From: lenona321@yahoo.com   
      
   On Sunday, November 12, 2023 at 12:31:49 AM UTC-5, Adam H. Kerman wrote:   
   > Bill Anderson   wrote:    
   >    
   > >In an effort to further his popular culture education I've been showing    
   > >classic movies to a high school kid I know, and last night I hauled out one    
   > >of the big guns. He is 17 years old and he had never heard of Clark Gable,    
   > >much less Vivian Leigh or the others. So it was time.   
   > This was a nice story; thanks. Glad both you and he had a wonderful    
   > time.    
   >    
   > >. . . and when all was said and done he didn't much care for Scarlett.    
   >    
   > Hehehehehehe    
   >    
   > She's still a great character and she does get her comeuppance more than    
   > once. You know, the Civil War really was a great personal inconvenience.    
       
   > That's wonderful.   
       
       
   The late Roger Ebert pointed out something I had never thought of...but he was   
   right. (Bill may want to point this out to his friend.)   
      
   Namely, Scarlett isn't really a girl of the 1860s. Even in the book, she's a   
   girl of the 1930s.    
      
   Specifically, a semi-liberated teenager. (Keep in mind that women had had the   
   right to vote for more than a decade and had already been through the Roaring   
   Twenties.)   
      
   That explains a lot about her personality. In multiple ways.   
      
   Why else would she believe - early on - what the twins, her father and Mammy   
   herself warned her NOT to believe - that Ashley wanted to marry HER when he   
   was already engaged to Melanie? Why wouldn't she have pursued him for years   
   before the war in the    
   same demure, sneaky way that "proper ladies" of that time were SUPPOSED to,   
   instead of taking his "love" for granted?   
      
   And naturally, she causes scandal everywhere she goes, just by existing.   
      
   But more importantly, the movie doesn't make it clear that Rhett   
   is...practically old enough to be Scarlett's father. (He's 17 years older.) So   
   of COURSE she would have been turned off by him at first; it took her twelve   
   years to learn to love him!    
   Nothing strange about that.   
      
   (By the 1930s, the typical age difference between a husband and wife   
   was...three years. In fact, Laura Ingalls Wilder, in her 1940 book "The Long   
   Winter," which takes place in 1880-1881, made it look as though her future   
   husband was only five years older,   
    so as not to shock her readers. In real life, he was ten years older. Also,   
   the median marriage age for a woman in the 1930s was a little over 21.)     
      
   Not to mention that, in the book, Rhett was constantly making fun of her   
   near-illiteracy. How romantic is that?   
      
   (He also made it sound, in his marriage proposal, as if sex with him would   
   make it worthwhile to have unwanted babies - that is, he knew perfectly well   
   she didn't want them, and ignored that. Sheesh. But of course, in the movie,   
   her two previous children    
   don't exist.)   
      
   Anyone can argue that Scarlett O'Hara is not "likeable" and not someone anyone   
   would want as a friend or a spouse, since she's too selfish to do anything for   
   anyone unless there's something in it for her, but if YOU were on the losing   
   side of a war and    
   facing starvation, how hard would she be to understand/relate to, as a   
   character?   
      
   I.e., would you really rather be Melanie under those circumstances? I   
   wouldn't. Melanie only survives as long as she does because of Scarlett; even   
   her loving relatives wouldn't have been able to keep her fed when she was   
   recovering from childbirth. As    
   Rhett said: "She hasn't your strength. She's never had any strength. She's   
   never had anything but heart." Or, as Scarlett said to herself about her late   
   mother Ellen:    
      
   ..."Nothing, no, nothing, she taught me is of any help to me! What good will   
   kindness do me now? What value is gentleness? Better that I'd learned to plow   
   or chop cotton like a darky. Oh, Mother, you were wrong!" She did not stop to   
   think that Ellen's    
   ordered world was gone, and a brutal world had taken its place a world wherein   
   every standard, every value had changed. She only saw, or thought she saw,   
   that her mother had been wrong, and she changed swiftly to meet this new world   
   for which she was not    
   prepared...    
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)