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HelpRe: Negative connotation, Pansy/Scarlett O'Hara, and Pansy Parkinson
in reply to a message by E
According to a biography of Margaret Mitchell that I read, in 1935, the year that "Gone With The Wind" was submitted for publication, the term "pansy" to mean a homosexual was current in the North but not (yet) in the South, so Mitchell was unaware of it. Because her New York publishers were in the North, they were aware of it, and that's why they informed her that the name had to be changed.
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I figured it was something like that, where the slang hadn't yet permeated to the South. I mean, even today there's a lag. And that's with television and the Internet! I can't even imagine what it was like almost 100 years ago.
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