Mammy, the slave devoted to her mistress Scarlett O’Hara in Gone With the Wind, is to be given her own back story by the author Donald McCaig, in what its publisher said was “a necessary correction” to how the black characters in Margaret Mitchell’s bestselling novel are portrayed.
Authorised by the Mitchell Estate, the novel is billed as a prequel to Gone With the Wind, and will see McCaig give Mammy both a name – Ruth – and a past. It will be published by Atria in the US in October and will, said the publisher, be “a remarkable story of fortitude, heartbreak, and indomitable will [in which McCaig] reveals a portrait of Mammy that is both nuanced and poignant, at once a proud woman and a captive, and a strict disciplinarian who has never experienced freedom herself”.
In Mitchell’s novel, the character of Mammy – which won actor Hattie McDaniel an Oscar in the film version of the book – is not fleshed out. Portrayed as a loyal and loving part of the O’Hara household, she keeps Scarlett in line in Mitchell’s painstakingly spelled out vernacular. “Ah ain’ gwine stand by an’ have eve’ybody at de pahty sayin’ how you ain’ fotched up right. Ah has tole you an’ tole you da you kin allus tell a lady by dat she eat lak a bird. An’ Ah ain’ aimin’ ter have you go ter Mist’ Wilkes’ an’eat lak a fe’el han’ an’ gobble lak a hawg.”
Peter Borland, editorial director of Atria, told the New York Times that McCaig “felt that Mammy was such a fascinating and crucial character to the book” that “he wanted to flesh out a story of her own”, adding: “What’s really remarkable about what Donald has done is that it’s a book that respects and honours its source material, but it also provides a necessary correction to what is one of the more troubling aspects of the book, which is how the black characters are portrayed”, Guardian informs.
