The Complex Romance of GWTW

Even in such a complicated scene, beautiful romance tends to shine through.

 In class, we watched the famous film, Gone With the Wind. We spent the class watching and observing this film to write an essay on. Out of most of the film we watched, I chose to cover the evolution, complexity, and other aspects of romance throughout the movie. 

 Gone With the Wind, released in 1939, is romantic and historical. The movie displays events occurring in the American South amid the period of the Civil War.  The main character in this movie is Scarlett O’Hara, a rich young lady brought up on a large estate where she received all she could want. 

During the early minutes of the movie, the attention is directed toward her longing for romance, her high social status, and her goal of winning the heart/attention of Ashley Wilkes, despite the fact that he is married to Melanie Hamilton, and continues to keep that marriage. 

Scarlett O'hara and Rhett Butler

The situation becomes more difficult for Scarlett as the war begins to bring changes to the society she used to live and thrive in. Alongside the heavy changes of the Civil war, Scarlett comes across Rhett Butler, an assertive and bold man who makes a heavy attempt to prove to good match for her in many aspects of life even though she tries to deny it at first glance.

Each of the major characters portrayed in the film, possess unique personalities that thicken the plot. Most of the romantic pieces of the first part of the film are associated with Scarlett’s feelings about Ashley. Ashley is engaged to Melanie, who possesses a gentle, loving, and loyal attitude toward her surroundings, and even towards O’hara after her obvious attempts to seduce Wilkes. While Scarlett has a desire for Ashley, Ashley prefers Melanie, creating heavy one-sided complications in relationships among the characters of the film. 

Another significant character of the movie is Butler, whose feelings toward Scarlett are completely different from the feelings of Ashley. While Rhett manages to understand more of the real character and personality of Scarlett, she tries hard to convince Rhett of his misjudgment, her efforts for Wilkes continuing despite the solid and growing marriage. The pride of Rhett and Scarlett together creates complications in their separate connections since both two main characters carry a heavy ego and won’t let the others drag them down. 

This movie expands further than just a complex romance triangle to pentagon. To begin with, romance in Gone With The Wind can be defined by pride, and expectations of others and personal desires/wants when connecting back to reality outside of this film.

Many men surrounding Scarlet

The romantic intentions of Scarlett towards Ashley along with her problematic and tense relations with Rhett are good examples to the fact that sometimes it is difficult to determine the feeling of love from the feeling of something you want the relation to be or even want the relationship to look like to outsiders. In total, marriage through this visual representation is determined not only by personal feelings, but also by the social requirements of the Southern society where one’s reputation and social status can play a significant role as well, all during the specific time point we are observing through a screen. 

The relationships of the detailed characters make it possible to illustrate the complexity of romantic relations of people who are unable to understand themselves and their beloved ones, yet yearn to do so.