Editing Margaret Mitchell (section)

==Early influences==
Mitchell spent her early childhood on Jackson Hill, east of [[downtown Atlanta]].<ref name=autogenerated14>{{cite book |last=Hobson |first=Fred C. |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=J8kdTSjGliAC&pg=PA19 |title=South to the future: an American region in the twenty-first century |location=Athens, GA |publisher=University of Georgia Press |year=2002 |page=19 |isbn=0-8203-2411-6 }}</ref>  Her family lived near her maternal grandmother, Annie Stephens, in a [[Victorian house]] painted bright red with yellow trim.<ref name="daughter">{{cite book |last=Pyron |first=Darden Asbury |title=Southern Daughter: the life of Margaret Mitchell |location=New York |publisher=Oxford University Press |year=1991 |page=37 |isbn=978-0-19-505276-3 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=6yNbAAAAMAAJ }}</ref> Mrs. Stephens had been a widow for several years prior to Margaret's birth; Captain John Stephens died in 1896. After his death, she inherited property on Jackson Street where Margaret's family lived.<ref name=marsh>{{cite book |last=Walker |first=Marianne |title=Margaret Mitchell and John Marsh: the love story behind Gone With the Wind |location=Atlanta, GA |publisher=Peachtree Publishers |year=1993 |isbn=9781561456178 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=OYLmngEACAAJ}}</ref>{{rp|24}}

Grandmother Annie Stephens was quite a character, both vulgar and a tyrant. After gaining control of her father Philip Fitzgerald's money after he died, she splurged on her younger daughters, including Margaret's mother, and sent them to finishing school in the north. There they learned that Irish Americans were not treated as equal to other immigrants.<ref name="daughter"/>{{rp|325}} Margaret's relationship with her grandmother would become quarrelsome in later years as she entered adulthood. However, for Margaret, her grandmother was a great source of "eye-witness information" about the Civil War and [[Reconstruction era|Reconstruction]] in Atlanta prior to her death in 1934.<ref>Farr, Finis. ''Margaret Mitchell of Atlanta: the author of Gone With the Wind''. New York: William Morrow, 1965. p. 51-52. {{ISBN|978-0-380-00810-0}}</ref>

===Girlhood on Jackson Hill===
[[File:Little Jimmy-He Keeps Clean 1905.jpg|thumb|Jimmy (right), the main character of the comic strip ''[[Little Jimmy]]''. Mitchell was nicknamed "Jimmy" due to her wearing male clothing as a child.]]
In an accident that was traumatic for her mother although she was unharmed, when Mitchell was about three years old, her dress caught fire on an iron grate. Fearing it would happen again, her mother began dressing her in boys' pants, and she was nicknamed "Jimmy", the name of a character in the comic strip ''[[Little Jimmy]]''.<ref name=autogenerated41>Jones, Anne Goodwyn. ''Tomorrow is Another Day: The Woman Writer in the South, 1859–1936''. Baton Rouge, LA: University of Louisiana Press, 1981. p. 322. {{ISBN|0-8071-0776-X}}</ref> Her brother insisted she would have to be a boy named Jimmy to play with him. Having no sisters to play with, Mitchell said she was a boy named Jimmy until she was fourteen.<ref name=marsh />{{rp|27–28}}

Stephens Mitchell said his sister was a [[tomboy]] who would happily play with dolls occasionally, and she liked to ride her Texas plains pony.<ref name=autogenerated305 />  As a little girl, Mitchell went riding every afternoon with a Confederate veteran and a young lady of "beau-age".<ref>Jones, A. G., ''Tomorrow is Another Day: The Woman Writer in the South, 1859–1936'', p. 321.</ref> She was raised in an era when children were "seen and not heard" and was not allowed to express her personality by running and screaming on Sunday afternoons while her family was visiting relatives.<ref>[https://www.pbs.org/wnet/americanmasters/episodes/margaret-mitchell-american-rebel/interview-with-margaret-mitchell-from-1936/2011/ Radio interview with Medora Perkerson on radio station WSB in Atlanta on July 3, 1936] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20150911235536/https://www.pbs.org/wnet/americanmasters/episodes/margaret-mitchell-american-rebel/interview-with-margaret-mitchell-from-1936/2011/ |date=September 11, 2015}}  Retrieved June 9, 2012.</ref>
Mitchell learned the gritty details of specific battles from these visits with aging Confederate soldiers. But she didn't learn that the South had actually lost the war until she was 10 years of age: "I heard everything in the world except that the Confederates lost the war. When I was ten years old, it was a violent shock to learn that [[General Lee]] had been defeated. I didn't believe it when I first heard it and I was indignant. I still find it hard to believe, so strong are childhood impressions."<ref>{{cite web|last1=Perkeson|first1=Medora|title=Margaret Mitchell: American Rebel Interview with Margaret Mitchell from 1936|url=http://www.pbs.org/wnet/americanmasters/margaret-mitchell-american-rebel-interview-with-margaret-mitchell-from-1936/2011/|website=PBS.org|date=March 12, 2012|access-date=January 3, 2018|archive-date=October 14, 2018|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20181014165218/http://www.pbs.org/wnet/americanmasters/margaret-mitchell-american-rebel-interview-with-margaret-mitchell-from-1936/2011/|url-status=live}}</ref> Her mother would swat her with a hairbrush or a slipper as a form of discipline.<ref name=autogenerated305>Farr, Finis, ''Margaret Mitchell of Atlanta: the Author of Gone With the Wind'', p. 14.</ref><ref name="daughter" />{{rp|413}}

