The Real Scarlett O’Hara – Heroine Or Selfish Brat
Did you enjoy Gone With The Wind? In this post, we look at whether Scarlett O’Hara was a heroine or a selfish brat.
The Real Scarlett O’Hara – Heroine Or Selfish Brat
It’s amazing how one can change in a few years. The first time I saw the film, Gone With The Wind, I was in awe of Scarlett O’Hara and in love with Rhett Butler. I thought Ashley Wilkes was a wimp, and Melanie too soft for her own good. I thought Gone With The Wind was an epic love story. While I was, as I say, in awe of Scarlett O’Hara, I did think she was selfish and silly. It was her courage and independence, I think, that I admired. After all, she was so beautiful, did a little selfishness matter?
Today, I feel completely differently. I have come to view the book with a certain level of distaste, and Rhett and Scarlett with a deepening disgust.
What was Scarlett O’Hara really like?
Here are 7 terms often used to describe her compared to other ways to look at her attitudes and behaviour based on what other characters, or the narrator said or thought about her:
1. Beautiful vs Beauty is in the eye of the beholder.
Scarlett O’Hara was not beautiful, but men seldom realised it when caught by her charm as the Tarleton twins were.
2. Sassy vs Argumentative and demanding.
“My, my,” Frank thought helplessly. “She can get mad quicker and stay mad longer than any woman I saw.”…He only had to say ‘Sugar, if I were you, I wouldn’t—” and the tempest would break. … She had the temper of a Tartar and the rages of a wildcat and, at such times, she did not seem to care what she said or how much it hurt.
3. Courageous vs Determined to get her own way irrespective of who was hurt in the process. After Rhett refuses to give her a loan, Scarlett unexpectedly meets her sister Suellen’s fiancé, Frank Churchill. When she discovers that Frank is wealthy, and she needs money to pay taxes on Tara, she lies without compunction and tells Frank that her sister has married someone else.
4. Flirtatious vs Manipulative. She used people, men especially to get what she wanted.
That was a neat way of soothing a man’s vanity and yet keeping him on a string.
5. Knew what she wanted vs Everything she wanted was for selfish reasons.
- Ashley Wilkes – even though he loved and was married to someone else.
“But I never really loved Ashley!” [cried Scarlett]
“Then, you certainly gave a good imitation of it up till tonight.” [replied Rhett Butler]
- Money – although she claimed to want money to save Tara, it’s more than likely she wanted money for its own sake and to enrich her own life. When she married Rhett, she didn’t even think of Tara. She only went back there at the end because she had nowhere else to go.
“Ever since I’ve known you, you’ve wanted two things. Ashley and to be rich enough to tell the world to go to hell.” – Rhett Butler. - True love – She wanted adoration. People, especially men, fawning over her and doing her every bidding without demur. Basically, she wanted white, rich, male slaves who worshipped the ground she walked on and demanded nothing of her but gave her everything her heart desired.
“You’re so brutal to those who love you, Scarlett. You take their love and hold it over their heads like a whip.” – Rhett Butler.
6. Passionate vs A termagant, violent, quarrelsome, and had little to no control of her moods or her temper. It’s possible she was either a narcissist or bi-polar. But that feels like making excuses for her bad behaviour.
“You are just as capable now as then of throwing vases if you don’t get your own way. But you usually get your way now.” – Rhett Butler
7. Had a strong sense of self-worth vs Arrogant and completely self-obsessed.
At the end of the book, when she realised Ashley really had loved Melanie, and she had Melanie’s ‘permission’ to ‘take care of Ashley she no longer wanted him. A trait she’d always had.
For once she owned the earlobes, they lost their value, as everything except money lost its value once it was hers.
She now believed she loved Rhett. She ran back to him expecting him to be delighted to hear that she loved him. She was so self-obsessed that she had no inkling that Rhett couldn’t possibly want her anymore. Despite her protestations and declarations of love, her consistently selfish attitudes had finally led to the most famous line of the book. (It was changed slightly in the movie.)
“My dear, I don’t give a damn.” – Rhett Butler
So, Heroine or Spoilt Brat?
Gone With The Wind is certainly epic. It has memorable characters. But it’s two main characters are, in truth, not very likeable if not downright dislikable. The books politics are revealing, racist, founded on slavery and verging strongly extreme right-wing. Reading it again now just irritates me. I would love to hear other readers’ opinions on Scarlett O’Hara, but my vote is for spoilt brat.
The Last Word
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by Elaine Dodge. Author of The Harcourts of Canada series and The Device Hunter, Elaine trained as a graphic designer, then worked in design, advertising, and broadcast television. She now creates content, mostly in written form, including ghost writing business books, for clients across the globe, but would much rather be drafting her books and short stories.
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3 thoughts on “The Real Scarlett O’Hara – Heroine Or Selfish Brat”
So glad to hear this point of view! I don’t understand how this story is so beloved when it includes such appalling characters and behavior. It may be well written, but I certainly agree that Scarlett is a spoilt brat. I’ve thought that since I saw the movie for the first time when I was 7!
Thank you for your comment. I agree and think it’s a case of ‘once you see it (her appalling behaviour) you can’t unsee it! But until then she can come across as ‘survivor’ and ‘a woman who knows what she wants’. I’m now actually glad Rhett abandoned her. It might have been the making of her into a decent human being. Sadly, we’ll never know if that was the author’s intention, but I doubt it was.
