Margaret Mitchell--aka Peggy the rebel

It's a fine, fabulous weekend in Atlanta and we are NOT going to let it go to waste! That said, I spent a delightful Saturday at Cafe 458 filled with philanthropic fun. The next day I raced to meet my friend Toni and her friend Stephanie at the Margaret Mitchell house. Now, for those of you who have been grievously bereft of either reading Gone with the Wind or seeing the film version, Margaret Mitchell wrote the said novel. We discovered (MUCH to my surprise) that Ms. Mitchell had much in common with Scarlett O'Hara, the vindictive, seemingly heartless protagonist yet not heroine, and derived all of her characters from people in her life. Not only that, but Ms. Mitchell was nicknamed Peggy (destroys the image of a distinguished authoress, doesn't it?) and was one of the first lady-reporters (and the star one, at that) for the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. She was constantly breaking traditions, being stubborn, and yet humanly doubting herself. Her two reasons for not writing the novel earlier were 1, she considered herself lacking in talent, and 2, it seemed there was nothing left to write. Unbelievable! Those are my two reasons exactly--or rather, were my two reasons. I'm inspired!

(Not as inspiring was the fact that she took ten years to write it--purportedly using only two fingers on her typewriter. *groans*)

Not only that, but Ms. Mitchell had a heart for civil reform--she rallied for equal-rights legislation and --get this-- a young Martin Luther King, Jr. sang in a boys' choir on the stage of Gone with the Wind's premiere ball. (Whatever happened to premiere balls?)

Anyhow, adjoined to her tiny apartment was a museum dedicated to the movie (oh, a gift shop was there was well, but that's moot). We were all rather surprised to learn that the only real, wooden part of Tara's setting, Scarlett's lovely Southern plantation home, was the wooden doorframe of its entrance. Other odds and ends included costume sketches and the memorable portrait of Scarlett hanging in their home, the target of an enraged Rhett Butler's goblet projectile. (Or something he threw--I forget what--but the portrait had a bunch of dents in it from all the takes.)

It was wonderful and made Margaret Mitchell truly come alive for us. I've found that most museums dedicated to an individual or a famous work tend to gravitate towards hagiography and forgetting human flaws. This one, however, certainly admired Ms. Mitchell but offered an insightful, comprehensive and personal view. Yay! Read Gone with the Wind!

Postscript: I meant to mention that the movie is vastly different from the book--Ms. Mitchell signed away all the rights to the movie, in essence washing her hands of any of its misdeeds or accomplishments. For example, book Scarlett lives on a small, quite rural spit of land, whereas movie Scarlett reigns on a plantation called Tara, which consists of rolling, spacious countryside and countless acreage.

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