Scarlett O'Hara 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 very spoiled by her wealthy parents.
She can also be insecure, but is very intelligent, despite her fashionable Southern-belle pretense at
ignorance and helplessness around men. She is somewhat unusual among Southern women, whom
society preferred to act as dainty creatures who needed protection from their men. Scarlett is aware
that she is only acting empty-headed, and resents the fashionable "necessity" of it, unlike most of
her typical party-going Southern belles social set.
Outwardly, Scarlett is the picture of southern charm and womanly virtues, and a popular belle with
the country males. The one man she truly wants, however, is her neighbor, Ashley Wilkes – the one
man she can't have. The Wilkes family has a tradition of intermarrying with their cousins, and Ashley
is promised to his cousin, Melanie Hamilton of Atlanta. Scarlett's motivation in the early part of the
novel centers on her desire to win Ashley's heart. When he refuses her advances (which no well-
bred Southern lady would be so forward as to make), she takes refuge in childish rage, and spitefully
accepts the proposal of Charles Hamilton, Melanie's brother, in a misguided effort to get back at
Ashley and Melanie.
Rhett Butler, a wealthy older bachelor and a society pariah, overhears Scarlett express her love to
Ashley during a barbecue at Twelve Oaks, the Wilkes' estate. Rhett admires Scarlett's willfulness
and her departure from accepted propriety as well as her beauty. He pursues Scarlett, but is aware
of her impetuousness, childish spite, and her fixation on Ashley. He assists Scarlett in defiance of
proper Victorian mourning customs when her husband, Charles Hamilton, dies in a training camp,
and Rhett encourages her hoydenish behavior (by antebellum custom) in Atlanta society. Scarlett,
privately chafing from the strict rules of polite society, finds friendship with Rhett liberating.
The Civil War sweeps away the lifestyle for which Scarlett was raised, and Southern society falls into
ruin. Scarlett, left destitute after Sherman's army marches through Georgia, becomes the sole
source of strength for her family. Her character begins to harden as her relatives, the family slaves
and the Wilkes family look to her for protection from homelessness and starvation. Scarlett becomes
money-conscious and more materialistic in her motivation to ensure that her family survives and Tara
stays in her family, while other Georgia planters are losing their homes. This extends to stealing her
younger sister's fiancé, going into business herself (well-bred southern ladies never worked outside
the home), engaging in controversial business practices and even exploiting convict labor in order to
make her lumber business profit. Her conduct results in the accidental death of her second husband,
Frank Kennedy, and shortly after she marries Rhett Butler for "fun" and because he is very wealthy.
Scarlett is too insecure and vain to truly grow up and realize her pursuit of Ashley is misdirected until
the climax of the novel. With the death of Melanie Wilkes, she realizes her pursuit of Ashley was a
childish romance. She realizes she never really loved Ashley and that she has loved Rhett Butler for
some time. She pursues Rhett from the Wilkes home to their home, only to discover he has given up
hope of ever receiving her love, and is about to leave her. After telling him she loves him, he refuses
to stay with her, which leads to the famous line, "Frankly, my dear, I don't give a damn." Wracked
with grief, but determined to once again pursue and win her man, realizing that Tara is what matters
most to her (other than Rhett) Scarlet returns home to Tara to launch her pursuit of Rhett at a later
time.

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 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 (who had been cast as a Southern belle in Jezebel in 1938), 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." Selznick replied rather bluntly, "I
can't imagine Rhett Butler chasing you for twelve years." [5] 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 Turner developed 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 French and Irish.
Identically, Miss Leigh's parents are French and Irish."[6]
In any case, Leigh was cast—despite public protest that the role was too "American" for an English
actress—but Leigh was able to pull off the role so well that she eventually won an Academy
Award for her performance as Scarlett O'Hara.

