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The O'Hara Plantation
Gerald O'Hara
Gerald O'Hara
Played By: Thomas Mitchell
The patriarch of the O'Hara family.
- Advertised Extra: The film's 1998 VHS cover, 2004 four-disc DVD cover, and promotional material throughout the years features an image of a silhouetted couple standing on a hilltop gazing down at Tara plantation. Those either unfamiliar or only vaguely familiar with the film proper are prone to mistakenly conclude that this is a depiction of two lovers - of Scarlett and either Rhett Butler or Ashley Wilkes - when in fact this is an image taken directly from a shot in the film - panning out away from the shadows of Gerald O'Hara and Scarlett overlooking Tara after giving her his speech about land being "the only thing that lasts."
- The Baby of the Bunch: The youngest and the smallest of his five brothers, all of who were at least six foot, while Gerald is only five foot four.
- Deceased Parents Are the Best: He was very doting towards all three of his daughters.
- I Have No Son!: He says, “You are no daughter of mine!” to Suellen when she tries to get him to sign the Iron Clad oath, which would seal the O’Hara’s loyalty to the Union.
- Innocently Insensitive: He acts like this towards his wife occasionally.
- May–December Romance: He is a lot older than Ellen, who was a teenager when they wed while he was clearly well into his middle-age.
- Outliving One's Offspring: His and Ellen's three sons die in infancy.
- The Patriarch: Though nobody takes him seriously as they do his wife.
- Sanity Slippage: He is so traumatised by the pillaging of the O'Hara plantation by Union soldiers and Ellen's death that he can barely even remember his wife has just died from typhoid fever. His both physically and mentally disheveled later appearances is a stark contrast to the doting parent with full grasp of his senses he is introduced as.
- Second Love: Ellen marries him after losing her lover/cousin Phillippe.
- Self-Made Man: Described as this word-for-word in the novel. Gerald is an immigrant from Ireland who made his fortune in America through luck, skill and determination, which goes a long way to explaining his belief that "land is the only thing in this world that amounts to anything."
- Senseless Sacrifice: In the movie, he tries to exact vengeance on Jonas Wilkerson, but ends up getting killed due to falling off of his horse.
Ellen O'Hara
Ellen O'Hara
Played By: Barbara O'Neil
The matriach of the O'Hara clan.
- Abusive Parents: Her father Pierre Robillard was very strict and controlling to the point where her sisters Pauline and Eulalie are afraid of him. Scarlett hypothesizes in the sequel that she was glad to be out of his house in Savannah when she married Gerald.
- Apron Matron: Younger than most, but fits this role well.
- Broken Bird: Between the death of her true love and her three infant sons, it's no wonder she's a Stepford Smiler.
- Dating What Daddy Hates: She married Gerald to get back at her father for driving away her true love, her cousin Philippe, who was subsequently killed.
- Deceased Parents Are the Best: She was a very loving mother to all three of her daughters, but mostly to Scarlett.
- Lost Lenore: Gerald becomes an utter wreck after she dies. She has her own, her cousin Phillippe.
- Loving a Shadow: She still has feelings towards her late cousin, despite living many years after he's died and was still a teenage girl at the time they were in love.
- Morality Chain: She holds the morals of Tara together and even knows when to put her husband and daughters in their places whenever they act out of line.
- One Head Taller: Described as such when compared to her husband in the novel.
- Outliving One's Offspring: Hers and Gerald's three sons die in infancy.
- Parental Favoritism: Out of the three Robillard sisters. Pierre considers Ellen to be his most cherished daughter.
- Proper Lady: She is very patient and understanding and was seen as the paragon of what a Southern lady ought to be. Scarlett aspires to be like Ellen someday but ends up discarding her ladylike teachings after the yankees invade and she finds that the modest and gentle values her mother encouraged are useless in the new post-war world.
- Raven Hair, Ivory Skin: Described in the novel as "creamy-skinned" with dark hair, eyes and eyelashes as inherited from her French mother.
- Say My Name: She dies calling out to Phillippe.
- Silk Hiding Steel: The book spends several pages of Chapter 3 establishing Ellen O'Hara as a textbook example.
- Stepford Smiler: In the book, Ellen is unfailingly gracious and never complains; she dies calling out to her long-dead cousin/lover.
- White Man's Burden: Believed in the paternalistic racism shared by Melanie that white owners were responsible for the darkies in their care, comparing them to children that must be led by a good moral example.
Their Daughters
Scarlett O'Hara
Katie Scarlett O'Hara
"I can't think about that right now. If I do, I'll go crazy. I'll think about that tomorrow."
Played By: Vivien Leigh
The daughter of Gerald and Ellen O'Hara. She is vain, self-centered, and very spoiled by her wealthy family. She can also be insecure, but is very intelligent, despite her fashionable pretense at ignorance and helplessness around men.
- Adaptational Attractiveness: Downplayed. In the film, she's played by silver screen beauty Vivien Leigh, while the very first line of the book declares that "Scarlett O'Hara wasn't beautiful." She is frequently described as pretty or handsome though.
- Adaptational Heroism: Downplayed. As she still commits much of her sinful acts in the books but the film adapts out her first two children and subsequently her neglect and abuse of them. Also scenes after the escape from Atlanta shows her using her wits to escape from Yankee patrolmen.
- Adaptational Villainy: Downplayed. The movie omits many of her inner monologues indicating she has moments of pity for the suffering she sees and remorse or guilt over the terrible things she says or does.
- Alcohol Hic: Scarlett after the death of her second husband.
