“It was the whiteness of the whale that above all things appalled me."
-H. Melville

“Experience teaches us that individual colors result in particular moods... In order to experience fully the individual significant effects, one must surround one's eye completely with one color, for example placing oneself in a room of one color, or looking through a colored glass...Blue glass shows us objects in sad light."
-J. W. Goethe

Introduction

Margaret Mitchel’s novel Gone with the Wind does not cease to puzzle literary critics. On the one hand, the popularity of the novel is unprecedented: it enjoys a continuous success among mass readers around the globe and has no rivals in terms of its profitability and longevity. On the other hand, the novel has never been really accepted as a work of art and the mystery of its unyielding appeal to the mass reader is yet to be solved. We propose an explanation for the novel’s steadfast popularity worldwide and offer an interpretation that places the works of popular art into a context of comparative mythology and folklore.

In Adventure, Mystery and Romance: Formula Stories as Art and Popular Culture, John Cawelti argues that Gone with the Wind lies in the “continuum between the formulaic social melodrama and naturalistic novels." Popular fiction often employs literary formulae and cliché: there is an unspoken convention between the readers and writers, the former know what to expect from reading this genre, and the latter know how to meet the readers’ expectations. This process of tuning the human emotions is similar to that of tuning a musical instrument, or, for Cawelti in “Notes toward an Aesthetic of Popular Culture," “a highly controlled experience which puts us through an intense series of emotions which immediately dissipate upon conclusion of the performance." Despite its use of clichés, in order to captivate mass audiences, the work of popular art must have some individual artistic “touch" distinguishing it from the thousands of other works in the same genre. It needs a “quality of personal style," since, as Cawelti points out in “Notes," “among essentially similar versions of a formula the one that manifests most clearly a sense of individual style will be most attractive and gratifying."

In this article, we examine the stylistic devices perpetuating the novel’s main theme, which Margaret Mitchell, according to her biographer, has established as “survival." There are inherent dualities in Gone with the Wind: for example, Victor Turner points out that the novel is based on several dualistic themes, such as two antithetical ideals of masculinity, that “of the North versus the South, and of capitalism versus landowning." Beyond doubt, such duality is also manifested in the main theme of a novel, which might be understood more broadly as a struggle of life force with death, destruction and decay. This theme is encrypted on several levels and its development in the plot of the novel reaches a mythical scale.

We hypothesize that it is the deciphering and recognizing of a universal mythical motif that has made this novel so popular around the world: the central theme of survival and eternal myth of Mother Earth and strength drawn from her (earth-bound hero) is intricately conveyed through color symbolism, allusions, tropes, and parallelism. Thus, Gone with the Wind offers a particularly rich opportunity to study symbolic meaning of the colors in fiction, and their effect on a reader. In turn, analysis of the color symbolism and tropes help uncover the mythical underpinnings of this novel.

Color Symbolism

The descriptions in Gone with the Wind are pictorial: most characters have a particular color scheme associated with them. The reader is able to see the protagonist’s dominant color very vividly, just as in visual art. The components of the color scheme include color of the clothes, eyes, skin, and hair. In Gone with the Wind, color symbolism allows for semiotic expression of ideas: each color signifies certain common human characteristics, and some of the colors symbolize such sentiments as patriotism and national pride.

In studying color symbolism in Gone with the Wind, we have applied the framework of the Luscher Color Test, which is based on the idea that colors are universal psychological stimuli. In addition, we examine the connotations of colors and their link with popular beliefs and cultural attitudes. The color pertaining to each protagonist functions as a leitmotif in a music drama: an associated melodic phrase or figure that accompanies the reappearance of an idea, person, or situation (as defined in Merriam-Webster). Along the same lines, the “color leitmotif" may be analogized with the facial make-up (“painted face") in classical Chinese musical drama, in which, as S. Serova has pointed out, spectators determine automatically the social status, personality, and destiny of the hero based on his facial make-up. Mitchell’s use of color symbolism serves as an implicit means to tune the reader’s emotive reactions in a desired way. Despite the fact that the perception of colors often is culturally and linguistically specific, in this novel colors elicit in readers what R.G. D’Andrade and Michael Egan call a “distinct, innate, unconditioned response."