Other actresses considered

The South of Gone with the Wind[edit]

While "the South" exists as a geographical region of the United States, it is also said to exist as "a
place of the imagination" of writers.[39] An image of "the South" was fixed in Mitchell's imagination
when at six years old her mother took her on a buggy tour through ruined plantations and
"Sherman's sentinels",[40] the brick and stone chimneys that remained after William Tecumseh
Sherman's "March and torch" through Georgia.[41] Mitchell would later recall what her mother had said
to her:
She talked about the world those people had lived in, such a secure world, and how it had exploded
beneath them. And she told me that my world was going to explode under me, someday, and God
help me if I didn't have some weapon to meet the new world. [40]
From an imagination cultivated in her youth, Margaret Mitchell's defensive weapon would become
her writing.[40]
Mitchell said she heard Civil War stories from her relatives when she was growing up:
On Sunday afternoons when we went calling on the older generation of relatives, those who had
been active in the Sixties, I sat on the bony knees of veterans and the fat slippery laps of great aunts
and heard them talk.[42]
On summer vacations, she visited her maternal great-aunts, Mary Ellen ("Mamie") Fitzgerald and
Sarah ("Sis") Fitzgerald, who still lived at her great-grandparents' plantation home in Jonesboro.
[43]
Mamie had been twenty-one years old and Sis was thirteen when the Civil War began. [44]

An avid reader[edit]
An avid reader, young Margaret read "boys' stories" by G.A. Henty, the Tom Swift series, and
the Rover Boys series by Edward Stratemeyer.[17] Her mother read Mary Johnston's novels to her
before she could read. They both wept reading Johnston's The Long Roll (1911) and Cease
Firing (1912).[45] Between the "scream of shells, the mighty onrush of charges, the grim and grisly
aftermath of war", Cease Firing is a romance novel involving the courtship of a Confederate soldier
and a Louisiana plantation belle[46] with Civil War illustrations by N. C. Wyeth. She also read the plays
of William Shakespeare, and novels by Charles Dickens and Sir Walter Scott.[47]Mitchell's two favorite
children's books were by author Edith Nesbit: Five Children and It (1902) and The Phoenix and the
Carpet (1904). She kept both on her bookshelf even as an adult and gave them as gifts. [48] Another
author whom Mitchell read as a teenager and who had a major impact in her understanding of the
Civil War and Reconstruction was Thomas Dixon.[49] Dixon's popular trilogy of novels The Leopard's
Spots: A Romance of the White Man's Burden (1902), The Clansman: A Historical Romance of the
Ku Klux Klan (1905) and The Traitor: A Story of the Rise and Fall of the Invisible Empire (1907) all
depicted in vivid terms a white South victimized during the Reconstruction by Northern
carpetbaggers and freed slaves, with an especial emphasis upon Reconstruction as a nightmarish
time when black men ran amok, raping white women with impunity. [49] As a teenager, Mitchell liked
Dixon's books so much that she organized the local children to put on dramatizations of his books.
[49]
The picture the white supremacist Dixon drew of Reconstruction is now rejected as inaccurate, but
at the time, the memory of the past was such it was widely believed by white Americans. [49] In a letter
to Dixon dated 10 August 1936, Mitchell wrote: "I was practically raised on your books, and love
them very much."[49]

Young storyteller[edit]
An imaginative and precocious writer, Margaret Mitchell began with stories about animals, then
progressed to fairy tales and adventure stories. She fashioned book covers for her stories, bound
the tablet paper pages together and added her own artwork. At age eleven she gave a name to her
publishing enterprise: "Urchin Publishing Co." Later her stories were written in notebooks. [50] May
Belle Mitchell kept her daughter's stories in white enamel bread boxes and several boxes of her
stories were stored in the house by the time Margaret went off to college. [48]
"Margaret" is a character riding a galloping pony in The Little Pioneers, and plays "Cowboys and
Indians" in When We Were Shipwrecked.[51]
Romantic love and honor emerged as themes of abiding interest for Mitchell in The Knight and the
Lady (ca. 1909), in which a "good knight" and a "bad knight" duel for the hand of the lady. In The
Arrow Brave and the Deer Maiden (ca. 1913), a half-white Indian brave, Jack, must withstand the
pain inflicted upon him to uphold his honor and win the girl. [52] The same themes were treated with
increasing artistry in Lost Laysen, the novella Mitchell wrote as a teenager in 1916, [53] and, with much
greater sophistication, in Mitchell's last known novel, Gone with the Wind, which she began in 1926.
[54]

