Is Rhett Butler evil in your opinion?
Especially in the controversial albeit ambiguous "staircase" scene among others as well?
shareHe wasn't evil in the slightest.
He was a good person at his core (and an awesome, alpha guy overall) but he preferred to hide it under his jaded, hardened, slightly bitter and sadistic persona that was his shield against the world that was full of people who were deceitful or hypocritical or just plain dumb. In his own estimation, Melanie was a great lady and you never once see him be rude or disrespectful towards her nor even fake an emotion. I'd venture to say he would've acted no different with Ellen either. Same goes for Bonnie and even Mammy.
Scarlett was a monster in her own way and Rhett being (street) smart & experienced, sees right through her and actually falls for her for the same reason, although her looks certainly would've helped as well. So he never lets her know that he genuinely loves her. For, in his own words, she was very cruel to those who loved her and would hold it as a whip over him ruthlessly. He's the only person who sees Scarlett fully and still accepts/loves her for what she is without admonition or intentions of changing her.
Naturally, he gets frustrated when she resists all his charms and ignores or insults his efforts over the years while still yearning for Ashley (whom Rhett knows Scarlett would sour of very quickly if she did get him), even after marriage. So the staircase scene is one of those times when his emotions override his intellect in his drunken state - he just loses self control and goes into animal mode out of anger.
I'm basing all this on the book, BTW. Just finished reading it for the 3rd time in 20 years and have to say that Rhett is one of the greatest male characters ever portrayed in fiction - he's right up there with Sherlock Holmes and Howard Roark for me.
Rhett had many good qualities, such as being the one person in the story who had the sense to see that starting a war with enemies that had more money, more men, and all the munitions factories, was a bad idea. He was intelligent, perceptive, witty, brave, honorable in his way, honest (even with women), decent to people who had it harder than he did, and he only uses his sharp wit on those whose status was equal to or greater than his own. I like that about him, but I can hardly call him "good at his core".
But he presumably owned slaves and never objected to the institution of slavery, he even ended up fighting to preserve the Confederacy and legal slavery. And he threatened to kill his wife, hurt her, and then raped her, (or intended to, the fact that she enjoyed it more than she enjoyed vanilla sex rather taking the edge off there), but he still engaged in abusive behavior towards his wife and held whatever slaves he owned in bondage.
So he was a complex character who had both good and bad qualities, I wouldn't call him either "good" or "evil" because there are no moral absolute with such people. Unless you're his slave, of course.
"Scarlett was a monster in her own way " She is a text book sociopath and at a very high-level.
shareA true sociopath would gave left Melanie to burn in Atlanta and snagged Ashley when he got home, but Scarlett saved her life and financially supported her for years. Same for her family members and house servants/slaves.
Sure, she was a total bitch about it, but that's the difference between an asshole and a sociopath.
Saving Melanie the one instance in the movie where she didn't do something sociopathic and we don't understand her motivation for doing so.
As her family members and house servants/slaves, she benefited from saving them.
I'm sticking with sociopath.
Run down the check list
Well, I'm sticking with "asshole"!
Scarlett wasn't nice, ethical, or empathetic, but she did have some genuine affection for a few people, like her parents and Mammy, and even Melanie (although she didn't realize that for a long time). And when a sociopath was ranting that they'd never be hungry again, they wouldn't think of others who were hungry and Scarlett did. I quote: "... As God is my witness they're are not going to lick me. I'm going to live through this and when its all over, I'll never be hungry again. NO, NOR ANY OF MY FOLK.", and at that moment, a true sociopath would be planning a dinner of roast Prissy.
Those are valid points, but there are levels of sociopathy.
Now, what I forgot is that we are discussing a movie sociopath. In movies and TV sociopaths who are protagonists are given non sociopathic traits so the audience will empathize with them; they are also usually very good looking. Don Draper on Mad Men is an example as is Scarlett. I ignore those traits when watching movies/TV, so I have a different POV.
So in the context of GWTW, you are correct. In real life she would be dinning on Prissy. That might make an interesting movie, tho surely not as beloved.
I was thinking of real sociopaths, like out of the DSM-V, and Scarlett isn't one.