May Belle Mitchell was "hissing blood-curdling threats" to her daughter to make her behave the evening she took her to a [[women's suffrage]] rally led by [[Carrie Chapman Catt]].<ref name="daughter" />{{rp|56}} Her daughter sat on a platform wearing a [[Votes for Women (speech)|Votes-for-Women]] banner, blowing kisses to the gentlemen, while her mother gave an impassioned speech.<ref name=autogenerated13 /><ref>Jones, A. G., ''Tomorrow is Another Day: The Woman Writer in the South, 1859–1936'', p. 323.</ref>  She was nineteen years old when the [[Nineteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution|Nineteenth Amendment]] was ratified, which gave women the right to vote.

May Belle Mitchell was president of the Atlanta Woman's Suffrage League (1915), co-founder of Georgia's division of the [[League of Women Voters]], chairwoman of press publicity for the Georgia Mothers' Congress and [[Parent Teacher Association]], a member of the Pioneer Society, the [[Atlanta Woman's Club]], and several Catholic and literary societies.<ref>[http://athnewspapers.galileo.usg.edu/athnewspapers/view?docId=news/ahd1915/ahd1915-0420.xml&query=Atlanta%20Woman's%20Suffrage%20League&brand=athnewspapers-brand "Georgia Suffrage News"]{{dead link|date=August 2023 |bot=InternetArchiveBot |fix-attempted=yes}} (March 3, 1915) ''Athens Daily Herald'', p. 4. Retrieved March 1, 2013.</ref>

Mitchell's father was not in favor of corporal punishment in school. During his tenure as president of the educational board (1911–1912),<ref>Fifield, James Clark. ''The American Bar''. Minneapolis: J.C. Fifield Company, 1918. p. 97. {{OCLC|8308264}}</ref> corporal punishment in the public schools was abolished. Reportedly, Eugene Mitchell received a whipping on the first day he attended school and the mental impression of the thrashing lasted far longer than the physical marks.<ref>Hornady, John R. ''Atlanta: Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow''. American Cities Book Company, 1922. p. 351–352. {{OCLC|656762028}}</ref>

Jackson Hill was an old, affluent part of the city.<ref name=autogenerated13>Bartley, Numen V. ''The Evolution of Southern Culture'', Athens, GA: University of Georgia Press, 1988. p. 89. {{ISBN|0-8203-0993-1}}</ref>  At the bottom of Jackson Hill was an area of African-American homes and businesses called "[[Darktown]]". The mayhem of the [[Atlanta Race Riot]] occurred over four days in September 1906 when Mitchell was five years old.<ref name=Hobson /> Local white newspapers printed unfounded rumors that several white women had been assaulted by black men,<ref>Godshalk, David Fort. ''Veiled Visions:  the 1906 Atlanta race riot and the reshaping of American race relations''. Chapel Hill:  University of North Carolina Press, 2005. p. 38. {{ISBN|978-0-8078-5626-0}}</ref> prompting an angry mob of 10,000 to assemble in the streets, pulling black people from street cars, beating, killing dozens over the next three days.

