Isn't the ending of Gone With The Wind kind of dumb?

Frankly my dear. I don't give a damn.

Yeah, that's the problem with the story

That book hadn't come out yet, so women didn't have a clue.

I always thought Scarlet was a screen heroine. Then when I finally saw the movie I realized she was just a neurotic gash.

It's been a while since I've seen it, but as I recall Ashley may have suggested to Scarlett's impressionable and flighty heart that his passion was for Scarlet but that he was honor bound to Melanie. Scarlet doesn't get that Ashley's feelings for Melanie are consummate until the end of the story.

Scarlet was a bipolar mess.

She thought Ashley was playing hard to get.

Ashley made a lot of flattering smarmy speeches to Scarlett about how he was unworthy of Scarlett, and how wonderful she was. He made it sound like he married Melanie because Wilkses always married their cousins. In other words, he would have loved to get together with Scarlett but he was stuck with Mellie. It makes you realize the so-called "romantic" Ashley was just another married guy badmouthing his wife.

Scarlett talked a tough game, but she grew up sheltered and didn't understand Ashley was just being two faced. I'm sure at the same time he was telling Mellie she was his one true love and Scarlett was just a skank.

Rhett realized Scarlett was just being taken in by an asshole. Unfortunately he couldn't get through to her, because attacking somebody that somebody likes gets you nowhere. Rhett was smart enough that he could have convinced her of the truth if he really tried. He preferred to be bitter because a sheltered dummy didn't understand what was going on, and nobody would explain it.

I like Butterfly McQueen. She was sweet.

(burned to death you know)

SPOILERS! OP.

The first line of the book:

Scarlett O'Hara was not beautiful

So who do they cast for the movie? One of the most beautiful women of the 20th Century.

I knew from the start that nothing would add up in this tale of The War of Northern Aggression.

The story that is screaming to be told is the tragic tale of Belle Watling. Now there was a true woman of the South!

I always though Ashley was being too gentlemanly to completely lower the boom on Scarlett, so he strung her along by default. That said, he wasn't that great a catch. He was too weak for Scarlett. I was completely addicted to this movie as a kid (my own dialing the phone with a pencil) and always thought Scarlett was an idiot for getting rid of Rhett for a fantasy that was never going to happen. Then hormones kicked in and I realized how much I would have given up to be with my crush who would never have me.

I liked your comment R7.

Lucy auditioned

Scarlett is a total bitch; that's what carries the movie. (You wouldn't want to spend four hours with a goody two-shoes, would you?) She's a greedy, manipulative alcoholic who is also frigid, right up to the moment Rhett Butler, um, "sexually assaults" her in the staircase scene. She's not ready to hear that the remote, evasive Ashley doesn't love her until she's finally ready to fall in love with Rhett. And then it's too late: she's been a bitch for too long, so Rhett walks out on her.

Of course, the movie also suggests that simpering Melanie and Ashley aren't completely lovely people themselves. In the early scenes in the movie, Ashley isn't completely emphatic about getting rid of Scarlett; his behavior seems a bit ambiguous. Apparently Hamilton based him on a gay cousin she adored, which, to me, makes the character easier to understand: he's deeply flattered by Scarlett's attentions, but can't respond to them; instead, he prefers to be married to a woman who doesn't want to have sex with him.

Well, at least WE were given a very fair shake in the movie!

Her corset was on too tight. Restricted blood flow to the noggin.

Ashley was the heir to 12 Oaks. He was exactly the kind of man that Scarlet was raised to BELIEVE she should marry.

Yes, R16, plus she believed she should marry someone kind, cultured and romantic, even those were qualities she actually despised.

If Scarlet seems to be a bundle of contradictions, it's largely because her basic personality is at odds with the culture around her - or at least that's how she grew up. As the culture around her changed her true nature and real priorities emerged, her love for Ashley was the last of her girlhood illusions to go. Her admiration for honor, gentility, and good Southern hypo racy were already long gone.

Ashley loved Scarlet but love Mel in a different way. It was the difference between erotic passion and the love that makes and keeps a family going. Ashley was too noble to succumb to Scarlet for a lifetime. And his guilt over his split feelings and secret desire reached a peak with Melanie's illness and death.

Among ALL the issues, THIS is what is a mess?

[quote]Was she suffering from alzheimers

She was. Don't you remember the scene where she traveled to Atlanta for an MRI? She was diagnosed shortly after. They sometime cut those scenes for TV, though.

It's kind of amazing that a book / movie that been around for ages and ages still has a central love triangle that there is no consensus on.

Was Rhett the father of Belle Watling's son? He and Belle went back a long way.

Yes, R21.

Ashley Wilkes was a queen. But no judgment.

No, he deliberately misled her.

She accuses him of not loving Melanie. He does not deny it and he does indicate he loves Scarlett.