In her pre-teens, Mitchell also wrote stories set in foreign locations, such as The Greaser (1913),
a cowboy story set in Mexico.[55] In 1913 she wrote two stories with Civil War settings; one includes
her notation that "237 pages are in this book".[56]

School life[edit]
Fancy Dress Masquerade
Seventy girls and boys were the guests of Miss Margaret Mitchell at a fancy dress masquerade yesterday afternoon
at the home of her parents Mr. and Mrs. Eugene Mitchell on Peachtree street and the occasion was beautiful and
enjoyable.
There was a prize for guessing the greatest number of identities under the masks, and another for the guest who best
concealed his or her identity.
The pretty young hostess was a demure Martha Washington in flowered crepe gown over a pink silk petticoat and her
powdered hair was worn high.
Mrs. Mitchell wore a ruby velvet gown.

The Constitution, Atlanta, November 21, 1914.

While the Great War carried on in Europe (1914–1918), Margaret Mitchell attended Atlanta's
Washington Seminary (now The Westminster Schools), a "fashionable" private girls' school with an
enrollment of over 300 students.[57][58] She was very active in the Drama Club.[59] Mitchell played the
male characters: Nick Bottom in Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream and Launcelot Gobbo
in Shakespeare's The Merchant of Venice, among others. She wrote a play about snobbish college
girls that she acted in as well.[60] She also joined the Literary Club and had two stories published in
the yearbook: Little Sister and Sergeant Terry.[61] Ten-year-old "Peggy" is the heroine in Little Sister.
She hears her older sister being raped and shoots the rapist:[62]
Coldly, dispassionately she viewed him, the chill steel of the gun giving her confidence. She must not
miss now—she would not miss—and she did not.[63]
Mitchell received encouragement from her English teacher, Mrs. Paisley, who recognized her writing
talent.[64] A demanding teacher, Paisley told her she had ability if she worked hard and would not be
careless in constructing sentences. A sentence, she said, must be "complete, concise and coherent".
[65]

Mitchell read the books of Thomas Dixon, Jr., and in 1916, when the silent film, The Birth of a
Nation, was showing in Atlanta, she dramatized Dixon's The Traitor: A Story of the Fall of the
Invisible Empire (1907).[66][67][68][69] As both playwright and actress, she took the role of Steve Hoyle.
[70]
For the production, she made a Ku Klux Klan costume from a white crepe dress and wore a boy's
wig.[71] (Note: Dixon rewrote The Traitor as The Black Hood (1924) and Steve Hoyle was renamed
George Wilkes.)[72][73]
During her years at Washington Seminary, Mitchell's brother, Stephens, was away studying
at Harvard College (1915–1917), and he left in May 1917 to enlist in the army, about a month after
the U.S. declared war on Germany. He set sail for France in April 1918, participated in engagements
in the Lagny and Marbache sectors, then returned to Georgia in October as a training instructor.
[74]
While Margaret and her mother were in New York in September 1918 preparing for Margaret to
attend college, Stephens wired his father that he was safe after his ship had been torpedoed en
route to New York from France.[75]
Stephens Mitchell thought college was the "ruination of girls".[76] However, May Belle Mitchell placed
a high value on education for women and she wanted her daughter's future accomplishments to
come from using her mind. She saw education as Margaret's weapon and "the key to survival". [5]
[40]
The classical college education she desired for her daughter was one that was on par with men's
colleges, and this type of education was available only at northern schools. Her mother chose Smith
College in Northampton, Massachusetts for Margaret because she considered it to be the best
women's college in the United States.[77]
Upon graduating from Washington Seminary in June 1918, Mitchell fell in love with a Harvard
graduate, a young army lieutenant, Clifford West Henry,[78] who was chief bayonet instructor at Camp
Gordon from May 10 until the time he set sail for France on July 17. [79] Henry was "slightly
effeminate", "ineffectual", and "rather effete-looking" with "homosexual tendencies", according to
biographer Anne Edwards. Before departing for France, he gave Mitchell an engagement ring.[80]
On September 14, while she was enrolled at Smith College, Henry was mortally wounded in action
in France and died on October 17.[79] As Henry waited in the Verdun trenches, shortly before being
wounded, he composed a poem on a leaf torn from his field notebook, found later among his effects.
The last stanza of Lieutenant Clifford W. Henry's poem follows:
If "out of luck" at duty's call
In glorious action I should fall
At God's behest,
May those I hold most dear and best
Know I have stood the acid test
Should I "go West."[81]
General Edwards Presents Medal

