Katie Scarlett O'Hara is the protagonist of Margaret Mitchell's 1936 novel Gone with the Wind and the 1939 film of the same name, where she is portrayed by Vivien Leigh. She also is the main character in the 1970 musical Scarlett and the 1991 book Scarlett, a sequel to Gone with the Wind that was written by Alexandra Ripley and adapted for a television mini-series in 1994. During early drafts of the original novel, Mitchell referred to her heroine as "Pansy", and did not decide on the name "Scarlett" until just before the novel went to print. PBS has called O'Hara "quite possibly the most famous female character in American history."
Biography Scarlett O'Hara is the oldest living child of Gerald O'Hara and Ellen O'Hara (née Robillard). She was born in 1845 on her family's plantation Tara in Georgia. She was named Katie Scarlett, after her father's mother, but is always called Scarlett, except by her father, who refers to her as "Katie Scarlett". She is from a Catholic family of Irish ancestry on her paternal side and French ancestry on her maternal side, descending from her mother's old-money Robillard family in Savannah. Scarlett has black hair, green eyes, and fair skin. She is famous for her fashionably small waist. Scarlett has two younger sisters, Susan Elinor ("Suellen") O'Hara and Caroline Irene ("Carreen") O'Hara, and three little brothers who died in infancy. Her baby brothers are buried in the family burying ground at Tara, and each was named Gerald O'Hara Jr.
Scarlett begins the novel unmarried, but with many beaus in the county; however, as a result of Ashley Wilkes' rejection, she marries Charles Hamilton, who dies before the birth of their son, Wade Hampton Hamilton. Later, in the midst of Tara's threat, Scarlett marries Frank Kennedy, Suellen's beau, for financial security for Tara and to provide for the family. They have Ella Lorena Kennedy together. Kennedy dies in a KKK raid on Shantytown, where Scarlett was attacked, because the Union army knew about it and laid a trap. She continues to marry Rhett Butler, for his money, again, although she admits she is “fond” of him. They have Eugenia Victoria, a.k.a. “Bonnie Blue” Butler; however, she dies after a tragic riding accident. Unable to reconcile, Rhett leaves Scarlett, although Scarlett ends the novel vowing to try to win him back.
Character summary When the novel opens, Scarlett O’Hara is sixteen. She is vain, self-centered, and very spoiled by her wealthy parents. She can also be insecure, but is very intelligent, despite the Old South's pretense of ignorance and helplessness. She is somewhat unusual among Southern women, whom society preferred to act as dainty creatures who needed protection from their men. Scarlett is aware that she is only acting empty-headed, and resents the "necessity" of it, unlike most of her Southern belle peers, including Melanie Hamilton and India Wilkes. Outwardly, Scarlett is the picture of Southern charm and womanly virtues, and a popular belle among the country males. The one man she truly desires, however, is her neighbor, Ashley Wilkes—the one man she cannot have. The Wilkes family has a tradition of intermarrying with their cousins, and Ashley is betrothed to his cousin, Melanie Hamilton of Atlanta. Scarlett's motivation in the early part of the novel centers on her desire to win Ashley's heart. When he refuses her advances—which no “Southern Lady” would be so forward as to make—she takes refuge in childish rage, and she spitefully accepts the proposal of Charles Hamilton, Melanie's brother, in a misguided effort to get back at Ashley and Melanie.
Rhett Butler, a wealthy older bachelor and a societal pariah, overhears Scarlett express her love to Ashley during a barbecue at Twelve Oaks, the Wilkes' estate. Rhett admires Scarlett's willfulness and her departure from accepted propriety as well as her beauty. He pursues Scarlett, but is aware of her impetuousness, childish spite, and her fixation on Ashley. He assists Scarlett in defiance of proper Victorian mourning customs when her husband, Charles Hamilton, dies in a training camp. Rhett encourages her spirited behavior in Atlanta society. Scarlett, privately frustrated by the strict rules of polite society, finds friendship with Rhett liberating.
