The Yearling by Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings and illustrated by N.C. Wyeth was given to me, by my mother for Christmas in 1991. I was 10 years old, and loved the story for its soft, slow understanding of nature and the South. I knew it to be a tale of growing up, a child's loss of a yearling deer, and the theme being that one cannot be an adult without surviving a permanent and unfair loss. My memories of the work consisted of the image of Jody, a pre-teen boy and his flutter mill he would make and lazily gaze at. Also, an understanding that a pet was killed, similar to Old Yeller. But re-reading the work as an adult, it struck me how sad the story is. Perhaps children are more likely to withhold an immunity to sadness as people and situations are seeming to pass by uncontrolled and unquestioned. Though, at the time I read the story, I was not a stranger to death. Nor without a respect for nature. As a little girl growing up in West Africa, I knew death more personally than is usual for Western culture. This may be because while the family resided in the Gambia, my father was given the gift of a grown ram by the natives. He came to us on a white flat bed truck, the natives sitting there holding him, their legs dangling over the side. My mother moaned and complained through puffs of endless cigarette that if they wanted to give my father a gift, which was sweet enough, then why not a canary? Or something manageable within a cage? He ran about our orchid, among the orange trees and would ram people. I christened him Ramsy. And so Ramsy he was. After he had thoroughly bruised my mother with me behind her, and my girlfriends and I (along with everybody else) would walk about the orchid in fear of being plowed down, it was decided perhaps a ewe would be of benefit to him. So, Ramsy was given Sparkle (I named her as well, it was the mid 80s), a matching gift from the staff. Ramsey chased Sparkle around and around the orchard. I remember Sparkle running as fast as she could, along the hollowed brown gate surrounding the orchard with its trees of lemon, grapefruit, cashew nut and orange. Behind her would be Ramsy. Sparkle was pregnant soon enough. Then one morning, I walked out to the orchard, in those pinafore dresses they had with the elastic over the front in an empire waste fashion. It was the dry season as the day was filled with a hot golden sunshine, and a sticky scent of citrus and African earth waved through the air. The gardner was digging a very large rectangle. Next to the grave lay Sparkle. There was blood and I remember the sweet, pungent smell of death. The gardener told me she had been too young. I knew what he meant. The lamb had not survived either. So, I knew death. To know someone who has died and to know death are two different things. I felt sad and it felt unfair, but I did not deeply mourn for Sparkle. I had never loved her. In the West, death is clean. Death is somewhere else. But not in Africa. The next day, I came back to the grave. Fresh earth had covered the scent of demise and the newly laid, broken ground held a silence unto itself. There was one moment when I did mourn. It was years later, and my best friend Karine and I were on the beach of Conakry, Guinea. It was a rocky, polluted area that we were forbidden to go. But being eight year old girls, Karine and I somehow, never always listened to what we were told to do. It was not dirty in the sense of trash strewn everywhere, but the water was not clean enough to swim in. We walked along, and talked and as it began to rain, I noticed a large grey dog. He looked like an Irish Wolfhound. The tide was rising and the dog was on a tiny island of rocks, between the waves and the shoreline. The waves grew higher and began to wash over the dog's legs. At this time there was a group of school aged boys. They were throwing stones at the dog. Big ones. I shouted at them to go away. They ignored me. They were told by Karine, to go. The waves were getting even higher and the rain came down. The sky was as grey as the dog. Then, my heart dropped into the bottom of my stomach as I realized they were going to kill it. I could hear the hollowed sound of the rocks hitting the dog and saw the waves washing over it. I ran across the soft purple-grey stones of the beach, through the black back yard gate and around the side of the bungalow crying, back to the servants of my friend as they were sitting in the garden shaded from the rain, and begged them. Go they are killing the dog. Please go. I pointed as the crow flies, back to the ocean, to where the adults should be to make it better. They laughed at me. "Look at that white girl caring for a dog," Karine's maid said, as she bent over in hysterics. My utmost tragedy was their comedy central. Nothing. I returned to the beach on my own. Karine was still there. She was stoic. There was no dog now. Karine said he had gotten to shore but they kicked him back, a couple of times. I walked the shoreline and I could swear I heard a sad whine that was not of the waves. But I could not find the dog. Karine's father returned and wanted to know, what she and I were thinking going to the beach on our own in the first place. We had always been forbidden to do this. But we had. And I mourned that dog's death more than I had ever mourned anything. It was not natural. There was no need for it. The shore had been right there. The dog could swim just fine. The servants were in trouble, as well for their response. But this time, there was no earth to cover. There was no comfort of an objective gardner to give to a little girl. The waves would take the dog with them in time. Our family's maids would laugh at me for how much I could eat, as I would come to the kitchen for meals so often I could have been a cartoon character. But that evening, I had no appetite. I could not stop hearing the gasping, dying whine and the sound of the relentless ocean waves, oblivious salty waters. I stared down at my dinner as if I had never seen food before, and tried not to cry. After dinner, my mother took me in her lap and said, in between puffs of cigarette, "It is a harsh country that makes for hard people and the animals fare