Elaine Dodge asks a bold question in her recent piece: Was Scarlett O’Hara a heroine—or just a selfish brat? It’s a provocative take, and while I respect the impulse to challenge romanticized characters, I believe there’s much more to unpack—particularly when it comes to historical context, character complexity, and the life of the woman who created her.
When Margaret Mitchell began writing Gone with the Wind in the mid-1920s, the world around her was undergoing tremendous change. The First World War had ended not long before. The role of women was shifting. The South—already scarred by the Civil War—was caught between nostalgia and modernization. Mitchell herself was no traditional woman. She was outspoken, often rebellious, and never quite fit the mold society expected of her. It’s no coincidence she created a character like Scarlett.
Scarlett is far from perfect. She lies, manipulates, and schemes. She’s short-sighted, selfish, and sometimes cruel. But she’s also a survivor. She adapts. She fights for her home, her family, and her place in a world that keeps shifting under her feet. That doesn’t make her a saint—but it does make her human.
What I think gets missed in Dodge’s analysis is the emotional and historical weight that shaped Scarlett’s character. Margaret Mitchell didn’t set out to write a flawless heroine—she set out to explore why some people survive and others don’t. She even said that was the novel’s core question. Scarlett isn’t always likable, but she is unforgettable. She isn’t admirable in every way, but she is undeniably resilient.
Scarlett doesn’t fit neatly into modern ideas of likability or morality, and that’s precisely what makes her important. She’s not an icon of virtue; she’s a reflection of survival, grit, and unapologetic ambition in a world that demanded women be passive and pleasing.
Mitchell once said, “If the novel has a theme, it is that of survival. What makes some people come through catastrophes and others, apparently just as able, strong, and brave, go under?” That question feels deeply personal—not theoretical. Scarlett is the answer she explored. Scarlett isn’t Margaret Mitchell, but she is Mitchell’s question, her mirror, her tension—and perhaps, her reckoning.
A Few Key Points About Margaret Mitchell That Reflect in Gone with the Wind:
1. Mitchell was fiercely independent—and a bit of a rebel.
She defied gender expectations early in life. She smoked, danced in speakeasies, rode horses astride instead of sidesaddle, and read voraciously. At a time when women were expected to be quiet and proper, Mitchell was sharp-witted, unconventional, and often controversial.
Reflection in Scarlett: Scarlett’s refusal to conform—her drive to do business, work the fields, and claim what she wants—mirrors Mitchell’s own defiance of the “Southern lady” ideal.
2. She lived through great societal upheaval.
Born in 1900 in Atlanta, Mitchell grew up hearing firsthand Civil War stories from aging veterans and Southern women who had lived through Reconstruction. Her family included strong, survival-driven women. She also lived through WWI, the Spanish Flu pandemic, and the rise of the women’s suffrage movement.
Reflection in the novel: The theme of survival at all costs—one of the book’s most quoted ideas—echoes the women in Mitchell’s life and the crises she witnessed firsthand.
3. She experienced grief, loss, and emotional intensity.
Mitchell’s first fiancé died in WWI. Her early marriage to Red Upshaw was turbulent—he was unstable and abusive. Later, her second husband, John Marsh, encouraged her to write while she was bedridden with an ankle injury.
Reflection in the story: Scarlett’s romantic confusion, her fixation on Ashley, her blindness to Rhett, and her profound losses all carry the emotional weight of a woman who loved, lost, and struggled to understand her own heart.
4. She never considered herself a “writer.”
Mitchell claimed she wrote Gone with the Wind as a personal project, never intending it to be published. She was intensely private and uncomfortable with fame, even after the book’s success.
Reflection in the novel: There’s an unfiltered honesty in the way the story portrays human flaws—often the mark of someone writing from a personal, unguarded place rather than aiming to impress.
That complexity becomes even more poignant when you consider how the novel came into being. Gone with the Wind was her first and only novel. She began writing it in 1926, while recovering from a serious ankle injury. Friends had teased her for reading so much but never writing, and in response, her husband brought home a typewriter. Out of boredom and frustration, she began typing scenes—not in order, but as they came to her. She started with the final chapter and built the rest like puzzle pieces over the next several years.
She didn’t talk much about the manuscript. She quietly tucked the pages away in drawers, envelopes, and boxes, unsure if they’d ever be worth sharing. It wasn’t until 1935, when a visiting publisher casually asked about her work, that she reluctantly handed over the disorganized stack of pages—still uncertain, still insecure about whether they were good enough.
And yet, that “drawer novel” went on to win the Pulitzer Prize and become one of the most enduring works in American literature.
That kind of background seeps into a story. Scarlett’s heartbreak, her contradictions, her iron will—they aren’t just plot devices. They reflect the woman behind the words: passionate, conflicted, deeply private, and burning with questions about what it means to endure.
Gone with the Wind is not without problems. It reflects the time in which it was written and the biases of that world. That doesn’t mean we excuse its flaws—but it does mean we should read it with care, not condemnation. Literature isn’t always meant to comfort us. Sometimes it holds up a mirror, showing us things we’d rather not see, or reminding us how much things have—and haven’t—changed.
Scarlett O’Hara isn’t ideal. But she is real. And in literature, as in life, that’s often what makes someone worth remembering.
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