Mrs. Ira Henry of Sound Beach was presented the Distinguished Service medal from the War
department today in honor of her son, Captain Clifford W. Henry for bravery under fire during the
World war. The medal, recommended by General Pershing, was presented by Major General
Edwards.
Captain Henry, who during the war was a lieutenant with Co.F, 102nd infantry, captured the town
of Vignuelles, nine kilometers inside the Hindenburg line on September 13, 1918. Lieutenant
Henry and 50 of his men were killed the next day by a terrific explosion in the town. Captain Henry
was a graduate of Harvard University.

The Bridgeport Telegram, July 4, 1927.

Henry repeatedly advanced in front of the platoon he commanded, drawing
machine-gun fire so that the German nests could be located and wiped out by his
men. Although wounded in the leg in this effort, his death was the result of shrapnel
wounds from an air bomb dropped by a German plane. [82] He was awarded the
French Croix de guerre avec palme for his acts of heroism. From the President of
the United States, the Commander in Chief of the United States Armed Forces, he
was presented with the Distinguished Service Cross and an Oak Leaf Cluster in lieu
of a second Distinguished Service Cross.[79][83]
Clifford Henry was the great love of Margaret Mitchell's life, according to her brother.
[84]
In a letter to a friend (A. Edee, March 26, 1920), Mitchell wrote of Clifford that she
had a "memory of a love that had in it no trace of physical passion". [85]
Mitchell had vague aspirations of a career in psychiatry, [86] but her future was
derailed by an event that killed over fifty million people worldwide, the 1918 flu
pandemic. On January 25, 1919, her mother, May Belle Mitchell, succumbed to
pneumonia from the "Spanish flu". Mitchell arrived home from college a day after
her mother had died. Knowing her death was imminent, May Belle Mitchell wrote
her daughter a brief letter and advised her:
Give of yourself with both hands and overflowing heart, but give only the excess
after you have lived your own life.[86]
An average student at Smith College, Mitchell did not excel in any area of
academics. She held a low estimation of her writing abilities. Even though her
English professor had praised her work, she felt the praise was undue. [87] After
finishing her freshman year at Smith, Mitchell returned to Atlanta to take over the
household for her father and never returned to college.[86]In October 1919, while
regaining her strength after an appendectomy, she confided to a friend that giving
up college and her dreams of a "journalistic career" to keep house and take her
mother's place in society meant "giving up all the worthwhile things that counted for
—nothing!"[88]

Marriage[edit]
Miss Mitchell, Hostess

Miss Mitchell was hostess at an informal buffet supper last evening at her home on Peachtree
road, the occasion complimenting Miss Blanche Neel, of Macon, who is visiting Miss Dorothy
Bates.
Spring flowers adorned the laced covered table in the dining room. Miss Neel was gowned in blue
Georgette crepe. Miss Mitchell wore pink taffeta. Miss Bates was gowned in blue velvet.
Invited to meet the honor guest were Miss Bates, Miss Virginia Walker, Miss Ethel Tye, Miss
Caroline Tye, Miss Helen Turman, Miss Lethea Turman, Miss Frances Ellis, Miss Janet Davis,
Miss Lillian Raley, Miss Mary Woolridge, Charles DuPree, William Cantrell, Lieutenant Jack
Swarthout, Lieutenant William Gooch, Stephen Mitchell, McDonald Brittain, Harry Hallman,
George Northen, Frank Hooper, Walter Whiteman, Frank Stanton, Val Stanton, Charles Belleau,
Henry Angel, Berrien Upshaw and Edmond Cooper.

The Constitution, Atlanta, February 2, 1921.

