Gone with the Wind-Scarlet

[Serena]

Ok, Let's talk about Scarlet. Who I like to call "Scarlet the little bitch", hahahaha! Sorry, I will be nice.

But am I the only one who thinks she is extremely selfish, shallow, not very smart, delusional, and heartless? This is comparing her to Melanie, who is the exact opposite of Scarlet. Melanie was sensitive, compassionate, obviously well read, and selfless. She's the only female whom Rhett Butler truly admired.

Why did Mitchell portray Scarlet that way? Her heroine in the novel. Or was she the heroine? Perhaps Melanie was...

The bonnet incident. "On the other hand, if she permitted one chaste peck, he might bring her other lovely presents in the hope of getting another kiss." My god! What a little whore! I suppose this is what Satia was referring to before, the part of her personality that's very similar to her father's. If she wanted something, she'd do anything to get it. What left a bad taste in my mouth was the fact that she's only 17 when she thought that...

[Satia]

I really cannot comment because I know more about where this story is going. I hope someone who is new to Gone With the Wind can jump in. Otherwise, to be honest, my perspective is skewed due to 20/20 hindsight.

[Serena]

There is hope for Scarlet yet?!? ;)

[Satia]

Hmmmm . . . is there hope for Scarlett? I dare not say.

[Serena]

I can't wait to start talking about Rhett Butler...

[Satia]

And here we go again . . . ouch, my tongue!!!

[Serena]

LOL!!! My bad!!

[Okie]

I always thought Scarlett represented white slave owning families in the south. I've read 'Uncle Tom's Cabin' and 'The Kitchen House', and her attitude really seems to reflect the apparently blind, shallow, apathetic attitude towards the humanity of their own slaves, as depicted in those two books. [my apologies for obviousness & probable pronoun ref problems].

[Serena]

Ok, I finished the book finally. Sorry it took me so long, even though I was very eager to see if Scarlett gets a bad ending. :) Lol! Yes, even now I dislike Scarlett as much as before. And I still do not understand why she gets more attention from readers in general than Melanie? Scarlett's machivellian nature is disgusting, her delusions frustrating, her soullessness despicable... And she is just so stupid.

She used people without blinking an eye, she ruined so many people's lives just for money; I am not proud of her as a female character who rises out of chaos. One can be just as strong and still retain the humanity within. Melanie in comparison, was a saint, while Scarlett the selfish grinch.

For me, it wouldn't been so frustrating if she wasn't so blind and destroyed Rhett (among many others) in the process. She is like the scatterbrain fashion-victim nowadays with her "I will think of it tomorrow" attitude.

It's very interesting to read Margaret Mitchell's own opinion of Scarlett through different characters' mouths. She didn't have very high opinion of Scarlett, only Scarlett's strength was something she truly praised. Everything Scarlett lacks—honor, understanding, compassion, insight, self-observation..., HUMANITY, were embedded in Melanie; what Melanie lacks—a strong physical body, Scarlett has. A perfect woman would be the merge of the two. (Although Melanie was very close to it already.)

[Serena]

I am going to read Uncle Tom's Cabin for sure.

[Satia]

Since I took the trouble to vilify Rhett to the best of my abilities, I am now going to come to dear Scarlett’s defense.

(view spoiler)[At first, she seems nothing more than a frivolous girl, spoiled by her father, and pretty much a typical party girl. I would imagine that, born in the present, she would be hanging out at clubs, with her puppy in a purse, embarrassed by some sex tape or something similar being leaked to press, famous for doing nothing but being pretty.

It’s interesting to note that she is also a product of the transition in her times. The more old school traditions sent older children abroad to learn more about culture in Europe while those more deeply committed to the new country of America are more interested in creating new ways of being, new traditions. Why go to the old country when things are so new and vital here?

Scarlett is symbolic of this newness. So while the south is immersed in an agricultural society dynamic that is overly depended on slavery, a situation that cannot sustain itself, Scarlett becomes a business woman, shrewd beyond her early education, that’s for sure. And it’s interesting to note that others southerners often describe as being like a Yankee, considering this an insult, a derogatory statement meant to belittle her because of her success. Men seem to admire her regardless but Melanie stands alone in her admiration and respect for all that Scarlett becomes by the end of the war and beyond.

