2. Literature Review         

Since the publication of Gone with the wind, there are far too many scholars have paid attention to this novel, but they regarded it from different perspectives. In 2005, Jing Xingmei’s “On Feminism in Gone with the Wind” came to the conclusion that the war and industrialization resulted in Scarlett’s transformation from a pure woman to a new woman. (Jing 6) Her final tragedy indicated her dilemma between traditional morality and cruel reality. In 2007, Zhai Xu made a contrast between Scarlett and Wang Xifeng in his work. And he found that these two women both had high ability and they used every methods to reach their goals. They were masters in life and both created excellent life. (Zhai 113-115 ) In 2007, Cai Xuelan analyzed Scarlett’s characteristic through her treating of love, life and obstacles in life. (Cai 9-10)In 2010, Li Jiayu and Li Li compared Gone with the Wind and O Pioneers from the perspective of ecofeminism. Although they were written by different writers at different times, they both showed women and nature’s fate under the pressure of patriarchal society. (Li 5)

There were many works that focused on the relation between Margaret Mitchell and Gone with the Wind abroad. Jane Eskridge’s “Before Scarlett: Girlhood Writings of Margaret Mitchell”showed some scripts of Margaret Mitchell when she was young. Julian Granberry collected all of Margaret Mitchell’s letters. And this made readers understand the author and her work better. 

From the above, we can come to the conclusion that studies of this novel were made mainly from the perspective of feminism, prototype images, American culture and so on. Critics concentrated on major topics such as comparison of characters, author’s relation with the work and the heroin’s characteristics. This thesis will use ecofeminism theories to interpret the novel and analyze the relation between women and nature. In Gone with the Wind, the heroin’s struggle and her intimate relation with nature is a great contrast with those of men’s. This novel is a positive material of ecofeminism.

This thesis is based on the theory of ecofeminism. Ecofeminism is a combination of women’s liberation movement and ecological movement. It is one of the important schools of feminist research and one of the important schools of ecological philosophy. It was the third wave of women’s movement. Eco-feminism not only focuses on the oppression over women and nature, but also it concerns about sexism, racism, and many other kinds of social inequalities. Ecofeminism can be pided into many streams from different perspectives, and there are three major one, cultural ecofeminism, socialist ecofeminism and philosophical ecofeminism. Though they analyze works from different aspects, they all focus on the harmony between women and nature. And this thesis will go on studying the author’s ecofeminism through patriarchy’s oppression over women and nature, and the harmony between women and nature.

3. Men’s domination over Nature

3.1 The Destroyed House

For a long time, the western main idea is the subjugation, control, reconstruction and utilization of nature, which is called anthropocentrism. Ecofeminism believes that in patriarchal system, men see nature merely as auxiliary to their needs, and they regard non-human nature as “dead”matter. As Cleanth Brooks says in his work, “True, men run the risk of distorting themselves if they reject nature in a cold callous asceticism, and they become monstrous if they vent their hatred of nature, if their appropriation of nature becomes a kind of rape. But love nature though man should, and respect it though he must, he is alienated from nature and must never presume upon an easy union with it if he wishes to call himself a man. (230) The image of the house has appeared far too many times in the novel.Through the description of the house, the author believe that the existence of human and house should keep harmony with each other. Men always put house in a lower position, and they seldom pay attention to what they do to house, so they act recklessly. House is a symbol of women’s independence, and house gives women consolation physically and spiritually. But men don’t think so. Most buildings in Atlanta city are burned, and the roads are cut. People rushed out of the city to other places for shelter. Frank even could not tell people in Tara what he sees when he goes back to Atlanta. However nature, also has feminine gentleness. It has calm, gentle, amiable, tolerant, fraternity characteristic, too. Tara is a piece of soil, the White House, a peaceful land, gently flowing rivers, like a mother, it gave birth to everything, nurturing people born and bred, even men go to war, make tara becomes a wool, a deserted land. It also has no resentment, but with broad mind, return of people with cotton and grain in the post-war period, soothe their broken hearts.