re: Gone With the Wind

Why? He played the patrician perfectly

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Disagree on this, thats part of what I meant in the OP with analysis (of the characters). She's not a bad person, she has a lot of character flaws but she wants to survive. She is capable of doing the wrong thing for the right reason.Vivienne Leigh was able to make us feel sympathy for her.

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She starts out as an Antebellum spoiled brat doing nothing all day but pining for boys, grows up, goes through hard times and becomes a hard-headed Irish lass no different than Mary Kate in The Quiet Man.

Yup

I like the scene where Rhett explains why the South will lose the war.

Damned accurate.

Too bad they didn't listen to him.

Well, I bet he can tie a cravat better than you

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Never seen it.

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not missing much except the desire to strangle a brat of a woman

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She starts out as an Antebellum spoiled brat doing nothing all day but pining for boys, grows up, goes through hard times and becomes a hard-headed Irish lass no different than Mary Kate in The Quiet Man.

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I think to fully grasp the change in Scarlett's character, you have to read the book. I'm in my 40s and have grown up watching the movie. I finally read the book a couple of months ago, and everything took on a new meaning.

Her dad was a self-made man, and he taught her the value of land and what it could produce.

When the book/movie starts, Scarlett is 16. Yes, she is a spoiled brat, and (like all girls of that time) is fixated on marrying a man who will support her for the rest of her life. Ashley is the prototypical eligible bachelor for that era, and she has known him her whole life. But, Scarlett admits that she doesn't understand him. He is high minded, loves reading books, likes political discourse and thinks with a philosopher's mind. Scarlett "loves" him not because they are this great match, but because he is familiar, handsome, and is the type of person a girl of her standard is supposed to be with.

One the war starts, Scarlett still tries to fit that old world into the world at war. It isn't until she gets back to Tara and sees what it has become, and the fact that only she is willing and able to try to keep it, that the O'Hara comes out in her and she turns into the tough as nails Scarlett.

The book does a great job in describing how after she marries Mr. Kennedy (and after his death) that she sends a big chunk of money from the store and sawmills back to Tara and the new overseer (her soon to be brother in law) to keep the place running.

Also, because she is willing to do business with the Yankees (in order to survive, and keep Tara afloat) she becomes a pariah to all of the southerners in Atlanta who would much rather starve than have anything to do with the Yankees, scalawags, and carpetbaggers. Once she and Rhett marry, her entire reason for building the big house in Atlanta is to make all of her former friends jealous and show them that by taking advantage of the Yankees that you can live just as lavishly as you could before.

Absolutely agree. Reading GWTW after being obsessed with the movie as a little girl really enriched the characters for me in a different way than other books/movies... it made me appreciate them in a way I wouldn’t have been able to when much younger.

It also sent me down a rabbit hole of reading the Alexandra Ripley sequel (and the rest of her books) and other related spinoffs as well as movie adaptations.

I never truly understood the book until this very moment when I saw your post