Scarlett O’Hara in Gone With the Wind,
by Margaret Mitchell
Fighting is like champagne. It goes to the heads of cowards as quickly as of heroes. Any fool can be brave on a battlefield when it’s be brave or else be killed.
MARGARET MITCHELL,GONE WITH THE WIND
Margaret “Peggy” Mitchell was in fighting form, surrounded by dilapidated manila envelopes, which, stacked up, nearly made it to the top of her barely-five-feet-in-high-heels frame. Earlier that day, she’d been a smiling and enthusiastic hostess. But now the sweet woman that had ushered the literary scout Harold Latham around Atlanta had been replaced by an impulsive spitfire. Her eyes snapped as she held out a piece of her gargantuan manuscript. “Take it before I change my mind,” she said. She did change her mind, but not before Latham had been seared by the book she had given him. By then it was too late: her fight had unleashed a literary phenomenon, and all because a snide friend had doubted her ability to write.
When asked to show Latham around Atlanta in April 1935, Peggy reluctantly agreed. Once she was roped into the task, though, it just wasn’t in her nature to deny a perfect stranger all the hospitality a Southerner could muster. She took him from social event to social event, introducing him to everyone she knew, charming him with the dexterity of an experienced hostess. When Latham implied that she herself might have something juicy to show him, she tried to hide her impatience. No, no, she dissembled; she was just an ex-journalist, not a novelist. But then the forces of literary history struck, delivering an insult that would change the course of Peggy’s life forever. A sharp-tongued friend overheard and interjected, her voice laced with sarcasm. Peggy had written a novel, she said, though she wasn’t sure how someone as frivolous as Margaret Mitchell could have much to say about anything at all.
Peggy laughed along with the others, but inside she was seething. When she finished dropping off Latham, she catapulted around her apartment, looking under desks and inside closets for the piles of manuscript she’d been accumulating for the last ten years. The manila envelopes had been hidden under towels, used as footrests and coasters and doorstops. They were coffee-stained and discolored with age, some still sporting handwritten notes to self. Now they were thrown into the car. When she finished handing them off to Latham, she was overcome with relief and a bit of fear: maybe this time she had gone a bit too far.
But Peggy was used to a rousing fight. It seemed she’d been on the offensive since before she formed her first coherent memories, for though her life had followed the simple trajectory of a Georgia debutante for the most part, her boisterous insides had never really matched the polite Southern girl she was supposed to portray. Atlanta, Georgia, was a place where name was everything, where a girl acted and thought like other girls if she wished to stay afloat. Externally, Peggy managed to be everything that was expected of her: gracious, inviting, a good conversationalist, and an expert flatterer. But the tiny body that obediently danced, sat, and played along concealed a defiant, unruly mind.
She inherited some of her uppitiness from her mother, Maybelle, a suffragist who warned her not to give over her life to that of some man. “Give of yourself with both hands and overflowing heart,” she wrote to Peggy just days before her death of Spanish influenza in 1918, “but give only the excess after you have lived your life.” Peggy had struggled with her mother’s unflappable sense of authority and her unerring knack for knowing just what to do; now she tussled with her advice. Ultimately, she defied it. Once her mother was gone, she had a chance to take the helm of a respectable Southern family, even if it meant leaving college and taking on the dull social duties expected of a matriarch. She snatched up the opportunity, never suspecting it would be one of her life’s first battles.
Peggy knew that any brainy girl could win the battle of Society, with a capital S, so long as she had cute clothing, a knack for conversation, and a whole lot of gumption. She possessed all these things, but that didn’t mean that managing the role left so empty by her mother’s death came easily. Not only did she have to oversee the upkeep of a large house for her father and brother, two men unused to any kind of tumult, but she had to tackle a social landscape fraught with suspicious matrons, gossiping “friends,” and plenty of men. The latter were a battle she rushed to fight and conquer, prevailing again and again. She was quick to assemble her own army of slobbering suitors, men who hung around her house dejectedly, called constantly, barraged her with unwanted correspondence, even crowded around her sickbed when she was in the hospital. These were men who hung on her every breathless, flattering word. And juggling their affections was just about the easiest thing she faced in the years that followed.
