Racial Worldmaking: The Power of Popular Fiction
Published:
07 November 2017
Online ISBN:
9780823280544
Print ISBN:
9780823277759
Contents
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Epistemologies of Racial Worlds from Dixon to Mitchell Epistemologies of Racial Worlds from Dixon to Mitchell
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“Tomorrow is another day”: Gone with the Wind’s Future Individuality “Tomorrow is another day”: Gone with the Wind’s Future Individuality
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Chapter
3: Romance and Racism after the Civil War
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Pages
71–88
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Published:07 November 2017
Cite
Jerng, Mark C., 'Romance and Racism after the Civil War', Racial Worldmaking: The Power of Popular Fiction (New York, NY , 2017; online edn, Fordham Scholarship Online, 24 Jan. 2019), https://doi.org/10.5422/fordham/9780823277759.003.0004, accessed 15 July 2026.
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Abstract
This chapter discusses the rebirth of the plantation romance from the 1900s through to the 1940s, discussing two key popular fictions: Thomas Dixon’s The Leopard’s Spots and Margaret Mitchell’s Gone With The Wind. It contextualizes the plantation romance as a genre that speculates on the past and on historiography itself. Such popular fictions re-tell the story of Reconstruction, not just to do a historical critique of it as misguided or as a failure, but to produce perceptual strategies that renew racisms along different lines. It shows how Gone With The Wind transforms racial perception from one based on status and character to one based on creating racial contexts.
Keywords:
Civil War, Gone With The Wind, Mitchell, Margaret, Plantation Romance, Racial perception, Reconstruction, The Leopard’s Spots, Thomas Dixon
Subject
Race and Ethnicity
Collection:
Fordham Scholarship Online
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