Florence King, one fiesty Southern lady, had some things to say about the novel and the film. Martha Mitchell was a scrupulous observer and recorder; there is more truth and insight about the era in a page or scene from GWIW than yards of scholarly dissertations or perverse modern characterizations of the antebellum South.
You're thinking of Margaret Mitchell.
I respect Florence King's opinion, but I don't like the book. I wrote my thesis analyzing a Civil War era plantation family and their environment in detail -- and the South was not like that. Mitchell's book details a fantasy of what Southerners -- in the midst of a depression that hit them very hard -- created as a myth of their glorious past.
She does touch on the truth in her characterizations, because many Southern women were as ruthless as Scarlett . . . but most were less obvious and more effective. And many of the other characters hit Southern types off very well -- almost as well as King did in her Southern Ladies and Gentlemen.
Have you read the Margaret Mitchell’s biography “Southern Daughter”? It’s well known by we GWTW fans that she spent many hours on her grandfathers lap listening to stories about the antebellum period, the war and it’s aftermath. But the biography goes into much more detail about her life from childhood until her death. It’s a very good bio. Highly recommended by yours truly.
Having lived in the deep South, which was only decades from the Civil War, as a child, I can attest to the authenticity of much of the film. The culture had not changed all that much except for the absence of slavery and the poverty left by the war. I love the film and the book . They speak to my6 heart because I recognize a part of myself in it. It’s sort of like when people say about Sarah Palin,”She’s like me.” You know what you feel even if you can’t quite put your finger on it.