Green and Red

Scarlett’s palette is predominately green and red, including various hues of those colors. Her “turbulent, willful, lusty with life" eyes are “pale green" and her clothes always accentuate the color of her eyes: “a new green flowered-muslin dress," “green morocco slippers," or “green sprigged muslin dress." When Scarlett struggles to save her house from devastation and her family from starvation, hard work transforms her into a "sharp green" woman. When Scarlett again tries to win Ashley’s heart and suggests that they flee together, he sees “a hot soft glow in the green eyes." When Scarlett attempts to give herself to Rhett in exchange for the money needed to buy the estate back, she sews the dress using old “moss-green velvet curtains." Later in the novel, Rhett chooses a “jade-green watered-silk dress" for Scarlett’s public appearance in Melanie’s house.

Red is the second color of Scarlett’s palette; obviously, her very name is intentional. Although it is not a color describing the heroine’s appearance, red is associated with her: Scarlett’s dreams about the future when she will gain back wealth and social status are colored in red: “red wall paper and red velvet portieres over all the folding doors." When Scarlett marries Rhett, she fulfils her dreams about affluence furnishing her “red stone house" in accordance with her taste. The red color and its derivatives (crimson, bloody, pinkish, sunset-colored, garnet, brick-dust and so forth) also accompany Scarlett throughout the novel in the descriptions of a landscape and the land of Tara, “a savagely red land, blood-colored after rains," and, for example, in the following passage:

Already the plowing was nearly finished, and the bloody glory of the sunset colored the fresh-cut furrows of red Georgia clay to even redder hues . . . The whitewashed brick plantation house seemed an island set in a wild red sea, a sea of spiraling, curving, crescent billows petrified suddenly at the moment, when the pink-tipped waves were breaking into surf.

The red and green colors of Scarlett’s palette can be interpreted in terms of Luscher’s color diagnostics. According to Luscher, the main colors of a spectrum symbolize major psychological desires. Thus, green corresponds to the “desire to prove oneself" and “elastic tension" while red is an “expression of vital force," “desire," “all forms of appetite and cravings," “the urge to achieve results," and the urge “to win success."

Throughout the novel, Scarlett is driven by her desire to possess – money, the earth of Tara, Ashley, and society’s attention and respect. For Luscher, green reflects a personal stance in which aggression is justified by an external threat, “which people perceive as their own secondary reaction to the external assault." Conforming to Luscher’s diagnostics, Scarlett’s dominant colors signify her desire to reach her goals and her will to survive.

In addition, green and red embody popular attitudes: like Margaret Mitchell herself, Scarlett is half Irish, and red and green are Irish national colors. This allusion is fortified by tropes, as for example, in the comparison of Scarlett’s eyes with emeralds, i.e., “her narrow eyes blazing like emeralds," “her eyes dark emerald and sparkling" which are references to Ireland, known by its poetic name “Emerald Isle."

The parallelism also reinforces this association: Scarlett’s father adores her green eyes, which seem to him “as green as the hills of Ireland." Their humming together a ballad "The Wearin' o' the Green" amplifies the visual effect of a green color, as the green shamrock is a national emblem of Ireland and “wearing the green" alludes to Irish rebellion.

Scarlett’s character fits a widespread stereotype that Irishmen are hot-tempered: “she had the easily stirred passions of her Irish father," and her spirit is “volatile." Therefore, we can say that Scarlett personifies the spirit of Ireland: through the symbolic and connotative use of colors, tropes, and parallelism, the Irish theme is invoked on several occasions, as, for example, in a speech Scarlett’s father gives her. This speech, in fact, preambles the appearance of a mythical motif of earth-bound hero in a novel: "It's proud I am that I'm Irish . . . And, to anyone with a drop of Irish blood in them - why, the land they live on is like their mother . . . There's no gettin' away from it if you're Irish."

