** spoiler alert ** I read this book when I was fifteen during a hot, sticky Texas summer. That was more than 10 years ago, and I have read the book at least 3 more times since then, but I can still remember the book's initial impact on me. I remember my journal entries about it and my inability to get the book off my mind long after I'd finished it. I was infatuated. In my U.S. History class a year later, my teacher assigned a paper on some historical topic or other. I hardly remember what the actual assignment was, because I asked him if I could write a paper on Gone With the Wind instead. I told him it should be considered a historical novel, and yes, I got what I wanted. Man, I was such a nerd then. I only wish I had kept that paper....

So, I was thinking just now of the scene in You've Got Mail where Meg Ryan is arguing with Tom Hanks about Pride and Prejudice, and she proclaims that Elizabeth Bennett is one of the most complex heroines ever written (I can't remember if she calls her THE most complex). I think Scarlett is much more complex than Lizzie. Her evolution throughout the novel is so amazing. She is so one-dimensional in the beginning, before the war and before everything that changes her way of life. Granted, Scarlett is always looking out for number one, and it's part of why I love her character. It is so rich with selfishness, her benevolent deeds always fueled by her own objectives, her baddoings justified by her will to survive. Even her relationship with Rhett is one of the most complex love stories ever written. Since I've read the novel several times, I even went back and noticed each and every time where Rhett was bursting with hesitation, just killing himself as he held back his true feelings for her. She doesn't marry Rhett for love, but her realization at the end that she "must have loved you all along" is so tragic and swollen with regret. I could never understand what she saw in Ashley, who was so weak and stupid and useless.

I think this novel was my first introduction to nostalgia, and it ruined me forever. Nostalgia now rules my life, and if I were a book, it would be my central theme.