Women In Fiction: Scarlett O'Hara, Gone With The Wind
It's hard to remember sometimes that the reason Gone With The Wind was such a phenomenally successful film was because women across the US were hooked on Margaret Mitchell's novel of the same name. It's an interesting book - in part because the attitudes it reflects would often be considered unacceptable now which in itself gives an interesting historical perspective to the events it portrays - if sometimes laboured by elements that made it the model for the type of book Mills & Boon flooded the world with. It is by turns analytical and trashy, and because of this Scarlett O'Hara becomes one of the more betwitching characters from fiction.
She is all at once a romantic novel stereotype, the impetuous, fiery heroine, and modern female role model - yes, really. I know, I know; she misunderstands her lovers, manipulates, steals, kills, ignores her children and acts like a spoilt brat. I'm not advocating any of that, exactly, but her behaviour mirrors that of the men around her. She is a character that strongly believes in being herself, irrespective of whether it's considered acceptable for a girl to behave that way.
The Scarlett of the book is, to some extent, actually toned down on film. Because the novel is really doorstop sized, various plotlines are trimmed, including the birth and subsequent upbringing of Scarlett's first two children with her first two husbands. Her complete disinterest in their upbringing shows her to be even more resolutely callous and selfish than she at first appears. However, it's also easy to forget in gazing on Vivien Leigh's mature gorgeousness that Scarlett is only sixteen years old, treated by her father as the son that he never had (for three in the family did not survive) and living in the shadow of a much-revered, gentle mother that she can never hope to emulate - so, she thinks, she might as well not try.
Spoiled, selfish and seductive? Certainly. But also steely. Scarlett's lack of subtlety - failing to understand the reverence paid to Melanie Wilkes's subtle strength in comparison to her own showy variety - is probably what keeps her alive. If she fully understood the gravity of possible starvation and being on the losing side of a catastrophic civil war, she would probably lose confidence in her ability to charm, plot and scrape her way through it. But she doesn't, and her lack of regard for the hallmarks of traditional womanhood (at least when her livelihood is at stake) sends her into the cotton fields without a second thought.
Of course, she's none too bright in some ways. Her disregard for her own safety and stereotypically masculine bravado almost get her assaulted and Ashley is nearly killed avenging her. If she had a fraction of self-awareness she'd avoid half the pitfalls in her life. Mitchell, Ashley and Rhett all repeatedly flag her complete lack of it - Mitchell as a matter of narrative fact, Ashley with the longing of one so aware of his own self he's rendered ineffectual and Rhett merely patronises her.
It's easy to get sidelined by Mitchell's descriptions of swishing hoop skirts, soft eyes with inky lashes, Southern womanhood and matter-of-fact asides about "pouting darkies" which seem jaw-droppingly racist now. But in doing that it's possible to forget that Scarlett may not be a figure every woman wants to emulate, but she's still worthy of respect for being a woman who does precisely what feminism prescribes; she lives her life according to her ideas and opinions without reference to the prevailing social climate for her gender.
Alex Roumbas is Deputy Editor of Shiny Shiny and will adopt a little O'Hara moxie but pass on the corset, thanks.
