Socioeconomic Class in Early Film: Gone With The Wind

From New Line Cinema, via Associated Press

In pursuit of the perfect waist: Vivien Leigh and Hattie McDaniel as Scarlett and Mammy, in “Gone With the Wind.”

The image depicted above is a still from the 1939 film, "Gone With The Wind."  In the movie, set in 1861, the protagonist is a strikingly beautiful Katie Scarlett O'Hara who lives on Tara Plantation and is a French aristocratic descendent.  At the beginning of the film, the O'Hara family is very well off and one of the richest families in rural Georgia.  The cotton plantation has many slaves for both working the fields and the domestic house work.  This screen shot shows one such slave, “Mammy,” lacing up Scarlett’s corset.  This image is so relevant to socioeconomic class in early film because it shows both extreme ends of the spectrum.  Scarlett, being raised a proper young southern belle, must wear a corset to be accepted within her social class.  During the time period, the main concern of her sixteen year old self is to attract a wealthy husband, which she cannot do if her corset isn’t laced tightly enough.  Mammy, on the opposite end of the spectrum, is a domestic house slave.  She is degraded as a human being by working for no pay while constantly being talked down to by her spoiled wealthy masters.  If she does not obey their every wish and whim, she suffers the consequences and fears the punishment.  A social class spectrum still exists in the United States today, but less extreme due to the abolition of slavery at the end of the American Civil War- a topic that feeds the plot of “Gone With The Wind.”


- Carly Cibelli