(Untitled)

[silverflight8]

Dear Scarlett O'Hara

Comments

[leaf_kunoichi]

This is one of the many reason I can't figure out why so many people I know think she is a great character.

[silverflight8]

I like her because she's strong in a time when women were told that they should not be strong (or if they had power, to hide it behind 'womanly wiles' or whatever), or actually do anything even when the world was falling apart. (I'll stop before I tl;dr all over your comment). I just think she would really, really benefit from self-examination.

[trojanphoenix]

I like her because she is completely flawed.

[gwenyvere4]

Actually, I like the character for that very reason--I think a lot of people manage not to be introspective and it hurts them, and her character, while definitely a strong female, really embodies that. I like the realism, in that sense.

[silverflight8]

Hm, good point, although I think that trait in her is very exaggerated.

[fabricalchemist]

sounds like Scarlett O'Hara needed a Sassy Gay Friend

"WHAT, WHAT, WHAT ARE YOU DOING? Look at your life, look at your choices!!"

[silverflight8]

Or just a friend who told her stuff. Melanie was kind, but she saw no flaw in Scarlett.

[fabricalchemist]

Well, that would be the less jokey and youtube-referenced answer :) Scarlett really was kind of isolated in a way, you're right.

[silverflight8]

Oh, whoops :D I think I'm out of the loop on that one.

[nuranar]

Hehe... this is one of the reasons she's such a good character, because she's so real. I'm not saying I like her - I don't, not really - but she's totally human and believable.

The real irony is that she knows she needs to look at herself and what she's doing. But very early in the book, she started saying "I'll think about that tomorrow." Because looking would point out the changes she needed to do, and she knew she wouldn't like the changes. She adored her mother, and wanted to be like her; but step by step she put off the hard decisions that would have made her a person like Ellen.

[miritsu]

*nod* Scarlett repulses me. I mean that literally, sometimes I had to put the book down, I thought she was so disgusting. But she was truly real, and three-dimensional, and interesting, and she kept things moving in the story.

That's a good character, I think, and a welcome break from 2-D heroines designed to be likable. I hate Scarlett, but I won't forget her.

[silverflight8]

I don't think anyone around her in GWTW could forget her, either; she was kind of a thorn in almost everyone's side.

[miritsu]

Or literally their deaths. My God, can you imagine being one of the men in her mills? Starving and dying, and having her promise you help, having her be your last hope of life in an almost literal Hell, only for her to decide not to save you because it was worth too much money to let your boss keep torturing you?

[tabular_rasa]

Haha, I actually rather like Scarlett because she is so flawed in this way, but this is certainly a deserved rant :-P