So I just joined and realized everyone else has these cool blogger nicknames, and mine is just virginia...so unoriginal! So you all may refer to me as "the lady of the night". Incredible nickname, yes?
As for reading, right now I'm mid-reconstruction in Margaret Mitchell's Gone With The Wind. Food for thought: is Scarlett really all that selfish or is she just a modern woman stuck in an ancient culture? She doesn't seem any more selfish than I am. Of course, when you compare her to the great ladies of the book, Ellen and Melanie, she would look wild and self-centered. Of course we would all wish to be Ellen or Melanie when described by others, but can you honestly believe that you reach that level of selflessness reserved only for ficticious characters and Sisters of the Missionaries of Charity? Yes, maybe she went a bit far with the whole Ashley ordeal. But aren't we all a little bit hussy?
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3 comments:
scarlett is less than favorable, it's true, but i think you're onto something with the idea of a modern woman in an older time. we are raised to want it all. she was raised to want it all - if her husband and her daddy thought it proper.
cheers to scarlett and other ladies of the night - haha!
"While Scarlett at times denies reality, or at least puts off thinking about it, she is the most real character in the story. Caught in America's powerful masculine/feminine gender myth, she also exposes its fallacies by violating it throughout."
and
"Melanie's goodness is a source of genuine and potentially radical sisterhood (remember, only Melanie defends prostitute Belle against other women's disdain and rejection). Perhaps her ability to love and identify with other women is too dangerous to be portrayed as believable."
taken from:
http://www.imagesjournal.com/2002/features/gwtw/
I think that you are a little bit hussy, Virg, but maybe that is because I am your older sister! Hah!
I think that Scarlett is also really torn between her romantic fantasy of Ashley, and the reality of her attraction to Rhett. She can't fully realize her own character and happiness without also admitting that she may not really want the noble, sensitive Ashley of her youthful ideals, but that she might rather live alongside someone tempermental, self-indulgent, and passionate, like both Rhett and she really are.
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