Gone with the Wind: In Word Clouds

Here's a silly little something that we put together and thought you might enjoy: Gone with the Wind as depicted in word clouds. We've broken the novel down in five charts, each one corresponding to five formal parts of MM's novel and representing the most frequently used words in that section of the book. Check it out: 

Part One 

(Beginning of novel through Scarlett's move to Atlanta)

Part Two

(The early Atlanta war years through spring 1864)

Part Three

(The Atlanta campaign and siege through Ashley's return to Tara)

Part Four 

(The Kennedy era through Scarlett's wedding to Rhett)

Part Five 

(Rhett and Scarlett's honeymoon through the end of the book)

So what do you think? To me at least, it's both very cool and sad to the the progression away from "Scarlett, Scarlett, Scarlett, Scarlett" as the most prominent words in the first four parts, to "Scarlett" and "Rhett" as words of equal prominence in the last part. A visual reminder that our heroine did eventually catch on, but much too late...

The Holliday-Dorsey-Fife House: The Inspiration for Fayetteville Female Academy

Last week we looked at what life might have been like for Scarlett at the fictional Fayetteville Female Academy, and now we're pleased to explore the real life inspiration behind Miss O'Hara's school. As many of you may already know, Margaret Mitchell based her heroine's alma mater on the real Fayetteville Academy. Located in the Georgia town of the same name, Fayetteville Academy was actually a coed institution, one that was attended by Mitchell's grandmother, Annie Fitzgerald. The Academy was housed in antebellum mansion, which today is known as the Holliday-Dorsey-Fife House Museum. (If the Holliday name sounds familiar to you, you aren't imagining things--the house was built in 1855 by John Stiles Holliday, uncle to the infamous "Doc" Holliday, whose connection to GWTW you can find here.)

To get the inside story on Fayetteville Academy, we reached out to John Lynch, City Historian for Fayetteville, Georgia and curator of the Holliday-Dorsey-Fife House Museum, who was kind enough to email us about the Academy's history and its relationship to MM, which we've excerpted for you:

"The academy was built and organized around the mid 1850's and was very popular with the surrounding planters and well-to-do people (which were not the majority).  They sent their children here due in part because of the reputation of the founding professors - George C., Morgan, and M.V. Looney (brothers). There really was no female academy although one was proposed in the 1840's and never came to be.  So the 1850's academy was coed.  Dr. John Stiles Holliday was one of the founding trustees of the academy and after building his home (present HDF Museum), he allowed some students and faculty to board in the house. One of the boarders was (at times) Miss Annie Fitzgerald (the grandmother of Margaret Mitchell).  To say the least the academy was the premier place in the county for educating young people.  Most of the other schools were one-room affairs that belonged to planters or wealthy farmers who built them for the use of their own children and surrounding neighbors' children.  We do have some information on a few of these.  Fayette County was not a very wealthy county as counties go in those days, although there were a few families of moderate wealth.  Most of the time these families tended to marry into each other...

"I should say that as far as local legends go there are numerous stories about M.M. and the people that lived around here.  Every family seems to have a story or connection to M.M. I would gather to say that about 90% of them or erroneous or greatly exaggerated.  However, Margaret Mitchell was very fond of Fayetteville and spent a lot of time here while helping the local woman's club in organizing the library. One of those ladies was Mrs. R.E.L. Fife (last owners of the HDF House).  She and her husband entertained M.M. at the home in 1937 at which time the young M.M. said the house "would make a good shot in the new movie GWTW.""

 --John Lynch, City of Fayetteville Historian and Curator of the Holliday-Dorsey-Fife House 

We agree with MM that the Holliday-Dorsey-Fife House would have made a good shot in GWTW. In fact, we blinked a few times upon seeing it ourselves, as it does remind us somewhat of Tara in the movie. Isn't it interesting to see how real life compares against reel life?

    The Holliday-Dorsey-Fife House. Image from fayetteville-ga.gov.                   Tara from Gone with the Wind. Image from fanpop.com.

 

Rue de la Paix

This week, we've got "His & Hers" collages, one featuring the dashing Clark Gable and the other the enchanting Vivien Leigh. How glamorous they were! 

6. Clark Gable by i'm Barcelona [b'day June 14] featuring jeffrey campbell shoes

12. Vivien Leigh by i'm Barcelona [b'day June 14] featuring shoulder handbags

Of Grandeur and Gifts: A Small Glimpse into Victorian Birthdays

Recently I stumbled across a cute little tibdit on Victorian birthdays and gift giving that made me smile--and naturally think of Gone with the Wind, of course:

"Birthdays were celebrated in grandeur and gifts between the family members became integral to the Victorian Christmas. The wealthy looked upon fatherhood largely to lavish gifts and paying of sons debts, while in the middle-class, gift-giving was looked upon one's financial capabilities. Unfortunately, the mother very often could not compete in the area of gift-giving, thus the act of gift-giving become symbolic as to the exclusive duty of the father providing for his children."

