Margaret Mitchell (1900-1949) was an American author best known for her novel Gone with the Wind, published in 1936. She grew up in Atlanta, Georgia in a wealthy family with Confederate roots. Her mother was a suffragist who influenced Mitchell. After graduating high school, she attended Smith College but returned home after her mother's death. Mitchell worked as a journalist until marrying Berrien Upshaw, who abused her, and then John Marsh. Gone with the Wind, about a woman's experiences during the Civil War and Reconstruction era, won the Pulitzer Prize and became a hugely successful film. Mitchell was struck by a car in 1949 and died from her injuries.

1. Margaret Mitchell (1900 – 1949)
Margaret Munnerlyn Mitchell (November 8, 1900 – August 16, 1949) was an American
author and journalist. She won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1937 for her epic American Civil
War era novel, Gone with the Wind, the only novel by Mitchell published during her lifetime.
Family history
Margaret Mitchell was a Southerner and a lifelong resident and native of Atlanta, Georgia, who
was born in 1900 into a wealthy and politically prominent family. Her father was Eugene Muse
Mitchell, an attorney, and her mother, Mary Isobel "May Belle" Stephens, was a suffragist. She
had two brothers, Russell Stephens Mitchell, who died in infancy in 1894, and Alexander
Stephens Mitchell, born in 1896.
Mitchell's family on her father's side were descendants of Thomas Mitchell, originally of
Aberdeen shire, Scotland, who settled in Wilkes County, Georgia in 1777, and served in the
American Revolutionary War. Her grandfather, Russell Crawford Mitchell, enlisted in the
Confederate States Army in July 1861, and was later severely wounded at the Battle of
Sharpsburg. After the Civil War, he made a large fortune in real estate and timber lands. Russell
Mitchell had twelve children from two wives; the oldest was Eugene, who graduated from the
University of Georgia Law School
Mitchell's maternal great-grandfather, Philip Fitzgerald, immigrated to America from Ireland,
and eventually settled on a slaveholding plantation in Jonesboro, Georgia, where he had seven
daughters with his wife, Elenor. Mitchell's grandparents were Annie Fitzgerald and John
Stephens, who had also emigrated from Ireland and was a Captain in the Confederate States
Army. John Stephens was a prosperous real estate developer after the Civil War and one of the
founders of the Atlanta trolley system. John and Annie Stephens had twelve children together;
the seventh child was May Belle Stephens, who married Eugene Mitchell. May Belle Mitchell
had studied at the Bellevue Convent in Quebec and completed her education at the Atlanta
Female Institute.

2. Margaret Mitchell (1900 – 1949)
Early influences
She talked about the world those people had lived in, such a secure world, and how it had exploded beneath
them. And she told me that my world was going to explode under me, someday, and God help me if I didn't
have some weapon to meet the new world.
— Margaret Mitchell recalling her mother's words and "Sherman's sentinels."
On summer vacations, May Belle Mitchell brought her daughter to visit her maternal great-aunts,
Mary Ellen ("Mamie") and Sarah ("Sis"), who still lived at her great-grandparents' plantation
home in Jonesboro. Mamie had been twenty-one years old and Sis thirteen when the American
Civil War began in 1861 Mitchell recalled her childhood was spent; "on the bony knees of
veterans and the fat slippery laps of great aunts," who had lived through the war. She was ten
years old before she learned the Confederacy had not won.
An image of the South was fixed in Mitchell's imagination when at six years old her mother took
her on a buggy tour through ruined plantations and "Sherman's sentinels," the brick and stone
chimneys that remained after William Tecumseh Sherman's "March and torch" through Georgia.
As a child, Margaret Mitchell owned a pony and went riding every afternoon with the only other
two people who owned horses in her part of town, an old white haired Confederate veteran and a
young lady of "beau-age."
Several historically important events took place during Mitchell's youth: the mayhem of the
Atlanta Race Riot in September 1906 when she was five years old; America entered World War I
when Mitchell was sixteen; at nineteen, the sale of alcohol was prohibited under the Eighteenth
Amendment, and the Nineteenth Amendment was ratified, which gave women the right to vote.
Mitchell's parents were influential in her life; her father offered more criticism than praise, which
drove Mitchell's independence, and her mother spoke to both her children directly, giving them
advice on matters of drinking and sex. One of Mitchell's most vivid memories of her mother was
being taken to a women's suffrage rally led by Carrie Chapman Catt. Margaret sat on a platform
wearing a Votes-for-Women banner while her mother gave an impassioned speech.
Mitchell read the books of Thomas Dixon, Jr. as a child, and recalled she dramatized Dixon's,
The Traitor. She read "boys' stories" by G.A. Henty, the Tom Swift series, and the Rover Boys
series by Edward Stratemeyer.[22] Her mother read Mary Johnston's novel, Cease Firing, to her.
She also read the plays of William Shakespeare, and novels by Charles Dickens and Sir Walter
Scott.
Education
Margaret Mitchell graduated from Atlanta's Washington Seminary (now The Westminster
Schools) in 1918, and then became engaged to a young soldier, Clifford West Henry. On
September 14th of the same year, while she was enrolled at Smith College, in Northampton,
Massachusetts, Henry was mortally wounded in action in France and died on October 17th.On

