《飘》是美国现代女作家玛格丽特.米歇尔于1936年发表的一部长篇通俗小说,也是其一生唯一的一部长篇小说,《飘》问世70多年来,被广泛流传并受到广泛的好评,不失为一部旷世经典之作。然而《飘》所走过的路程却并不是一帆风顺的,在许多批评家看来,《飘》不能被称为一部优雅的艺术之作,甚至不能进入美国文学的神圣殿堂。小说的女主人公斯佳丽被他们描绘成一个极度自私、爱慕虚荣、冷酷无情、为达目的不择手段的女性。但是,经过

it is a novel dominated by strong women—Scarlett, Melanie, Ellen O Hara (Scarlett s mother), Mrs. Tarleton, Grandma Fontaine, Mrs. Meade, and Mammy. Mitchell takes pains to show the spine of a southern matriarchy secretly underlying a patriarchy.

Some critics have argued that Scarlett s feminist success story is undercut by a sexual desire to be engulfed and dominated. Mitchell does problematize human sexuality. Ashley Wilkes s own fear of being passionately released but then engulfed and dominated by Scarlett is a case in point. “You would want all of a man,” he laments. In Mitchell s failure to bend sexual desire to some clinically theorized, balanced, emotionally healthy paradigm, she is a model.

1.3 About American Modernism

American modernism lasted from 1900 to about 1940 and postmodernism was in vogue from 1960s to 1980s. Gone with the Wind was written during 1920s to 1930s, and also Margaret Mitchell was a modernism writer. During the first decades of the 20th century modernism became an international tendency in art and literature. It began in Germany in the 1890s, and spread worldwide, and ended in the early 1940s. It included a wide range of artistic expressions such as symbolism, impressionism, imagism post-impressionism, expressionism and so on.

1.4 About the American Civil War

The American civil war was broke out in 1861 and last for five years. The Westward Movement, the two different economic systems of the North and the South and the upsurge of the workers movement formed the main aspects of the situation before the Civil War. In the North the capitalist economy developed rapidly and industrial production advanced at an amazing speed. The output value of manufacture increased almost three times from 1840 to 1869. Coal and iron production were greatly increased. Transportation was also improved. Many canals were dug and thousands of miles of railway were built. All this stimulated the further development of industry. By 1860, American industry had ranked fourth in the world. But in the South things were quite different. The South had a large number of plantations on which Negro slaves were made to work. They grew cotton and tobacco, but there was little industry. So cotton and tobacco were exported as raw materials for they could not be processed there. Plantation owners kept a great number of slaves, and slave labor was totally depended