--excerpted from The Victorian Father and Child

The quote above refers to Victorian England, but I couldn't help but think it had a nice parallel to Rhett and his approach to spoiling Bonnie rotten fatherhood. It's not hard to imagine Rhett going completely overboard in buying Bonnie birthday presents--and being rather generous to Wade and Ella too, for that matter. 

In fact, I often wish Gone with the Wind provided us more glimpses into how birthdays were spent in the Butler household. It would have be fascinating to see how Scarlett and Rhett celebrated each others' birthdays, for instance, both before and after their estrangement--or if they even knew each others' actual birthdays at all, given their mutual hesistancy to share personal details and Scarlett's secrecy over her exact age. I'd also love to see just how lavishly they celebrated the children's birthdays and what kind of gifts they bestowed. But, alas, we have so little to go on, beyond the few tantalizing details MM mentions about the day of Bonnie's birth.

So I'd like to turn it over to you all and get your thoughts. How do you think Rhett and Scarlett and family celebrated their birthdays? Or any other characters in GWTW for that matter?

Poster of the Week

Any guesses as to what state this Gone with the Wind poster is from? That's right, Hoosiers, you've got your very own piece of GWTW memorabilia! The other 49 states are now officially jealous of you.

Image from christies.com.

 

The Puzzle of the Puffed Sleeves: What Scarlett's Wedding Dress Should Have Looked Like

"In the midst of this turmoil, preparations went forward for Scarlett's wedding and, almost before she knew it, she was clad in Ellen's wedding dress and veil, coming down the wide stairs of Tara on her father's arm, to face a house packed full with guests."

--Gone with the Wind, Chapter VII

Back when the Doppelganger Dresses series in full swing, one dress I definitely hoped to feature was Ellen's and subsequently Scarlett's wedding dress. So I plugged the numbers to refresh my memory as to what year Ellen married Gerald O'Hara. (Ellen is 32 at the start of GWTW in 1861, meaning her wedding at age 15 was in 1844.) With the date in hand, I went off to search for fashion plates.....and found nothing that even remotely resembled the massive-sleeved creation that Walter Plunkett made for Scarlett's wedding to Charles Hamilton (shown right). 

That was very puzzling to me--that the 1840s dress silhouette appeared to bear no resemblance at all to the bridal style shown in the movie. But dozens and dozens of fashion plates later, I couldn't avoid that fact. Big sleeves were distinctly out in the 1840s. Dresses featured tight sleeves, perhaps with a few delicate puffs for decoration, but that was about the extent of it. 

To help you visualize what I mean, here's a good example of day and evening styles from an 1844 fashion plate:

Dress Styles from May 1844. Ladies' Companion.

So, what did Plunkett use as the inspiration for Ellen/Scarlett's wedding dress, since it definitely wasn't 1840s fashion? Not being able to figure out the answer to that question, I gave up my search and moved on to look for other doppelganger styles. But this mystery continued to bother me from time to time--until something recently jogged my memory. 

It's true that 1840s dresses eschewed giant sleeves, but this wasn't the case a decade earlier. In the early 1830s, enormous gigot sleeves were all the rage--much like the ones we see on Scarlett's wedding dress. A quick search of 1830s wedding dresses turns up styles much more akin to the dress in GWTW than anything from the 1840s: 

                   Wedding Dress, June 1834. La Mode.                                           Wedding Dress, June 1835. La Mode.

So there's our answer. It looks like Walter Plunkett based his design for Scarlett's wedding dress on 1830s bridal styles, not 1840s. But why? This intriguing note on the Harry Ransom Center's Gone with the Wind costume collection offers one clue: 

"Since Scarlett rushed into the marriage with Charles Hamilton, she would have had to use her mother's wedding dress. So Plunkett fitted the dress on Barbara O'Neil's (Ellen O'Hara) dress form. Consequently, the dress was a little too long and had large sleeves which was the fashion in 1834 when Ellen would have been married." (Emphasis mine)

So did Plunkett simply get his dates wrong and put together an 1830s gown instead of an 1840s one? It seems so. It's also possible that he was just uninspired by 1840s fashion and instead found a historical model more to his liking a decade earlier. Either way, it begs the question: what should Ellen/Scarlett's wedding dress have looked like, if done in actual 1840s style? 

You'll find the answer after the jump, where I've put together a gallery of bridal gowns, all from the year of Ellen's marriage in 1844. Would you rather have seen Scarlett wear a dress like one of these in the movie? Or do you prefer Plunkett's vision? 

Poster of the Week

This week, we're pleased to add Norway to our GWTW league of nations, with this charming poster circa the 1950s-60s. 

Image and poster information from christies.com.