Scarlett is a definite anti-hero. She's a slave-owner who slaps her enslaved maid, marries men for their money and makes them miserable, uses starving convict labor to keep her lumber mill profitable, etc. She's never presented as a morally positive person, but rather, as a person who will do ANYTHING to survive and prosper in difficult times. The book came out during the Great Depression, and yeah, people were interested in a story about someone surviving in difficult times.
But the un-admirable anti-hero wasn't new to either Hollywood or literature, but perhaps a female anti-hero was*. Hollywood had made a lot of gangster films before "GWTW", and Prince Hamlet and Eugene Oniegin predated Scarlett O'Hara by decades or centuries.
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* Oh wait, Becky Sharp came first. in Thackery's "Vanity Fair" (1847).
** And Valmont, the anti-hero of "Dangerous Liaisons" (1782) came rather earlier. He was an antihero from the days before novels were novels, and were written as an exchange of fictional letters.
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GreenGoblinsOck8 (7704)
2 years ago
I guess that makes sense. Though to be fair, in the end she only ever married one man. And yeah. Scarlett is not a likable protagonist but that's supposed to be the point. That she's selfish and doesn't think about anything but what she wants. And she suffers greatly for it in the end.
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Otter (24464)
2 years ago
She had THREE husbands! Butler is the most momorable one, of course, but there was also the gormless Charles Hamilton, who she married at 16 after Ashley rejected her, and who died in the war after a brief and unsettleing honymoon. Then there was Frank Kennedy, who was actually her sister's fiancee, She married him because he had the money to keep her plantation from being foreclosed for nonpayment of taxes, and she made him unhappy and everyone blames her for getting him killed (he died while participating in a KKK assault on innocent people, and IMHO he deserved what he got).
But yeah, under all the adventure and history and romance of the book, it's about surviving in difficult times, and the price a person has to pay for doing whatever it takes to survive in difficult times.
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GreenGoblinsOck8 (7704)
2 years ago
That maybe in the book but it is not in the movie.
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Furienna (3345)
2 years ago
Actually, she did marry three men in the movie as well.
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GreenGoblinsOck8 (7704)
2 years ago
I guess I need to watch it again cause I don't remember that being a thing.
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snepts (11123)
2 years ago
While I believe in accuracy, I don't think people should emphasize minutiae just to diminish one's appreciation of a movie. Scarlett's supposed previous marriages don't seem to be much of a factor in the telling of the story. At least not to me, your modestly average enjoyer of film.
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sslssg (34249)
2 years ago
She did marry 3 men in the movie, but she only had a child with Rhett. In the book she had a child with each husband.
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Otter (24464)
2 years ago
Husbands number 1 and 2 weren't memorable guys, so don't feel bad! I bet Scarlett couldn't remember a damn thing about either of them, after they were gone.
The only affect they had on the plot was that Husband #1 was Melanie's brother, which is why she and Scarlett acted like they were related for most of the book. And husband #2 saved the plantation from foreclosure, and served to show just how far Scarlett would go to get what she wanted - even steal her sister's fiancee.
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Furienna (3345)
2 years ago
Actually, we should remember that Scarlett's actions kept Suellen free to marry Will Benteen.
It is a character, who made no apperance in the movie.
However, I like to think that Suellen was better off with him than with Frank Kennedy.
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Otter (24464)
2 years ago
I think Suellen would have been happier with Kennedy, or at least more self-satisfied. She'd have liked to live in town and run a prosperous home, instead of living on a farm that was owned by her older sister and marrying the only man around.
I have no idea if she really loved Will, I don't remember absolutely everything from the book.
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Furienna (3345)
2 years ago
Well, it is true that we don't really know what Suellen thought about Will Benteen.
But I want to think that things turned out for the best for her in the end.
Kennedy was after all much older than her (and Scarlet) in the book, wasn't he?