In a book I'm reading about the novel, It says two 13 year old girls offered the author two sequel ideas. One where Scarlett has amnesia. Or one where Rhett has amnesia.

What's the book called, R25?

R26, It's called Margaret Mitchell's Gone With the Wind. A Bestsellers Odyssey from Atlanta to Hollywood. by Brown and Wiley. It's on Amazon.

Thanks!

Both of those sequel ideas sound like pretty typical teen fan fiction, r25

"Wasn't he basically telling her that over and over again for four hours before that? Was she suffering from alzheimers or was she just not the brightest girl around?"

No, he never actually said to Scarlett: "I love Melanie, not you. I'm fond of you and I'm sexually attracted to you, but I don't love you. I love Melanie. So lay off!" Ashley just kept talking about "honor" and doing the right thing. Scarlett was incredibly dense; she thought Ashley was just staying with Melanie out of a sense of duty and that he really loved HER. Which is why she's angry at Ashley at the end; if he had told her flat out, once and for all, that he loved Melanie but not her their lives would have been much different. Scarlett has no understanding of other human beings at all; you have to beat her over the head to get her to realize what's obvious. That's one of Scarlett's major failings: her lack of empathy.

The book does a better job at making clear what happens at the end. First of all, we get the picture pretty early on that Scarlett's fixation on Ashley is only physical. When Scarlett sees how Ashley reacts to Mellie's death she suddenly realizes what everyone had been telling her all along is true: Ashley is a weakling. He is stuck in the past and was never right for her. He was a man who, although she was physically attracted to him, she could never really respect. He is the polar opposite of Rhett, a man who was closer to her in spirit and drive. This realization comes right after another big epiphany: how much she loved and treasured Melanie. Melanie stood by Scarlett through thick and thin, defended her when everyone else would put her down. Melanie was the one person who was closest to only woman Scarlett admired, her mother.

OP, what R5 said.

"You're a fool Rhett Butler, when you know I shall always love another man!"

THE MOVIE IS CRAP

Props though to that episode where Will Gardner (or somebody else) says: I don't give a damn.

Margaret Mitchell wrote the last chapter first. She wanted to show a woman who, through her impulses and bad decision making, had lost everything. She then went back and wrote the other 1,000 pages to explain how Scarlett got there.

She's not the Scarlett I knew and its not the film I envisaged.

All little girls should have ponies!

[quote]to show a woman who, through her impulses and bad decision making, had lost everything.

Except money -- this was to bring the tale in line with the Biblical warning about gaining the world world but losing your soul.

R39, in the last scene with Rhett he asks Scarlett her age and remarks that 28 is awfully young to have gained the world and lost her soul.

"First of all, we get the picture pretty early on that Scarlett's fixation on Ashley is only physical."

Uh, no. Ashley is good-looking but that's not why Scarlett wants him. Scarlett is pursued by a lot of attractive men, but she's besotted with Ashley because he's, well, different. He's as good at shooting and riding and hunting and drinking and gambling as any other man, but he's not that interested in those pursuits. He likes art and music and literature, which is considered very unusual. He's mysterious; he's a challenge for Scarlett. But the main reason she wanted Ashley was because she couldn't have him. At the end of the novel she thinks to herself that if she'd ever had him at her mercy like all of her other beaus she would have lost interest in him immediately. But his talk of honor and unwillingness to lay it on the line that he loved Melanie and not her kept her "dangling" all those years.

Should have pulled the plug at the Intermission mark.

It's all downhill after:

[quote]As God is my witness, as God is my witness they're not going to lick me. I'm going to live through this and when it's all over, I'll never be hungry again. No, nor any of my folk. If I have to lie, steal, cheat or kill. As God is my witness, I'll never be hungry again.

I always thought she didn't try hard enough to keep Rhett. She should have slipped her knickers of and told him to get her pregnant with Bonnie Blu 2

Ashley was gay, gay, gay. He married homely Melanie. He worked better as Scarlett's gay BFF.

It would have been a much better film had it ended at the intermission.

Wasn't Leslie Howard miscast as Ashley?

Bless her heart, but Scarlett was never known for being the sharpest knife in the sideboard knife box.

The book lists more of her unwise choices.

Blame it on the Georgia humidity that fogs the brain.

[quote] It would have been a much better film had it ended at the intermission.

Apparently when the film was issued on a double-sided DVD many people had no idea that they have to flip the disc over at the intermission to continue watching the film and thought that was the actual ending of the movie.

I reread the novel last year thanks to one of these threads.

What’s interesting is that this is the story of ordinary women, as neither of them are particularly intelligent. Melanie is a lot less beatific. I blame her film portrayal on Olivia De Havilland’s sickly sweet smiles. Melanie is a decent and very naive girl who is often scared but makes sensible choices. One of these is latching onto Scarlett . You see more how she needs Scarlett emotionally to survive. In the film her reliance on Scarlett seems mostly physical, but it’s also intellectual and emotional.