The Civil War sweeps away the lifestyle in which Scarlett was raised, and Southern society falls into ruin. Scarlett, left destitute after Sherman's army marches through Georgia, becomes the sole source of strength for her family. Her character begins to harden as her relatives, the family slaves and the Wilkes family look to her for protection from homelessness and starvation. Scarlett becomes money-conscious and more materialistic in her motivation to ensure that her family survives and Tara stays in her possession, while other Georgian plantation owners lose their homes. This extends to first offering herself as a mistress to Rhett; although after Rhett's rejection, Scarlett resorts to marrying her younger sister's beau, Frank Kennedy, investing in and starting a business herself, engaging in controversial business practices, and even exploiting convict labor in order to make her lumber business profitable. Her conduct results in the accidental death of Frank, and shortly after, she marries Rhett Butler for "fun" and because he is very wealthy. They have a little girl named Bonnie, but she dies from a horseback riding accident that leaves Rhett and Scarlett's relationship unstable.
Scarlett is too fixated on Ashley Wilkes to realize her pursuit of him is misdirected until the climax of the novel. With the death of Melanie Wilkes, she realizes her pursuit of Ashley was a childish romance, and she has loved Rhett Butler for some time. She pursues Rhett from the Wilkes home to their home, only to discover he has given up hope of ever receiving her love and is about to leave her. After telling him she loves him, he refuses to stay with her, which leads to the famous line in the movie, "Frankly, my dear, I don't give a damn." Wracked with grief but determined to win him back, Scarlett returns to Tara to regain her strength and create a plan to reunite with Rhett.
Common character analysis Scarlett's character, portrayed in both the novel and the 1939 film, is, at face value, unscrupulous and selfish, but her character development ultimately portrays multiple stigmas throughout that support Mitchell's theme. In a rare interview, Mitchell admitted the theme of the novel was “survival,” specifically shown through exploring human behavior in the face of the catastrophe of the Civil War. Decades later, literary critics and authors agree that Scarlett's revolution from a spoiled, wealthy girl—typical of her socioeconomic status—to becoming an independent woman in an unforgiving society and unstable economy is a testament to the development of Mitchell's character.
Lisa Bertagnoli, author of Scarlett Rules, compared Scarlett to a chameleon by morphing herself from a pampered girl to a "no-nonsense businesswoman responsible for feeding not only herself, but her extended family as well." Scarlett stands out in the novel because she alone, among her female peers, is the only one who survives and thrives despite Sherman's March through Atlanta, despite being widowed twice, despite being a woman in a patriarchal society. She was told "no" to almost every action she did to survive, by both societal standards and her female and male peers around her, such as marrying Frank Kennedy for money or even running a successful business, and in return, she told them "watch me" in the process.
Scarlett struggled with her status as a woman because of the standards of the "Southern Lady" invoked and shown at the beginning of the novel, and displayed throughout Scarlett's peers, embodied in Melanie Wilkes. However, this is clearly challenged by Scarlett because of the dire conditions she is meant to face and endure. Therefore, those standards of the "Southern Lady" are discarded because the standards do not meet her physical needs, nor are they useful to her physical survival. The essence of the public responsibility of being a "lady" is flagrantly disregarded because of her commitment to survival (Fox-Genovese, p. 400). Thus, she is ostracized from her peers. Scarlett does not uphold the same code of standards as she did in the beginning of the novel because her motivations changed from societal and class standings to economic status and physical survival.
Inspiration for the character
Margaret Mitchell used to say that her Gone with The Wind characters were not based on real people, although modern researchers have found similarities to some of the people in Mitchell's own life. Scarlett's upbringing resembled that of Mitchell's maternal grandmother, Annie Fitzgerald Stephens (1844–1934), who was raised predominantly Irish Catholic on Rural Home plantation near Jonesboro in Fayette, not unlike the O’Hara family. Mitchell was engaged three times, although only married twice. Her first engagement was to Clifford Henry, a bayonet instructor at Camp Gordon in World War I. He was killed overseas in October 1918 while fighting in France, similar to O’Hara and her first husband, Charles Hamilton. Mitchell's mother, Maybelle Stephens Mitchell, contracted influenza and died shortly before Mitchell could reach home, similar to Ellen O’Hara dying before Scarlett fled Atlanta. Rhett Butler is thought to be based on Mitchell's first husband, Red Upshaw, because Upshaw left Atlanta for the Midwest and never returned. Her second marriage was to John Robert Marsh, and they were married until her death in 1949.
In the 1939 film
Casting