She isn't intended to be one, she's partly based on the author herself, and is intended to be a character who's complex and possessed of many bad qualities (an asshole), but ultimately sympathetic and fascinating, and definitely not a sociopath. Which is how she turned out, because here we are discussing her almost 90 years after the publication of the book.
Not sure if he ever actually owned slaves. He was a drifter living on his wits for years.
shareTrue, I hadn't thought that through all the way. If Rhett hadn't inherited the family fortune, he may or may not have owned slaves. He probably had a valet who was with him through his travels and adventures, a gentleman always did, and that valet may have been Rhett's own property, or the property of the Butler family. It's possible that Rhett owned other slaves, maybe a coachman or footman, but probably no more than that during his bachelor years. I don't remember any indication that he owned a house as a bachelor, so I assume he lived in hotels, on ships, or enjoyed long stays at other people's houses.
And no, we don't know of such a valet, but there probably was such a person, at least up until the time that Atlanta fell and Rhett joined the army. The enslaved valet may have run for it at that point, but as every wealthy bachelor had a valet, and that holds true even though he's never mentioned in the book. The book and film are told from Scarlett's POV, and it wouldn't have been considered proper for Scarlett to visit a bachelor's rooms, or ride in his carriage, so she'd probably never have met Butler's slaves.
After he raped her the movie showed Scarlet the next morning smileing with delight.
shareThe book was a big more explicit. In the book, the author stated plainly that Scarlett had found sex with her first two husbands awkward and uncomfortable, and that even Rhett failed to awaken any passion in her... until he got rough that night. Then, she experienced exstasy for the first time in her life!
Which frankly must have been one of the big factors that drove Rhett away, first his disappointment that he couldn't get any more of a rise out of his wife than Frank Kennedy had, and then his guilt and/or repulsion at the means he'd used to finally, uh, get a rise out of her. They left all that out of the movie, but the story still worked without it.
Involuntary orgasm response anyone? And it still makes it "it", right, at least in a moral, dictionary definition and legal sense, and r*** IS ALWAYS evil, right?
At first I thought you'd say, after he raped her, he became an UNREPENTANT VILLAIN. No?
For those who claim the scene depicted rape - the she only smiled the next day due to "involuntary orgasm":
- if a woman can experience involuntary orgasm during rape, as a man can, would she really be smiling and singing about the rape the next morning in bed?
- before you make more knee-jerk accusations about this scene, for God's sake, read the book. It talks about the pleasure and passion Scarlett felt. Reminder: it was written by a woman.
"Reminder: it was written by a woman"
Fair enough, it may have been, but does it REALLY matter or make a difference THAT much?
As in, asking a secret question, do all or even MOST 'men' have it in their blood, brain or DNA some kind of intrinsic and inherent BIAS or a natural lack of understanding around 'that type of subject matter' and did probably ooh nearly 100 YEARS (damn CENTURY!) ago? Not saying I disagree, just a bit (or a lot) curious, cheers.
shareIt does if you think that no woman would write about a woman liking what would be rape by modern standards.
But you have to remember that this story was written in the 1930s about people living in the 1860s.
I have to admit, I didn't really give this area much thought in my life and I wouldn't be qualified to tell. But I suppose it does speak volume that one gender tends to understand one issue better than the other and in today's day and age, people can automatically and almost intrinsically assume such thoughts like that on a whim.
And wouldn't it be "r**e" by ANY standards not just modern ones?
When you think of say stuff like murder, theft, assault, battery etc, have standards for THOSE "things" ALSO changed over the years or is r**e and sexual violence the only matter or the most unique one in such category?
Also... Uhm, OK, next time.
If it looks like a duck, quacks like a duck etc etc etc, then it must be a duck, right?
shareThe book was written by a woman, and apparently that part was based on her own experiences with the rat-bastard husband who was the inspiration for Rhett Butler. Apparently he got a bit rough, and she was surprised by her reaction.
I've never heard of another women admitting to a similar experience, outside of BDSM circles anyway, but you never know what's going to turn a person on. I guess she had a bit of a kink.