Margaret began using the name "Peggy" at Washington Seminary, and the
abbreviated form "Peg" at Smith College when she found an icon for herself in the
mythological winged horse, "Pegasus", that inspires poets.[89][90] Peggy made her
Atlanta society debut in the 1920 winter season.[90] In the "gin and jazz style" of the
times, she did her "flapping" in the 1920s.[91] At a 1921 Atlanta debutante charity ball,
she performed an Apache dance. The dance included a kiss with her male partner
that shocked Atlanta "high society".[92] The Apache and the Tango were scandalous
dances for their elements of eroticism, the latter popularized in a 1921 silent
film, The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, that made its lead actor, Rudolph
Valentino, a sex symbol for his ability to Tango.[93][94]
Mitchell was, in her own words, an "unscrupulous flirt". She found herself engaged
to five men, but maintained that she neither lied to or misled any of them.[95] A local
gossip columnist, who wrote under the name Polly Peachtree, described Mitchell's
love life in a 1922 column:
...she has in her brief life, perhaps, had more men really, truly 'dead in love' with her,
more honest-to-goodness suitors than almost any other girl in Atlanta. [91]
In April 1922, Mitchell was seeing two men almost daily; one was Berrien Kinnard
Upshaw （Berrien "Red" Upshaw，Mar 10, 1901 - Jan 13, 1949）, whom she is
thought to have met in 1917 at a dance hosted by the parents of one of her friends,
and the other, Upshaw's roommate and friend, John Robert Marsh（Oct 6, 1895 -
Mar. 5, 1952）, a copy editor from Kentucky who worked for the Associated Press.
[96][97]
Upshaw was an Atlanta boy, a few months younger than Mitchell, whose family
moved to Raleigh, North Carolina in 1916.[98] In 1919 he was appointed to the United
States Naval Academy, but resigned for academic deficiencies on January 5, 1920.
He was readmitted in May, then 19 years old, and spent two months at sea before
resigning a second time on September 1, 1920.[99] Unsuccessful in his educational
pursuits and with no job, in 1922 Upshaw earned money bootlegging alcohol out of
the Georgia mountains.[100]
Although her family disapproved, Peggy and Red married on September 2, 1922,
and the best man at their wedding was John Marsh, who would become her second
husband. The couple resided at the Mitchell home with her father. By December the
marriage to Upshaw had dissolved and he left. Mitchell suffered physical and
emotional abuse, the result of Upshaw's alcoholism and violent temper. Upshaw
agreed to an uncontested divorce after John Marsh gave him a loan and Mitchell
agreed not to press assault charges against him.[47][96][101] Upshaw and Mitchell were
divorced on October 16, 1924.[102]
On July 4, 1925, 24-year-old Margaret Mitchell and 29-year-old John Marsh were
married in the Unitarian-Universalist Church.[103] The Marshes made their home at
the Crescent Apartments in Atlanta, taking occupancy of Apt. 1, which they
affectionately named "The Dump" (now the Margaret Mitchell House and Museum).
[104]

"The Dump", now the Margaret Mitchell House and Museum

Reporter for The Atlanta Journal[edit]