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Otter (24464)
2 years ago
I think the only thing that Suellen would have liked more than being a well-to-do Atlanta housewife, was being a well-to-do Atlanta widow!
Which Suellen would have been, while she was still young and had her looks, considering Kennedy's age and stupidity.
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sslssg (34249)
2 years ago
I think you might be thinking about the children. In the book she has one child with each husband. In the movie she only has a child with Rhett.
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strntz (12342)
2 years ago
She's a slave-owner who slaps her enslaved maid..
Picking nits here, but Scarlett didn't own any slaves. The Civil War happened before she had any opportunity to acquire any (which I'm sure she would have). As far as slapping Prissy, Prissy really did had it coming. She misled Scarlett to believe that she could deliver a baby when she couldn't and as a result of her lie put Melanie and Melanie's child's life in extreme danger. Given her bit of a temper and bossiness over her siblings, I believe Scarlett would have slapped her own sister under those same circumstances.
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Otter (24464)
2 years ago
Ah, perhaps you're right, Scarlett's father didn't die and officially leave her his estate until after the Civil War had been won by the good guys. So I suppose as long as her father was alive, Scarlett was slapping her father's slaves, and living on the fruits of their forced labor. The book never mentioned her owning anyone in particular.
And BTW, the fact that she went from using unpaid forced slave labor to run the family plantation to using unpaid forced convict labor to run her lumber mill is one of the things that really marks her as an "Antihero". The book and film really are brilliant in their potboiler way, so many of her actions are morally/ethically indefensible, yet the audience cares so deeply about her.
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GreenGoblinsOck8 (7704)
2 years ago
Uh, the union wasn't completely good. They weren't all against slavery. In fact, a lot of union soldiers were okay with slavery and were more fighting for unity more so than the abolishment of slavery. Also there were slave states like Missouri and Kentucky in the union. Abraham Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation did not apply to the slave states in the union. Lincoln did get the senate to approve the ammendment to the constitution that would end slavery. But not everyone in the union agreed with this. I guess I am just pointing out a lot of the people in the union weren't against slavery. So both sides had their badsides is what I am saying.
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strntz (12342)
2 years ago
I guess I am just pointing out a lot of the people in the union weren't against slavery. So both sides had their badsides is what I am saying.
No doubt, and let's not forget that a lot of Southerners were against slavery (or at least not for it - there is a distinction there), but what the Southerners *hated* was the North telling them how to govern.
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Otter (24464)
2 years ago
Of course both the North and the South were made up of flawed and complicated human beings, who varied in their political opinions and moral outlooks.
But it was the South that was dedicated to the cause of Pure Evil, a.k.a. Slavery and institutionalized racism, so that makes the North the good guys.
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strntz (12342)
2 years ago
And BTW, the fact that she went from using unpaid forced slave labor to run the family plantation to using unpaid forced convict labor to run her lumber mill is one of the things that really marks her as an "Antihero". The book and film really are brilliant in their potboiler way, so many of her actions are morally/ethically indefensible, yet the audience cares so deeply about her.
She's clearly an anti-hero, yes. I think most people hated her in the first half of the film then began to get a deep appreciation for the way she took care of her family when she didn't have to.
The magic of movies is that we tend to feel strongly for anti-heroes when we are privy to their side of the story, even if their other actions are terrible. My favorite Western is Unforgiven, and we root for Clint Eastwood's character even though he was a known killer. Movies is magic!
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Otter (24464)
2 years ago
Yes, Scarlett is an anti-hero, she doesn't start to show any genuinely admirable qualities until the Confederacy has collapsed about her, and then we start to see how strong and hard-working this spoiled rich girl really is, and how much she'll do for her family whether she likes them or not!
The odd thing about the book is that even the first half of the book is engaging, although not as gripping as the part where shit gets real, the part of the story where Scarlett is just another spoiled rich girl who lives for clothes and beaux. It really is a brilliant book in its way, even though for some reason it's despised by the sort of people who take Literature-with-a-capital-L seriously.
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