Gone With The Wind:
The Evolution Of Sex And Race In The 1930’s

Taylor Reed

English 101
Professor Reynoso
7 June 2010

How the 1930’s could have turned out to be positive instead of a negative. The difficult decade for many Americans was the 1930s. Knol Beta stated that “the Great Depression plagued citizens throughout the country because of lost jobs and a poor economy.” Although there wasn’t very much money left to be spent on nice items, Americans still turned to entertainment to remind themselves life is only what you make it. One of the greatest things to come out of the Great Depression was the film titled, Gone with the Wind. The movie Gone with the Wind falls into classic Hollywood story structure where “an initially …show more content…

Belle, as you may be able to tell from the film, is an uneducated prostitute and Prissy is a slave child. Even though this image of a slave child may not seem very virginal, she still knows better than to associate herself with the whore figure in this movie. Although bad things never happen to Belle, she is always looked at by Scarlett and many of the other female figures as a bad person. Also I would like to point out the differences between Scarlett and Melanie Wilkes, the very weak woman seen at the end of the clip. Although Scarlett is portrayed much more virginal than Belle, she is still considered quite whorish compared to Melanie. In fact, throughout the whole movie Scarlett is consistently trying to gain the love and affection of Melanie's husband, Ashley. Her efforts are fruitless, though, as Ashley would rather be with his frailer, virginal wife than with a strong willed, flirtatious woman like Scarlett. There is a lot for the representation of the women in Gone with the Wind as strong female role models. Since the women of the 1930s still had remnants of the Great Depression still fresh in their minds, the female characters, who were business women with a strong desire to succeed, may have inspired them to not give up hope. When I heard Scarlett’s famous determination to not be hungry again made me realize how very strong-willed she is.
In the South, women were viewed as naturally weak and dependent and desperately in need of protection by men. A