While still legally married to Upshaw and needing income for herself, [105] Mitchell got
a job writing feature articles for The Atlanta Journal Sunday Magazine. She received
almost no encouragement from her family or "society" to pursue a career in
journalism, and had no prior newspaper experience.[106] Medora Field Perkerson,
who hired Mitchell said:
There had been some skepticism on the Atlanta Journal Magazine staff when Peggy
came to work as a reporter. Debutantes slept late in those days and didn't go in for
jobs.[106]
Her first story, Atlanta Girl Sees Italian Revolution,[107] by Margaret Mitchell Upshaw,
appeared on December 31, 1922.[108]She wrote on a wide range of topics,
from fashions to Confederate generals and King Tut. In an article that appeared on
July 1, 1923, Valentino Declares He Isn't a Sheik,[109] she interviewed celebrity
actor Rudolph Valentino, referring to him as "Sheik" from his film role. Less thrilled
by his looks than his "chief charm", his "low, husky voice with a soft, sibilant accent",
[110]
she described his face as "swarthy":
His face was swarthy, so brown that his white teeth flashed in startling contrast to
his skin; his eyes—tired, bored, but courteous.[111]
Mitchell was quite thrilled when Valentino took her in his arms and carried her inside
from the rooftop of the Georgian Terrace Hotel.[112]
Many of her stories were vividly descriptive. In an article titled, Bridesmaid of
Eighty-Seven Recalls Mittie Roosevelt's Wedding,[113] she wrote of a white-columned
mansion in which lived the last surviving bridesmaid at Theodore Roosevelt's
mother's wedding:
The tall white columns glimpsed through the dark green of cedar foliage, the wide
veranda encircling the house, the stately silence engendered by the century-old
oaks evoke memories of Thomas Nelson Page's On Virginia. The atmosphere of
dignity, ease, and courtesy that was the soul of the Old South breathes from this old
mansion...[114]
In another article, Georgia's Empress and Women Soldiers,[115] she wrote short
sketches of four notable Georgia women. One was the first woman to serve in
the United States Senate, Rebecca Latimer Felton, a suffragist who held white
supremacist views. The other women were: Nancy Hart, Lucy Mathilda Kenny (also
known as Private Bill Thompson of the Confederate States Army) and Mary
Musgrove. The article generated mail and controversy from her readers.[116]
[117]
Mitchell received criticism for depicting "strong women who did not fit the
accepted standards of femininity."[118]
Mitchell's journalism career, which began in 1922, came to an end less than four
years later; her last article appeared on May 9, 1926.[102] Several months after
marrying John Marsh, Mitchell quit due to an ankle injury that would not heal
properly and chose to become a full-time wife.[62] During the time Mitchell worked for
the Atlanta Journal, she wrote 129 feature articles, 85 news stories, and several
book reviews.[119]

Interest in erotica[edit]
Mitchell began collecting erotica from book shops in New York City while in her
twenties.[120] She and her friends were flamboyant in 1925. The newlywed Marshes
and their social group were interested in "all forms of sexual expression". [121] Mitchell
discussed her interest in "dirty" book shops and sexually explicit prose in letters to a
friend, Harvey Smith. Smith noted her favorite reads were Fanny Hill, The Perfumed
Garden and Aphrodite.[122]
Mitchell developed an appreciation for the works of Southern writer James Branch
Cabell, and his 1919 classic, Jurgen, A Comedy of Justice.[120] She read books
about sexology,[122] and took particular interest in the case studies of Havelock Ellis,
a British physician who studied human sexuality.[123] During this period in which
Mitchell was reading pornography and sexology, she was also writing Gone with the
Wind.[124]

Novelist[edit]
Early works[edit]
Lost Laysen[edit]
Mitchell wrote a romance novella, Lost Laysen, when she was fifteen years old
(1916). She gave Lost Laysen, which she had written in two notebooks, to a
boyfriend, Henry Love Angel. He died in 1945 and the novella remained
undiscovered among some letters she had written to him until 1994. [125] The novella
was published in 1996, eighty years after it was written, and became a New York
Times Best Seller.[126]
In Lost Laysen, Mitchell explores the dynamics of three male characters and their
relationship to the only female character, Courtenay Ross, a strong-willed American
missionary to the South Pacific island of Laysen. The narrator of the tale is Billy
Duncan, "a rough, hardened soldier of fortune",[127] who is frequently involved in
fights that leave him near death. Courtenay quickly observes Duncan's hard-
muscled body as he works shirtless aboard a ship called Caliban. Courtenay's suitor
is Douglas Steele, an athletic man who apparently believes Courtenay is helpless
without him. He follows Courtenay to Laysen to protect her from perceived foreign
savages. The third male character is the rich, powerful yet villainous Juan Mardo.
He leers at Courtenay and makes rude comments of a sexual nature, in Japanese
nonetheless. Mardo provokes Duncan and Steele, and each feels he must defend
Courtenay's honor. Ultimately Courtenay defends her own honor rather than submit
to shame.
Mitchell's half-breed[128] antagonist, Juan Mardo, lurks in the shadows of the story
and has no dialogue. The reader learns of Mardo's evil intentions through Duncan:
They were saying that Juan Mardo had his eye on you—and intended to have you—
any way he could get you![129]
Mardo's desires are similar to those of Rhett Butler in his ardent pursuit of Scarlett
O'Hara in Mitchell's epic novel, Gone with the Wind. Rhett tells Scarlett:
I always intended having you, one way or another. [130]
The "other way" is rape. In Lost Laysen the male seducer is replaced with the male
rapist.[131]
The Big Four[edit]
In Mitchell's teenage years, she is known to have written a 400-page novel about
girls in a boarding school, The Big Four.[132] The novel is thought to be lost; Mitchell
destroyed some of her manuscripts herself and others were destroyed after her
death.[62]
'Ropa Carmagin[edit]
In the 1920s Mitchell completed a novelette, 'Ropa Carmagin, about a Southern
white girl who loves a biracial man.[62] Mitchell submitted the manuscript to Macmillan
Publishers in 1935 along with her manuscript for Gone with the Wind. The novelette
was rejected; Macmillan thought the story was too short for book form.[133]

