“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 |