Yet another connotation of a green color is related to spring: green connotes the spring season; it signifies a revival, the rebirth of nature from the deadly grip of winter. The spirit of life is personified by Scarlett herself, which is evident in the scene in which Scarlett reveals her feelings to Ashley: “for Ashley spring was back again, that half-forgotten balmy spring of green rustlings and murmurings." This association is typical of folklore and popular beliefs, for example, Jakobs & Jakobs, based on the substantial ethnographic evidence, point out that green is the “color of growth, of fertile fields and fruitful trees . . . green signifies fickleness and desire for change." In popular Scottish belief, Jakobs & Jakobs point out, green signifies an unlucky color in regard to love – "those that marry in green / their sorrow is soon seen." In Walter Scott’s Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border, for example, we find a belief that it is unlucky to wear green at any time. There is no contradiction between green color symbolism in folklore or popular beliefs and its role in the unfolding plot of the novel. Just as this color is deemed to be unlucky in love matters, Scarlett, whose dominant color is green, fails to find (or recognize) her true love.

Furthermore, Scarlett’s second color, red, symbolizes for Luscher activity and invading aggressiveness. Its affective overtones are manifest in the urge to achieve results, to win success – it is, for Luscher, “the will to win, and all forms of vitality and power from sexual potency to revolutionary transformation." Red signifies a physiological state in which a person expends a lot of energy. Red color mostly appears in the descriptions of Tara and in the latter part of the novel, when Scarlett reaches her goal of material comfort and also when for the first time in her life she is conquered by a man. For Scarlett, the red earth of Tara is the meaning of life, the object of love, and a never-ending source of her strength and energy. Scarlett’s love for Tara is her strongest affection: “She never came wearily home across the fields and saw the sprawling white house that her heart did not swell with love and joy of homecoming. She never looked out of her window at green pastures and red fields . . . that a sense of beauty did not fill her. Her love for this land . . was one part of Scarlett, which did not change when all else was changing." For Scarlett, the land is “the one thing in the world worth fighting for." When she is tired and exhausted from struggles, Tara symbolizes a shelter for her. Parallel to the myth, the earth will give back her strength: “All she wanted was a breathing space in which to hurt, a quiet place to lick her wounds, a haven in which to plan her campaign."

The red earth of Tara is a protagonist by itself, a mythical Mother Earth, hungry or anticipating a sexual intercourse, “moist hungry earth, waiting upturned for the cottonseeds." Tara and Scarlett are related: “the love of the land was in her blood." Scarlett’s story is the myth of Antaeus, the mythical hero, who draws strength from contact with his mother Geia: “She’s like the giant Antaeus, who became stronger each time he touched Mother Earth. It doesn’t do good for her to stay away too long from that patch of red mud she loves. The sight of cotton growing will do her more good than all Dr. Meade’s tonics." The contact with Tara gives Scarlett strength and vitality, but it is a harsh contact, as this natural force strips Scarlett from any cultural elements she acquired from her mother: “She couldn’t feel herself a lady . . . Harsh contact with the red earth of Tara had stripped gentility from here."

Interestingly, red signifying blood and attachment appears in one small episode, when Mammy accepts Rhett’s gift, the red taffeta petticoat, which she had refused to wear for a long time, and which she puts on when she finally opens her heart to Rhett the day Bonnie is born. For Rhett, Mammy is a symbol of home, family, stability, and childhood reminiscences: “I remember my mammy always said that when she went to Heaven she wanted a taffeta petticoat so stiff that it would stand by itself and so rusty that the Lord God would think it was made of angel’s wings. I’ll buy Mummy some red taffeta and have an elegant petticoat made." Rhett’s wish for a garment in red symbolizes here both the “earthy feeling" of a home and family he hopes to create, but also has an erotic undertone, as Rhett decides on this color in New Orleans, a “strange glamorous place" where people “seemed to have all the money they wanted and no cares at all." Mammy, the keeper of the family status and prestige, opposes Scarlett’s involvement with Rhett, but his turning into a respectable pater familias, and his delight at the birth of a girl win Mammy’s heart. She shows the change in her attitude with the “ruffle of a red taffeta petticoat." Including Rhett in the informal domesticity of Tara, Mammy also shows that she understands the sexual undertone of the gift. When Rhett wants to see the edge of the petticoat, she exclaims, “Mist’ Rhett, you is bad!" With “a little shriek" she “retreated and from a distance of a yard, modestly elevated her dress a few inches and showed the ruffle of a red taffeta petticoat." Mammy is the bond between the members of the O’Hara family, she nursed Scarlett’s mother and Scarlett, and it can be suggested that the red color of Mammy’s petticoat signifies here a new, “blood" relationship linking Mammy with Rhett through the birth of a child.

