While some argue that the controversy that surrounds Gone with the Wind is a product of reinterpretation of the text through a modern lens, the novel has been a controversial book since the time of its publication in 1936: Margaret Mitchell’s narrative presents a glowing depiction of life in the antebellum South that has drawn criticism as an endorsement of racist ideology, specifically the Lost Cause narrative.

The Lost Cause took shape after the Civil War as a concerted effort to rewrite and reframe the history of the antebellum South, the war itself, and the defeat of the Confederacy. After the war, the South was forced to reckon with undisputable loss: of soldiers’ lives, of property, and of a way of life dependent on the labor of the enslaved. The Lost Cause narrative was an unofficial movement that served as a psychological buffer on the part of white Southerners who were attempting to justify not only having fought the war but also their antebellum way of life. Clinging to these myths made life bearable for the war’s survivors and helped to bring the defeated out of a cycle of fury and despair.

Fundamentally, the Lost Cause narrative depicts the antebellum South as an idyllic

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