Eugene Mitchell went to bed early the night the rioting began, but was awakened by the sounds of gunshots. The following morning, as he later wrote, to his wife, he learned "16 negroes had been killed and a multitude had been injured" and that rioters "killed or tried to kill every Negro they saw". As the rioting continued, rumors ran wild that black people would burn Jackson Hill.<ref name=Hobson>Hobson, Fred C. ''South to the Future: An American Region in the Twenty-First Century'', p. 19-21.</ref> At his daughter's suggestion, Eugene Mitchell, who did not own a gun, stood guard with a sword.<ref>Bartley, N. V., ''The Evolution of Southern Culture'', p. 92.</ref>
Though the rumors proved untrue and no attack arrived, Mitchell recalled twenty years later the terror she felt during the riot.<ref name="daughter" />{{rp|41}} Mitchell grew up in a Southern culture where the fear of black-on-white rape incited mob violence, and in this world, white Georgians lived in fear of the "black beast rapist".<ref>Bartley, N. V., ''The Evolution of Southern Culture'', p. 50 & 97.</ref>
[[File:Peach Tree Street Atlanta 1907.jpg|thumb|[[Stereoscope]] card showing the business district on [[Peachtree Street]] ca. 1907. The Mitchells' new home was about 3 miles from here.<ref>Farr, Finis, ''Margaret Mitchell of Atlanta: The Author of Gone With the Wind'', p. 32.</ref>]]
A few years after the riot, the Mitchell family decided to move away from Jackson Hill.<ref name="daughter" />{{rp|69}} In 1912, they moved to the east side of Peachtree Street just north of Seventeenth Street in Atlanta. Past the nearest neighbor's house was forest and beyond it the [[Chattahoochee River]].<ref>Williford, William Bailey. ''Peachtree Street, Atlanta''. Athens, GA: University of Georgia Press, 1962. p. 122–123. {{ISBN|978-0-8203-3477-6}}</ref> Mitchell's former Jackson Hill home was destroyed in the [[Great Atlanta Fire of 1917]].<ref name="before">{{cite book |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=bjhbAAAAMAAJ |title=Before Scarlett: Girlhood writings of Margaret Mitchell |last1=Mitchell |first1=Margaret |year=2000 |publisher=Hill Street Press |isbn=978-1-892514-62-2}}</ref>{{rp|xxiii}}

Mitchell's father was of a [[Protestant]] background, while her mother was a devout Catholic; Mitchell was raised in a Catholic household.<ref name= franciscan>{{Cite web|url=https://www.franciscanmedia.org/st-anthony-messenger/as-god-is-my-witness-the-catholic-roots-of-gone-with-the-wind|title='As God is My Witness': The Catholic Roots of Gone with the Wind &#124; Franciscan Media|date=May 14, 2020}}</ref><ref>{{Cite web|url=https://www.tampabay.com/archive/2000/11/19/an-indefensible-pleasure/|title=An Indefensible Pleasure|access-date=February 6, 2022|archive-date=February 6, 2022|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20220206151121/https://www.tampabay.com/archive/2000/11/19/an-indefensible-pleasure/|url-status=live}}</ref> As a young woman, she spent time visiting the [[Sisters of Mercy]] convent affiliated with [[Emory Saint Joseph's Hospital|St. Joseph's Infirmary]] in downtown Atlanta.<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://www.baltimoresun.com/news/bs-xpm-2003-03-22-0303220314-story.html|title=Tracking down a tale of nuns and 'GWTW'| date=March 22, 2003 }}</ref> Her religious upbringing influenced her decision to make the O'Hara family in her novel Catholics in a Protestant-majority state.<ref name=franciscan /> One of Mitchell's mother's cousins entered the Sisters of Mercy at [[St. Vincent's Academy|St. Vincent's Convent]] in [[Savannah, Georgia|Savannah]] in 1883, becoming [[Sister Mary Melanie Holliday|Sister Mary Melanie]].<ref name=franciscan /> The characters [[Melanie Hamilton]] and Careen O'Hara were probably based on this relation.<ref name=franciscan />

===The South of ''Gone with the Wind''===
While "the South" exists as a geographical region of the United States, it is also said to exist as "a place of the imagination" of writers.<ref>Cassuto, Leonard, Claire Virginia Eby and Benjamin Reiss. ''The Cambridge History of the American Novel''. Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press, 2011. p. 236. {{ISBN|978-0-521-89907-9}}</ref> An image of "the South" was fixed in Mitchell's imagination when at six years old her mother took her on a buggy tour through ruined plantations and "Sherman's sentinels",<ref name=autogenerated8 /> the brick and stone chimneys that remained after [[William Tecumseh Sherman]]'s "[[Sherman's March to the Sea|March]] and torch" through Georgia.<ref>Caudill, Edward and Paul Ashdown. ''Sherman's March in Myth and Memory''. Lanaham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc., 2008. p. 179. {{ISBN|978-0-7425-5027-8}}</ref> Mitchell would later recall what her mother had said to her:

<blockquote>She talked about the world those people had lived in, such a secure world, and how it had exploded beneath them. And she told me that my world was going to explode under me, someday, and God help me if I didn't have some weapon to meet the new world.<ref name=autogenerated8>Felder, Deborah G. ''A Century of Women: the most influential events in twentieth-century women's history''. New York, NY: Citadel Press, 1999. p. 158. {{ISBN|0-8065-2526-6}}</ref></blockquote>