Melanie sees Scarlett more honestly and most people say she’s a fool, including Scarlett, for not seeing how Ashley is attracted to Scarlett. But Melanie is no fool. She knows, as well as Ashley, that Scarlett is no real threat. Melanie is the serene wife, the queen who looks away as the kind indulges in a variety of dalliances, the First Wife who doesn’t comment on her husband’s infidelities. She knows that, were Ashley to act on his lust, his love would inevitably bring him home.

And she sees Scarlett clearly, loves her strength. Melanie is that rare female character who does not cat fight or say spiteful things behind other women’s backs. I’ve never seen Melanie as too good or foolish. Rather, I see her as carrying the sort of compassion and unconditional love and acceptance one rarely finds and typically see only in religious leaders like the Dalai Lama, et al.

But I digress.

Scarlett is more northern in her relentless pursuit of security and success. She sees that the old ways of being cannot and will not work in this new industrial age and she has the sense to exploit the times to ensure her own peace of mind. She also assures her family security by not allowing Tara to be lost to unpaid taxes. So relentless is she that she is not above exploiting herself, willing to ruin her reputation to be Rhett’s mistress and then willing to marry a man she does not love in order to protect what she loves–her home.

Okay, so she may not love her sisters terribly but she loves them with the same ruthlessness as she does anyone and everything else. And she provides a home for them. She alone, of those who live at Tara after the war, is fully willing to roll up her sleeves–except for Melanie who is too fragile to follow through but willing to do what she can. Even Pork and Mammy complain about doing field hand work when they are house slaves.

Scarlett is irredeemably a survivor and she has the one quality that psychologists today is crucial to happiness in the face of inevitable change: adaptability. When all she needed to be is a frivolous belle, that is what she was. When life demanded more of her instead of bemoaning her fate, she grabbed the bull by the horns and went for a ride.

Frankly, I don’t think she ever could or would love Rhett, although she comes closer to loving Rhett than anyone else. She loves her father and idolizes her mother. Notice she also equates certain personality traits in Bonnie that are like “Pa” which is ironic given that she herself is described as being more like Gerald than Ellen.

The very fact that Scarlett feels most alive in Atlanta is telling for Atlanta was the most industrial area in the south, the primary reason it was burned to the ground during Sherman’s long march through the south. She is at home in Tara but feels at home and alive in Atlanta. And it is here, repeatedly, she breaks away from tradition–dancing in her widow’s weeds, becoming a successful businesswoman in spite of her husband’s objections.

She not only survives, as so many other women did, but she has the audacity to thrive. While they sit at home and yearn for how things were before the war, Scarlett is buying new hats and the latest fashions. They take pride in their surviving a war as losers but Scarlett takes pride in something none of them has the courage to do–to stop looking back at the past and look to the future.

They are like Lot’s wife, looking back and being turned into a pillar of salt while Scarlett has the sense to run forward into a new future. And she’s not too proud to do the work that’s necessary to make all of her hopes and expectations come true.

Anyway, it’s late, I’m tired, and although I could blabber on, I am going to stop now. I don’t really think Scarlett needs to be defended because she changes, she grows, and she is such a fully realized literary character that I quite frankly admire her. She doesn’t always think the best of others but typically they think worse of her and I have no doubt that, if they had the temerity to ask her what she really thought of them, she would have the balls to say what she really thought. But polite society still defines her and she is a product of her southern heritage in many ways. And yet I trust her more than I do the other women who are vicious towards her. She and Melanie are the only women who are honest about who and what they are, throughout the novel. Well, except for Ellen, who’s a saint with an obviously darker past than we realize, and perhaps Aunt Pittypat who is merely a child in an adults body.

And let us not forget that many of the qualities for which Scarlett is attacked by her contemporaries throughout the novel are those very same things that the women’s movement fought to attain for women–equal rights, political and social power, etc. So why is it so easy to hate her when she is merely a product above and beyond her times? If she had lived today, we would admire her, adore her, and she would not have been forced to get married, have a family, or do any of the other conventional things she so loved. If anything, Scarlett’s flaw is not in her character but her being born at the wrong time. (hide spoiler)]

[Serena]

(view spoiler)[
I do admire Scarlett's spirit, her drive, her head-strongness to fight any obstacle that comes her way, especially during the time when a "lady" was supposed to use only half of her brain and being frightened was considered sexy. I side with her when she wants to buy the mill, ride out and do business, and expand her business. But she does not need to lose her humanity along the way.

