History professor Jennifer Dickey (R) holds a seminar on the making of a cultural phenomenon at a HCMC seminar on December 23, 2008

How one novel has created history in different spaces and times.

Thanh Nien talks with her about why the novel is such an international cultural phenomenon.

Dickey was born in Georgia and lived down the street from Margaret Mitchell, the author.

Thanh Nien: This morning when we had the discussion about “Gone With the Wind,” many Vietnamese women said they want to have a husband like Rhett Butler. What about American women? Do they think the same?

Prof. Dickey: Yes, I think many of them say that, but if they really think about it, they would realize that’s probably not true. Rhett is something of a rascal. He runs around with other women; he drinks a lot. So I think Clark Gable came to very much embody the character of Rhett Butler and Clark Gable himself was so popular that people developed this affinity for him as the character of Rhett. So that’s really what they’ve become enamored with, probably more so than the actual character. If they go back and read the story very carefully and sort of understand how Rhett is behaving, then maybe they’re not so interested in being married to Rhett Butler.

So maybe it is something that Vietnamese men don’t have, so they like him?

What do they see in him that the Vietnamese men don’t have that is so appealing?

He is rich. Handsome. He is funny. And he takes care of the baby. He’s very indulgent to women, yes. Very much.

Those are all the same qualities that American women find attractive about him as well. I think those are the things that most women focus on when they sort of idealize Rhett Butler as a character. Those are all very appealing things. But he’s also a blockade runner, and has children out of wedlock by prostitutes and things like that. Those are things I think that most women probably don’t think are very good qualities. But he’s an interesting character. He’s a complex character. And Scarlett is the same way. I think people tend to focus on her survival instincts and sort of how she perseveres in the face of great adversity and they overlook a lot of her character flaws, and she has very many flaws. She is very selfish in a way, and there are things about her that are not very admirable, although overall the perception people have of Scarlett O’Hara is of a great heroine. They’re both very interesting characters that way. They’re very suave characters I would say. They have very admirable traits, but very questionable traits as well.

Can you tell me a little bit about your impression when you first read the novel and watched the movie?

I actually saw the movie before I read the book. I was, as we say in America, I was blown away, I loved the movie so much. It was so big and so fantastic, beyond any movie I had ever seen. First of all, it’s four hours long. It’s an investment of time. But it was such a great story.

So I immediately read the book after I saw the movie. The book is actually a much richer story in a way. As almost always happens when you translate something to film, you have to pare the story down, you have to eliminate some characters. So the book is, as I mentioned this morning, much less nostalgic. It’s much richer. The characters are much more richly drawn. There are more characters, and you understand a lot more about sort of the psychology of Scarlett and Rhett, particularly Scarlett and why she does the things she does and the role that her mother plays in shaping her view of things, in the way she behaves. You understand all that from the book in a way that you totally don’t get from the movie.

A great thing about the book, when I was a child and I read the book, I was really caught up in the story. I was maybe 11 or 12 years old. I became very caught up in the story and I read it very quickly. I had no sensibility at that age of what this institution of slavery was all about, or racism, none of those things were concepts that I understood or had any concept of at that point in my life. So I also did not understand that some of the language in the book is considered very offensive today.

Can you tell me the main points of your dissertation on “Gone With the Wind”?

The main points are that one, “Gone With the Wind” is a very important cultural touchstone in the United States and the world and that it’s important to Atlanta because of this. And that “Gone With the Wind” presents a great opportunity to talk about these broader issues of American history and particularly the history of the American South. Because it is such a beloved work that you can draw people in because they’re interested in the literature or the film, and then it gives you the opportunity to talk about these bigger issues of American history and to talk about the things that are wrong or right in terms of the way the book and the film tell that history. So it’s a good way to sort of use something that’s very popular to capture the attention of the public and then maybe teach them a little history along the way that sort of corrects some of the fallacies, but also gives credit where credit is due about the things that you write about it.

Was Margret Mitchell happy with the representation of the novel in the film?

I think she generally was. There was thing that she complained about. Well, there were a couple of things that she was unhappy with. One was this very romanticized text that scrolls across the screen at the beginning that talks about the Old South being this land of master and slave, of ‘cavalier and lady fair.’ It’s a very romanticized notion of the Old South. She was somewhat appalled by that because there’s nothing in her writing that really sort of captures that same spirit. So she was very unhappy about that. She also was not happy that Tara was made to look more beautiful on film than it was. She didn’t publicly talk about that, but she writes about that in her letters and she talks about how she wants to form a club of people whose grandpappies did not live in big mansions with white columns because nobody really lived like that in the South that she knew about. So she does write a lot of that in letters to her friends and to some of the people that she started corresponding with after the film came out.

Is “Gone With the Wind” the subject of many dissertations or theses these days?

Not so many. Dr. Thanh (a lecturer of HCMC’s Hong Bang University), her dissertation I think was done recently in 2004 or 2006, I can’t remember. It’s fairly recent. It’s one of the more recent ones. “Gone With the Wind” is not studied in terms of its literary merits in the United States. My perspective on it was looking on it from a public history perspective in terms of the cultural phenomenon.

“Gone With the Wind” is something that’s very much a part of American culture. It’s something with which everyone is familiar. But there aren’t a lot of people who are doing academic research on this topic right now.

Did you read Dr. Thanh’s dissertation?

I did. I’ve read it twice now. I read it when I first started doing my research, and then I read it again fairly recently. I sort of went back through it to refresh my memory on it. It was very interesting. It was also very poignant, I thought. The first time I read it I was crying, when she was telling the story about her father and about when she first read the book. It was very touching, I thought.

It was very insightful and interesting. I was preparing to come on this trip and to talk to people here in Vietnam about “Gone With the Wind,” to read about her research, because her research was very much about how it’s perceived in Vietnam. So that was very interesting for me. And also, I am very appreciative that the Vietnamese people, that so many of you have read this work and actually appreciate and love this work as well.

What were some of the main points in her dissertation?

It’s very much about how the Vietnamese people have identified with this work, and the things that have really resonated have been, actually I think some of the universal things that have made this a very popular work through the strength of the characters.

One thing that’s very interesting that the Vietnamese people that she surveyed for her work did not seem to be very much affected by was this issue of slavery which of course has become a big issue that has made the work controversial in the United States. And I think that’s interesting because that’s not something that’s part of your culture the way it has been part of our culture and history in the United States. But sort of the strength of the characters and the story are the things that have really seemed to have resonated with the Vietnamese people according to her research.

She did some interesting research into, because there have been very many different translations of “Gone With the Wind,” some of which were done from French into Vietnamese and some of which were done from English, so she does a lot of comparative looks at the language that is used in these translations which the thing that was sort of interesting to me about that is again, the strength of the characters and the story line really transcends the language that’s being used. So maybe not necessarily anything that’s so spectacular about Margaret Mitchell’s writing style or her prose, but it’s really the characters that are so interesting and the story that is very interesting. And regardless of what language you translate that into, those characteristics carry forward.

Has “Gone With the Wind” affected you personally?

I often say, “I’ll think about that tomorrow.” That’s what Scarlett always says … I think everybody who is familiar with “Gone With the Wind,” at least people in the South, throw out that phrase, “I’ll think about that tomorrow,” all the time. It’s a good phrase to sort of keep in your pocket and ready to use.

Reported by Pham Thu Nga