3. Margaret Mitchell (1900 – 1949)
January 25, 1919, her mother, May Belle Mitchell, died of pneumonia in the Spanish flu
pandemic. After finishing her freshman year at Smith, Mitchell returned to Atlanta to take over
the household for her father, and never returned to college.
Marriage and career
Margaret Mitchell married Berrien ―Red‖ Upshaw in September 1922, and the best-man at her
wedding was John R. Marsh, who would become her second husband. By December the
marriage to Upshaw had dissolved and he left. Mitchell suffered physical and emotional abuse,
the result of Upshaw's alcoholism and violent temper. Upshaw agreed to an uncontested divorce
after John Marsh gave him a loan and Mitchell agreed not to press assault charges against him.
On July 4, 1925, 24-year-old Margaret Mitchell and 29-year-old John Marsh were married in the
Unitarian-Universalist Church.
While still legally married to Upshaw and needing income for her, Mitchell got a job writing
feature articles for the Atlanta Journal Sunday Magazine. Her first story, Atlanta Girl Sees
Italian Revolution, by Peggy Mitchell, appeared on December 31, 1922.
Several months after marrying Marsh in 1925, Mitchell quit her newspaper job due an ankle
injury that would not heal properly and to become a full-time wife. During the four years
Mitchell worked for the Atlanta Journal, she had written 129 articles in the Sunday Magazine
section.
Novelist
In Mitchell's teenage years, she is known to have written a novel about girls in a boarding school
titled, The Big Four, as well as a story about "Little Sister" who hears her older sister being raped
and shoots the rapist, and a romance novella that takes places on a South Pacific island titled,
Lost Laysen. Mitchell gave Lost Laysen, which she had written in two composite notebooks, to a
boyfriend, Henry Love Angel. Angel died in 1945 and the novella remained undiscovered among
some letters she had written to him until 1994. In the 1920s, Mitchell completed a novelette titled,
'Ropa Carmagin, about a southern white girl who loves a biracial man. She also started another
novel set in the 1920s, but it was not completed.
Margaret Mitchell was struck by a speeding automobile as she crossed Peachtree Street at 13th
Street in Atlanta with her husband, John Marsh, while on her way to see a movie on the evening
of August 11, 1949. She died at Grady Hospital five days later without regaining consciousness.
The driver, Hugh Gravitt, was an off-duty taxi driver who was driving his personal vehicle when
he struck Mitchell. After the accident, Gravitt was arrested for drunken driving and released on a
$5,450 bond until Mitchell's death. It was discovered that he had been cited 23 times previously
for traffic violations. The Governor of Georgia, Herman Tallmadge, later announced that the
state would tighten regulations for licensing taxi drivers. Gravitt was convicted of involuntary
manslaughter and served 4 months in jail.