no better." I understood her logic, but it brought little comfort. (The life expectancy for the average Guinean at the time was 42 years at the most). Yet that night, I was given Henry and Ribsy by Beverly Cleary, among a pile of books we had recently gotten. It was an old library copy with a yellow cover and the picture of a dog with a boy, in 1950s style illustration. Ribsy is a worn down dog, whose ribs show and he is found and given a home by Henry. I devoured that book. Curled up on the couch, the world regained order. Two years later I was given The Yearling for Christmas. And as melancholy as losing that grey dog was, The Yearling is sadder. It knocks Black Beauty out of the park. It's as if there is some unspoken rule that a tale must never be too tragic. There are tragic characters, but they are rarely the main ones. Rawlings ignores this rule and she provides no answers as to why. Perhaps this is what granted the novel its popularity, for whatever a person may have been through in life, The Yearling is somehow sadder. As an adult I realized how much loneliness centered within the lives of all Rawlings' characters living within the world of late 1800s northern Florida. A country of farmers and hunters who live off the land, but not with it. Man is an animal with a gun in a spanish moss decorated forrest filled with wild life. Jody Baxter, is part of this setting. He goes to the creek and makes a flutter mill upon the shallow, slow moving waters. He lives in a small three room house, with his father, Penny and his mother, Ory. Penny is smaller than Ory, and why he choose her for a wife is not certain, but he did: "Sich doin's! Nobody acted that-a-way when I were a gal." "No," Penny said, "I was the only one wanted you." She lifted the broom in pretended threat. "But sugar," he said, "the rest just wasn't smart as me." Ory lost a few children to rural living and the travails of the time. But Jody survived. A wide eyed boy with one friend, Fodder-wing Forrester, a neighbor who is a cripple and dies, but not before naming Jody's new found friend and playmate, Flag. Penny was bit by a rattle snake while on a hunt, and he lives by shooting a doe, cutting out her organs and using them to draw poison from his own blood. The doe had a fawn who becomes Jody's Flag, as his white turned up tail is like a flag. The Baxter's home is sparse, but Jody has never been starved. Never beaten. He goes on hunts with Penny and learns the ways of farming. The men all live bound on what nature provides. If they need to eat they go out and hunt. But they also hunt for sport. As if all that is natural will always come out of nowhere, continuously and forever. Men are animals competing with animals for food and space. But men have guns they can kill easily and repeatedly with in a way other animals cannot do to them in turn. Jody, sensitive and thoughtful, is raised to be a man such as these men. There are no other examples. Penny, is better than most and contemplates unnecessary killings of wolves, but in the end he helps to kill off the last wolf himself so as not to be outdone by neighbors, who kill and capture at will and for profit. Jody's best friend is Flag. The two play together and wherever Jody is, there is Flag to be found soon enough, prancing along and butting his un-horned head at imaginary enemies. Both are yearlings, growing up side by side. But there are premonitions that Flag's life is in jeopardy when it becomes clear he does not understand the difference between forrest foliage and the Baxter's plantings. The Baxter's survive on their crop. Hours and days of labor go into their yield. And when Flag% The Long Walk Home, is a favorite of films regarding the 1950s American South. The storyline brings two women together to both play a part in the Civil Rights Movement. One of the women is Miriam Thompson, who is a white, upper middle class housewife with two daughters; the youngest, Mary Catherine, is seven years old. Her sister, Sarah, is in college. The scenes begin with a Montgomery Alabama bus (1955) pulling up for three black women (all are domestic workers) to board. They walk with backs straight, put their money into the bus meter, then walk out and along the side of the bus to enter at the back. One of the maids, Odessa Carter, works for Mrs. Norman Thompson. Mary Catherine's voice-over describes Odessa, "I called her Dessy. As best as anyone knows, she was the first woman to rock me to sleep. There wasn't anything extraordinary about her. But, I guess there's always something extraordinary about someone who changes and then changes those around her." Odessa arrives to the Thompson's family enclave, seasoned with its 1950s space age furniture, to meet her usual morning scene. Sarah is looking for her tennis racket so she can meet her boyfriend at the club, Norman asks Miriam to have his golf clubs repaired, as he is heading out to work, and Miriam asks Odessa to take Mary Catherine to the park, as there is to be a cocktail party thrown later that night. Miriam drives Mary Catherine, Odessa and two of Mary Catherine's friends to Oak Park. Odessa sits in one of the back seats. Miriam drops off Odessa and the girls, telling Odessa to meet her at the same spot at 3p.m., as she should be back from the beauty parlor by then. The girls run and play, while Odessa puts lunch together. Then, a Montgomery Alabama police officer comes along. He is very tall and big, and as the children look on, he loudly informs Odessa the park is for whites only. Odessa and the children have to leave. Miriam is incensed at the story of the children and maid's experience in Oak Park and she calls the police office to complain of the incident. It appears her husband (or father) carries a reasonable amount of weight in town as the officer comes to apologize, that very afternoon, to both the maid and the children. Later that evening, at the cocktail party, Norman's brother, Tucker, hears about how his sister-in-law had the officer come out and apologize for what he did to Odessa and the girls in the park. Tucker tells Miriam, that for a white officer to have to express regret or demureness, to a black maid is, "juus plein ol' wrrong." Miriam becomes