To think that Scarlett's first 2 children are one of the most overlooked bits of Gone With The Wind?

[Jane379]

I was rereading it a few days ago and it struck me how at the end, Scarlett is totally focused on getting Rhett back, nothing else. What happens to poor Wade & Ella afterwards are anyone's guess - especially as Melanie has died and Rhett seems to have checked out, and they were previously acting as surrogate parents. I suppose Mammy would probably end up looking after them?
It's hardly Scarlett's fault that she was expected to have kids despite no desire to, but she should have treated them better once they were born. I think the film toned down her attitude to them a lot, probably because it was seen as too shocking and damaged her heroine sstatus.A retelling in retrospect by Wade or Ella would be an interesting spin-off idea...

Rhett seems a pretty negative parental figure too, I think he's often assessed too positively & romanticised. Unbelievable he had Bonnie jumping like that at only 4,..the whole thing with him & Bonnie was weird, at the end he essentially says he treated her as a substitute for Scarlett.

AIBU?

Totally agree. Scarlett is my favourite heroine of all time. I've always wanted to be as strong, resourceful and resilient as her. She never ever gives up. Tomorrow is another day 💪🏻

Scarlett's relationship with Melanie is very complicated. On the one hand she hates her, but on the other hand she secretly admires her and is envious of her decorum and social status. Melanie is the only person in the whole world who stood by Scarlett and on whom Scarlett could rely regardless of how bad her behaviour was. Melanie was her only true friend who never let her down. I feel like Melanie was the only person who saw the good in Scarlett - her vivaciousness and resilience and ability to survive no matter what. Without Melanie Scarlett had absolutely no one on her side. That's why she felt Malanie's loss so deeply.

Melanie was definitely not just an inconvenience to Scarlett. Without her she was completely on her own with no one to protect her. Plus, Melanie was a lot like her mother whom she adored and wanted to be like.

They both get from each other don't they both have qualities that complement each other .
Rhett sees scarlet as a real and interesting person unlike the simpering southern belles alla round .

It's strongly implied. Belle tells Melanie that she has a little boy but he's at boarding school, and she clearly has a sexual relationship with Rhett. When Scarlett has Bonnie, people commiserate that it's not a boy but Rhett gets a dark look on his face and says boys are nothing but trouble, he'd much rather have a girl.

Scarlett is strong, resourceful, a survivor, you have to admire her even if you don't like her. But Melly is the true heart of it. She has a different kind of strength to Scarlett but it's definitely strength and Scarlett does see it.

@ThatCyanCat Rhett has a son but in South America I think. I don't think Belle's son was Rhett's.

I think he was, but the book isn't specific. Only Mitchell knew for sure.

I think there's a scene where Melanie's son is shown playing but there's no girl. Wade and Ella are definitely not in film and I should know, I must've watched it two dozen times as a teenager!

No, Wade and Ella are written out of the film. Beau is in it but he's critical to the plot to get Melly pregnant and ill. A lot of characters never made it to the film. I do think it's a shame that film Suellen never got her Will Benteen. Can't say I miss Archie although he certainly served a purpose in the book.

Weak and let's face it, he wanted to sleep with Scarlett, she says as much herself in the book when she tells him he only wanted her "like Rhett wants that Watling woman".

I'm one of the people who thinks Leslie Howard was miscast - Ashley is meant to be what? 21? And LH was well into his 40s. He was older than Hattie McDaniel!

Howard agreed, actually. He thought he was too old for the role and really had to be persuaded into it. His performance was great though.

I'd be interested to know who else was in line for the role of Ashley.

Scarlett's treatment of her children reveals a great deal about who she is, as well as reflecting some of the typical attitudes towards childrearing in both the historical period in which the book is set and the era in which it was written.

What about Melly? I thought she was a very loving mother to her children and kind to Scarlet’s children.

It's interesting that it's a classic US film about major events in US history - yet three of the four main stars were British! Although Olivia De H. had lived in the US since she was a small child.

I absolutely LOVE the Tarleton brothers in the book and everything about them and it's such a shame they're only a tiny afterthought in the film. I think Scarlett would have been happy had she married one of the Tarleton brothers. They had a lot more in common with her than Ashley or even the older more worldly Rhett.

