英语专业论文——斯嘉丽的性格分析

Title: Why Scarlett was gone with the wind?

Outline:

1. The Virtues and Defects in Scarlett’s Character

1.1 Virtues

1.1.1 Rebellion against Social Restrictions

Scarlett O’Hara behaves quite differently from the women in the southern American society in that period. Female, at that time, are taught to be gentle and elegant. They not only should be forced to obey all the conversations that a gentlewoman should know, but also wait for men’s appreciation and love passively. Even in love, they could not tell anybody their own ideas.

While Scarlett hates the so-called traditional regulation. Instead, she wants to be herself: She shows her indifference for the affected manners: “I’m tired of everlastingly being unnatural and never doing anything I want to do. I’m tired of acting like I don’t eat more than a bird, and walking when I want to run and saying I feel faint after a waltz, when I could dance for two days and never get tired. I’m tired of saying someday I’m going to do and say everything I want to do and say, and if people don’t lik e it, I don’t care.” She will not confine herself nor live below men, she dresses up beautifully and wants to handle men around her and loves to be the focus of men.

At that time, marriage is planed by parents and daughters have no choices but to accept parents’ arrangement. When Scarlett is young, her father wants her to marry one of the twins who will give their family a big house,a broader orchard garden. But she is brave to pursue her love and happiness actively, when she falls in love with Ashley, she confesses to him and gets ready to elope with him.Her emotion is so powerful that she tries her best to make him feel and understand her love.

Unlike other girls who have a little food graciously at the party only to catch men. Scarlett never let herself be hunger. She just wants to be herself and ignores the public scold.

In a men’s world, women are not allowed to have their own job. On the contrary, she becomes stronger and has her own business after the Civil War. In order to protect her family and servants, she manage to preserve Tara by any kind of means. Besides, she takes charge of a sawmill successfully,emploies prisoners to save money and even runs business with Yankees.

She lives her own free life throughout her life no matter how hard living is or what people talk about her. Her amazing deeds surprise people in the world and proves that women could also do business as sagacious as men.

1.1.2 Obstinate and Indomitable

1.1.3 Brave, Independent and Responsible

Scarlett is very determined to make her own decision.Her mother and her nanny always tell her to learn rules and regulations of being a fair lady. But she is brave to break the code of ethic. She defies her father’s wishful thinking of her marriage and she shows her affection for Ashley boldly. Particularly, her love is refused, she still stick to be persisting and being strong-willed. In the period of the Civil War, Scarlett keeps her promise to Ashley to manage to deliver a baby boy of Melanie (Ashley’s wife) safely by herself under the tough situation.

When she comes back home with Melanie and her son, she finds that everything is in ruin. There is no food and drink but hunger and poverty. Her gentle, amiable mother, has died; her father has turned to a terribly old man with schizophrenia. Now he is like a child, no longer a strong man, the backbone of T ara. Both of her sisters are ill in bed; slaves have run away, with only three darkies still remaining. There remains not enough food, and all their cotton has been burnt to ashes. Meanwhile, their lot of Confederate cash becomes worthless. The most important is that she, Scarlettt Hamilton, will be responsible to continue to carry her burdens and rebuild T ara——a red earth where she could get strength from. She could not give it up.“She belonged to the red acres far more than they could ever belong to her. Her roots went deep into the blood–colored soil and sucked up life, as did the cotton”.

The next morning Scarlett forces her to endure body’s stiffness and sore, goes out to search for some food. In the Negroes’ garden patches of Wilkes’ plantation; she is licked down by hunger and tiredness. When she arises at last and sees again the black ruins of the plantation, her head is raised high and something t hat is “youth and beauty and potential tenderness” has gone out of her face forever. The lazy luxury of the old days is gone, never to return. “There was no going back and she was going forward throughout the South for fifty years there would be bitter–eye d woman who looked backward… But Scarlett was never to look back” At that moment hunger grows at her empty stomach again and Scarlett says aloud: “As god is my witness...the Yankees aren’t going to lick me.

I’m going to live through this, and when it’s over I’m never going to be hunger again.