As said upthread the ONLY things Scarlett has any sentiment for are her mother, Tara and Ashley. Scarlett is the one who offers up her wedding ring first at the auction - and while in the movie it is changed to show Mellie’s selflessness vs Scarlett’s vanity, it makes more sense that Scarlett would give away Charles’ ring. She didn’t love him, he’s gone, she has nothing else to donate - it makes pure sense to her. Where as Mellie’s love for Ashley is strong and intense and more her dedication to the Cause - it would never occur to Mellie to donate her wedding ring because like most happily married women it is a physical embodiment of Ashley’s love for her. As Melanie says in the film the ring does more for her husband off her finger than on, but that notion doesn’t even seem like a possibility until she sees Scarlett give away her ring, and Melanie, of course, thinks Scarlett thinks of dumbass Charles the way she does her husband.

So is it implied that Belle's kid at boarding school is Rhett's bastard child?

The book delves into the role of family name and background. The location, inland Georgia, was also important. Scarlett 's father would never have been accepted in Savannah or Charleston, he was Irish. As it was, where they lived was practically Hicksville, so it didn't matter as much. Scarlett 's mother had the lineage to smooth that over, ie Scarlett 's acceptance in Atlanta society (initially anyway). Ashley could've lived in those snobby coastal cities, he had a refined background. It made him stand out from the other county lads who had no use for higher education.

It was a sad note when Ellen was dying of fever, she cried out "Phillippe" but no one knew what she meant except for Mammy and she wasn't going to talk. Was that in the movie? i forget.

R51 no Scarlett's mum was already dead when she got home in the movie. They cut so much out for the sake of time.

You're all wrong. Scarlett only wanted Ashley because she knew she couldn't have him. You always want what you can't have. Once Melanie dies and he becomes available, she's like "Well, fuck this shit! I'm out! ". Then she thinks of Rhett because she knows she's pushed him to the point of no return. AH! After all the shit she put this man through, she now knows that now she cannot have him. So, NOW she wants him.

Scarlett was a horny slag after Rhett pleasures her. Such a pity it was a one off

They also left out a of Scarlett's other kids. She had 3 or 4 between Charles and Frank whom she treated as inconveniences and ignored.

[quote] r53, I always thought that after the novel what really happened was she did marry Ashley./ He always wanted to fuck her and they were both free then.

Too bad for that speeding car in Atlanta (THUD!), or maybe Margaret Mitchell would have one day written a sequel.

She had a meek and timid boy with Charles - Wade Hampton Hamilton, and Ella Lorena Kennedy with Frank. Ella may have been partially retarded due to Scarlett's liking for booze during her pregnancy.

That spoilt bitch Bonnie Blue was with Rhett

[quote]They also left out a of Scarlett's other kids. She had 3 or 4 between Charles and Frank whom she treated as inconveniences and ignored.

Scarlett ate them when times got tough. She meant it when she said she never go hungry again.

I think it's kind of normal. A marriage ends.

It would be interesting to get the stories of Belle and the two sisters Scarlett fucked over. Maybe someone could even rewrite the story from their perspectives along with Mammy. Hell, throw in India too.

Wide Sargasso Sea was written from the perspective of Rochester's crazy wife in the attic so why not GWTW?

I wouldn't want to see anything rewritten from so and sos perspective because the author would infuse modern day morals, ethics, and sensibilities on to these ancient characters and it wouldn't be any fun.

There was a book called The Wind Done Gone which came out about the time that Mitchell’s estate were pushing one of their authorised novels. It’s about one of Mammy’s daughters and features a gay Ashley who was secretly in love with Charles.

I read it as a teen and vastly preferred to Scarlett and Rhett’s People.

I want a 1000 page novel from Suellen's POV.

[quote]Hell, throw in India too.

India Wilkes is one of my favorite characters.

Alicia Rhett played her in the film. She had originally tested for Melanie and for about five minutes was rumored for Scarlett.

Ashley Wilkes was a wishy-washey effete mess that didn't have the balls to tell Scarlet O'Hara to piss off. In his way by not being a man about things he lead Scarlet on and she wanting to see what she wanted, didn't finally get the message until Melanie died.

Ending makes sense because Scarlet spent entire film chasing after Ashley in the process ruining her reputation, causing death of one husband (even if inadvertently), giving false hope to another (who ended up dying of measles anyway) , and in general behaving like the spoilt brat that she was.

Rhett Butler was the man she loved and truly was best suited; but Scarlet was so busy lusting and chasing after Ashley to realize. By end of film Scarlet has lost her child, finally sees Ashley for the weak pathetic man he always was, and wants to make things up to Rhett. " I don't give a damn" which was strong words for a film then, really should have been "I don't give a flying fuck"...

