A Study of Scarletts: Scarlett O'Hara and Her Literary Daughters
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Overview
This comparative study examines Scarlett O’Hara as a literary archetype, revealing critical prejudice against strong female characters.
There are two portrayals of Scarlett O’Hara: the famous one of the film Gone with the Wind and Margaret Mitchell’s more sympathetic character in the book. In A Study of Scarletts, Margaret D. Bauer examines both, noting that although Scarlett is just sixteen at the start of the novel, she is criticized for behavior that would have been excused if she were a man. Her stalwart determination in the face of extreme adversity made Scarlett an icon and an inspiration to female readers. Yet today she is often condemned as a sociopathic shrew.
Bauer offers a more complex and sympathetic reading of Scarlett before examining Scarlett-like characters in other novels, including Charles Frazier’s Cold Mountain, Ellen Glasgow’s Barren Ground, Toni Morrison’s Sula, and Kat Meads’ The Invented Life of Kitty Duncan. Through these selections, Bauer touches on themes of female independence, mother-daughter relationships, the fraught nature of romance, and the importance of female friendship.
There are two portrayals of Scarlett O’Hara: the famous one of the film Gone with the Wind and Margaret Mitchell’s more sympathetic character in the book. In A Study of Scarletts, Margaret D. Bauer examines both, noting that although Scarlett is just sixteen at the start of the novel, she is criticized for behavior that would have been excused if she were a man. Her stalwart determination in the face of extreme adversity made Scarlett an icon and an inspiration to female readers. Yet today she is often condemned as a sociopathic shrew.
Bauer offers a more complex and sympathetic reading of Scarlett before examining Scarlett-like characters in other novels, including Charles Frazier’s Cold Mountain, Ellen Glasgow’s Barren Ground, Toni Morrison’s Sula, and Kat Meads’ The Invented Life of Kitty Duncan. Through these selections, Bauer touches on themes of female independence, mother-daughter relationships, the fraught nature of romance, and the importance of female friendship.
A wise and wonderfully fresh look at the novel, Gone with the Wind, its misread heroine Scarlett, and her literary descendants. Bauer overturns the heterosexual romance script of the novel and posits female friendship as an alternative reading. An important and provocative book in southern studies and women’s studies.
Mary Ann Wilson, professor of English, University of Louisiana-LafayetteMargaret Bauer’s utterly readable new study examines Scarlett O’Hara and other, more contemporary characters like her, independent women who cannot accept the limitations set for their gender. Bauer highlights the significant role women play in each other’s lives, relationships that often steal the spotlight from the heterosexual romances in the novels. Ignoring traditional roles, Bauer’s subjects instead find the Scarlett within themselves.
Barbara Bennett, associate professor of English, North Carolina State UniversityAn important contribution, Bauer’s study thoroughly explores relevant literary criticism of these novels while providing fresh insights and comparisons of her own.
Donna Meredith, The Southern Literary Review- Title: A Study of Scarletts: Scarlett O'Hara and Her Literary Daughters
- Author: Margaret Donovan Bauer
- Publisher: University of South Carolina Press
- Print Publication Date: 2022
- Logos Release Date: 2024
- Pages: 168
- Language: English
- Resources: 1
- Format: Digital › Ebook
- ISBNs: 9781611173741, 9781611173734, 1611173736, 1611173744
- Resource ID: LLS:9781611173741
- Resource Type: Monograph
- Metadata Last Updated: 2025-04-21T19:18:17Z
Louisiana native Margaret D. Bauer is the Ralph Hardee Rives Chair of Southern Literature at East Carolina University in Greenville, North Carolina, where she was named one of ECU's ten Women of Distinction in 2007 and received the university's Lifetime Achievement Award for Research and Creative Activity in 2014. She is the author of The Fiction of Ellen Gilchrist, William Faulkner's Legacy: "what shadow, what stain, what mark" and Understanding Tim Gautreaux, University of South Carolina Press, 2010.