I have a friend who refuses to read the book or see the film because she considers it racist--sight unseen. And yes, there are some passages here and there that make me cringe--although really almost all of such passages are from Scarlett's point of view, accurately reflecting the mindset of her time and class.
But I know this, from the time I was a teen and first read this book, I was impressed with the feminist subtext.
One of the most moving parts of the book is when Scarlett returns home only to find her mother dead. In the days that follow Scarlett is the one that pulls her family together and saves the plantation for all of them--even as she has to drag many of them kicking and screaming because they couldn't or wouldn't adapt. Scarlett, above all, is a survivor and I love her for it. In one passage she bitterly rues how her mother didn't teach her anything she could use in this new post-war world. Then the narrative points out that her mother Ellen and Mammy were preparing Scarlett as best they could for a code that the war ended--or at least made hard to follow and yet survive.
And it's this code, under which Scarlett chaffed even before the war, which Mitchell renders so well. A world with corsets molding and shaping you not unlike the practice of footbinding among Chinese women of that century. A world where a women of a certain class dare not show an appetite. A world where you'd be socially ruined if you take a ride in the open with a man. A world where a widow has to wear black--oh, just about forever. Scarlet frets and kicks and wiggles herself out of one restriction after another in the course of the novel. And, yes, she can be vain, self-centered and cruel in her single-minded determination to get what she wants. But damn if I wasn't pulling for her every step of the way.
I'd add it's a fat book that never, ever drags for one word of its length. And is much richer than the film.