The emotive and connotative aspects of colors in this novel are often intertwined, which is not accidental given the conventional and formulaic nature of the genre. In general, as Cawelti maintains in “Notes," “what is popular embodies cultural attitudes to a greater extent" than that which is not popular.

Black and Blue

Indeed, each protagonist typifies certain human qualities and characteristics, and color plays an important role in this creative process. It is not chance that Rhett Butler’s palette is black. His image is more schematic and the black color dominates in the descriptions of his appearance and clothes. Rhett is “dark of face," “swarthy, as a pirate," and he has a “close-clipped black moustache." He is dressed in “black broadcloth," wearing a severe black suit. His hair is “jet black."

Rhett is a force opposite to Scarlett. The plot unfolds as a contest between the two protagonists; every encounter ends in their disagreement or conflict, in which each contestant tries to defy the opponent. Their relationship develops as a combat, but they also attract and resist each other. They both are “scoundrels," and nothing is beyond them when they “want something."

Rhett is rapacious, and on the surface, avarice is his major trait, but he personifies the qualities that Ashley lacks – vigor, virility, and masculinity. The black color associated with him emphasizes the duality and opposition found in Rhett’s character. According to Luscher, black symbolizes refusal, non-acceptance, and negation as opposed to affirmation. Adherence to the black color signifies a protest against the world, and a challenge cast to one’s destiny: “black, as negation itself, represents renunciation." All these characteristics are found in the plot – Rhett openly challenges the society in which he lives, breaks with his family, and his political stance is in unconcealed opposition to the official patriotism. Another characteristic of Rhett is his reticence; he is the only protagonist whose thoughts and feelings are not conveyed through authorial allusion. Instead, the reader guesses about his feelings and motives from his actions and speech, which are also conveyed through the black leitmotif in accordance with his role as homme fatale.

Not only do the main protagonists have color leitmotifs associated with them, but so do the secondary characters. Thus, Bonnie’s palette is blue. Her eyes are as blue as “the bonnie blue flag," and this is constantly accentuated by the color of her clothes. Like Scarlett, who sticks to green, Bonnie wears “blue taffeta and lace collars" or a “blue velvet habit with a skirt." “When it came to making her riding habit," Mitchell writes, “as usual she had her choice of colors and as usual chose blue." In Bonnie’s palette, we find the same interplay of connotative and emotive undertones that can be interpreted on several levels of analysis. The first one relates to the shared sentiments: the very name, Bonnie (or “Bonnie-blue" as Melanie calls the newborn girl), alludes to a song “The Bonnie Blue Flag," which was the second most popular patriotic song of the Confederacy.

Another interpretation is a semantic one: blue connotes sadness (“to be in a blue mood" or “feeling blue"), which on a subconscious level affects the reader because Bonnie’s fate is tragic. On the one hand, Bonnie’s blue-color leitmotif conveys a feeling of melancholy, brought by her death. On the other hand, blue conveys the idea of hope and faithfulness in love because blue is a symbolically loaded color, “a jumble of associations and beliefs," Jakobs & Jakobs state, “which once permeated the opinions and judgments of mankind." In popular beliefs, where practically all the symbols can be ambivalent, the blue color is ambivalent as well. As Jakobs & Jakobs remark, it is associated with gloom, death, and the devil, but it is also a color of “fidelity in love," a symbol of constancy and truth – as in "blue, color true" or “blue is loyalty." Bonnie melts Rhett’s heart; as cynical as he is, he openly and proudly displays his love to the girl. Luscher’s color diagnostics support this view, as blue symbolizes deep feelings, with affective nuances of attachment, love, and tenderness. For Luscher, blue represents “the bonds one draws around oneself, unification and the sense of belonging." When Rhett loses Bonnie-blue, he loses his interest in Scarlett: Bonnie personifies the warmth and tenderness missing in their relationship and represents the link between them.