irate Tucker should judge her on any given moral synopsis, and responds to his stated perspective by telling him, she knows what is right and knows what is wrong, and she is not to be second guessed by a "wet behind the ears patrolman," nor by Tucker. She then walks off and Tucker can think of no better reply in turn other than to tell his brother he always thought Miriam was a, "hellcat." Some time went by before an event occurred that really brought Odessa and Miriam together as people: the arrest of Rosa Parks and the boycott of the Montgomery Alabama buses by the African American populace. Parks was the second African American woman arrested for refusing to give up her seat for a white person. And so, the boycott begins. Some black people had cars, but most did not. And this meant two things: 1. A lot more walking 2. Carpools The morning after the boycott is announced, the buses roll by Odessa's family home, "That bus is as empty as my grave," Odessa remarks of one going by. Odessa has three children of her own, one girl and two boys. The youngest of the boys asks, "Mom, if we can't ride the bus, do we have to go to school?" Odessa responds with, "Boy, you ain't never took the bus in your life..." With the boycott comes friction at work for Odessa sometimes arrives late and moves slow as she is tired from the lessened hours of sleep and all the walking. She even has bloodstains on her socks from poor walking shoes. Odessa cannot take the bus, even if she would like to, as a black person taking the bus by themselves is liable to attract a dangerous amount of attention in a small city where white police cannot be relied upon to protect the black community. The boycott causes increased debates among both the black and white populaces. After walking miles and cleaning house all day, Odessa attends weekday night Church meetings, where the voice of Martin Luther King is heard over the loud speaker saying, "the only weapon we have in our hands this evening is the weapon of protest. That's all..." Odessa, despite her innately strong work ethic begins to drag around Christmas time. Miriam feels bad and both out of empathy and as a business measure, she agrees to give Odessa a ride from Curb Market, twice a week in the mornings. Mary Catherine is a witness to the carpool agreement between the two women. Miriam informs her daughter, the matter is a secret between them, so there is no need to tell Daddy. Christmas comes and Odessa, has in her pocket a little gift for Mary Catherine, the same size as the gifts Odessa gave her own children. Though, when Mary Catherine runs up to Odessa to show off her fancy new doll, Odessa puts the little gift back in her pocket. Mary Catherine will never know Odessa bought her a gift for that Christmas day. Odessa walks home after serving the Thompson's their Christmas, and she walks because it means giving her children a better place in the world. Miriam decides to aid the boycott and carpools even further, perhaps to give her own children a sweeter future, and for herself. Miriam has a good, loving husband, but as time goes by their distance grows over their perspectives of Odessa's place in their family. Miriam becomes part of the underground carpool movement: white women giving rides to African American, mostly domestic workers, in an organized pick up and drop off venue. The carpool is crashed by white southern male fundamentalists, one of whom is Miriam's husband, and Miriam is caught in the act of aiding the Civil Rights Movement. Her car is vandalized while Mary Catherine looks on in tears and Miriam's own husband stands by, hopeless to make it stop. Tucker, who is at the scene, tells Miriam that she has lost this one. Miriam turns right around and in true spitfire fashion, tells Tucker,"Go to hell, you ignorant sonofa-," and she gets slapped across the face for it. But she stays. Her husband finally comes to Miriam's physical protection but it is obvious, she and Norman are on two different sides of one line. The women of the carpool, mainly African Americans, begin to sing in response to the white men's chants of "walk n-r walk, walk n-r walk." The women stand their ground and they sing a hymn. By Sarah Bahl The Help, (2009) by Kathryn Stockett is a portrayal of life in early 1960s Jackson, Mississippi. The focus is on the relations between white women and those "of color." The novel is written from three perspectives. The first voice is Abileen, a black maid working for the Leefolts, a white family, that is undergoing financial strain. Abileen is calm, intelligent and caring. She has worked for white families, nurturing and raising their children for much of her life. She is in her 60s and has cared for white child after white child, most of whom grow up to be as racist as their fathers and mothers. The second perspective is Minny, a maid as well, with an alcoholic husband who beats her the same as her father used to during her childhood. Minny is vivacious, portly, and has trouble keeping a job in Jackson because of her tendency to respond frankly to her white bosses. She has children, a husband, and she spends all day cleaning other people's houses. There are woman in Jackson Mississippi, who are ready for change, such as a perfectly made bonfire, just waiting for a match. Skeeter (third) is 23 and as an ambitious writer, she craves freedom away from 1960s plantation life and her mother, who thinks she can make up for her own petty life by overly controlling her daughter, with comments and suggestions to improve her looks, so as to find a husband, in a manner meant to be "helpful." Skeeter smokes, and applies for writing/editorial jobs, not in Mississippi. She hears back via mail from an Elaine Stein, Senior Editor at Harper and Row Publishers. And so the change begins. Skeeter compiles a narrative of stories based on the lives of maids in Jackson. As a result, she becomes outcasted from every white person in the small city, with the exception of her family. Her mother is direly ill and her father runs the plantation, as a shell of a person, unable to believe his wife is dying. Skeeter is able to move to New York and begin her career with the help of a trust fund, once the book is