Scarlett O’Hara

Scarlett OHara (full name Katie Scarlett Rollibard OHara Hamilton Kennedy Butler) is the paladin in Margaret Mitchells 1936 novel Gone with the Wind and in the later film of the same name. She also is the important character in the 1970 musical Scarlett and the 1991 book Scarlett, a sequel to Gone with the Wind that was written by Alexandra Ripley and adapted for a television mini-series in 1994. During earliest drafts of the original novel, Mitchell referred to her heroine as Pansy, and did not make up on the name Scarlett until just before the novel went to print.Scarlett OHara is not beautiful in a pompous sense, as indicated by Margaret Mitchells opening line, but a charming sulphurern belle who grows up on a Clayton County, Georgia plantation named after Tara in the years before the American Civil War. Scarlett is described as being sixteen years old at the outbreak of the Civil War in April 1861, which would piece her approximate birth date in early 1845 1. She is the ol dest of three daughters. Her two younger sisters are the inactive and whiny Susan Elinor (Suellen) and the gentle and kind Caroline Irene (Carreen).Her mother also gave birth to three younger sons, who were every last(predicate) named Gerald Jr. and died as infants. Selfish, shrewd and vain, Scarlett inherits the strong will of her Irish father Gerald OHara, but also desires to ravish her well-bred, gentle French American mother Ellen Robillard, from a good and well respected Savannah, Georgia family. Scarlett believes shes in love with Ashley Wilkes, her aristocratic neighbor, but when his engagement to meek and mild-mannered Melanie Hamilton is announced, she marries Melanies brother, Charles Hamilton, out of spite.Her new husband dies early in the war of the pox, and Tara falls into the marauding hands of the Yankees. In the face of hardship, the spoiled Scarlett uncharacteristically shoulders the troubles of her family and friends, and lastly the not-so-grieving widow marries her sisters beau, Frank Kennedy, in order to get funds to pay the taxes on and save her familys pricey home. Her practical nature leads to a willingness to step on anyone who doesnt have her familys best interests at heart, including her own sister. unmatchable of the most richly developed female characters of the time on film and in literature, she repeatedly challenges the prescribed womens roles of her time. As a result, she becomes very disliked by the people of Atlanta, Georgia. Scarletts ongoing internal conflict amidst her feelings for the Southern gentleman Ashley and her attraction to the sardonic, opportunistic Rhett Butlerwho becomes her third husbandembodies the general position of The South in the Civil War era.