Scarlett especially is such an American character - it's funny that a British actress captured her so perfectly. I think Vivien Leigh's performance is the most amazing performance by an actress of all time.

Yes, Scarlett’s so envious of someone who can be genuinely virtuous in keeping with the values of the time. She would love to embody the virtues her mother symbolises but she isn’t really like that so whenever she wants to look good she has to lie and plot.
Melly admires Scarlett’s strength and straightforwardness.
There’s something at the heart of Scarlett’s personal progress that is centred on authenticity and the value of your relationships with people who really love you despite your flaws, and maybe even admire traits that you take for granted or don’t value.

BTW can I ask what Helen Forrester novel it was? I read Twopence To Cross The Mercy recently and would love to read more of hers.
When you say DV was shrugged off, was this more by the narrator, or the characters in the novel?

I think it was Liverpool Daisy, which is about a woman who works as a prostitute.

I would say by both. It’s interesting because I never get the impression forrester condones or dismisses domestic violence or any of the other societal ills permeating wherever you find poverty (I know abuse within the home isn’t just linked with poverty) but she is a realist; she knows the area she’s writing about and she knows what the attitudes are. And in order to invite the reader into that time and place she has to immerse them in those attitudes. I suppose it is similar with GWTW; it’s pointless having a narrator who is repulsed by the KKK and wants the slaves to be awarded their freedom.

This is a great thread though, thanks @Jane379

Yes! Will Benteen is one of my favourite characters - I think he’s just brilliant. And I agree re Archie, too. I understand that he’s sort of ‘useful’ in the book but I loathed him.

I wish they’d been able to have Scarlett’s talk with Grandma Fontaine in the film, although from what I remember that too is an exercise in frustration because Scarlett doesn’t really get it! I haven’t read it for a while, though, so may be misremembering.

Scarlett is definitely a flawed character who has extremely negative traits, as well as some positive features. As I wrote elsewhere in this thread, that is one aspect of the novel that I appreciate most. It is far too easy to create flat (and essentially boring) characters who are either entirely good or completely evil. Complexity is much more difficult to pull off and Mitchell certainly succeeds IMO. I wish we saw more characters like this in contemporary literature and especially cinema.

Anna Karenina is also a flawed character, though I would argue not as flawed as Scarlett. One of the ironies of her fate is that she lives in a society that accepts infidelity as long as it is carried out within certain boundaries, but Anna is fundamentally too honest to adhere to this hypocrisy. Her brother Stiva is a good example of a cheerfully amoral person who can navigate the rules of society and succeed despite being habitually unfaithful to his wife, though as a man he also has somewhat more leeway than Anna.

To return to the original topic of this thread, I think it is interesting to compare Scarlett and Anna as mothers. Anna is devoted to her son until she meets Vronsky and their affair begins. Then she abandons her son and later neglects her daughter. For Tolstoy, Anna's failures as a mother are far worse than her infidelity (and I agree with him). I don't think that Mitchell judges Scarlett as harshly for her emotional distance from her first two children.

And he was too weak to tell her that he loved Melanie all along. (Melanie deserved better, really).

I thought Ashley did love Scarlet - what about the scene when he’s splitting logs at Tara and she tells him she loves her and he kisses her and then pulls himself together:
“We won’t do this!” he said. “I tell you we won’t do it!”

He was very attracted to her physically and wanted to sleep with her. He never loved her.

Anna Karenina is a terrible mother in my view - abandoning her son for a lover. I don't think Tolstoy liked any of the three main characters in Anna Karenina. Her, her husband and Vronsky are all very flawed in their own ways and Tolstoy is not kind to either of them. He only liked Levin (whom I found insufferable but it's a typical Tolstoy moralist like you have in War and Peace).

Melanie appealed to his head and heart. Scarlett appealed to... other parts of his anatomy.

It's a bit more than pure physical lust, I think. In a sense he does love her too; he admires her energy, her will to live, her proactive, resourceful and driven nature. Everything he's not. But he also knows they'd be an absolutely miserable pairing, and his love for Melanie is the stuff proper marriages are made of.