Madeline’s answer to “Is this book ok for teenagers to read? Is it fiction?” > Likes and Comments
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Margaret Mitchel's biased memories maybe. Not all slaves were happy either.
Margaret heard a lot of stories from her grandparents and relatives. This is one of the ways she learned her family's history.
Most of history is not perfectly accurate or unbiased. Margaret never said that all slaves were happy. It depended on the individual owners. But Margaret strove to be accurate in what stories and facts that she put down. She incorporated these into the story she wove.
If you want to read about the brutality of some of the slaveowners, you won't find much in her book, but there are plenty of other books in which you can read of this horror.
Karen, I read a couple of biographies of Margaret Mitchell. She started out as a reporter for a newspaper and had to be accurate in checking her facts. She was obsessive about checking every fact mentioned in her book.
Of course some slave owners were cruel. The owners could be very harsh. But M.M heard her stories from her own family. They had many memories. Whether the memories were accurate or not I cannot say. But we do learn lots of history from the mouths of people who were there or else were passed down to other generations. Many cultures who are illiterate pass on history through songs and stories as they couldn't write.
If Margaret wrote her memories of slave owners who treated their slaves like an extended family, then I believe it. I also believe the stories about cruel slave owners. One doesn't cancel out the other.
This book is not about race relations but is a wonderful historical fiction book that is a page turner and can't be forgotten!
Saying M.M. was biased is the same as me saying you are biased because you want to discount the good slave owners and only want to believe the stories about the bad.
Hmm, quite frankly the fact that these "good" slave owners were slave owners at all is disgusting & repulsive. No matter what!
Yes, this is certainly true. But nevertheless, this is part of our history and we need to know what happened. We learn from history what not to do so we don't repeat the same awful thing twice.
I also want to say that in Margaret's experience with her relatives' stories, she learned a lot of history that was factual for their family. When she wrote about it in GWTW, some parts were quite true and of course she took her license to fictionalize much of it. But what happened during the Civil war, needs to be known, just like what happened with the Nazis must never be forgotten with their horrible atrocities.
Madeline, do you know whether M.M. was ever able to talk with any of her family's former slaves or their descendants as part of her research?
She was a little girl when her older relatives told her their stories. I would think whatever slaves they had 60 years earlier were gone with the wind.
Just a quick quibble with the idea that this racist slavery propaganda is historically accurate. It isn't. The parts where it suggests that slavery was good and slaves liked it - eg all the parts - were inaccurate.
Alex, people choose to believe what they want. I believe that some slaves were well treated. None of us LIKE the concept of having slaves. That said, just because there were cruel owners, that doesn’t automatically make ALL slave owners cruel. Margaret Mitchell wrote about the experience of having slaves by listening to her older relatives stories and from a few blacks who were set free. She remembered the many stories. History is often told not written down. If you choose to believe that the stories of cruel slave treatment are the ONLY true reports, that’s your choice. But Mitchell, who was a reporter, told her stories as she remembered them. In her biography, she said it was very important to her to get the facts as right as she could in the novel. It took her 10 years to write, so she had lots of time to check on things. It’s very sad to have people believe her book did not tell the truth as she knew it.
Thanks, Madeline, that's actually really helpful. To anyone reading along: this is the sort of people who are okay with this book. Slavery apologists.
Liberals love to coin expressions with which to label people. No one can be an individual with thoughts separate from the Party. “Slavery apologist” is one of those unfortunate labels. The person using the label thinks with herd mentality and can’t understand anyone who doesn’t fall into their own self-anointed and labeled group.
Sorry, I should have said racist. I meant to call you a racist.
I actually like that label even more. It’s the most popular one your group likes to throw at everyone who doesn’t fall into your party beliefs.
If anyone is showing racist tendencies, I think it is you. You are saying that all slaveholders were white and cruel. That is not a true statement. Owning slaves was wrong but not everyone was cruel to their slaves. And in Africa, there were many black slave owners. Does that make them racists too?
I said that owning slaves was wrong but that not all were cruel.That is all I was saying. That does not make me a slave apologist or a racist. You, on the other hand, just generalize and label people. You don’t allow for individual thinking
.
Margaret Mitchell was not a racist, a slave apologist and neither am I. She told a story and used events that were told directly to her. She did not own slaves herself.
