An Analysis of the novel Gone with the Wind文学作品评论：飘英语教育硕士 2006684 黄丽Abstract: The novel Gone with the Wind is set during the times of the Civil War in Atlantic. This article gives a brief account of the novel and its author. Besides, the writer analyses the linguistic presentation of the novel according to the speech of the dramatis personae, Scarlett, from phonological features, punctuations, lexical features and syntactic features. Key words: novel, author, linguistic presentation If historians were to look back over the 20th century and ask which single work of art proved to be its most popular and enduring, reaching the largest global audiences and achieving most purchase within world culture, there is probably only one choice: Gone with the Wind by Margaret Mitchell(1900-1949).Margaret Mitchell wrote only one novel, though she was a prolific reporter for the Atlanta Journal . She was born in a prominent Atlanta lawyers family. She spent much of her childhood listening to graphic accounts of Civil War battles, the burning of the city, the use of the family house as an army hospital, and the sufferings of the family and their friends during the postbellum Reconstruction period. Attending parades commemorating Atlantas Confederate dead, learning by heart Civil War songs and minute details of military skirmishes, battle wounds, and acts of heroism, the young Margaret was well primed to write a defensive, chauvinistic account of the Souths war. She began writing Gone with the Wind in 1926, the next year she married John Marsh. The whole writing last almost 10 years. This romantic picture of life in the South during the American Civil War became a best-seller almost immediately and was awarded the Pulitzer Prize in 1937. It was made into a motion picture that, after its release in 1939, became one of the most popular and praised of all films. Unfortunately, in 1949, crossing a street to go to a theater, Margaret Mitchell was killed by a drunken driver.The story revolves around Scarlett OHara, daughter of Irish landowner Gerald, who has made the plantation Tara into one of Georgias finest. She is in love with Ashley Wilkes, who marries his cousin Melanie. As war begins, Scarlett has to protect her family and the pregnant Melanie. Staying in Atlanta with relatives, she faces Shermans army and delivers Melanies baby as the city goes up in flames. During Reconstruction, she pragmatically does business with the Yankees and so prospers and restores the fortunes of Tara. During the course of the narrative, she marries 3 timesfirst to spite Ashley, a second time to pay off Taras postwar taxes, and the third time for fun. Her third husband, Rhett Butler, shares her wifes pragmatism, blockade-running during the early part of the war and only later joining the Confederate Army. He engages in lucrative deals with the Federal Army from the start of the conflict and right through Reconstruction. Enraged at his wifes love for Ashley and selfish disengagement from him and their daughter, Bonnie Blue, who dies in a riding accident, he leaves her. The novel ends with Scarlett realizing how much she loves him and resolving to get him backby returning to her beloved Tara to plan her strategy.Gone with the Wind is a long and loving exploration of the traumatic American Civil War and the devastation of the South. This novel belongs to a long tradition of southern plantation fiction and white apologist historiography. It focuses on the Souths most dramatic historic period: Secession, the Civil War, the bloody demise of plantation culture and the slave economy, and the violent chaos of Reconstruction. Indeed, a major reason for the continuing success of this work is its huge appeal to women readers and audiences. The figure of Scarlett was willing to move and experiment with the times, and prepared to play dangerous games with her sexuality and loved ones, which has been appropriated by post-1960s feminists as well as 1980s and 1990s “Me Generation” career women and free spirits. Like all great heroines, Scarlett fulfils a variety of thematic functions: romantic protagonist, epic figure and conservative conformist at war with ruthless iconoclast. Here, I will take the speech of Scarlett from Chapter 5 set in the scene of preparing for the barbecue to be held in Twelve Oaks to analyse her personality of being a beautiful young girl.“Oh, hurry! Dont talk so much. Ill catch a husband. See if I dont, even if I dont scream and faint. Goodness, but my stays are tight! Put on the dress! ”“I wish to Heaven I was married,” she said resentfully as she attacked the yams with loathing. “Im tired of everlastingly being unnatural and never doing anything I want to do. Im tired of acting like I dont eat more than a bird, and walking when I want to run and saying I feel faint after a waltz, when I could dance for two days and never get tired. Im tired of saying, How wonderful you are! t