Already an outsider due to religion (her mother was a devout Catholic), a Northern education at Smith College, and a socially inept grandmother who didn’t care about her powerful enemies, Peggy struggled for acceptance in Atlanta. It would have helped if she’d actually cared what anyone thought of her, but that was one part of playing along she just couldn’t fake. Small in stature but long on personality, she struggled to embrace her role as sweet little debutante. Women had won the vote, but they weren’t encouraged to express their own opinions, of which Peggy had many. Bored by her constant battles to fit in, she began to act out.
The Roaring Twenties suited Peggy perfectly. She took her newfound flapper role to heart, scandalizing her elders and getting the papers talking along the way. That in and of itself was a novelty: women were supposed to shy away from overt publicity as they would a leering rapist or a muddy gutter. But Peggy embraced, even encouraged, the newspapers’ interest in her dubious relationships and wild habits. 1921 may have marked Peggy’s uncertain debut into society, but she did far more than attend balls and appear at community service events. The exclamation point to the new debutante’s hell-raising year was a performance of the violently sexual Apache dance at a ball. Soon, she had added “banned from the Junior League” to her flapper résumé. Next stop: marrying against her father’s will. Red Upshaw was dangerous, erratic, and, as it later turned out, violent. He was also handsome and rakish, just the kind of man Peggy was attracted to, and just the person to save her from the oppressive boredom she already associated with Atlanta high society.
Her new marriage was far from boring, but that wasn’t a good thing. Red couldn’t hold down a job, and his violence and provocation prompted constant arguments. To top it off, he was a bootlegger and rum-runner, a fact that mortified Peggy. She had married to escape; now she was as trapped as she had been at the head of the table in her father’s home, where the miserable couple had been encouraged to set up housekeeping. Sick of appeasing her inconsistent husband, she opted for full-out warfare, and writing was her first offensive. She landed her first freelance newspaper writing gig at a local newspaper, her flamboyant byline of “Peggy Mitchell” deliberately making no mention of her married name.
This flagrant provocation hit its mark. After revelations of the extent of Red’s illegal activities, it became clear that the marriage was over. Now separated, Peggy moved to her next battle: becoming a woman journalist in a town that banned women from most newspaper offices. Somehow, she fast-talked her way into a job at the Atlanta Journal. Peggy ignored the crudity of the language that surrounded her at the offices of the Journal, brushed away the cigarette butts that surrounded her, and got to work sniffing out stories in places unfit for any lady. Blasé about her dislike for proofreading and her inability to use a typewriter, she went on to get daring interviews with generals, ax murderers, and even Rudolph Valentino.
That she held her own was no small feat. That she did so while under constant physical threat from her ex-husband, who at one point beat her so severely she was hospitalized, was even more impressive. She slept with a gun at her side through those years and put on a brave front. But inside, the constant danger was taking its toll. She started to have medical problems and accidents that were exacerbated by her nervous temperament and her propensity toward hardship and struggle. She tried to ward off her failing health and spirits by marrying Red’s former best man, Journal proofreader John Marsh, but even he couldn’t protect her from the mysterious ailments that began to encroach on her life and her comfort. Beaten for the time being, she retired from the newspaper business and took to her bed.
Never a model patient, Peggy was a wretched, cranky invalid. Her irritability inevitably got her into trouble. First she read all of the books adoring John could provide her, exhausting the riches of the local library and then the surrounding colleges and universities before reaching an impasse that could not be filled by medical tomes, pornography, or popular literature. Annoyed, she took her husband’s advice and propped herself up with a ream of paper and a typewriter to draft the last chapter of a novel about the Civil War. She’d later insist that the decision to start with the end and work back to the beginning was just an old ambulance-chasing journalist’s habit. But what Peggy had begun to envision couldn’t fit into a newspaper. She was already embroiled in a book that could only be called “epic.”
Nobody will ever know how long it took Peggy to draft and edit Gone With the Wind. She certainly never told, just as she never discussed the book with her family or friends while she was writing it. This obsessive need to control her public image was matched only by the relentless drive with which she wrote. Her manuscript piled up all over the tiny apartment called “The Dump” by one and all. Said apartment was full of friends, phone calls, and visitors, distractions that made her cagier and crazier the further she got into her dense narrative. Everyone knew about the book soon enough, but nobody could get any details out of Peggy. She laughed when they teased her about writing “the great American novel,” changing the subject as quickly as possible.