Grey, Silver, and Gold

Unlike Scarlett and Rhett, who constantly fight, Ashley and Melanie complement each other. Their relationship is full of harmony and mutual understanding, and their feelings are tuned in unison. This is reflected by their color leitmotif: neither Ashley, nor Melanie has his or her own color, but rather they have the combined palette: grey infused with highlights of gold and silver. Ashley is a romantic, who mourns “the loss of the beauty of the old life"; for him, a new life is “a shadow show." He is dressed in “grey broadcloth with a wide black cravat setting off his frilled shirt to perfection." He has “frowsy grey eyes," and his blond hair seemed “like a cap of shining silver." Ashley is noble but lifeless, and by the end of the novel his spirit is completely broken. He belongs and lives in the past; his temperament has dreamlike qualities: “tis moonstruck they all are, the Wilkes." Melanie’s appearance is “washed out." She does not have her own palette, and it is not accidental that the colors of Melanie’s dress complement the colors associated with Ashley, thus, for example, her “heavy earbobs with their long gold fringe" are in accord with Ashley’s “gold hair and mustache," and “his gold head." Ashley’s “crystal-grey eyes" match her “grey organdie dress." This matching palette expresses the idea that these two protagonists are very alike or, as Ashley remarks, “she is like me, part of my blood, and we understand each other."

According to Luscher, adherence to the color grey signifies the desire to be isolated, to “wall everything off, to remain uncommitted and uninvolved so he can shield himself from an outside influence and stimulus." Grey symbolizes passivity and the need for solitude. For Luscher, grey “is not an occupied territory but a border." This point is found in Ashley’s personality; here is, for example, how he characterizes himself: “I do not like the outlines of things to be too sharp. I like them gently blurred, a little hazy." He cannot adapt to the emerging social order, and his thoughts are full of nostalgia for the beauty and serenity of the old world. Melanie and Ashley’s grey palette with its golden and silver hues is also connotative of the underworld and death: for example, based on ethnographic evidence showing the role of gold in mourning rituals worldwide, Vladimir Propp connects gold and golden hues with the underworld, and its role as a metaphor connoting the meaning of death.

Mythical Underpinnings: Oppositions, Parallelism, and Tropes

Gone with the Wind is abundant in metaphors and tropes that amplify the above ideas, motifs and themes. In Blanche Gelfant’s view, this novel retells “an archetypal creation myth." In general, in Gone with the Wind there is an apparent isomorphism between the human and the natural: people are often described as natural phenomena and elements, or have zoomorphic qualities, and, in turn, natural elements and objects may have anthropomorphic traits. Such isomorphism is characteristic of a myth, in which the human is often not yet separated from the cosmic, or as Gelfant maintains, “Tara is rising from chaos."

In general, the whole novel is built upon oppositions, and Melanie and Scarlett exemplify two rival natural forces. Whereas Scarlett is always compared to dynamic and wild elements and animals, Melanie is described in terms of stillness, immobility, and serenity. Scarlett is a predator: “she was continuously unable to endure any man being in love with any woman not herself . . . too much for her predatory nature"; “her eyes sometimes had a look of a hungry cat." Scarlett’s attitude to life is “taking it by the horns and twisting it to [her] will." She is “as elemental as fire and wind and wild things."

Melanie and Ashley on one side and Scarlett on the other, represent two opposite poles: cultural and cosmic, static and dynamic. Unlike Scarlett, whose elements are wind and fire (compare with her Irish temperament), Melanie is the opposite element – water and earth. Melanie’s eyes have “the still gleam of a forest pool in winter when brown leaves shine up through quiet water," they are “remote as mountain lakes under grey skies." Melanie has the ability to shield – “a woman around whom storms might blow without ever ruffling the serene core of her being." Unlike the selfish Scarlett, she is a giving and happy woman, who has a big heart, which is also amplified by the trope: her face has a “heart shape." Melanie is kind and protective of her loved ones: “she looked – and was – as simple as earth, as good as bread, as transparent as spring water."

Wet and dry is yet another opposition conveying the idea of a struggle between life and death. When Grandma Fontaine remarks that Scarlett and she are both the same type, she uses a metaphor of a plant full of sap:

. . . we bow to the inevitable. We’re not wheat, we’re buckwheat! When a storm comes along it flattens ripe wheat because it’s dry and can’t bend with the wind. But ripe buckwheat’s got sap in it and it bends . . . the wind has passed, it springs up almost as straight and strong as before. We aren’t a stiff-necked tribe. We’re mighty limber when a hard wind’s blowing, because we know it pays to be limber . . . That’s the secret of survival.

