| This thesis closely reads, Margaret Mitchell's, Gone with the Wind and Caballero, co-authored by Jovita Gonzalez and Eve Raleigh, to illustrate how women in two separate regions of the Southern United States were transformed by the effects of a historical war setting. While these two literary texts deal with distinctive social, political, and historical contexts, they both highlight factors that contributed to the Southern woman's alteration: colonization, gender roles and a historical war--setting that ironically liberated women. As a result, the female characters of each story become progressive by the events that take place with and during their respective wars. I argue that these two novels illustrate how the Civil War and the U.S./ Mexican War functioned as catalysts for liberating Southern women. |
