Decades after critics whacked Gone with the Wind for its racism and sexism, a new reading has emerged. Molly Haskell’s Frankly My Dear: Gone with the Wind Revisited is a feminist defense of the book, which establishes Scarlett O’Hara as a heroine and a survivor. Haskell analyzes her romance with Rhett Butler as a “a historical romance that transcended the genre with the immediacy of its mix of sex and feminism.” And in a response to Gloria Steinem's criticism that Scarlett represented female objectification, Haskell says she represents Americanism and femininity, and that her “image redounds upon our eternal political struggles and deepest fantasies.”
Read it at The New York Times
