Posts Tagged ‘contest’

Okay, so I’d love to pretend that there were constant swirling rumors about The Heroine’s Bookshelf…but dare to dream.

However.

I am very pleased to officially announce February the month of Heroine Love. For many, it’s a bitter month, or a swoony one, or just a normal one, but just once, this once, I want it to be all about love of literature and, of course, love of literary heroines.

How will we celebrate?  With guests, lots of them.  In fact, no fewer than twelve of my favorite book bloggers will be joining the blog throughout the month of February to extol, praise, and ruminate on the literary ladies who made them who they are today.

Better yet?  The prize.  Yes, there will be a prize…and it will be big.  I’ll announce specifics of the prize pack later in the game, but suffice it to say that it is going to be awesome, and that its artistic, literary, and trinket-like contents were contributed by a diverse set of book lovers and a publisher who will go unnamed but can surely be guessed.  Yours for the winning February 18.

By my calculations, there are a whopping 19 days until Heroine Love kicks off on February 1.  That’s 19 days to spread the word, my loves…and to mull over heroic feats to come.

PS – While you’re at it, check out Beth’s wonderful post on just this topic on An Accomplished Young Lady!

Guest Post by Ellen F. Brown

Next up in our series of guest posts on heroines featured in The Heroine’s Bookshelf is Ellen F. Brown, who may just qualify as the world’s nicest human being (unlike her subject).  Ellen emailed me out of the blue (okay, I think I retweeted a link of hers, but still) to tell me she had heard about the book and wanted to introduce me to her hard-core Gone with the Wind fan friends.  Why, the pleasure was mine!  Want to continue on in great company?  Click here to win a galley of the book, or ask Scarlett, Lizzie Bennet, and Jo March for another chance to win!

When I heard about Erin Blakemore’s upcoming book on heroines it did not even occur to me that Scarlett O’Hara would be included. After spending the last two years researching and writing about Gone With the Wind, I have learned that contemporary literary circles tend to forget Margaret Mitchell’s novel ever existed. Although it won the Pulitizer Prize and is one of the most successful books in publishing history, Scarlett and Rhett typically get short shrift when it comes to discussions of the great books. These two hot-headed lovers were, it seems, too popular to be taken seriously. They’re too un-P.C. They’re too Southern. They’re too, too…Gone With the Wind.

I was thrilled to discover that Blakemore had included Mitchell’s iconic belle-gone-bad among the ranks of Lizzy Bennett, Jane Eyre, and Jo March. Mitchell is finally going to get her day in the sun, I thought. This was great news! Though I am no Gone With the Wind fanatic, I do harbor a soft-spot for Mitchell, who I have come to see as one of the most misunderstood and underappreciated writers in American letters.

But then a tiny seed of doubt crept into my brain as I waited for Heroine’s Bookshelf to arrive. “Wait a minute,” I panicked. “Scarlett is not a heroine!” Doesn’t a heroine have to be heroic? Shouldn’t she be virtuous, or at least mostly so? Lizzy, Jane and Jo fit that bill, but certainly not Scarlett.

Since Gone With the Wind was first published in 1936, people have been misdiagnosing Scarlett O’Hara as a traditional heroine. This confused and irritated Mitchell to no end. She reviled her leading lady, whom she described in the novel as “poor white trashy” and a “flighty, fast bit of baggage.” She once threatened to sue a magazine editor who planned to run a story comparing her to Scarlett. The enraged author fumed at the insult of being likened to a woman who was self-centered, conceited, verging on illiterate, and lacking both taste and social skills. Scarlett did not have a nurturing bone in her body and was the bane of any man foolish enough to love her. She was an opportunist, a murderer, and was willing to sell her body for financial gain.