published. The book's capital income is divided 13 ways because of the number of people whose stories Skeeter used. The Help reveals the maids of 1960s suburban Southern life are not ghosts meant to care for white people; but that they are people themselves, with thoughts, feelings and faults of their own. Some of the novel I was uncertain of in terms of racial representation because the author, Stockett, wrote the black characters according to phonetic diction while the white characters' southern accents are written in Standard American English. Also, with the African American narration, there are differences in wording while all white dialect is written in SAE. Rosa Parks (born 1913), a black Alabama seamstress, spoke in SAE. Is Stockett credited to know what African American speech would have been like at that time and place in history? The "white trash" character, Celia Foote, from The Help speaks in SAE rather than Southern American English. So, if Celia is speaking in SAE, why are the working class African American characters speaking in what seems a version of African American Vernacular English, (using double negatives and keeping intransitive verbs without converting them to third person singular) rather than SAE? The whole book should be written according to dialect for both black and white characters, or else all in SAE. By Sarah Bahl I was first introduced to Fried Green Tomatoes at the movie theater, in 1992. My mother thought it would be a good film for my grandmother, Mary McGraw, and for my sister and myself to enjoy; and it was. My grandmother, born on August 6, 1917; grew up as part of a large family in a small Irish town, in Western Maryland. The film would remind my grandmother of what she was used to growing up, my mother explained. The film is filled with those old large wooden houses, with the wrap around porches and the sound of a large noisy family. My grandmother took after her mother as the family beauty, and was graced with singing, musical and artful talents. As a child I knew she loved films and TV shows and she always had the radio on to classical music. My grandmother has been for some years now, buried in Arlington National Cemetery with my grandfather, Dennis McGraw. Every family has its own dramas, hopes and legacies. My grandmother grew up in a small town, South of the Mason Dixon line. This might be considered an old fashioned stereotype: but if there is one thing Southern American women can do: it’s talk. As well as cook…and eat…and talk some more. And so from this premise is born Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe. The novel begins with the Whistle Stop Cafe news bulletin announcing the 1929 opening of the town’s only cafe. The writer’s name is Dot Weems. There are few things cuter than a little Southern woman named, Dot, working at the post office and writing weekly news bulletins in which she makes fun of her own husband half the time. Now, if one is the kind of woman who eats ice cream sandwiches for breakfast, (me), then she would want the writer to skip to the good stuff…cafe? A Southern cafe? What is on the menu? Well, here we are: “For lunch and supper you can have: fried chicken; pork chops and gravy; catfish; chicken and dumplings; or a bbq plate; and your choice of three vegetables, biscuits or cornbread, and your drink and dessert – for 35 cents…the vegetables are: creamed corn; fried green tomatoes; fried okra; collard or turnip greens; black eyed peas; candied yams; butter beans or lima beans. And pie for desert. My other half, Wilber, and I ate there the other night, and it was so good he says he might not ever eat at home again. Ha. Ha. I wish this were true…Dot Weems.” The Weems Weekly, Whistle Stop Alabama’s neighborhood information letter, gives all the needed information for everyone in Whistle Stop. Then, the narrative flips to December 1985; a woman, Evelyn Couch who, with her husband, has just arrived at Rose Terrace to visit her mother-in-law, Big Momma. Evelyn cannot stand sitting around and watching television with them, so she takes the only sweet thing in her life at the moment; a candy bar, then goes to silently and singularly shove her face in the cold, sterile, visitors’ lounge. But instead of sweetness and solace, Evelyn finds herself next to a large boned, chatty old woman; “Now, you ask me the year somebody got married…who they married…or what the bride’s mother wore, and nine times out of ten I can tell you, but for the life of me, I can’t tell you when it was I got to be so old. It just sort of slipped up on me.” The 86 year old woman, is a Mrs. Cleo Threadgood, “It’s funny, when you’re a child you think time will never go by, but when you hit about twenty, time passes like you’re on the fast train to Memphis,” Mrs. Cleo Threadgood, a.k.a. Ninny, continues. Ninny, who never had a driver’s license, and had never lived anywhere but Whistle Stop until she is at Rose Terrace. Ninny came to keep Mrs. Otis, her friend, company. And it is a good thing she did, because Evelyn Couch needed a friend for herself more than ever. Though friendship is not what Evelyn initially sought when she entered that visiting room, but it is what she found. Evelyn was 48 years old and had discovered the world was not as she had always been taught it would be. The bad girls in highschool who had gone “all the way,” had not ended up living in ruin and disgrace, but were either happily or unhappily married like everyone else. Evelyn had waited until her wedding night and found out it hurt. But, not nearly as much as giving birth. The doctor told her she would forget the pain as a natural defense mechanism. The doctor, was either a fool or a liar. Evelyn remembered every bit of the pain. And birthing pain hurt just as much the second time around. She had two children, a girl and a boy. When her daughter had grown up, she wanted to know how many men Evelyn had slept with. Evelyn had only ever been with her husband. Her daughter was shocked, “Oh mother, how dumb. You don’t even know if he is any good or not. How awful.” And her daughter was right. Evelyn had no idea if Ed was any good or not. Evelyn had been part of her highschool’s golden circle, in the 1950s. A