The novel Gone with the Wind, published by Atlanta-born writer Margaret Mitchell in 1936, has been criticized for perpetuating racist and sexist themes in its story of willful Southern belle Scarlett O’Hara and her experiences during the American Civil War and the Reconstruction era. Told from the point of view of the Confederacy, Gone with the Wind depicts the Ku Klux Klan as heroic and draws from the mythical Lost Cause interpretation of the war. The novel romanticizes the South, and Reconstruction is characterized as a period in which unjust burdens were placed on white citizens and lawlessness was caused by the emancipation of formerly enslaved Black people.