Although Mitchell had a touch of the drama queen about her, she was smart to be worried about perceptions of Scarlett. Deeming the character a heroine in the sense of a role model can lead to a horribly skewed reading of Mitchell’s novel. In fact, such misreadings are at the heart of much of the criticism lodged at Gone With the Wind for being racist. If one assumes that Mitchell put Scarlett up on a pedestal, it leads inexorably to the conclusion that Mitchell must have been a racist herself. If Scarlett thought that “that negroes had to be handled gently, as though they were children,” then it stands to reason, some say, Mitchell did too.

I don’t purport to know whether Margaret Mitchell was or was not a racist. I can point you to evidence on either side of that tricky coin. It’s a question we’ll never know the answer to. But, I do feel confident in saying that Scarlett’s racial views are scant evidence of her progenitor’s opinions. Mitchell wanted us to find Scarlett engaging, but she never meant to hold her up as a paragon of virtue.

So, should Scarlett O’Hara really be featured in a book called The Heroine’s Bookshelf ?

The answer is yes, when it’s written by a celebrity-gossip-loving former roller derby queen like Erin Blakemore. She nails it.

Scarlett is right where she belongs in a chapter labeled “Fight.” Fight is what Scarlett is all about. Her courage and strength were the only qualities that Mitchell intended for us to admire in her vixen. And, fight is what Gone With the Wind is all about. The point is not black versus white or north versus south. It is about the human spirit and its ability to overcome adversity.

Blakemore deftly draws us into the fights Mitchell experienced in her own life and the pure awfulness of Scarlett, then brings us to the heart of the matter: why, despite all her flaws, are so many people fascinated by Scarlett? As Blakemore says, “She’s a heroine who gets under the skin like that seductive splinter you can’t quite remove.” I couldn’t agree more.

Understanding why we admire Scarlett despite her flaws requires us to confront some harsh truths about ourselves, explains Blakemore. She describes the cultural fascination with Scarlett as a “train-wreck voyeurism”—we watch precisely because it is so awful. Then there is the nagging truth that we can’t help but see a little of the worst part of ourselves in Scarlett: “Who among us hasn’t hurt someone else in the pursuit of her own goals?” Ouch. Most of us do a fairly good job of keeping our inner Scarlett O’Hara tamped down and hidden. But, she’s in there. You know she is. And it’s only reasonable that she wants to come out and play every now and again, even if only vicariously through the pages of a novel.

My favorite part of the Scarlett chapter though is Blakemore’s dismissal of the idea that we should feel ashamed for finding inspiration in Gone With the Wind. She queries: “Can I really be expected to push against the boundaries of my own life without a bit of inspiration from literature’s most lovable bitch?” I certainly hope not.

Ellen F. Brown is co-author of Margaret Mitchell’s Gone With the Wind: A Bestseller’s Odyssey from Atlanta to Hollywood, to be released by Taylor Trade in February 2011.

A minute later, she was dragging a heavy marble-topped table across the floor, its rusty castors screeching in protest. She rolled the table under the window, gathered up her skirts, climbed on it and tiptoed to reach the heavy curtain pole. It was almost out of her reach and she jerked at it so impatiently the nails came out of the wood, and the curtains, pole and all, fell to the floor with a clatter.
- from Gone with the Wind by Margaret Mitchell

Yes, waiting is hard, Scarlett!  But tomorrow is another day, and the passage above is a teaser for tomorrow’s blog bounty.

In the meantime, why don’t you sign up to win a galley of The Heroine’s Bookshelf, or perhaps ask  Jo March, Lizzie Bennet, and Scarlett O’Hara for advice to life’s pressing problems (and win a book as well)?  And if you see the book in the wild before its publication date, won’t you let me know?

She was sitting there waiting for something or somebody and, since sitting and waiting was the only thing to do just then, she sat and waited with all her might and main.

Anne of Green Gables, Lucy Maud Montgomery

The countdown continues…and today you can not only sign up to win a galley of The Heroine’s Bookshelf, but you can now turn to Jo March, Lizzie Bennet, and Scarlett O’Hara for advice to life’s pressing problems on The Roaring 20s.