smiling cheerleader, Evelyn never knew the names of the boys in the band nor those of the girls with the see-through blouses. She never cared to know. And now, at 48, Evelyn Couch had woken up. Not that she hadn’t tried to be a fuller person along the way. She tried to raise her son to be sensitive but Ed told her he would turn out, “queer,” so she stopped. And her son became only an apparition to her; a stranger. Evelyn thought about the War in Vietnam but Ed had told her that anyone against the war was a communist. So, she never argued, but it did occur to her sometime after the war was over that maybe it had not been such a “good war” after all. One day in her mid forties Evelyn, with her shopping cart, stared into a vast array of TV screens, all for sale. Evelyn honestly wondered who the fat, pretty little woman was and what she was on TV for. Then Evelyn realized with horror it was her own reflection. Time had taken Evelyn with it, and she never once demanded an answer from Time, nor ever even asked Time any questions. Evelyn was lost. She had awoken from the dream of her life, to realize she did not know where she was nor what she was doing there. The dull torpids of Americana, stared her in the face: TV, grocery shopping, air conditioned car, a husband who spends hours at the Home Depot looking for nothing. She wanted to seek comfort from Ed, but he was just as lost as she was. At their 30th highschool reunion Evelyn prayed for an answer. A true connection in the dark, nebulous emptiness that was her life. But all the other wives looked just as scared and confused as she felt; clinging to their drinks and husbands as if they were about to plunge over a cliff. Evelyn had spent her whole life doing everything because someone else told her to. She feared names. She never had more than one drink at a party, as she did not want a reputation. She got married as to not be thought of as frigid, she waited until her wedding day, so she would not be called a slut. Evelyn had done everything she was supposed to her whole life…and she now had no real girlfriends nor job. She went to Christian women gatherings were she was told all those successful career women were secretly lonely and miserable. Evelyn had a hard time picturing Barbara Walters giving it all up for Ed Couch, but alright. It was her duty to save her marriage, as far as she knew. Ed, at one point was having an affair with some woman from work and Evelyn tried to sex up her marriage by dressing up in nothing but saran wrap and answering the door for Ed. (It was what the Christian womens’ circle told her to do.) Ed just pushed her to the side when he came in from work and asked her if she had gone crazy. Self-esteem was not coming to Evelyn from all directions, to say the least. Ed’s affair ended and the situation settled down, but still, Evelyn did not have enough for herself. Instead of them working on losing weight together, Ed would look at Evelyn “whenever she had anything fattening to eat and said in mock surprise, ‘Is that on your diet?’” So, Evelyn ate in secret, alone with whatever she could find that was sweet. “Evelyn stared into the empty ice cream carton and wondered where the smiling girl in the school pictures had gone.” She bought the ice cream from Baskin Robbins, telling the sales clerk, it was for her grandchildren. She did not have any grandchildren. But, if Evelyn had not escaped for something sweet she would never have met Ninny Threadgood. Ninny, with her stories of times gone by. So, when Evelyn came the following Sunday and all other Sundays, clutching her Almond Joys and her Snickers as if they were the Bible, and sat down in the visitors lounge, she really had no choice but to listen to Ninny with her stories of the Threadgood family. “The front yard had an old chinaberry tree. I remember, we’d pick those little chinaberries all year long, and at Christmas, we’d string them and wrap them all around the tree from top to bottom.” Ninny was raised by the Threadgood family, who was the prime family of the small Southern town. Families in general, were much bigger in the 1920s, 30s, and 40s, than now. The two main characters of the family in relation to Ninny, are Buddy and Idgie, short for Eugenia; as well as Cleo, who she married. Buddy is the family darling, with a million dollar smile and the personality to match. Idgie, born a tomboy, might have been out of sorts in the family, if it were not for Buddy’s protection, for when Buddy had a football game, Idgie sat on the bench right there with him and his teammates. Buddy was popular with everyone. When he began seeing a woman from the other side of the tracks, Buddy did what no other man in town would do. He took her right home to meet the family. It was a tragedy for everyone who knew him, when, Buddy was hit by a train while he was too busy flirting with yet another girl in town to notice the train pulling up right behind him. Trains in those days claimed, fingers, legs and lives. Children would play on the tracks and yes, one can hear the trains coming behind from behind, but not always, and especially not always fast enough. Ninny had been kissed by Buddy, but she was one of many. Ninny always had a crush on Buddy, (who didn’t?) but she married Cleo in her 17th year. Ninny points out that the one wanted is not always the one gotten, but one can still be happy. Cleo fell in love with the tall, sweet woman who had been adopted by the Threadgood family when her parents died years before. Evelyn learned to love and look forward to Ninny’s stories, about Idgie and Ruth especially. Ruth came into Idgie’s life the summer of 1924. Ruth was from Valdosta Georgia and was put in charge of all the Baptist Youth Activities for Momma, Mrs. Threadgood. Ruth was truly one of the most beautiful women anyone had ever seen, and Idgie was in love with her at first sight. For some reason, for a small Southern town so viciously racist, there is little eyebrow raising toward lesbianism. It is treated the same as heterosexual love on a social basis. At least in the novel, Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe it is. And is Idgie ever in love with Ruth. Idgie wakes up Ruth very early one morning