Editing Gone with the Wind (novel) (section)

====Historical background====

Marriage was supposed to be the goal of all southern belles, as that of their husbands largely determined women's status. All social and educational pursuits were directed towards it. Despite the Civil War and the loss of a generation of eligible men, young ladies were still expected to marry.<ref>Giselle Roberts (2003), ''The Confederate Belle'', University of Missouri Press, pp. 87–88. {{ISBN|0-8262-1464-9}}</ref> By law and Southern social convention, household heads were adult, white propertied males, and all white women and all African Americans were thought to require protection and guidance because they lacked the capacity for reason and self-control.<ref>Laura F. Edwards (2000), ''Scarlett Doesn't Live Here Anymore: Southern Women and the Civil War Era'', University of Illinois Press, p. 3. {{ISBN|0-252-02568-7}}</ref>

The [[Atlanta History Center|Atlanta Historical Society]] has produced many ''Gone with the Wind'' exhibits, among them a 1994 exhibit titled "Disputed Territories: ''Gone with the Wind'' and Southern Myths". The exhibit asked, "Was Scarlett a Lady?", finding that historically most women of the period were not involved in business activities as Scarlett was during Reconstruction when she ran a sawmill. White women performed traditional jobs such as teaching and sewing and generally disliked work outside the home.<ref>Jennifer W. Dickey (2014), ''A Tough Little Patch of History: Gone with the Wind and the politics of memory'', University of Arkansas Press, p. 66. {{ISBN|978-1-55728-657-4}}</ref>

During the Civil War, Southern women played a significant role as volunteer nurses in makeshift hospitals. Many were middle- and upper-class women who had never worked for wages or seen the inside of a hospital. One such nurse was Ada W. Bacot, a young widow who had lost two children. Bacot came from a wealthy [[South Carolina]] plantation family that enslaved 87 people.<ref>Ada W. Bacot and Jean V. Berlin (1994), ''A Confederate Nurse: The Diary of Ada W. Bacot, 1860–1863'', University of South Carolina Press, pp. ix–x, 1, 4. {{ISBN|1-57003-386-2}}</ref>

In the fall of 1862, Confederate laws were changed to permit women to be employed in hospitals as members of the Confederate Medical Department.<ref>Kate Cumming and Richard Barksdale Harwell (1959), ''Kate: The Journal of a Confederate Nurse'', Louisiana State University Press, p. xiii. {{ISBN|978-0-8071-2267-9}}</ref> Twenty-seven-year-old nurse [[Kate Cumming]] from Mobile, Alabama, described the primitive hospital conditions in her journal:

<blockquote>They are in the hall, on the gallery, and crowded into very small rooms. The foul air from this mass of human beings at first made me giddy and sick, but I soon got over it. We have to walk, and when we give the men any thing kneel, in blood and water; but we think nothing of it at all.<ref>Cumming, K., et al., ''Kate: The Journal of a Confederate Nurse'', p. 15.</ref></blockquote>