论《飘》中思嘉丽的性格(2)

At last, Scarlett realizes that Rhett and herself are the people with the same character, and he always loves her and supports for her. But Scarlett looks down upon him and mocks him, and she doesn’t know his love for her. However, she admits the common sense between them and she likes to be with him. Under the tolerance of Rhett, she shows her rebellion, her vanity and selfishness. She can’t realize her true feeling and she avoids facing the reality of the spirit. Until her dream for Ashley is broken and Rhett is too tired to love her and is going to leave her, she realizes the value of Rhett, but it is too late. Although her realistic character unites together both on the material and spiritual aspects and she realizes what the true love is, she must face the reality that Rhett will leave her alone.
Life is filled with various contradictions, and when a contradiction is over; another is coming, so the plots of the story will develop further and the portrayed image will be more charming.
It is better to see her not being blown down. She always encourages herself that “Tomorrow is another day” and “Things always look better in the morning.”[10] She still believes that she cans get him back finally.

4. Scarlett’s Attitude towards Love and Marriage
Scarlett spends most of her life being adored and loved by others. Wherever she goes, she is always the center and focus among the girls. Although she marries three times, she never understands the meaning of love or gets the true love. In real life, love and marriage are often related with each other by most of people, because love is the foundation of marriage. But Scarlett pides them into two, which proves that she is a character full of contradictory and complexity. In the novel, Scarlett has been thinking that she loves Ashley and some decisions she made are also related with Ashley. However, she never considers marriage as a serious matter but just treats it as playgames, and she marries with the men she doesn’t love just in order to resolve living problems.

4.1 Scarlett’s Attitude towards her Marriages
Marriage is a serious matter and also a nice dream to most of the young girls, but Scarlett treats her marriage as playgames. Scarlett is so immature that she marries Charles Hamilton who she doesn’t love at all to hurt Ashley for her first marriage. From then on, she becomes a slave of love, and she loses the ability to distinguish what is right from wrong, which is the basis of her love tragedy.[11] The Civil War kills her first husband after two months of their marriage, and Scarlett becomes a widow at her sixteen years old. She endures the rules of being a widow, but the war changes her goal of life. In order to survive, to save Tara, she marries her sister’s lover by subterfuge once more. Not long after her second husband’s death, she marries Rhett for her third marriage. She thinks that marring him, she will never have to bother about money again and never to worry about money again, to know that Tara was safe, that the family was fed and clothed, that she would never again have to bruise herself against stonewalls.
4.2 Scarlett’s Bewilderment in Love
Scarlett falls in love with Ashley at her first sight. Through the relationship with Ashley she is affected by the love and all the struggles and lessons that go along with it. Scarlett loves Ashley because of all the young man she flirts with; he is the one who seems to have the strength of character she admires. The difference between Ashley and the other boys is that Ashley is well educated, intellectually, artistically and musically talented, and does not put him at the mercy of every pretty face. He is also tall and handsome, and somewhat aloof, Scarlett doesn’t understand anything he talks about, but she is drawn to his dignity and his old world charm. In fact, Scarlett doesn’t understand him at all. What she sees is just his surface merely, knowing nothing about his disposition and thought.
Although Scarlett dislikes the people with weak character, she still loves Ashley. She regards him as her prince since she is a young girl and offers her pure love blindly. Even if she can’t get him, she never gives up or changes her love to him through the repeated tribulations. Her love to him is so loyal, clinging and self-sacrificing that she is willing to do anything for him. When Ashley is leaving away for the war, he asks Scarlett to look after his wife, Melanie, Scarlett is very depressed but she still complies. In order to keep promise to Ashley, Scarlett stays by the side of her lover’s wife in dangerous Atlanta and escorts her and her baby to Tara; unfortunately, her dearest mother is dead before the day she comes back. When the war is over, Ashley can’t adept the postwar new life, and he can’t do anything but just lives in the dreams of the past, and he even doesn’t have the ability to support his own family. However, Scarlett doesn’t look down upon him but she helps him support his family silently with her own money. In order to defend Ashley’s self-respect as a man, Scarlett undertakes the loss of money of her sawmill, which is given to her lover Ashley to manage,. She spends no time to accompany her husband and her children, for the reason that she is occupied by the thoughts of earning more money or making appointment with Ashley.