Final work[edit]
Writing Gone with the Wind[edit]

I had every detail clear in my mind before I

“ sat down to the typewriter.

”
 — Margaret Mitchell[134]

In May 1926, after Mitchell had left her job at the Atlanta Journal and was
recovering at home from her ankle injury, she wrote a society column for
the Sunday Magazine, "Elizabeth Bennet's Gossip", which she continued to write
until August.[119] Meanwhile, her husband was growing weary of lugging armloads of
books home from the library to keep his wife's mind occupied while she hobbled
around the house; he emphatically suggested that she write her own book instead:
For God's sake, Peggy, can't you write a book instead of reading thousands of
them?[135]
To aid her in her literary endeavors, John Marsh brought home a Remington
Portable No. 3 typewriter (c. 1928).[104][136] For the next three years Mitchell worked
exclusively on writing a Civil War-era novel whose heroine was named Pansy
O'Hara (prior to publication Pansy was changed to Scarlett). She used parts of the
manuscript to prop up a wobbly couch.[137]

World War II[edit]

USS Atlanta (CL-104) is christened by Mrs. Margaret Mitchell Marsh (1944)

Margaret Mitchell (1941) in her Red Cross uniform aboard the USS Atlanta(CL-51)

During World War II, Margaret Mitchell was a volunteer for the American Red
Crossand she raised money for the war effort by selling war bonds.[138] She was
active in Home Defense, sewed hospital gowns and put patches on trousers. [135] Her
personal attention, however, was devoted to writing letters to men in uniform—
soldiers, sailors and marines, sending them humor, encouragement, and her
sympathy.[139]
The USS Atlanta (CL-51) was an anti-aircraft ship of the United States
Navysponsored by Margaret Mitchell and used in the naval Battle of Midway and
the Eastern Solomons. The ship was struck and sunk in night surface action on
November 13, 1942 during the Naval Battle of Guadalcanal.[140]
Mitchell sponsored a second cruiser named after the city
of Atlanta, USS Atlanta (CL-104). On February 6, 1944, she christened Atlanta in
Camden, New Jersey. Atlantawas operating off the coast of Honshū when the
Japanese surrendered on August 15, 1945. It was sunk during an explosive test
off San Clemente Island on October 1, 1970.[141]

Death[edit]

Mitchell's grave in Oakland Cemetery in Atlanta

Margaret Mitchell was struck by a speeding automobile as she crossed Peachtree

Street at 13th Street in Atlanta with her husband, John Marsh, while on her way to
see the movie A Canterbury Tale on the evening of August 11, 1949. She died at
age 48 at Grady Hospital five days later on 16 August 1949 without fully regaining
consciousness.
The driver, Hugh Gravitt, was an off-duty taxi driver who was driving his personal
vehicle when he struck Mitchell. After the accident, Gravitt was arrested for drunken
driving and released on a $5,450 bond until Mitchell's death. [142]
Gravitt was originally charged with drunken driving, speeding, and driving on the
wrong side of the road. He was convicted of involuntary manslaughter in November
1949 and sentenced to 18 months in jail. He served almost 11 months. Gravitt died
in 1994 at the age of 73.[143] Margaret Mitchell was buried at Oakland Cemetery
(Atlanta), Georgia. When her husband, John died in 1952, he was buried next to his
wife, Margaret.
Legacy[edit]
Mitchell was inducted into Georgia Women of Achievement in 1994 and into the
Georgia Writers Hall of Fame in 2000