It should be noted that, according to Allan Dundes, the dichotomy of wet and dry in worldwide folklore, myths, and rituals signifies the opposition between life and death, the view, which the novel fully supports: those, who have “sap" (vital fluids) in them, survive and prosper.

Another mythical characteristic found in the novel is widowhood as a ritual death, and liberation from widowhood as a victory of life over death. When Scarlett becomes a widow, according to Southern custom, she has to behave like a widow, which for her lively temperament is the equivalent of being buried alive, as Charles Rowan Beye has observed, “[She] wished that she were dead." The necessity to comply with social norms leads to the rapid deterioration of her physical health. Rhett, who liberates her from the grip of the social obligations to behave like a widow, expresses this view openly:

I have always thought . . . that the system of mourning, of immuring women in crepe for the rest of their lives and forbidding them normal enjoyment, is just as barbarous as the Hindu suttee . . . In India, when a man dies he is burned, instead of buried, and his wife always climbs on the funeral pyre and is burned with him . . . A wife who didn’t burn herself would be a social outcast . . . Personally, I think suttee is much more merciful than our charming Southern custom of burying widows alive.

Due to her new social status and the social obligations that come with it, one of Scarlett’s worst fears is never to wear green again. She is lusty for life and she dreads that she will be obliged to wear clothes in a grey palette appropriate for “old ladies," unlike green, which is proper for young girls: “That green is just my color . . . And to think I’ll never wear that color again, not even when I do get out of mourning. No, not even if I do manage to get married again. Then I’ll have to wear tacky old greys and tans and lilacs."

When Rhett presents Scarlett with a beautiful green bonnet, his only condition is that she will not dye it black to telegraph her widowhood to the world. Rhett gives her a bonnet made of “dark-green taffeta, lined with water silk of a pale-jade color. The ribbons . . . were pale green. And, curled about the brim of this confection was the perkiest of green ostrich plumes." Rhett’s gift (or its green color) revives her from ritual death and transforms her back into a “charming lady with green eyes."

As we can see, the motif of life and death is skillfully encoded within the plot through color symbolism and the association of green to the renewal of life. According to Valerie Eremina, the ritual of burying widows together with their husbands was a common practice worldwide, but with time it has been substituted by symbolic actions which re-enacted the wife’s joining the husband in death (such as, for example, her putting a lock of her hair in a husband’s coffin). Eremina finds such examples of ritual or symbolic death in the Western literary tradition as “Kristin Lavrandsdatter" by Sigrid Unset or “The Valencian Widow" by Lope de Vega. Likewise, Scarlett in some way participates in her husband’s death, and then is miraculously liberated from death, returning to the “greenness" and renewal of the living land. Such salvation is a miracle by itself because it would not have been possible without the war breaking all the social norms.

One last archetypal metaphor that should be mentioned is the traditional opposition between the benevolent South and the demonic North, which is also a literary archetype and has parallels in a world literature, as noted by Eliazer Meletinsky.

Conclusions

Color symbolism serves as an individual artistic technique encompassing stereotypical beliefs, cultural attitudes, and conventional meanings, but also helps tune readers’ emotions. The deliberate and blatant manner in which the color symbolism is employed in this novel makes its style distinct and particularly gratifying for the mass reader. Readers, particularly women, may forget certain historic details, but it is unlikely that they would ever forget the color of Scarlett’s eyes, her dresses, or the color of the earth of Tara. As Claude Levi-Strauss points out, the process of symbolization embraces the semantic value of color and the natural, unconditioned response – sensory stimuli – it triggers. In Structural Anthropology, he, analyzing the semiotics of red and green colors as traffic signals, argues the following:

. . . the opposite choice could have been made. And yet, if it had, the emotional and symbolic overtones of red and green would not simply be reversed thereby . . . If the opposition red/green is inverted, its semantic content shifts perceptibly . . . but also because they constitute the supports of a traditional symbolism which, once it has come into historical existence, can no longer be manipulated with complete freedom.

This view is fully supported by our findings: the use of color symbolism in Gone of the Wind is similar to the use of color in myth, customs and rituals – each color has a conventional meaning and semiotically encrypts particular ideas and themes. Therefore, the secret of this novel’s remarkable popularity can can be explained by its mythical qualities that leave an indelible imprint on readers’ imaginations.

September 2006

From guest contributors O. Levitski and O. Dumer