In fact, Scarlett is very different from Ashley. Scarlett is very brave, energetic, realistic, and she has enough courage to face any difficulties during and after the Civil War. Ashley is that kind of person who likes thinking rather than acting. He misses the life of the old South and he can’t adjust to the new life. Ashley loves nobody but himself. He marries Melanie not because he loves her but because they are alike and only he stays with Melanie, thus he can link himself with the past of the old days. Although Scarlett is strong on some aspects, she still needs someone to encourage and comfort her sometimes, that is to say Scarlett needs a man who is stronger than her. But Ashley can give her nothing, and he even shows his fear for the new life to her: “It isn’t that I mind splitting logs here in the mud, but I do mind what a stand is for. I do mind very much the loss of the beauty of the old life I loved. Scarlett, before the war, the life was beautiful. There was glamour in it, perfection and completeness and symmetry to it like Grecian art. Maybe it wasn’t so to everyone. I know that now. But to me, living at Twelve Oaks, there was a real beauty to living. I belonged in that life. I was part of it. And now it is gone, and I am out of place in this new life and I am afraid. Now I know that in the old days it was a shadow show I watched. I avoided everything which was not shadowy, people and situations which were too real, too vital”.[12]
Scarlett is alike Rhett very much: Both of them are the rebels of their families and the society of the South; they all oppose the feudal morals, and they all have the bourgeoisie merchant natural disposition, that is to say, they are all selfish and they will try all means to achieve their goals. They seem to be made for each other. In fact, Scarlett has already trusted in him and depended on him when she affiliates with him, but she doesn’t realize her love to him.

Rhett knows that Scarlett scorns men she can win easily, so Rhett refuses to show her she defeats him. He mocks her, argues with her, and eventually resorts to cruelty and indifference in order to win her. Even knowing about the true reason of Scarlett’s marriage to him, Rhett still loves her and dotes on her, acting as parent to Scarlett throughout the novel-guiding her out of mourning, comforting her from bad nightmares. Rhett to Scarlett, in the final scene: "You were such a child, my dear, I wanted to marry you and protect you".[13] He understands Scarlett very much, so he gives her all supports he can. He encourages her to shun social customs and gives her money to start her own business. He wants to drive Ashley out of Scarlett’s hearts, but after a long time with his best efforts, he still cannot change her and make her understand his love for her. He feels pain and tired at last. He compares Scarlett to a child crying for the moon: “I’m sorry for you-sorry to see you throwing away happiness with both hands and reaching out for something that would never make you happy…”[14]

Scarlett’s idealization of Ashley slowly fades as time goes on, and she finally sees that the Ashley she loves is not a real man but a man embellished and adorned by her imagination. “I love something I made up, something that’s just as dead as Melly is. I made a pretty suit of clothes and fell in love with it. And when Ashley came riding along, so handsome, so difference, I put that suit on him and made him wear it whether it fitted him or not. And I wouldn’t see what he really was. I kept on loving the pretty clothes-and not him at all.”[15] After Melanie’ death, Scarlett finds that Ashley has never loved for Melanie, to him, she is only a dream that he lived and breathed and did not die in the face of reality. Scarlett finds him only a coward who will depend on her in the future without Melanie. Then she knows that the heaven she has sought in dreams, the place of warm safety, which has always been hidden from her in the mist. It is not Ashley! Scarlett can’t get any warmth and security from Ashley. It is Rhett who has strong arms to hold her, a broad chest to pillow her tired head, jeering laughter to pull her affairs into proper perspective. And he completely understands her, because he, like her, sees truth as truth, unobstructed by impractical notions of honor, sacrifice, or high belief in human nature.
For years Scarlett has had her back against the stone wall of Rhett’s love. Rhett loves her, understands her, ready to help her. Rhett at the bazaar reads her impatience in her eyes and leads her out the reel; Rhett helps her out of the bondage of mourning; Rhett conveys her through the fire and explosions the night Atlanta fell; Rhett lends her the money, Rhett comforts her when she wakes up in the nights crying with fright from her horrible dreams. No man does such things without loving a woman to distraction.
Scarlett comes to her sense at last. She wants to tell him everything; she wants to tell him she loves him and she wants to gain his love to her. But it’s too late. Her lovely daughter is dead; Rhett is worn out and decides to go away. “Oh, my darling, if you go, what shall I do?” He said: “My dear, I don’t give a damn.”[16] Suddenly, her great house becomes a tomb, and her wealth has already lost the significance to her. What Scarlett loses is not only her love but also her soul, although she owns too many things on the aspect of materials. And it just likes a cup; she just gets hold of it on the left hand, but then loses it on the right hand.

However, she is able to handle the tragedies by thinking about them “tomorrow is another day” and “things always look better in the morning”. She wants to return to Tara, the source of her strength, and she believes that she can get Rhett back confidently.
5. Conclusion
The three parts above analyze the features and reasons of Scarlett’s complex character. The figure of Scarlett is real and vivid and the image of Scarlett’s portrayed by the author corresponds to the logic of the developing of the figure’s character, which is real and full of appeal, and that is enough to prove that Gone with the Wind is a masterpiece, charming and valuable.

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