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Karen
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Mar 28, 2015 10:27AM
Margaret Mitchel's biased memories maybe. Not all slaves were happy either.
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Margaret heard a lot of stories from her grandparents and relatives. This is one of the ways she learned her family's history. Most of history is not perfectly accurate or unbiased. Margaret never said that all slaves were happy. It depended on the individual owners. But Margaret strove to be accurate in what stories and facts that she put down. She incorporated these into the story she wove.
If you want to read about the brutality of some of the slaveowners, you won't find much in her book, but there are plenty of other books in which you can read of this horror.
Karen, I read a couple of biographies of Margaret Mitchell. She started out as a reporter for a newspaper and had to be accurate in checking her facts. She was obsessive about checking every fact mentioned in her book.Of course some slave owners were cruel. The owners could be very harsh. But M.M heard her stories from her own family. They had many memories. Whether the memories were accurate or not I cannot say. But we do learn lots of history from the mouths of people who were there or else were passed down to other generations. Many cultures who are illiterate pass on history through songs and stories as they couldn't write.
If Margaret wrote her memories of slave owners who treated their slaves like an extended family, then I believe it. I also believe the stories about cruel slave owners. One doesn't cancel out the other.
This book is not about race relations but is a wonderful historical fiction book that is a page turner and can't be forgotten!
Saying M.M. was biased is the same as me saying you are biased because you want to discount the good slave owners and only want to believe the stories about the bad.
Hmm, quite frankly the fact that these "good" slave owners were slave owners at all is disgusting & repulsive. No matter what!
Yes, this is certainly true. But nevertheless, this is part of our history and we need to know what happened. We learn from history what not to do so we don't repeat the same awful thing twice.
I also want to say that in Margaret's experience with her relatives' stories, she learned a lot of history that was factual for their family. When she wrote about it in GWTW, some parts were quite true and of course she took her license to fictionalize much of it. But what happened during the Civil war, needs to be known, just like what happened with the Nazis must never be forgotten with their horrible atrocities.
Madeline, do you know whether M.M. was ever able to talk with any of her family's former slaves or their descendants as part of her research?
She was a little girl when her older relatives told her their stories. I would think whatever slaves they had 60 years earlier were gone with the wind.
Just a quick quibble with the idea that this racist slavery propaganda is historically accurate. It isn't. The parts where it suggests that slavery was good and slaves liked it - eg all the parts - were inaccurate.
Alex, people choose to believe what they want. I believe that some slaves were well treated. None of us LIKE the concept of having slaves. That said, just because there were cruel owners, that doesn’t automatically make ALL slave owners cruel. Margaret Mitchell wrote about the experience of having slaves by listening to her older relatives stories and from a few blacks who were set free. She remembered the many stories. History is often told not written down. If you choose to believe that the stories of cruel slave treatment are the ONLY true reports, that’s your choice. But Mitchell, who was a reporter, told her stories as she remembered them. In her biography, she said it was very important to her to get the facts as right as she could in the novel. It took her 10 years to write, so she had lots of time to check on things. It’s very sad to have people believe her book did not tell the truth as she knew it.
Thanks, Madeline, that's actually really helpful. To anyone reading along: this is the sort of people who are okay with this book. Slavery apologists.
Liberals love to coin expressions with which to label people. No one can be an individual with thoughts separate from the Party. “Slavery apologist” is one of those unfortunate labels. The person using the label thinks with herd mentality and can’t understand anyone who doesn’t fall into their own self-anointed and labeled group.
Sorry, I should have said racist. I meant to call you a racist.
I actually like that label even more. It’s the most popular one your group likes to throw at everyone who doesn’t fall into your party beliefs. If anyone is showing racist tendencies, I think it is you. You are saying that all slaveholders were white and cruel. That is not a true statement. Owning slaves was wrong but not everyone was cruel to their slaves. And in Africa, there were many black slave owners. Does that make them racists too?
I said that owning slaves was wrong but that not all were cruel.That is all I was saying. That does not make me a slave apologist or a racist. You, on the other hand, just generalize and label people. You don’t allow for individual thinking
.
Margaret Mitchell was not a racist, a slave apologist and neither am I. She told a story and used events that were told directly to her. She did not own slaves herself.
