both G. Beecher Stowe and M. Mitchell contributed to the mythologization of the history of the South. "Uncle Tom's Cabin," the critic believes, is a myth about the "cruel, inhuman South." In our opinion, this statement is not without reason and may to some extent serve as a key to revealing the popularity of both novels.
Narrating in "Gone with the Wind" about the tragic events of the history of the South, M. Mitchell deliberately refused the role of an "omniscient author⁶", leaving the reader the opportunity to reflect on some problems himself, to speculate about what is happening. The comment of the narrator occupies a significant part of the novel text, but there is no didacticism and claims to absolute truth in it. None of the characters is her "alter ego" in the true sense of the word. The heroes of the novel often express mutually exclusive opinions on the same issue, but the reader can not always determine in which cases the positions of the author and the hero coincide, and in which they differ.
The "polyphony" of the characters, their unexpected change in their positions on certain issues, the lack of a clear division of the characters into "good" and "bad" in the novel, indicate the complexity and ambiguity of solving the problems posed by the author. Probably that is why the novel "Gone with the Wind" does not give the impression of such a tendentious novel as other works such as "The Red Rose" by S.The contradictions between the characters of M. Mitchell's novel are limited by the framework of the "southern" canon, and although the author manages to break away from tradition, refute the stereotypes inherent in the "southern" novel, all the characters, and with them M. Mitchell, are trying to prove the already known truth: "The South was right." It is no coincidence that none of the northerners in the novel has the "right to vote".
When starting work on "Gone with the Wind", M. Mitchell strove for simplicity of expression of thoughts, simplicity of style, composition, language, deliberately abandoning the complex techniques of modernist literature. The presence in her novel of stereotypes and cliches peculiar to the "plantation⁷" novel in the composition, the system of images, plot situations gives the impression of the secondary and "recognizability" of the text, but careful acquaintance with it convinces us of the illusory external simplicity, the deceptiveness of the first impression.
A characteristic feature of the poetics of "Gone with the Wind" is the reproduction of familiar formulas and stamps in the plot, images, style, and their simultaneous parody, the denial of many schemes familiar to the "southern" novel, which is reflected in unexpected plot twists, the approach to solving the hero's problem, the novel's finale, the principles of character creation. In this case, we are dealing with a process that M.M. Bakhtin called "accentuation⁸".
The composition of the novel is not new. At first, the author depicts the happy life of the pre-war South, which is interrupted by the Civil War. The events in "Gone with the Wind", as in "The Red Rose" by S. Young and in "No One will Turn Around" by K. Gordon, are transmitted through the perception of Southern women who remained in the rear, but the action in the novel by M. Mitchell does not end in 1865, with the defeat of the Confederacy, but captures the subsequent, no less a difficult period for Southerners Reconstructions. However, in the center of the narrative of "Gone with the Wind" is Scarlett O'Hara and Rhett Butler, who usually play the roles of a villainess and a demonic seducer in the novel.
In order to consider the features of the poetics of the novel by M. Mitchell, it is advisable to turn first of all to the image of the main character Scarlett O'Hara. The story of her struggle for personal happiness and well-being, taking place against the backdrop of the Civil War and Reconstruction, is the compositional core of Gone with the Wind.
The unpredictability of the character of the heroine of "Gone with the Wind" Scarlett O'Hara determines and determines the plot action. M. Mitchell emphasizes the lack of nobility and pragmatism of Scarlett, and at the same time the heroine constantly acts as a savior, a kind of guardian angel of her rival Melanie, raises the family estate of Tara from the ruins, striking others with her diligence and resilience⁹. The image of the heroine is full of contradictions, kindness is combined in her with self-interest, hypocrisy. with truthfulness, effeminacy with diligence, the desire to be "out of politics" with sympathy for the southerners.
Scarlett's character is revealed through the author's objective narrative and psychological commentary on her actions. M. Mitchell also uses the technique of "double vision" and the multiplicity of perception of her by other characters in the novel, Rhett Butler, Ashley Wilkes, Gerald O'Hara, Grandma Fontaine and others. The author evaluates the heroine of his novel quite critically. Perhaps, telling the story of the "southern beauty", M. Mitchell wanted to give the reader a moral lesson and prove a simple truth: «money can't buy happiness." But if that was the intention, it must be admitted that Scarlett went beyond the prescribed role.
In her novel, M. Mitchell rethinks the theme of the Civil War. The story of the death of the "old South", shown by the author of "Gone with the Wind", has become a kind of legend about the death of a beautiful civilization, doomed and anticipating its tragic end. However, M. Mitchell, unlike many Southern writers, is not limited in the novel to describing the collapse of the "American Camelot", she proves the regularity of this phenomenon and claims that such events happen with a certain periodicity in the history of many countries and peoples.
The principle of contradictions, the literary paradox, laid by M. Mitchell as the basis of the novel, expressed itself in the combination of "high" and "low" styles, in the development of plot situations unconventional for the "southern" novel and the solution of the hero's problem. Following in many ways the canons of the "southern" historical novel, the author of "Gone with the Wind" parodies his stereotypes, lays the foundations of a new tradition in the genre of the American historical novel devoted to the theme of the Civil War. The greatest success of M. Mitchell was the image of Scarlett O'Hara. Using the example of the fate of the main character, the author of the novel convinces the reader of the unlimited possibilities of a person in the struggle for his place in life, for personal happiness and well-being. With the image of Scarlett, complex and ambiguous, personifying the "new South", the writer associates hope for the prosperity of her region. The images of Scarlett and Rhett turned out to be archetypes, with which in the future! Many fiction writers "wrote off" their "businesswomen" and "super-men". The path chosen by M. Mitchell became a reference point for many writers of subsequent generations.
In recent years, interest in the work of the writer has increased. Chapters in A.G. Jones' books "Tomorrow will be another day" are dedicated to her. Women Writers of the American South" (1982), L. Fiedler "What was literature? Class culture and Mass society" (1985), B.H. Gelfant "Women Writers of America" (1985)3. The authors of these works consider "Gone with the Wind" from a Freudian perspective. In their interpretation, the novel by M. Mitchell appears as a complex work full of understatement and encrypted symbols.
The change of female nature as a result of the change of the traditional roles of men and women in society (A.G. Jones), the struggle between a child and an adult in the subconscious of a person (B.H. Gelfant), the presence of sadomasochistic motives as the key to revealing the popularity of the novel (L. Fiedler) such problems were posed and solved in their works by American critics, perceiving each in their own way "Gone with the Wind".