Sea. The novel unfolds against the backdrop of rebellion wherein seven southern
states, Georgia among them, have declared their secession from the United States (the
“Union”) and formed the Confederate States of America (the  “Confederacy”), after
Abraham Lincoln was elected president with no ballots from ten Southern states
where slavery was legal. A dispute over states’ rights has arisen involving African
slaves that were the source of manual  labor on cotton plantations throughout the
South. The story opens in April 1861 at  the “Tara” plantation, which is owned by a
wealthy Irish immigrant family, the O’Haras. The reader is told Scarlett O’Hara, the
sixteen-year-old daughter of Gerald and Ellen O’Hara, “was not beautiful, but had an
effect on men, especially when she took notice of them”. (Margaret Mitchell, 1964: 1)
Scarlett marries Charles Hamilton, Frank Kennedy, and Rhett Butler, all the time
wishing she is married to Ashley Wilkes instead. Scarlett is secretly scornful of
Melanie Wilkes, wife to Ashley, who shows nothing but love and devotion towards
Scarlett, and considers her a sister throughout her life because Scarlett married
Melanie’s brother Charles. Scarlett is unaware of the extent of Rhett’s love for her or
that she might love him. With the untimely death of Melanie Wilkes a short time later,
Rhett decides he only wants the calm dignity of the genial South he once knew in his
youth and he leaves Atlanta to find it. Meanwhile, Scarlett dreams of love that has
eluded her for so long, but  she still has Tara, and “tomorrow is another day.”
(Margaret Mitchell, 1964: 945) The novel is never just a love story. It has the themes
of survival, love and honor, war and its scars. The book is the source of the 1939 film
of the same name. Margaret Mitchell was a Southerner and a lifelong resident and
native of Atlanta, Georgia, who was born in 1900 into a wealthy and politically
prominent family. Mitchell wrote the book’s final moments first, and then wrote the
events that lead up to it. Gone with the Wind is the only novel by Mitchell published
during her lifetime.
 
2 Different Stages of the Academic Studies and their Limitations
Gone with the Wind was introduced to China in 1940 and has experienced more than
half a century history of translation and rewriting. In the period, Gone with the Wind
has been rewriting into movies and plays. Gone with the Wind’s reception in China
went through the vicissitudes and people have various judgments towards it. It went
from a best seller at first to a literary classic at last. Gone with the Wind’s reception in
China is a rooted social and cultural picture of diachronic and synchronic behavior.
Ongoing diachronic performance in Gone with the Wind is from the 1940s to the
present China, witnessing more than half a century of changes in China, going
through different stages - the war, the founding of the Cultural Revolution, reform and
opening up new era. Social and political climate, ideology, poetics norms and fashion
of the time are not the same, which left  its mark in the rewriting process. The
synchronic performance means that the forms of rewriting  Gone with the Wind
persify in the same period. Trough the strategies for rewriting in the field of movie,
translation, comments et al. are different, and they are all influenced by the common
social background environment, which together decides the novel’s image and
reception in China.
 
This part pides the reception of the novel in China into three stages from the
perspective of diachronism, exploring the reception status and comments in each stage, 小说《飘》在中国的接受现状调查(2):http://www.youerw.com/yingyu/lunwen_4842.html