“Gone With the Wind” by Margaret Mitchell (post 6): And Scarlett was not surprised to see them…whispering to her…“Whether you are there or not”

“The long road from Atlanta to Tara had ended, ended in a blank wall…Never again could Scarlett lie down, as a child, secure beneath her father’s roof with the protection of her mother’s love…There was no one on whose shoulders she could rest her burdens. Her father was old and stunned, her sisters ill, Melanie frail and weak, the children helpless…and there was nothing—nothing but Scarlett O’Hara Hamilton, nineteen years old, a widow with a little child…

“Was there no escape from this dead end?…

“She was seeing things with new eyes for, somewhere along the long road to Tara, she had left her girlhood behind her…She was a woman now and youth was gone…She would stay at Tara and keep it, somehow, keep her father and her sisters, Melanie and Ashley’s child, the negroes…she would fit the yoke about her neck…

“Of a sudden, the oft-told family tales to which she had listened since babyhood…were crystal clear. Gerald…Ellen…Grandfather Robillard…Great-grandfather Prudhomme…the Scarletts…and the O’Haras…All had suffered crushing misfortunes and had not been crushed…

“All of those shadowy folks…seemed to move quietly in the moonlit room. And Scarlett was not surprised to see them…

“Were they really there, whispering wordless encouragement to her, or was this part of a dream?

“ ‘Whether you are there or not,’ she murmured sleepily, ‘good night—and thank you’ ” (1, pp. 418-421).

Comment

Scarlett says “whether you are there or not,” so this is probably not a dream. She feels it is dreamlike, so it might be called a “waking dream.” She is having auditory and visual hallucinations of sorts, but she realizes that they are not objective reality, so it is not a psychotic experience.

Since “Scarlett was not surprised to see them,” she had apparently had such experiences before, perhaps since childhood, when multiple personality starts.

It is the kind of experience that a person with multiple personality might have, interacting with alternate personalities, or that a writer might have, interacting with characters.

1. Margaret Mitchell. Gone With the Wind. New York, Scribner, 1936.