GWTW: The Greatest Love Story of All Time?

"The Greatest Love Story of All Time..." is printed on the inside cover page of Gone With the Wind, but is Margaret Mitchell's civil war saga really a love story?

People tend to distill a great book down to its central relationship and then bill it as a great love story. That doesn’t just apply to Scarlett and Rhett. I have a hard time finding the love in a lot of the world's most adored "love stories". Lust and longing? Yes. Passion? Of course. But love?

Gone With the Wind can be described in one sentence: A story about the structure of society and the importance of balancing personal desires with finding one’s own place in that society.

Despite my childhood crush on Rhett Butler, I cannot think of Gone With the Wind as a simple love story. The relationships between the main characters explore the larger picture of what is happening as a society is destroyed and rebuilt.

The book begins by painting a picture of the Old South and its intricate pre-war society. It isn’t long before the Civil War strips back that way of life. Those who do survive have had to set aside many of the proprieties. Scarlett takes this to the extreme. She scorns all of society’s conventions and becomes financially successful, but an outcast. It’s only at the end of the novel when she begins to examine her priorities and realize what she threw away.

True, the relationship between Rhett and Scarlett is woven throughout the story. Rhett, a social outcast before the war, is immediately taken with Scarlett, who is already comfortable with bending societal rules to get her way. Throughout the story, Rhett encourages Scarlett to abandon society and follow her own dreams.

Meanwhile, Scarlett, despite flouting convention in order to adapt to the new post-war social order, cannot let go of her childhood crush on Ashley Wilkes. Though she doesn’t realize it, he has come to symbolize the old way of life that has been destroyed. He, and Tara, are the dreams Scarlett fights to preserve. Although through her struggle to preserve them, Scarlett loses sight of who she herself had been before the war.

The same blinders that give Scarlett the strength to persevere, also keep her from seeing the potential for happiness in a life with Rhett. In his desire to free Scarlett from the shackles of society, he encourages in her the same selfishness and shallowness that builds a wall between them. He cannot admit that he loves her, for fear of her using it against him, and she cannot see his feelings (or her own) through the guarded nature of their relationship.

If there is any true love in this book, it comes in the form of Melanie Wilkes. Adored by all who know her, Melanie lives her life by society’s rules, but can stand against them when they threaten her personal beliefs. Unlike Scarlett with her self-serving rebellions, Melanie understands the importance of both respecting the fabric of society and struggling against its more outdated or misguided notions.

Melanie wants to see the world as a beautiful place filled with beautiful people. She seeks out the good in everyone she meets, forgives those who are truly repentant, and is fiercely loyal to those who are dear to her. She alone exhibits what I would consider actual love.