Description

In a letter written that November, Mitchell reported to her publisher that the book is on the required collateral reading lists of many high schools in the South, and even a number of junior high schools and grammar schools are using it. She noted that the sex angle seemed to pass easily over the youngest heads, or had proved amenable to such interpretation as that of one bright child aged elevenwhose school book report referred to Belle Watlings brothel, in the scene where the heroic Klan members are sheltered there, as the swankiest night club in Atlanta. This happy example, she wrote, had given her a sense of relief: After that I had no fears that I was polluting the youthful mind. What kind of moral responsibility does she bear, after all