Inside, though, she was occupied with much more than the creation of a really long book. Gone With the Wind was part of Peggy’s lifelong struggle to make sense of a tradition-bound world that expected her to content herself with her family name and her deft grasp of Southern customs. A dual narrative of a defeated way of life and an undefeatable heroine, it covers massive territory, weaving together birth and death, family ties, and fatal historical forces. Appropriately, Scarlett’s story plays out against a historical backdrop as complex and contradictory as its heroine, a woman whose internal battles are as violent as any Appomattox. At its core, the book is about the one thing Peggy knew best of all: fight.
Scarlett O’Hara is more than painfully self-serving. She’s a heroine who gets under the skin like that seductive splinter you can’t quite remove. Where perfect heroines are brave, she is weak; where they act with decision, she is fickle and mercurial. She wastes a lifetime of love on a harebrained obsession with a man of inaction, brutalizes her offspring, and throws away the affection of everyone who counts. And still we read and reread Gone With the Wind, as obsessed with Scarlett’s fight for her land, her life, and her ridiculous love as she is with her own survival.
Peggy’s exhaustive depiction of Civil War battles is nothing next to Scarlett’s smaller war on her own behalf. Unsuited for anything but luxury, Scarlett is the last person we’d expect to hike up her skirts and deliver a baby or schlep her hated sister-in-law, Melanie Wilkes, over miles of gutted terrain. But Scarlett is a warrior, if not always a particularly likable one. When backed into a corner, she fights for her life, dragging anyone and everyone along with her to epic effect.
Rumor has it that Margaret Mitchell wrote the scenes in which Scarlett survives the siege of Atlanta in one marathon sitting, and I for one have never been able to put them down, preferring instead to let myself be pulled along by Scarlett’s terror-fueled flight to Tara at the peril of my own appointments, meals, and bedtimes. I’ve inhaled the book again and again, from my first stint as a sixth-grader pressed up against a musty bus seat to my days as a relatively cosmopolitan woman cramped into commercial flights and solo lunches, but time and experience haven’t dulled the impact of Peggy’s ragged, unstoppable narrative. There’s something so cruel and vital about Scarlett’s fight that I can’t help but watch it, jaw ajar with the same awe inspired by an erupting volcano or a mudslide that threatens to take down Malibu.
But train-wreck voyeurism isn’t the only thing that makes Scarlett an unforgettable heroine. It’s easy to identify with her brief battle against the teachings of childhood, values that just don’t fit into a world full of maggots and starvation and $300 mortgages. As we watch Scarlett change from a girl who idolizes her gentle mother’s every action to a hard woman who would sell her body to save the farm, there’s an icky sense of identification. Who among us hasn’t had to reexamine something she thought was important when the stakes were high enough? And who among us hasn’t hurt someone else in the pursuit of her own goals?
Rhett Butler has it right when he points out that Scarlett’s never as appealing as when she’s backed into a corner. We can’t help but cheer her on, even as she steals her sister’s fiancé, shoots a Yankee in the face, and underestimates the love that surrounds her despite all odds. And we can’t help but envy her knack for dismissing risk when it is inconvenient to her, looking instead to a fictitious tomorrow that we know will never come:
“I won’t think of that now,” she said firmly. “If I think of it now, it will upset me. There’s no reason why things won’t come out the way I want them—if he loves me. And I know he does!”
She raised her chin and her pale, black-fringed eyes sparkled in the moonlight. Ellen had never told her that desire and attainment were two different matters; life had not taught her that the race was not to the swift. She lay in the silvery shadows with courage rising and made the plans that a sixteen-year-old makes when life has been so pleasant that defeat is an impossibility and a pretty dress and a clear complexion are weapons to vanquish fate.
Scarlett is nothing if not results-oriented, and she usually gets what she wants. Lacking in self-awareness and psychotically uninterested in the emotions or motivations of others, she uses the tools that have been given her, be they her inner grit or her mother’s green curtains. And she does so whether others accept her point of view or not. Even when it tears her up to do what she must do, she shoulders the burden of her life and moves ahead, her decisions swift, self-serving, and without compromise. This blinders-on approach is one of hard offense and unwavering defense, and defeat is not an option. Scary? Yes. Effective? Very.
