“Gone With the Wind” by Margaret Mitchell (post 11): Scarlett, the only major character who changes, does so among three alternate personalities.

Continuing to read this long novel, I am increasingly impressed by the fact that each of the main characters—except Scarlett—is portrayed as having one, and only one, personality. No matter how circumstances change, Ashley is Ashley, and everyone else, except Scarlett, remains basically unchanged.

Scarlett changes, but not for the reason you might think. In the first scene, she is a Southern belle, for whom work is a man’s responsibility, while later she is an Atlanta businesswoman, and you might think that this change is the result of maturation and that Gone With the Wind is a Bildungsroman.

But her hard-hearted, masculine personality, which serves her so well as an Atlanta businesswoman, is not the result of maturation, but has been one of her personalities since childhood. As Grandma says to Scarlett after her father’s funeral, “You were always hard as a hickory nut, even as a child, and I don’t like hard females, barring myself…You take your fences cleanly like a good hunter” (1, p. 715) and have “a man’s way of being smart” (1, p. 719).

However, Scarlett’s continued chaste love for Ashley, an ideal kind of man for a Southern belle, is a continual reminder that her Southern belle personality continues to exist.

A third personality is suggested by Scarlett’s reaction to Rhett: “For all his exasperating qualities, she grew to look forward to his calls. There was something exciting about him that she could not analyze,” evidently having to do with “his complete masculinity.”

“ ‘It’s almost like I was in love with him!’ she thought, bewildered, ‘But I’m not and I just can’t understand it’ ” (1, p. 221). Her sexual personality, possibly also present since childhood, is waiting its turn to come out. Indeed, the surprising fact that she gets pregnant with each of her first two husbands, even though she claims she doesn't want children, and she knows how to put them off, may indicate that her sexual personality has already come out when it had the chance.

In short, Scarlett is the only major character who changes, but her changes are among longstanding, ongoing, alternate personalities.

1. Margaret Mitchell. Gone With the Wind. New York, Scribner, 1936.