Scarlett O'Hara was the high spirited heroine of "Gone With the Wind", portrayed in the movie by the beautiful Vivien Leigh. To quote directly from my reference material:

"Scarlett was shrewd, stubborn, calculating, acquisitive, self-centered, and not particularly bright or beautiful. But she had courage, loyalty of sorts, and an amazing single-mindedness and resiliency which makes her able to survive anything. She rises above a war, Reconstruction, the Ku Klux Klan, attempted rape, miscarriage, and any other number of misfortunes which were set against an engrossing and complex historical background, giving the story its epic qualities and a compelling narrative thrust."

Margaret Mitchell says, in the first few paragraphs of her novel:

"Scarlett O'Hara was not beautiful, but men seldom realized it when caught by her charm as the Tarleton twins were. In her face were too sharply blended the delicate features of her mother, a Coast aristocrat of French descent, and the heavy ones of her florid Irish father. But it was an arresting face, pointed of chin, square of jaw. Her eyes were pale green without a touch of hazel, starred with bristly black lashes and slightly tilted at the ends. Above them, her thick black brows slanted upward, cutting a startling oblique line in her magnolia-white skin . . ."

"Her new green flowered-muslin dress spread its twelve yards of billowing material over her hoops and exactly matched the flat-heeled green morocco slippers her father had recently brought her from Atlanta. The dress set off to perfection the seventeen-inch waist, the smallest in three counties . . . But for all the modesty of her spreading skirts, the demureness of hair netted smoothly into a chignon and the quietness of small white hands folded in her lap, her true self was poorly concealed. The green eyes in the carefully sweet face was turbulent, willful, lusty with life, distinctly at variance with her decorous demeanor. Her manners had been imposed on her by her mother's gentle admonitions and the sterner discipline of her mammy; her eyes were her own."

Scarlett is a flirt and a tease, being outwardly for the first part of the book what a Belle should be . . . until what I call "The Library Love Scene". She declares her love for Ashley Wilkes on the day when his engagement to his cousin, Melanie Hamilton, was to be announced. When he refuses to marry her in his own gentle, weak way, she marries her first husband, Charles Hamilton, to show him that she didn't care. Unfortunately for her, Rhett Butler, the Scallawag and all around bad guy who was not received even by his own family overheard her.

Because the war was coming, she and Charles were married after a very short engagement period, and within two months of going to war, Charles died from an attack of measles following pneumonia. Wade Hampton Hamitlon was born afterward, named after Charles' commanding officer.

Scarlett went to Atlanta to live with her Aunt Pittypat Hamitlon and Melanie, whose husband Ashley was at war. Scarlett felt that she was "too young" to be a widow, and hates the confinement that comes with it. A passage of the novel shows her feelings:

"She was at the bazaar but not a part of it. No one paid her any attention and she was the only young unmarried woman present who did not have a beau. And all her life she had enjoyed the center of the stage. It wasn't fair! She was seventeen years old and her feet were patting the floor, wanting to skip and dance. She was seventeen years old and she had a husband lying at Oakland Cemetery and a baby in his cradle at Aunt Pittypat's and everyone thought she should be content with her lot. She had a whiter bosom and a smaller waist and a tinier foot than any girl present, but all for all they mattered she might just as well be lying beside Charles with "Beloved Wife of" carved over her.

"She wasn't a girl who could dance and flirt and she wasn't a wife who could sit with other wives and criticize the dancing and flirting girls. And she wasn't old enough to be a widow. Widows should be old -- so terribly old they didn't want to dance and flirt and be admired. Oh, it wasn't fair that she should have to sit here primly and be the acme of widowed dignity and propriety when she was only seventeen. It wasn't fair that she must keep her voice low and her eyes cast modestly down, when men, attractive ones, too, came to their booth."

Since Scarlett wasn't in love with Charles when she married him she did not feel that mourning was necessary. She eventually discarded her widow's weeds.

Scarlett saw Rhett during the Civil War quite often. He was a frequent caller at Aunt Pittypat's even when no other family would let him through their doors. When Atlanta fell to Sherman, Rhett was the one who helped get Scarlett, Prissy, Melanie and her newborn baby Beau out of town on time, but abandoned them to enlist on the road to Tara.

Scarlett's second husband was one that she loved no more than her first. She married him during the Reconstruction period, since the Carpetbaggers that had come after the war wanted $300 in taxes on Tara. She extracted the money from him, and led him a hard life. He was shot during a raid on Shantytown, where Scarlett had been attacked.

The night Frank died, Rhett proposed. He teased that he couldn't wait forever to "catch" Scarlett "between husbands". Scarlett married Rhett, and thus history was made.

Of course, I have left many details out. To find out more about this fascinating character, read the novel, or watch the movie!