Gone With the Wind?

Question

Does Gone with the Wind have accurate history in it,or did Margaret Mitchell stretch the truth?

Answer 1

It is fiction but her husband did go out into the field and collect dialect information so that she could get the speech patterns of African Americans correct to the era.

Answer 2

It is considered a book of fiction so there might have been a stretch of the truth but there is truth in some of the facts of the Civil War and Reconstruction in the book .Margaret Mitchell was trying to write a romantic drama about the southern way of life before and after the Civil War so she had to glamorize the characters a little for good fiction but she has a definite preciseness of the history of the times.

Answer 3

To explain briefly -- good historical fiction takes actual events and weaves them in and out of the lives of fictional characters. As I always tell young writers, I renew my "artistic license" annually. It gives me the right to bend facts a bit here and there to make them fit history and fiction together into good literature. Ms. Mitchell did the same. C.

Answer 4

Yes and Yes.

The story was loosely based on happenings in that area during the civil war, but there was no real-life Scarlett O'Hara, although, the depiction is so vivid, I'm sure there were several hundred women on whom the character could have been based.

Answer 5

Poetic Licence is always allowed in Fictional material. Very rarely is EVERYTHING as printed absolutely accurate.

Answer 6

it is a ficticious story about fictitious people set against a backdrop of real events happening in the south during the American Civil War

Answer 7

http://www.enotes.com

seems to think that there is much historical accuracy in Ms. Mitchell's work.

Answer 8

yes and yes