Scarlett and her creator both excelled at the surprise struggle, the kind of conflict that arises when you’re looking the other way. To say that Peggy Mitchell was blind-sided by the success of Gone With the Wind, which was immediately purchased by an enthusiastic Latham, would be a gross understatement. The book she almost withheld from the world sparked a revolution in publishing, a Pulitzer Prize, worldwide translations, a movie adaptation phenomenon, and a lifetime spent swatting away gossiping relations and fame-chasing fans. Characteristically, Peggy took to this battle, shoring up her defenses and drawing her boundaries very carefully around herself. In later years, she fought for her privacy just as hard as she battled for fame, withstanding lifelong criticism of her pulpy literary methods, her racism, and her unschooled literary style. And while Gone With the Wind is nothing if not racist, manipulative, and pulpy, it’s a book I can’t quite be ashamed of reading and rereading. Can I really be expected to push against the boundaries of my own life without a bit of inspiration from literature’s most lovable bitch?
It would be easy to discard Scarlett in favor of the woman Peggy always claimed was “the real heroine” of Gone With the Wind, but I can’t see Melanie Wilkes gaining a cult following any time soon. Sure, she’s practical and saintly and dear, but she lacks the fire and impatience that make Scarlett so maddening and so marvelously brave. Where Melanie lays down her arms, Scarlett takes them up with twice as much vigor. And though Melanie is able to create happiness all around her, a heroine’s trait if ever I’ve seen one, her happiness will always lack the Technicolor clarity of the few joyful moments Scarlett allows herself.
As a modern-day heroine struggling for boring things like work-life balance and exciting ones like self-definition and -esteem, I’m always better served when I let others join me in the fight. Scarlett and Peggy both pushed others away to the detriment of their success and happiness; Scarlett, at least, pays a heavy price for her unwillingness to let others into her life. As I revisit Gone With the Wind as an adult woman, I’m shocked at the community Scarlett so selfishly discards, throwing away Melanie’s and Rhett’s unconditional love in favor of a hypothetical and ill-fated emotional bond.
But even through my disdain of Scarlett’s selfishness, I am reminded that a heroine’s most serious battles are often fought alone. Scarlett’s steely exterior hides a woman who must choose to either live inside the pain of insecurity and thwarted love or move through it. We all know which option she chooses, and we all can learn from her spectacular defeat. Her blatant willingness to leave her heart behind in favor of the battle itself is, perhaps, her greatest weakness. And I, at least, can’t help but afford it my grudging admiration, as Ashley does when Scarlett decides to put aside her emotions in favor of survival:
He remembered the way she had squared her shoulders when she turned away from him that afternoon, remembered the stubborn lift of her head. His heart went out to her, torn with his own helplessness, wrenched with admiration. He knew she had no such word in her vocabulary as gallantry, knew she would have stared blankly if he had told her she was the most gallant soul he had ever known. He knew she would not understand how many truly fine things he ascribed to her when he thought of her as gallant. He knew that she took life as it came, opposed her tough-fibered mind to whatever obstacles there might be, fought on with a determination that would not recognize defeat, and kept on fighting even when she saw defeat was inevitable.
But, for four years, he had seen others who had refused to recognize defeat, men who rode gaily into sure disaster because they were gallant. And they had been defeated, just the same.
He thought as he stared at Will in the shadowy hall that he had never known such gallantry as the gallantry of Scarlett O’Hara going forth to conquer the world in her mother’s velvet curtains and the tail feathers of a rooster.
READ THIS BOOK:
• When the mortgage payment is (over)due
• Whenever your personal Melanie Wilkes thwarts your self-centered plans
• At the hotel you’ve spirited yourself away to for a secret, selfish staycation
SCARLETT’S LITERARY SISTERS:
• Any heroine in The Portable Dorothy Parker, by Dorothy Parker
• Christabel LaMotte and Maud Bailey in Possession, by A. S. Byatt
• Lily Bart in The House of Mirth, by Edith Wharton