Gone With the Wind , livre ebook

Original by Margaret Mitchell
Retold by Pauline Francis
ReadZone Books Limited





First published in this edition 2018
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Printed in Malta by Melita Press
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British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data (CIP) is available for this title.
ISBN 978-1-78322-729-7
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Chapter One       The Secret
Chapter Two       Wife, Widow and Mother
Chapter Three     Casualties of War
Chapter Four      War Comes to Georgia
Chapter Five       Back to Tara
Chapter Six        Murder!
Chapter Seven     Saving Tara
Chapter Eight     Wife, Mother and Widow
Chapter Nine      Becoming Respectable
Chapter Ten       What about Tomorrow?
Introduction
Margaret Mitchell was born in Atlanta, Georgia, in the United States in 1900. She grew up listening to stories about the American Civil War (1861–65). This war had broken out when a Confederacy of southern states broke away from the United States. By the time the Confederacy collapsed, and slavery was abolished, almost 700,000 soldiers had died – but the United States survived as one nation.
After her marriage in 1925, Margaret wrote down many of these stories, which she turned into a novel.
Gone with the Wind is a love story set against the war and the following Reconstruction Era (1865–77). Its one thousand pages tell the story of spirited Scarlett O’Hara, the spoiled daughter of a rich cotton plantation (and slave) owner, brought up on a plantation called Tara. She is secretly in love with Ashley Wilkes, the fiancé of her friend, Melanie. During the terrible years of the war, it is thanks to Scarlett that Tara survives. When the war is over, Scarlett, still in love with Ashley, has to face the many struggles that life continues to bring, which she does, helped by Rhett Butler.
Although criticised for its racist language, the author uses the language of the time of these events.
Gone with the Wind was published in 1936. It sold over ten million copies, won the Pulitzer Prize, and was translated into more than eighteen languages. It was also made into a very successful film. A few years ago, it was voted the second most popular novel in the US. It was Margaret Mitchell’s only novel and it has never been out of print. She died in 1949.
CHAPTER ONE
The Secret
On a bright April afternoon in 1861, Scarlett O’Hara was sitting with the Tarletan twins on the porch of Tara, her father’s cotton plantation in Georgia. At sixteen, she made a pretty picture: her skin was magnolia-white, always protected from the fierce sun. Her eyes were green, with a touch of hazel, and her hair and eyebrows dark. Her new green flowered muslin dress billowed over wooden hoops, its fitted waist showing her figure to perfection.
Her hands, so daintily folded on her lap, did not reveal Scarlett’s true nature. Her manners had been forced upon her by her gentle mother and her nurse, Mammy. But her eyes could not hide her true self. They flashed with impatience and wilfulness.
Talk turned to the coming war. The boys said it would start any day.
‘You know that’s just talk,’ Scarlett said, bored. ‘Anyway, I’ve heard that the Yankees in the north are too scared of us to fight. If you say war once again, I’m going into the house.’
She meant it too. Scarlett O’Hara could not bear any conversation that was not about her .
But she smiled as she spoke, showing her dimples and fluttering her eyelashes. The twins were enchanted. War was men’s business, they thought, and it made Scarlett seem even more feminine. They asked Scarlett to reserve dances with them at the barbecue the next day.
‘If you promise, we’ll tell you a secret,’ Stuart said. ‘There’s going to be an announcement at the Wilkes’ ball tomorrow night. It’s Ashley Wilkes engagement to Melanie.’
Scarlett’s lips went white. She sat without speaking in a state of shock. After the twins had left, she went back to her chair like a sleepwalker. Her mouth hurt from having to smile.
For the first time in her life, Scarlett O’Hara would not have what she wanted.
She wanted Ashley Wilkes. She was in love with him and surely he was in love with her !
How could he love Melanie, with her plain face and childish figure?
She waited outside for her father to come home. He had been visiting Twelve Oaks – the plantation of the Wilkes’ family.
‘I met that sweet little woman called Melanie…and her brother, Charles, just arrived from Atlanta for the barbecue,’ he said.
‘Was Ashley there’ Scarlett asked.
Gerald O’Hara peered sharply at his daughter.
‘Is that why you’ve waited for me to come back?’ he asked. ‘Has he asked to marry you?’
‘No,’ she snapped.
‘Well, he won’t now,’ he said. ‘I heard it just now. He’s to marry Melanie.’
A pain slashed Scarlett’s heart.
‘I want you to be happy, Scarlett, and you’d never have been happy with him,’ her father went on. ‘Like must marry like for a couple to be happy. The Wilkes are different. They’re always off to Boston or New York to see oil paintings and listen to operas.’
‘If I married him, I’d change all that,’ Scarlett said.
Gerald O’Hara linked Scarlett’s arm through his to walk to the house. He warned her to keep her pride when the engagement was announced the next day and not to shed any tears in public.
It was only when they were saying grace before supper that the thought came to Scarlett.
‘Why, Ashley hasn’t an idea that I’m in love with him! He wouldn’t marry Melanie if he knew that I loved him.’