All through GWTW Scarlett schemes, connives, and twists men around her finger to get what she wanted. Most women (especially Mammy) had her number in spades, and Rhett was immune to her tricks.

[quote]Maybe someone could even rewrite the story from their perspectives along with Mammy.

Several years ago, the Mitchell estate released RUTH'S JOURNEY by Donald McCaig, who had previously written RHETT BUTLER'S PEOPLE. It recounts Mammy's backstory and the events of GONE WITH THE WIND from her point of view.

R62 THE WIND DONE GONE is parody and not canon, unlike SCARLETT and RHETT BUTLER'S PEOPLE,, which were both authorized by the Mitchell estate.

R42/R45 I've always thought so! At the end of Part 1, Tara is in ruins and the family is destitute. However, it ends on an optimistic note. Part 2 is so anticlimactic. It drags and Scarlett becomes even more insufferable, it is difficult to root for her. The ending seems hopeful but she's really delusional. I almost never watch Part 2.

If I were Scarlett, I would have spent the rest of my life fucking all the field hands. Fiddlee-Dee!

I'm sure this will lead to the second time I'm called an old white f*g on here tonight, but I just watched the movie- it feels apropos right now, we all just need to do what we can to survive.

Mary.

OK, so Ashley was an mostly honorable yet way too idealistic gay man, or more likely, a celibate asexual. who either genuinely and authentically no clue that he wears gay, and if he wasn’t, that never came into question, anyhow, as Ashley did not have a high sex drive.

The book is an excellent transition for teens who love trashy teen or chick flick novels, here’s why:

Well written. Mitchell is a helluva righter, especially for such a well thought out, thoroughly engaging, edge of your seat romance/feminist, rebel without a cause woman WAAYYY ahead of her time, like scarlet.

It bothers me that Scarlet begged for Rhett’s forgiveness in the end and asked him to please stay and try.

After all that literal hell and high water, do you think a woman like Scarlett O’Hara does that?

The one that never gave a damn was Scarlett, unless it was about food and shelter. She never needed a man, and while Mitchell gave Rhett a small moment of payback for our satisfaction, Scarlett is the type who will now always miss Rhett, but just like she did with Ashley, move on and look after her #1 first: her.

And Rhett was somewhat either hypocritical with his own behavioral disorders, or kind of a jerk too, because either he would have always rebuffed her had she completely admitted she loved him, no matter what, or he would have been practical and said, “Let’s see what happens. Sure. Let’s give it a shot”.

Why? Because Rhett knew Scarlett loved him from day one. He was waiting for her to realize and admit it to him. What does it matter if she did that immediately or later? Same difference.

The problem is that Rhett was not the hard hearted, anything to get ahead asshole that everyone believed he was and that he pretended to be, because he rightfully owed no one an explanation.

Scarlett was all those things, yet only found honor in her associations ‘ honor, since she had none, and unlike Rhett, never saw any value or use for it.

He knew this from day one. Why be mad at investing decades and massive cash into the chase and conquer of someone you knew always loved you, whom you claimed to live in spite of their H U G E flaws, then get mad because she’s being herself, always loved you, and finally told you, just like you knew she would?

The one who walked away permanently hurt and probably done with love forever in that romance was Rhett.

Scarlett? She’s way too selfish and in my opinion, was out on the prowl within weeks.

So yes, dumb, OP.

One thing I noticed upon rewatching the film recently is that most of the men are clean-shaven. In real life, they would be sporting 'whiskers,' which was in vogue at the time. A clean-shaven face was associated with boys and young men (i.e., immature).

The ending of the film always reminds me instead of some of the worst vocals overdubbing ever that is evident there, with Ashley carrying his grieving son out of Melody's room and the kid speaking his inane dialogue with the most annoying voice possible, even considering that era's typical-kid vocals fashion.

Why would the end be any different than the rest of it? I've never been able to get through the book or the movie...both awful.

Nowadays, they would split the book into two movies. So, Part 1 and Part 2 would be separate movies. Actually, that would work. Each half is nearly two-hours long.

Why aren't more men named Ashley nowadays? Or Shannon? Or Leslie? Or Hayley?

Why are all these names largely being overtaken by the wimmenzfolk more and more? Is it time to reclaim those names for the male gendered?

The movie's biggest flaw IMO is that there are no battle scenes. They are just referred to or written about. It's all a big soap opera, otherwise.

[quote] The movie's biggest flaw IMO is that there are no battle scenes.

And no catchy songs.

R79 Funny. But it is striking that a movie about the Civil War has not one battle scene, especially since two of its major characters (Ashley and Butler) served in it.

Casting Leslie Howard as the third in the love triangle was disastrous. Even though he was in reality quite the poon hound he came off as queerer than a $2 dollar bill. His miscasting wrecked the film for me.