From an imagination cultivated in her youth, Margaret Mitchell's defensive weapon would become her writing.<ref name=autogenerated8 />

Mitchell said she heard Civil War stories from her relatives when she was growing up:

<blockquote>On Sunday afternoons when we went calling on the older generation of relatives, those who had been active in the [[1860s|Sixties]], I sat on the bony knees of veterans and the fat slippery laps of great aunts and heard them talk.<ref>Martin, Sara Hines. ''More Than Petticoats: remarkable Georgia women''. Guilford, CT: The Global Pequot Press, 2003. p. 161. {{ISBN|0-7627-1270-8}}</ref></blockquote>

On summer vacations, she visited her maternal great-aunts, Mary Ellen ("Mamie") Fitzgerald and Sarah ("Sis") Fitzgerald, who still lived at her great-grandparents' plantation home in [[Jonesboro, Georgia|Jonesboro]].<ref>Historical Jonesboro/Clayton County, Inc., ''Jonesboro-Historical Jonesboro'', p. 113.</ref> Mamie had been twenty-one years old and Sis was thirteen when the Civil War began.<ref>[http://www.fayettecem.tiffman.com/F.htm Fayetteville City Cemetery] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20120406180714/http://www.fayettecem.tiffman.com/F.htm |date=April 6, 2012 }}. Retrieved December 20, 2011.</ref>

===An avid reader===
An avid reader, young Margaret read "boys' stories" by [[G.A. Henty]], the [[Tom Swift]] series, and the [[Rover Boys]] series by [[Edward Stratemeyer]].<ref name=autogenerated41 /> Her mother read [[Mary Johnston]]'s novels to her before she could read. They both wept reading Johnston's ''The Long Roll'' (1911) and ''Cease Firing'' (1912).<ref>Gardner, Sarah E. ''Blood and Irony: Southern white women's narratives of the Civil War, 1861–1937''. Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 2004. p. 241. {{ISBN|0-8078-2818-1}}</ref> Between the "scream of shells, the mighty onrush of charges, the grim and grisly aftermath of war", ''Cease Firing'' is a romance novel involving the courtship of a Confederate soldier and a Louisiana plantation belle<ref>Cooper, Frederic Tabor. "The Theory of Endings and Some Recent Novels." ''The Bookman'', November 1912, Vol. XXXVI: p. 439.</ref> with Civil War illustrations by [[N. C. Wyeth]]. She also read the plays of [[William Shakespeare]], and novels by [[Charles Dickens]] and [[Sir Walter Scott]].<ref name=autogenerated3>Champion, Laurie. ''American Women Writers, 1900–1945: a bio-bibliographical critical sourcebook''. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 2000. p. 240. {{ISBN|0-313-30943-4}}</ref>  Mitchell's two favorite children's books were by author [[E. Nesbit|Edith Nesbit]]: ''[[Five Children and It]]'' (1902) and ''[[The Phoenix and the Carpet]]'' (1904). She kept both on her bookshelf even as an adult and gave them as gifts.<ref name=marsh/>{{rp|32}} Another author whom Mitchell read as a teenager and who had a major impact in her understanding of the Civil War and Reconstruction was [[Thomas Dixon Jr.|Thomas Dixon]].<ref name="Leiter 2004">{{cite web|last=Leiter|first=Andrew|title=Thomas Dixon, Jr.: Conflicts in History and Literature|publisher=Documenting the American South|date=2004|url=http://docsouth.unc.edu/southlit/dixon_intro.html|access-date=July 21, 2017|archive-date=February 28, 2017|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20170228142801/http://docsouth.unc.edu/southlit/dixon_intro.html|url-status=live}}</ref> Dixon's popular trilogy of novels ''[[The Leopard's Spots|The Leopard's Spots: A Romance of the White Man's Burden]]'' (1902), ''[[The Clansman: A Historical Romance of the Ku Klux Klan]]'' (1905) and ''[[The Traitor (Dixon novel)|The Traitor: A Story of the Rise and Fall of the Invisible Empire]]'' (1907) all depicted in vivid terms a white South victimized during the Reconstruction by Northern [[carpetbaggers]] and freed slaves, with an especial emphasis upon Reconstruction as a nightmarish time when black men ran amok, raping white women with impunity.<ref name="Leiter 2004"/> As a teenager, Mitchell liked Dixon's books so much that she organized the local children to put on dramatizations of his books.<ref name="Leiter 2004"/> The picture that white supremacist Dixon drew of Reconstruction is now rejected as inaccurate, but at the time, the memory of the past was such that it was widely believed by white Americans.<ref name="Leiter 2004"/> In a letter to Dixon dated August 10, 1936, Mitchell wrote: "I was practically raised on your books, and love them very much."<ref name="Leiter 2004"/>