and with her brother’s stolen car keys, Idgie drives them both out to the country so Idgie can take Ruth on a romantic picnic. Idgie also wants to show Ruth a secret. She picks up an empty jar, walks over to where a beehive is and sticks her hand right in, to pull out some honeycomb. The bees cover Idgie head to toe in layers but by the time she walks back to where Ruth is panicking next to a tree, they have all flown away. Ruth is hysterical that Idgie might have killed herself. But Idgie was only charming bees. For Ruth, that is. But their love was not to last that summer as Ruth was already engaged to Frank Bennett; one of the more notable lowlifes in all of literature. Frank Bennett, owned a fair amount of land from a town in Georgia and knew all the ladies. He knew them, whether they wanted to know him or not. Frank, supposedly scarred from some childhood trauma, had grown a cold heart and didn’t care what he took and who he took it from. He raped at will, with his buddies nearby, enjoying the scene or “helping” Frank Bennett along. Before the days of DNA tests and scientific proofs…if a man wanted to take in such a manner, there were only social repercussions to really stop him. And in Georgia, at that time, no one seemed to be stopping Frank Bennett. So, when Ruth married Frank, he treated her no better than usual. All women meant one thing to Frank, including his wife. Idgie had kept an eye on Ruth since Ruth left, asking about her to the local townspeople. And when she heard from a store clerk that the clerk was not so fond of men who beat their wives, such as Frank; Idgie, went right up to Frank while he was getting a shave in the local barbershop and threatened to kill him. Then Idgie got in her car as fast as she could and drove away. The barber thought Idgie, though technically a pretty woman, must have been some crazy boy. There was nothing more to do, until Idgie received a note from Ruth, “Ruth 1:16-20: And Ruth said, Intreat me not to leave thee, or to return from following after thee; for wither thou goest I will go; and where thou lodgest, I will lodge: thy people shall be my people, and thy God my God.” Idgie, not the symbolic sort, had no idea what the note meant. Momma Threadgood, tells her, “Well honey, it means what it says.” And she orders Idgie to take Big George, who worked for Idgie in the Cafe, and her brothers and go over to get Ruth and bring her back to Whistle Stop. Idgie did just that, but her rescue effort met with repercussion years later when Frank ended up missing and Idgie had to stand for a murder trial in 1955. The judge threw the case out, as there was really no evidence, and in either case, the judge's daughter had died, "old before her time and living a dog’s life on the outskirts of town, because of Frank Bennett; so he really didn’t care who had killed the sonofa-.” And so here we have a case of Southern justice. Though, Frank Bennett’s legacy is carried on in his son by Ruth, Buddy Jr., who lost an arm to the trains but not his life. Buddy Jr., then called Stump, grows to be a football hero with only one arm. And when Peggy, a highschool girl with glasses asks Stump, back from college, to the highschool dance, Stump laughs at her and tells her to come back when she’s grown some t-ts. Idgie lets Stump have it about that one, after Peggy runs into the Whistle Stop Cafe in tears and blurts the whole story out to Idgie. Idgie outright tells Stump she did not raise him to be white trash and what if Peggy’s brother had been there? Stump said Peggy’s brother was there and he laughed too. Idgie takes the highroad and says Peggy’s brother should have had his butt whipped as well. Idgie inquires as to Stump’s lack of dates and points out that Stump does not want to end up like Smokey Lonesome, the hobo who takes up at the Cafe from time to time. Smokey spent his childhood, or his growing years at least, in the mountains. His mother had his father arrested for making moonshine and then was bit in the face by a rattlesnake during a preaching event. Smokey and his sister were separated by surviving family, then Smokey took off for the rails and never again looked forward nor back. Stump eventually admits to Idgie that he is afraid of being laughed at, by the girls, because of his arm. Idgie solves the problem by taking Stump over to Eva Bates’s, the same woman who Buddy loved so long before. It seems to solve the problem as when Peggy wants to go to her spring dance with Stump, despite his prior way with words toward her, he accepts. Ninny tells this whole story and much, much more to Evelyn and it helps Evelyn connect, to raise her esteem and get through a hard part of her life. Ninny tells Evelyn she should sell Mary Kay cosmetics, with Evelyn’s great skin and good personality. Evelyn goes out and does just that. After Ninny passes away, Evelyn goes to her gravesite and also receives from Ninny's old neighbor the last few items of Ninny’s life; all in a shoebox. Evelyn finds pictures and she realizes and is startled by how truly beautiful Ruth was. One of the most beautiful women to live on this earth and she breathed, loved and died in two small towns. Ruth probably never went so far east in Georgia as to see the ocean. In a photo, Evelyn sees Buddy, who she can recognize from his smile. Evelyn cries because she will never understand why people have to grow old and die. On the way back from Ninny’s grave Evelyn notices a jar of honey with a card by Ruth Jamison’s stone. The card is signed, “I’ll always remember. Your friend, The Bee Charmer.” By Sarah Bahl Margaret Mitchell begins the initial statement of one of the world’s best selling novels with, “Scarlett O’Hara was not beautiful, but men seldom realized it…” If Scarlett, with her pure green eyes, black lashes, dark hair and ivory skin was not beautiful, then it is hard not to imagine that she must have been at the very least quite attractive and attracting. Scarlett’s looks reflect those of Mitchell herself. The novel begins with Scarlett, at her family’s plantation, Tara, on the front porch, gossiping with two twin beaux of hers, the tall red headed Tarletons. Scarlett was bred to be a lady and to catch a husband. Wealthy Southern