Gone with the Wind; by Margaret Mitchell.

Often people mistake characters for the actors that play them in a film, and just as often people judge them in light of their prejudices never apparent in spite of all progress of society and attempted enlightenment. It is amusing to notice the reactions of a hoard to a successful woman who was unfortunate in love, while they might claim to worship virtues that are held up nominally but practiced rarely. Hypocrisy and manipulation however do not come naturally to everyone, and one that is clear of those is seen with hatred by most who use the normal social tools.

Gone With The Wind is a part of US history, of the years around the civil war of US, and it gives a great deal of information about the era in an intimate way to those that are not from that part of the world.

Again, on an intimate level it is also about a woman who was very capable and independant in her mind before such ideas existed in that society - it does not mean not marrying or not loving, but knowing your own mind and will and being capable of supporting a family and a clan when necessary, in the direst of circumstances, through one's honest work.

For all the heroic qualities the heroine gets only brickbats, except from the other heroine - whose genre is quiet loving and a "thin blade of steel flashing" within, and supporting those people and those causes she believes in; - even the man who supported the strong, stubborn but a bit blind when it came to perception of people heroine, is not wise enough or strong enough to understand her or to be patient enough.

He is of course much supported and forgiven his flaws and misdeeds by all - while she receives almost universally bad sentiments from the people then and readers or viewers now. Little has changed in perception and gap of treatment in the century and half past.

It was only the writer who immortalised her heroine, who was based on someone real. The story was written as a way to relate to her husband the story of an era and a persona she had always heard spoken of as she grew up.

Strangely this is one of the convincing arguments against arranged or well thought out matchmaking for marriages when up against a love especially when both persons involved feel it. Thinking over the whole course of events it becomes somehow clear that if only Ashley had the wisdom, the courage to admit his love for Scarlett, if only they had married, Scarlett would be an adoring wife never stepping below the normally universally demanded standard of behaviour from "ladies" (which in fact she did not in action ever but was indicted just as universally for loving someone with a steadfast heart and going on with her life with marriages and children anyway, rather than living as an unwanted unmarried heartbroken woman pining for her lover who in fact loved her and desired her!), - much less looking elsewhere or a life that scandalised society in any way. A respectably married woman who does not care two hoots for company of another man is forgiven every other scandalous behaviour including the wet petticoats a la Grandma Robillard and Scarlett was not feminine enough to indulge in any of it, deep within she was more of man with a mind, a strong mind.

One wonders sometimes if then Rhett might have married Melanie, since he did always have respect and concern for her, and in this the two men are very alike, except that Rhett understood Scarlett - as a child who is willful and stubborn and crying for the moon - pretty much as her own father Gerald O'Hara did, and loved her for everything including her indomitable courage in face of every impossible adversity. Rhett was more Gerald's age or at any rate that of Ellen Robillard O'Hara, perhaps even older to her, anyway. And there have been some suspicions about Melanie's visit consoling him after the death of his daughter, which one suspects the writer had a toungue in cheek about, leaving the scenario the way she did.

All such speculations would hold water if the writer had not been so emphatic about her characrters, and explicit about every little detail. Thus one is told firmly that Melanie in fact was too timid and scared to death of anything male, especially virile robust males such as Gerald, and Rhett until he befriends her with respect and concern inspiring confidence in her, and that she sees him as a brother and says so. And if Melanie said so that is what she thought - neither of the two women are hypocritical when it comes to it, except in silence for sake of courtesy socially unless it is made desirable to break it or impossible to keep it.

Life would be very convenient if everyone loved those that make a good match, and understood that anything else was folly - but hearts don't do acccount books of life and have an instinct superior to mind often. Following heart takes more courage than some people have. Men ought to have courage in theory, but in this realm it is women who are wiser, with more courage to boot.

Why did Scarlett make marriages in cold blood is easily explained by the various discourses in the book if indeed it is a mystery in a system where a male might court anyone he wishes and a woman must hold her tongue and her whole self in check and respond only when asked, and accept one when suitable. Love as experienced by Scarlett's warm heart is a torture, and weary load to carry on her frail shoulders, and moreover an excuse for the hypocrites and the fortunate and the cold hearted to stone a loving hearted woman with impunity.

But there is more. Her mother, the aristocratic very proper Ellen O'Hara, loved just as impetuously and stormily and unfortunately at the same age, and married the first man she found suitable when she lost her love due to her family's interference. She was perhaps more fortunate in that her loved one died - which is when she married Gerald O'Hara, who had selected her after careful scrutiny of all possible eligible candidates. Gerald was in awe of his wife, and loved her, but while she was entirely proper and honourable in her life she also was a woman with her heart in the grave with her dead loved one, and cold.

With that perspective it is easy to see that what Scarlett knew about love was a little from her father and the rest from her own heart, with no example set for her. And in that perspective her entire conduct is more than noble, more than honourable. She is willing to give the promises her love asks - which is to take care of his wife, and the baby - and more. She is willing to labour and toil like a field hand when necessary to feed her own, never asking for help from others such as the O'Hara uncles or the Robillard aunts. In fact she sends them money knowing they have little to live on, money she earns with her own toil and risks she takes in the process in Atlanta.

As for her husbands, two out of three die before they know her heart was elsewhere and she married them for reasons other than falling in love. Which is fortunate for the first one, who never loved his fixed cousin and married Scarlett because he was in love with her and dazzlingly happy to think she loved him too. He died with this love, instead of a drab existence he had until then, and hence a fortunate man. As for the second husband, he was courting a younger woman and she was not in love with him either, except there seems to have been no one else from a neighbourhood full of young males courting Suellen O'Hara, who couldn't possibly have been so unattractive as all that - she was the younger sister of the same parents who gave birth to Scarlett and Carreen the fragile blossom beauty.

Frank married Scarlett the moment he thought she loved him, indeed he forgot about Suellen even in the first Twelve Oaks scene when Scarlett smiled at him and spent the barbecue vying with half a dozen other - much younger, strapping full blooded southern - males, bringing food for Scarlett. And he was happy enough - there are much worse mariages than his with Scarlett, with women who never have never experienced love and are far less attractive at that, and expect their husbands to provide for all their needs and luxuries too, unlike a Scarlett who worked hard to make her people secure so they never go hungry again.

As for Rhett, the never marrying man who fell in love and met his Waterloo in her and married her because he finally couldn't get her in any other way - he was about twice the age of the young woman (at her age most women of her class today are still dealing with various pleasures of life and not committed much less required to toil and fear starvation or being without a roof) and should have had the patience and understanding not to speak honesty. Having been the catalyst for her exclusion from society, the least he could have done is to reestablish her when he did so himself for his daughter. That he could not see her heart, concealed by her pride and her fear of his sarcasm, was his deficiency.

The film suffered not only from necessity of being shorter than required to show so huge a canvas of a story, dealing with generations and families from Ireland and France to beginning of Georgia and Atlanta and civil war, but also from biased direction and screenplay, and poor casting except for that of Scarlett O'Hara. Beautiful Olivia de Havilland was far from the timid and plain Melanie afraid of males (- Audrey Hepburn could have done far superior a job of portraying Melanie, if the film had not come at a time when she and Anne Frank alike were part of the victims of the war going on in Europe and the occupation of their country by the brutal), Rhett really ought to have been someone far more like Cary Grant - and as for Ashley the dreamy love, he is a blond noble beautiful dreamy thinker, and only Gregory Peck would do except for the blond bit which is a must. Mitchell's descriptions leave no room for a doubt or a different interpretation, and I don't know if there is any performer that would suit to play Ashley.