The 1936 reviews of Margaret Mitchell's Gone with Wind appeared during a chaotic cultural period: Mitchell's subject, South, was undergoing a kind of regional crisis as various groups, including Agrarians (with I'll Take My Stand published a few years earlier), attempted to claim and define culture and literature; nation was in crisis, experiencing height of Great Depression; even world was in crisis, as Germany threatened to appropriate its neighbors. But in pages of The New Republic and The Review, awful popularity of Mitchell's novel seems more threatening than all of these. In September 16, 1936 issue of The New Republic, Malcolm Cowley cites, in horror, a recent press release which claims pages of all copies [of Gone with Wind have been purchased] were laid end to end they would encircle world at Equator two and two-thirds times (161). If rhetoric of his chosen press release suggests image of novel as boa constrictor, is not surprising. Cowley goes on to denigrate Gone with Wind as a popular but flawed monster, suggesting to his readers they had nothing to fear but a bestseller written by a hack female novelist. Cowley is intent on placing Mitchell's novel in its proper sphere--the popular woman's novel. To Cowley, Gone with Wind meets specialized demands of book-buying public (as distinguished from larger and less prosperous public borrows its books from library). It is written from woman's point of view, and most book buyers are women (161). Though they espoused diverging political views, John Crowe Ransom echoed Cowley in his emphasis on gender of author when he reviewed novel for The Review. He complains novel is lacking in detailed political description. His explanation for this is that principal point of view is Scarlett's, and Scarlett is a woman, and so is her who may therefore feel relieved of responsibility of understanding what would have been instant and urgent interest of a man (399). Ransom also characteristically collapses categories of female writers and popular literature when he suggests despite its grandiosity upon first read, minuter inspection discloses not much acquaintance with technical resources of modern (399). By emphasizing Mitchell's gender, these reviewers are able to call up in their readers what was already unfavorable connection between female and artless or merely popular. Beginning with Suzanne Clark's Sentimental Modernism, literary criticism has shown conflation of sentimental and feminine with bad fiction was hardly uncommon. Despite its shared critical fate with sentimental fiction, however, Gone with Wind does not offer a plea for value of sentimental. Indeed, Agrarians' dismissal of book as sentimental may actually have been based more on their stake in its particular subject--the South--than on its so-called sentimentalism. The Agrarians were deeply invested in how Old and New South would be perceived and defensive of its historical and contemporary significance. It would seem, then, even if Ransom couldn't forgive Gone with Wind's technical and artistic deficiencies, he could enjoy its regional championship. However, like Cowley, Ransom found novel too southern in its themes. For Ransom, the point of view is intensely and sometimes a little painfully Southern (399). This partisanship of author, as he calls it, comes in Mitchell's presentation of Civil War and Reconstruction. He sums up her narrative: Sherman's army burned Atlanta. Then, while was rebuilding, carpetbaggers, black Republicans, and scalawags were in control, and was heroic if old-style Southerners held out (399). Similarly, Cowley finds Gone with Wind an encyclopedia of plantation legend and gives his own version of this cliche: it is all here, every last bale of cotton and bushel of moonlight, every last full measure of female devotion working its lilywhite fingers uncomplaining to lilywhite bone (161-162). …