women during the mid 1800s were expected to be ladies and businesswomen. As soon as their coming of age, at about 15 or 16, they could be wed and running plantations of 100 persons or more including husband, children, slaves and personal staff. Though, on the day of the start of a Georgian summer, the sixteen year old Scarlett is thinking less about the ins and outs of plantation life as she is about Ashley Wilkes, (the man, women of the novel seem to have a crush on though, as a reader, I simply find him annoying). Ashley is tall, with large grey dove like eyes and blond hair. He sports the rare affiliation among Southern aristocrats: a Harvard education. Ashley; with his books, poetry and dreams. The most likeable quality about Ashley is his admitted imperviousness toward reality. He sees the world around him, and neither likes nor dislikes the people in it. He simply prefers the beauty of his music and his books and after doing a once about gaze toward life, shrugs then returns to his most natural element; a world of dreams. Reality just isn’t his thing. Scarlett and Ashley have nothing in common other than they are exact opposites. Scarlett can never understand Ashley’s wisdom nor his poetry. Though, he seems to understand her perfectly well. Which is why he decides not to marry her. Scarlett is not the type to have affairs, at least she never does throughout the entire 1023 page novel, but she does attract attention wherever she goes. And Ashley needs the quiet comfort of someone who he knows would be all about him, the constancy within a wife, who he can depend on as a woman to him, though he lacks manly capabilities, in a man’s world. This woman of his chosen suit is also his cousin, Melanie Hamilton. Melanie with her large brown eyes, small bust and small hipped figure, resembles a Calvin Klein waif of a beauty. She never fully develops her figure and for women at the time this is no more of a dilemma for child bearing than for small hipped women today. It simply makes it harder to carry and birth a child when a woman's hips are too small. And not only harder, but more medically dangerous. Despite her physical setbacks, Melanie does understand Ashley in a way Scarlett never could. Melanie can share with Ashley and support him and his perspective of the world, in the manner of no other woman. Though, she dreams of Ashley, Scarlett, could literally have any beaux in the county. In the next three counties for that matter. Scarlett’s overall attitude toward men is predatory, calculating and expansive. She sports a post corset, 17-inch waist, a developed bust and the curves to match. Wherever Scarlett went, so did the men. Scarlett is not one to trouble herself with thoughts toward books. Libraries depress her. She enjoys people, the country and open air. It is hard not to fall in love with Scarlett by the end of the first page. For Scarlett is neither a man nor a woman. She is Scarlett. She is herself. It is likely the state of Scarlett’s universal appeal that makes Gone With the Wind one of the most widely read novels of all time. From her French aristocrat mother, she inherits her penchant for math. For adding up numbers quietly and favorably. From her Irish father, Scarlett inherits her spirit, including her love for land. When her mother, Ellen Robillard, prize daughter of an elite Savannah family, tall, of beauty and graceful, agreed to marry Gerald O’Hara, the plucky self made Irish man 28 years her senior and a head shorter, Gerald simply could not believe his luck. “That was the year when Gerald O’Hara…came into her life-the year too, when youth and her black eyed cousin, Phillipe Robillard, went out of it. For when Phillipe, with his snapping eyes and his wild ways, left Savannah forever, he took with him all the glow that was in Ellen’s heart and left for the bandy legged Irish man who married her, only a gentle shell. But that was enough for Gerald, overwhelmed at his unbelievable luck in actually marrying her. And if anything was gone from her, he never missed it.” Their love affair is one of marked humor and infinite sadness. Ellen found it to be a man’s world and she listened to Gerald drone on about politics, raised her daughters with care, fed and clothed an entire plantation, smelled of lemon verbena sachet; and was the perfect martyr in every way. She never really loved her husband, yet it never mattered that she didn’t. Her dying words were for “Phileep! Phileep!” But God, did Gerald love her. For when the Civil War came and Ellen, always caring for others, was unable to pull through Gerald quite simply lost his mind. “He would never be any different and now Scarlett realized the truth and accepted it without emotion-that until he died Gerald would always be waiting for Ellen, always listening for her. He was in some dim borderline country where time was standing still and Ellen was always in the next room. The main spring of his existence was taken away when she died and with it had gone his bounding assurance, his impudence and his rest-less vitality. Ellen was the audience before which the blustering drama of Gerald O’Hara had been played. Now the curtain had been rung down forever, the footlights dimmed and the audience suddenly vanished, while the stunned old actor remained on his empty stage, waiting for his cues.” And the moral of this heartrending love story? Do not ever actually need anybody. For to need is to run the risk of one becoming a daft wandering fool. Scarlett inherits from her mother a certain quality- she utilizes chimeras, muses for her love, while caring less about those who are actually around her. Scarlett, is the opposite of the sad little match girl, and is made for survival in every manner. She is born into a loving family and has a small waist, large hips, full breasts, never catches ill easily, recovers from births quickly and has never once actually needed anyone in her whole life. When she needs a husband Scarlett marries one. She never once actually needs the husband, himself. Her first husband is Charles Hamilton, Melanie’s brother, who she marries out of spite, since Ashley is marrying Melanie. Charles does love Scarlett, though, she does not seem to care that he