Ashley Wilkes is one of the reasons that Scarlett's life was such a mess. He loved Melanie, who was 'the only dream he had that lived and breathed and never died in the face of reality'. (She was also his cousin, which is kind of weird!) And, although he really loved Melly, he led Scarlett to believe that he loved her. Actually, I think that he also led himself to believe the same thing.
Ashley Wilkes was played by Leslie Howard in the film. Howard was reluctant to play the part, for it was the type of person he got no joy out of playing. Ashley was a dreamer, someone who never could take real life. He should have been born either before or after the war, for he was not strong enough to face it, and did not have the pride not to hide behind figures in petticoats and hooped skirts.
Leslie Howard died during WWII when the Germans bombed the airplane that he was on.
Ashley Wilkes was in a large portion of the movie, yet is terribly hard to write about. He never did any courageous or unselfish deed, he never saved a life, he never was brave. Some may argue about this, for I am being terribly hard and judgemental. But to look at it a different way, without Ashley, the book and film would not have been interesting. Scarlett would not have met Rhett Butler if it had not been for him. She would not have married Charles Hamilton, or Frank Kennedy. She married Charles just to get back at Ashley for marrying Melanie, and she married Frank so Ashley would not have to do anything unrespectable to save Tara. So, although Ashley is hard to write about, he did have an impotant role to play in "Gone With the Wind".
I was at the now non-existent Scarlett Fever bulletin boards when I saw an essay on Ashley Wilkes. It was so incredibly good, (because CAIRO wrote it!) that I decided to post it here for all of you to read. It is what I think of Ashley, too, but I couldn't put it into words as nicely as Cairo does.
Ashley is a tragic character, but he's not the pathetic loser many people seem to think. We tend to misjudge him because it's so hard to separate the book from the movie.
Most of us saw the movie before we ever read the book, and when reading the book we tend to judge the characters in terms of the way they were portrayed in the movie. Is it possible to read about Scarlett and not see Vivien Leigh, or to read the words of Rhett and not hear Clark Gable's voice? I hardly think so. And so we see Ashley of the book in the light of Ashley of the movie, and this is unfortunate because Leslie Howard was the wrong choice for the role.
Now Howard was a marvelous actor, and we're all sentimental about the people who appear in the movie. We recognize and respect their contributions. But even so, LH was wrong for the role.
For one thing he was too old, and it shows. Gable was too old to be Rhett, but he was such an incredible actor that he made it work anyway, and work superbly well. But with LH it doesn't work. For another thing LH's cultured English elegance was perfect for a Belgravia drawing room, but out of place in Clayton County Georgia. And most importantly, LH's style was best suited to playing forceful, dynamic men like Sir Percy Blakeney (The Scarlet Pimpernel) or Professor Henry Higgins (Pygmalion). In trying to capture an unnatural (for him) character like Ashley he overcompensates and creates a particularly anemic persona.
So what was Ashley really like? A thoughtful, scholarly man. A dreamer, yes. A man inclined to retreat from unpleasant realities, especially realities that appear insoluble. But also a man with fire in his spirit, even if only a flicker, and steel in his backbone when necessary.
Ashley is braver than the other young bucks of "The Troop". They rush off to war expecting a Summertime lark of high adventure, but Ashley goes knowing the war can only mean death and misery. Even the impetuous hotheads respect his judgment and abilities and elect him Captain. And Ashley's "hot anger" flares fast enough when Grandpa Merriwether insults him for rationally expounding a case for ratifying the 15th Amendment.
Was Ashley a defeated man, broken by the war? Yes, but the war was not some little thing, easily shrugged off. It took a catastrophe of horrific and devastating magnitude to bring him down. Could he have made a new life of his own without Scarlett's help? Yes, he arranged the offer of the banking position in New York by himself. Not as good as what Scarlett provided for him in Atlanta, but his own doing.
Was he a good husband, a good man for a woman? Absolutely. Melanie knew him all her life, understood him and married him willingly. We can trust Melanie on this point. The fact that she loved him deeply is as fine a recommendation as he could have had.
Tragic, yes. Pathetic, no. Defeated, yes, but still a good man. Not a man who could win a bitter war or build a new South on the ruins of the old. But still, if the South had had more like him, more voices of sense and reason, it wouldn't had seceeded in the first place. And the whole tragedy of war and destruction could have been avoided. That's the real Ashley.