Scarlett O'Hara (born Katie Scarlett O'Hara; credited as Scarlett O'Hara Hamilton Kennedy Butler) is the protagonist in Margaret

Mitchell's1936 novel Gone with the Wind and in the later film of the same name. She also is the main character in the 1970 musical Scarlett and the 1991 bookScarlett, a sequel to Gone with the Wind that was written by Alexandra Ripley and adapted for a television mini-series in 1994. During early drafts of the original novel, Mitchell referred to her heroine as "Pansy", and did not [1] decide on the name "Scarlett" until just before the novel went to print.
Contents
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1 Biography 2 Personality 3 Searching for Scarlett 4 Other actresses considered for Scarlett 5 Adaptations 6 Historical sources for the character 7 Comparisons to other characters 8 References 9 External links

Biography[edit]
Katie ("Scarlett") O'Hara is the oldest living child of Gerald and Ellen O'Hara. She was born on her family's plantation Tara in Georgia. Her given name Katie comes from her father's mother, but has been called Scarlett for most of her life. She is a descendant of both Irish and French ancestry. Scarlett has dark hair, green eyes, pale skin, and a slim frame. Her living siblings are her two younger sisters Susan Elinor ("Suellen") O'Hara and Caroline Irene ("Carreen") O'Hara. She also has three younger brothers who died while in infancy, and are buried on their family's property. Each child was named Gerald O'Hara, Jr.

Personality[edit]
She is an atypical protagonist, especially as a female romantic lead in fiction. When the novel opens, Scarlett is sixteen. She is vain, self-centered, and somewhat spoiled; she can be insecure; and she has an intelligent, bright mind. She stands out in that she is smarter than and very much unlike the typical party-going Southern belles around her. She can be a high-strung busybody, but for someone so smart, with men she loves, she can go into a mode where she is both babyish and overthinks little things. On the outside she seems charming, busy, good, and smart; but on the inside she is insecure and just wants the affection of her neighbor, Ashley Wilkes. She makes surface efforts to live up to the expectations her culture demands, but fears discovery by society of her true self. Scarlett has deep affection for Ashley, and wishes to marry him, despite a tradition in his family to marry cousins. Scarlett's motivation in the early part of the novel centers on her desire to win the affection of Ashley, despite the fact that both of them marry others. Rhett Butler, an older bachelor, overhears Scarlett expressing her true feelings to

Ashley, during a barbecue at Ashley's home. Rhett admires and is interested in the willful Scarlett, and pursues her through a romantic friendship when she becomes widowed, helping her to ignore Southern conventions and become active in society again. The Civil War is ultimately blamed by disapproving society, and Scarlett finds friendship with Rhett liberating. After the War, Scarlett's character hardens, when she is burdened by her family, servants, the Wilkes family, and the fear of homelessness and starvation. This causes her to become extremely moneyconscious and materialistic. Her motivation is to assure that no one close to her faces the threat of starvation or being a burden to others outside the family. As such, she engages in controversial business practices and exploits convict labor in order to make her lumber business, bought and run in defiance of her second husband's wishes, have a higher profit margin. After she becomes widowed again, she marries Rhett Butler for "fun" and because he is very wealthy. Unfortunately, Scarlett is too insecure and vain to realize her pursuit of Ashley was misdirected until the climax of the novel. With the death of Melanie Wilkes, she realizes her pursuit of Ashley was in vain and he did not return her affection. She realizes she never really loved Ashley and that she has loved Rhett Butler for some time. She pursues Rhett from Melanie's deathbed to their home in the neighborhood, only to discover he has given up on receiving a return of affection from Scarlett and is preparing to leave her. In a reminder of how important her homeland is to her, Scarlett decides to return to the family plantation, Tara, to rest and set her plans to attract Rhett anew.

Searching for Scarlett[edit]

While the studio and the public agreed that the part of Rhett Butler should go to Clark Gable (except for Clark Gable himself), casting for the role of Scarlett was a little harder. The search for an actress to play Scarlett in the film version of the novel famously drew the biggest names in the history of cinema, such as Bette Davis (whose casting as a Southern belle in Jezebel in 1938 took her out of contention), and Katharine Hepburn, who went so far as demanding an appointment with producer David O. Selznick and saying, "I am Scarlett O'Hara! The role is practically written for me." David replied rather [citation needed] bluntly, "I can't imagine Rhett Butler chasing you for twelve years." Jean Arthur and Lucille Ball were also considered, as well as relatively unknown actress Doris Davenport. Susan Hayward was "discovered" when she tested for the part, and the career of Lana Turnerdeveloped quickly after her screen test. Tallulah Bankhead and Joan Bennett were widely considered to be the most likely choices until they were supplanted by Paulette Goddard. The young English actress Vivien Leigh, virtually unknown in America, saw that several English actors, including Ronald Colman and Leslie Howard, were in consideration for the male leads in Gone with the Wind. Her agent happened to be the London representative of the Myron Selznick talent agency, headed by David Selznick's brother, Myron. Leigh asked Myron to put her name into consideration as Scarlett on the eve of the American release of her picture Fire Over England in February 1938. David Selznick watched both Fire Over England and her most recent picture, A Yank at Oxford, that month, and thought she was excellent but in no way a possible Scarlett, as she was "too British." But Myron Selznick arranged for David to first meet Leigh on the night in December 1938 when the burning of the Atlanta Depot was being filmed on the Forty Acres backlot that Selznick International and RKO shared. Leigh and her then lover Laurence Olivier (later to be her husband) were visiting as guests of Myron Selznick, who was also Olivier's agent, while Leigh was in Hollywood hoping for a part in Olivier's current movie, Wuthering Heights. In a letter to his wife two days later, David Selznick admitted that Leigh was

"the Scarlett dark horse," and after a series of screen tests, her casting was announced on January 13, 1939. Just before the shooting of the film, Selznick informed Ed Sullivan: "Scarlett O'Hara's parents were [2] French and Irish. Identically, Miss Leigh's parents are French and Irish." In any case, Leigh was castdespite public protest that the role was too "American" for an English actressand eventually won an Academy Awardfor her performance.

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