She ruins people's lives as she tries to achieve her goals, Frank, Suellen, Ashley, and Rhett. I am not counting Charles but if he had lived on, his life would be ruined by her as well.

The repeating nightmare of her running through a fog searching for something she doesn't know what, tells me subconsciously she knows she's losing her soul. Humanity which is embedded in Melanie's character. Her blind hatred of Melanie makes her refuse to see the goodness. As Melanie dies, Scarlett started to realize it.

The fights she has to go through in order to triumph while everything, everyone else are going to ruin, do not necessarily go against being a good person. One can be a shrewd and still be humane. She does not need to use convicts and she knows it; I personally believe she can find other ways to pay the taxes without stealing her sister's man with lies, it is just easier and she knows it'd be easy for her to do it. Everything she does, she does for Scarlett, and Scarlett only (best example being her marriage to Charles, no war and hunger there, she marries him out of spite!). If she does not love Tara, Tara would go to ruin. She takes care of her sisters out of duty.

Rhett points these things out to her more and more toward the end of the book. And the characters such as Melanie, Grandma Fontaine, Will Benteen, or even Rhett Butler, contrast Scarlett's heartlessness and lack of wisdom dramatically.

If Mitchell's point is to say a woman can only rise to the top and fights to be equal of men by being a selfish person and steps over anyone to get it. Then I must cry unfairness and sexist on Mitchell's part. Lol!

I love Grandma Fountaine. Melanie and Grandma Fontaine, those 2 characters as the anchor of humanity and wisdom in the story, prevented me from deciding Mitchell really was a sexist! (hide spoiler)]

[Satia]

Well, here is where my having to return the book before we got to where we were finishing it is a disappointment. I can't really discuss the things that come up after part 3 with any depth because I haven't read them in nearly 30 years.

Easter isn't too far away and I will borrow the book again to finish it. Perhaps we'll still be discussing it by then. *sigh*

[Satia]

I was just pondering Scarlett after talking with a writer I know about characters and it occurred to me that there is very little about Scarlett to like, my defense of her notwithstanding.

So why do we, the reader, care what happens to her? What is it about the character, unlikable as she is, that compels us to read over 1000 pages of her story or sit through nearly 4 hours of a movie?

[Serena]

Half way through the book, I asked the same question to myself. And the answer came instantly: "I want to see how Scarlett falls."

The famous quote, "Frankly my dear, I don't give a damn." was already in my radar from the very beginning. Hence I was aware of the possibly tragic ending between her and Rhett. The second half of the book, I was more eager to find out whether their relationship would possibly have a good ending and that the famous quote was not at the very end.

I think her being so unlikeable also gives the readers the desire to find out whether she will ever grow up and learn the value of humanity. We know about her delusion of her love for Ashley, her pettiness toward Melanie, and all the little selfish things she's done to the people around her. I have read some reviews where readers would reject her at the first 50 pages and dropped the book. I myself am more devious, I wanted to see her fall because she's so awful. Lol!

[Julie]

(view spoiler)[ Serena, I was curious about that famous quote, too. I knew going into the book that Rhett said it to her, but I did not know why or when. Imagine my surprise when he said it on the second to last page! (hide spoiler)]

[Serena]

And it's different from the movie to the book version, additional words "my dear". Which one do you prefer?

[Julie]

I think that "my dear" added to the hurt that Scarlett felt. (view spoiler)[ It emphasized that Rhett onced loved her and cared for her but that it is gone. If his rejection was the knife in the skin, then "my dear" was like twisting the knife for more pain.

Maybe I'm overanalyzing that, but Rhett was being hurtful by saying "my dear." Not that I blame him since Scarlett was very difficult in their relationship. (hide spoiler)]

[Serena]

Yes. I agree. Especially with Clark Gable's Rhett, the dancing devil light in his eyes certainly brings out the sarcasm to the forefront.