does. He proposes to her while at a Twelve Oaks barbecue on the eve of the Civil War, and when he does, he gives her the most pure and noble look from his brown soft eyes, that Scarlett ever has or ever will receive from a man. Though, Scarlett does not realize this. She merely equates his ethereal gaze to that of a dying calf, and a swift calculation plays in her head. Then that is it. She thinks nothing more about it. Scarlett’s first husband gives her Wade, named after a general as was popular in those days. She cannot believe she is a mother and has no particular natural motherly instincts, though she provides for Wade as is necessary. She is also no more than 17 years old and still thinks very much like a teenager. Charles dies shortly into the war, and Scarlett becomes a bewildered widow. She moves to Atlanta, to join her Aunt Pitty and Melanie, for a change of scene. She stays in Atlanta until the war comes to her. Melanie is pregnant, and gives birth while Atlanta is besieged and burnt down by Yankees. The birth is hell, Scarlett is drenched in sweat, Prissy, their house slave is of no help, and the only doctors in town are caring for the hundreds of dying men. The birth nearly kills Melanie but doesn’t. Scarlett, with the help of one of her beau, Rhett Butler, gets Melanie, Prissy, Wade, the new baby and herself out of Atlanta and to Tara all in one piece somehow. Once at Tara, Scarlett becomes the protector, the overseer, of her lost father, her two ill sisters, the recovering Melanie, and the children; with the help of the house slaves, including Mammy and others. (It’s odd to me, that the beloved Mammy never seems to want a husband or children of her own. I also find it comical, that when the time comes for picking cotton, everyone argues about who has to do it, because even the house slaves are horrified at the idea of doing field hand work). Yet, Scarlett troops along. She does the books and finds food somehow. It’s actually amazing any of them lived at all considering the food shortages and from what is described, they could not have been living on more than 500 calories a day each during the darkest parts of the war. But all of them survive, in one way or another. And the house also lives in constant fear of Yankees returning to steal what they have not taken already. Wade is certain that Yankees are coming for him, and Scarlett does not have the time or inclination to calm his child like fears. She tries to prostitute herself to Rhett to pay the taxes on Tara, but when that doesn’t work, she marries Frank Kennedy, a beau of her sister, Suellen. Rhett claimed his assets were frozen, but it was probably more that he simply loved her too much. Scarlett, moves to Atlanta and takes lumber mills from her husband’s control to expand their profits immensely. Frank is stunned that his pretty little wife, can do math so much more quickly and accurately than he can. He is even more stunned by her incentive to do business. Scarlett is prone to rages when she does not have her way and there is no one in Atlanta to cross her path on that count. She does business with Yankees, drives a carriage by herself, until Rhett gives up watching her and drives her about town himself. In short: she acts like a man nearly to the point of outcast. The pretty little bell of the ball, is now doing what it takes to make it through, regardless of gender based propriety. And the whole town talks about it. Frank Kennedy is killed defending her honor after she is molested during one of her carriage rides by herself. Rhett protects the rest of the men, by claiming they were all drunk at the local whore house at the time of the shooting. For at the time, all white shootings were investigated by Yankee officials. Melanie remains Scarlett’s best friend throughout. For really Melanie knows that Ashley is useless and she must be married to Scarlett in order to survive and provide for Beau, her child. Scarlett gives Ashley a job at the mills, but he blunders it and the Wilkes household is always skimping by. But Melanie does pay Scarlett back. She does not have the physical strength but she does have the connections. For Scarlett just does not think politically or abstractly. She is a calculation machine. Melanie tends to think in terms of people, sex and ability. She weighs the merits of humanity with the same efficiency as Scarlett plays cash machine. Melanie is as political as Scarlett is financial. The two make a fine pair. And when Scarlett is caught in the arms of Ashley Wilkes (nothing actually happened…but it was enough to scandalize the town), it is Melanie who defends her and prevents Scarlett from being more of an outsider to the Southern Confederate community, than she already is. For if Scarlett is entirely disgraced then the mills might lose too much money and how would Melanie then provide for her family? Scarlett wears the crown of King Rat and she is too busy to feel its weight. When her third husband, Rhett, walks out the door on her with the famous line, “My dear, I don’t give a damn,” it is a lie. For Rhett very much still did give a damn. It was truly Scarlett, for all her beaux, babies and money, not once in her life did Scarlett O’Hara ever truly give a good god damn. (Perhaps for the love of her mother, but that was it.) She would not be Scarlett if she did. And in her heart of hearts it is hard for one to believe Melanie ever gave a damn either. They were both little women, who were born into a certain world, and upon a certain way of life. Both needed to survive and that they did. Melanie’s legacy is carried on in Beau, and for Scarlett, her true legacy, lies in Wade, her child by the man, Charles, who she so coldly related to a dying calf. Her other surviving child is Ella, by Frank Kennedy. But somehow, it is of doubt Scarlett will ever realize what she has in Wade, just as she will never realize what she had in that soft, pure gentle brown eyed look that boy gave her that day at the Twelve Oaks barbecue. And the worst-best part of it all is that it will never really matter that Scarlett will never know. For Scarlett did more than know. She survived. By Sarah Bahl |
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