4. Margaret Mitchell (1900 – 1949)
Margaret Mitchell’s ―Gone with the wind‖ which birthed Scarlett is a masterpiece. Margaret
Mitchell’s masterpiece was reproduced in 1939 as a Hollywood film and has been ranked as one
of the highest grosser of all times with figures adjusted for inflation. The movie was made with a
budget of 4 million, by no means a modest sum for that era. While Scarlett and Rhett lived in a
world of strife at the time of the civil war amongst wounded and dying confederate soldiers, food
shortage and growing taxes, I lived in a near perfect utopian state of realization of Scarlett’s
spirit. Scarlett’s Arian spirit is unwavering. Despite all odds, she faces life with strife, valor and
unparalleled determination as the central character of the novel. She loves Ashley but Scarlett’s
love for Tara overrides all other and like none other. The dashing, handsome Rhett Butler (Clark
Gable) loved Scarlett when he set eyes on her at the library of Twelve Oaks when Scarlett has an
altercation with Ashley Wilkes. He wakes up to the noise of a crashing vase that Scarlett hurls
over the sofa he is sleeping on, hidden from her view. Awakening to the shattering noise and
with a twinkle in his eye asks if the war has begun. Nobody, looked like the way Rhett did at
Scarlett, nobody kissed Scarlett like the way he did in cinematic history. Whether it was the book
that describes this moment at the library and Rhett’s love for Scarlett or the movie that brings to
life Scarlett and Rhett, this fiery romanticism that existed between the suave, dashing Rhett and
the immature Scarlett was never witnessed before. Our eyes and ears yearned for more of
Scarlett and Rhett and their chemistry set our hearts on fire.
There are immense lessons to be learnt from the story and Mitchell’s detailed descriptions of
Scarlett’s spirit are a treasure. Scarlett resurrects Tara when it was devastated by the Northern
troops. She gets on her hands and knees and revives the dying crops on the plantation. She
famously says – ―As God is my witness, as God is my witness they’re not going to lick me! I’m

5. Margaret Mitchell (1900 – 1949)
going to live through this and when it’s all over, I’ll never be hungry again! No, or any of my
folk. If I have to lie, steal, cheat or kill! As God is my witness, I’ll never be hungry again!‖
Scarlett is widowed twice and marries Rhett the third time more out of convenience and her
growing need for luxury and comforts. She wished to satiate her child like fantasies of re living
the Tara life. She seizes the opportunity and lives in a sprawling manor in Atlanta. She loses both
her children with Rhett and her reputation is sullied by her love for Ashley in a reviving
Atlanta. An already mourning Rhett is outraged and distances himself from Scarlett. When
Melanie dies, Scarlett realizes Ashley’s love for Melanie and she loved something that never
existed. When she runs back to Rhett, it is too late. He is packing up to leave and she frantically
pleads with him to stay – ―Rhett… If you go … where shall I go? What shall I do?‖
―Frankly, my dear, I don’t give a damn‖ says Rhett famously and walks out of the heavy oak
doors of the Atlanta manor.
Rhett’s love for Scarlett and Scarlett’s love for Ashley is better understood than Scarlett’s love
for Rhett. Amidst Scarlett’s immature and hasty propositions to the men whom she married and
lost, there is tapestries adoration for Rhett. Scarlett being a fighter makes the optimum utilization
of unconditioned moments and latches on to every life line that is thrown at her. Somewhere
during her travesties she falls out of love with Ashley and falls in love with Rhett. Rhett treats
her like a child but adores her bashfulness as much as her impulsiveness. Scarlett’s love for Rhett
is more whimsical than the child like obsession that she initially had for Ashley. The realization
of her true love for Rhett sets in only at the very end.
Scarlett hopes, yearns and firmly resolves that she will go back to Tara – ―Tara! Home. I’ll go
home, and I’ll think of some way to get him back! After all, tomorrow is another day!‖
Tomorrow is indeed another day in all our lives. What aspirations are not realized today, we live
in the profound hope of realizing it tomorrow?
Some more memorable dialogues Rhett Butler (Clark Gable):
―I can’t go all my life waiting to catch you between husbands.‖
Rhett Butler (Clark Gable):
―I love you. Because we’re alike. Bad lots both of us. Selfish and shrewd but able to look things
in the eye and call them by their right name.‖
Scarlett O’Hara (Vivien Leigh):
―Fiddle dee dee. War, war, war. This war talks is spoiling the fun at every party this spring. I get
so bored I could scream.‖
Scarlett O’Hara (Vivien Leigh):
―Another dance and my reputation will be gone forever.‖
Rhett Butler (Clark Gable):
―With enough courage you can do without a reputation.‖

6. Margaret Mitchell (1900 – 1949)
Rhett Butler (Clark Gable):
―No, I don’t think I will kiss you. Although you need kissing badly. That’s what wrong with you.
You should be kissed and often by someone who knows how.‖

7. Margaret Mitchell (1900 – 1949)

8. Margaret Mitchell (1900 – 1949)

9. Margaret Mitchell (1900 – 1949)
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