Final Draft!

Emily Coleman
Professor Gideon Burton
English 295 Section 01
8 June 2012

“Tomorrow is Another Day”: Using the “New Day” of the Internet to Strengthen Gender Roles

In Margaret Mitchell’s classic tale Gone With the Wind, white Southern plantation owners are struggling to get through huge societal change. The Civil War and its aftermath leaves some characters helpless while others use the change to their advantage. The title itself suggests that the issues of the time period are gone with the wind; however, we may be more similar to the novel’s characters than we ever supposed. We, too, are facing the struggle of learning to deal with the onslaught of the digital age and the Internet. Many of our traditions are changing, including gender roles. However, many don’t realize that while some aspects of gender roles are being left behind, others are being strengthened. Like Scarlett and Melanie of Gone With the Wind, modern women are benefited the most when they use the great societal change of the Internet to strengthen their social role as women.

Like the white Southerners in Gone With the Wind, people are dealing with the coming of the Internet in many different ways. In the book, the elite white Southerners rush off happily to war, excited to “lick the Yankees,” but as they begin to lose the war, they start dealing not only with tragedy and heartbreak, but many difficult societal changes. They are forced to abandon their entire way of life. Many don’t have the skills or the guts to find their way in the new society. The South is taken over by Carpetbaggers and “white trash,” while the former elite are left trying to figure out where their old ways have gone. The societal changes faced by the Southerners are remarkably similar to the changes our society is going through today. With the coming of the digital age, some are still shell-shocked, unable or unwilling to come to terms with the technology that is taking over our lives. The Southerners in Gone With the Wind faced many of the same challenges. Ashley Wilkes, an able, educated plantation owner prior to fighting in the Civil War, never recovered emotionally after his return, living off the charity of others and unable to take care of his own. Like Ashley, some of us who thrived before the digital age are now finding themselves helpless without the necessary skills to succeed in a world run by technology. Many, however, are using the powerful tool of the Internet as a new way to manage their social life, particularly women.

“Tomorrow is Another Day”: Using the “New Day” of the Internet to Strengthen Gender Roles--First Draft

Here is the first draft of my paper. The citations are (obviously) messed up and I still need to provide documentation, it's not quite long enough, and it needs a lot of work. I would love to get your feedback.

Gone With the Wind, by Margaret Mitchell, is a story of Southern plantation owners trying to live through the Civil War and its aftermath. In the book, the elite white Southerners rush off happily to war, excited to “lick the Yankees,” but as they begin to lose the war, they begin dealing not only with tragedy and heartbreak, but even more difficult societal changes. They are forced to abandon their entire way of life. Many don’t have the skills or the guts to find their way in the new society. The South is taken over by Carpetbaggers and “white trash,” while the former elite are left trying to figure out where their old ways have gone.

The South of the 1800s may be gone with the wind, but the societal changes faced by the Southerners are remarkably similar to the changes our society is going through today. With the coming of the digital age, some are still shell-shocked, unable or unwilling to come to terms with the technology that is taking over our lives. Many, however, are using the powerful tool of the Internet as a new way to manage their social life. In particular, women are using social networking tools to expand their social reach. As a result, women are expanding their traditional gender role while, at the same time, preserving it. 

The characters of Scarlett and Melanie from Gone With the Wind are two distinct and opposite examples of ways that women were and are able to deal with great societal change. Melanie is depicted as the picture of femininity. One of her most traditionally feminine characteristics is her social grace. For many years, women have been considered more social than men. Before the war, Melanie is a graceful hostess, knows everyone and never says a bad word about anyone. She is a sweet, reserved Southern belle, never stepping beyond the path prepared for her. However, she doesn’t cower from the tragedy of the war. Instead, Melanie uses the Civil War and the Reconstruction as an opportunity to expand the definition of femininity. 

Similarly, many women of the digital age are expanding their gender role. Women continue to be the more social gender. Research shows that the numbers of female users of social networking tools like Facebook and Twitter far exceed the numbers of male users. In the words of Elisa Camahort Page, co-founder of BlogHer: “In general women adopt social networking tools more highly than men, and they are more engaged and active on those tools. . . . Women are actually the majority user base for most social tools online.” Women are seeking social relationships, but like Melanie, they want to expand their social network and meet people that, without the Internet, they would never have been able to connect with.

Video Trailer!

After many, many technical difficulties (and then a final editing process which took about half an hour), here is the trailer video for the paper! The first draft will be finished on Monday. Whew! 

Music by Kevin MacLeod: "Morning Snowflake", 2005 (public domain)

Special thanks to my lovely bilinguals: 

Rea (Tagalog), Louisa (German), Cynthia (Spanish), Sarah (Portuguese), Rachel (Chinese), Kathleen (Swedish), Alissa (Japanese), Melody (Russian), Catherine (Thai), and Rebecca (American Sign Language).

Thank you for watching!

The video can be found on Youtube at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q9ULP0DR3TA&feature=youtu.be

Confederate Belles and Cyberfeminism: Scholarly Sources

Tweethis Statement: Like Scarlett O'Hara and the Confederate women learning to adapt to a new way of life after the Civil War, women today are trying to adapt to a new digital age and gender roles are changing.

Boswell, Angela and Judith N. McArthur, eds. Women Shaping the South: Creating and Confronting Change. Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 2006. Print.
I found this while looking for Censer’s book (on this list) in the HBLL. This is a collection of conference papers from a conference on Southern women’s history. It shows how women were willing to step out and embrace change in the South. I want to compare the real women who promoted change and what they did, Scarlett and her actions, and how women are reacting to change today.

Censer, Jane Turner. The Reconstruction of White Southern Womanhood 1865-1895. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State UP, 2003. Print.
I found this book through the HBLL catalog. It details the confederate women’s attempts to rebuild during the period immediately following the Civil War. Interestingly, the author disagrees that gender roles were changed in favor of women; she believes that women actually tried to keep the oppressive gender roles the same way they used to be. This could provide an interesting parallel between now and then, and could provide the backdrop to highlight how different Scarlett really was from the women around her. 


Daniels, Jessie. “Rethinking Cyberfeminism(s): Race, Gender, and Embodiment.” Women’s Studies Quarterly 37.1&2 (2009): n. pag. Project Muse. Web. 20 May 2012. http://muse.jhu.edu.erl.lib.byu.edu/journals/wsq/v037/37.1-2.daniels.html
I found this on Project Muse. It discusses cyberfeminism and how women have used the Internet to promote feminism and goes on to compare that to the typical female experience with the web. I think I could get some very interesting insights from this on how women are using the Internet to rethink gender roles.