- Babies Make Everything Better: Even the shrewd, cynical Scarlett seems to believe this when she gets pregnant for the fourth time and is happy about it for the first time—she thinks the baby will be the key to reconciling with Rhett. This doesn't work out though: she miscarries and it's the beginning of the end for them. Later, after Bonnie's death, she admits that she would be willing to have another child if that what's it will take to bring Rhett out of his grief.
- Be Careful What You Wish For: Scarlett wishes to be rid of Melanie. When Melanie is on her deathbed, Scarlett regrets it deeply.
- Belated Love Epiphany: She doesn't see that Melanie was her closest and truest friend until Melanie is on her deathbed. Nor does she realize that she loves Rhett much more than she loves Ashley until Rhett decides to leave her.
- Big Eater: Scarlett openly loves to eat, unlike the typical Southern belle. After the war, hunger becomes one of her biggest fears, and when she works, she dreams of all the surplus of food she and her family will have when she makes enough money.
- Big Sister Instinct: Downplayed in that she doesn't exactly love her younger sisters, especially Suellen, but Scarlett still thinks they are "of her blood, part of Tara" and works herself to the bone to provide for them as well as for herself.
- Bitch in Sheep's Clothing: When she cares enough, Scarlett can manipulate almost any man into thinking of her as a sweet, innocent, delicate flower of womanhood. This is played with quite a bit throughout Gone with the Wind and Scarlett. Scarlett may be a scheming, lying bitch under her flirtatious demure exterior, but she can be quite naive and innocent about the really nasty stuff that goes on behind closed doors and in society. E.g., in Charleston, she is actively shocked and sickened when she finds out that adultery is actually really quite common among married people.
- Book Dumb: Thanks to her disinterest, she is actively stupid in areas that should be common knowledge to her (considering her class, era, and gender). Rhett and Ashley often reference and quote classical works of literature, which fall utterly flat on her—in an early scene, even Charles is embarrassed by her ignorance and hurriedly tries to cover for her. Ironically, she is conversely very adept in things that were considered unladylike at the time, such as mathematics, this time embarrassing Frank—"A woman has no business even knowing what a mortgage is!"
- Cannot Spit It Out: She never got a chance to explain to Rhett that the embrace she and Ashley were caught in was completely innocent. When she also starts to fall for Rhett late in their marriage she starts to tell him how happy he makes her a few times, only for her to lash out and claim she doesn't care when he treats her coldly, which contributes to their spiralling marriage.
- Can't Get Away with Nuthin': The one time she connects to Ashley on a real emotional level without any thought of seducing him, she is caught in the act by Moral Guardians. Very frustrating given all the actually immoral things she's done and gotten away with—even she practically lampshades this by saying that she would have gladly welcomed everyone's contempt had they been doing something wrong, knowing that she would have deserved it.
- Cartwright Curse: Her first two husbands die in unrelated circumstances.
- Character Development: She belatedly realizes that she and Melanie have become Fire-Forged Friends and that she doesn't really love Ashley when it's too late to do anything about it. She also matures from an ignorant, vapid Southern Belle to the 1800s version of a Corrupt Corporate Executive to keep the family land and her family well-fed.
- Colour Coded Eyes: Scarlett's green eyes are very relevant to her personality, always wanting more money, and having a jealous personality.
- Cool Big Sis: Doting and sweet towards her youngest sister Carreen. Suellen... not so much.
- Daddy's Girl: She's very close to her father, and is the only woman in the family not to admonish him for riding his horse over fences.
- Death Glare: You know the one.
◊ - Determinator: She gets props for being so ridiculously determined to survive and keep her family alive that she debases her own class and values, lies, cheats, steals, farms by literally pulling the plow herself, and does everything the men of the time were having trouble doing and things that women were never supposed to do. The true tragedy of the series - whatever book or film you look at - is that her amazing intellect is permanently twisted and stunted by her upbringing as an idiotic Southern belle.
- Determined Homesteader: Her father tells her, "Land's the only thing that matters. It's the only thing that lasts!" And everything she does is ultimately to protect Tara, particularly in the book in which we are frequently reminded that she and Melanie actually own the house in Atlanta jointly and could abandon Tara to move there at any time.
- Don't You Dare Pity Me!: Scarlett cannot stand being pitied.
- Drowning My Sorrows: She drinks whiskey when she comes back to Tara only to find out that her mother died, her father lost his mind, and almost all of their food and harvest was taken or destroyed by the Yankees. After her second husband Mr Kennedy dies, she drinks a lot of alcohol to cope, and becomes a Lady Drunk after her marriage with Rhett starts to fall apart. She actually uses this term in Scarlett when she becomes an alcoholic while trying to pretend to herself that Rhett will come back to Atlanta for her.
- Even Bad Men Love Their Mamas: She idolizes her mother and completely freaks out upon learning that she's ill. After Frank dies, she's genuinely sorry that she isn't the kind of person her mother wanted her to be. She's also very fond of Mammy, to the point of being genuinely hurt at her cutting disapproval of her plans to marry Rhett (this is after laughing her head off at everyone else's reaction).
- Fatal Flaw: She's unable to understand the emotional motivations of anyone, including herself.
- Femme Fatale: She's a shameless flirt before she ever gets married, seducing pretty much every unmarried man into falling for her. She also seduces two men she doesn't love into marrying her over the women who love them (Melanie's brother Charles away from India, and Mr Kennedy away from her sister Suellen) for her own ends; Charles in a vain attempt to make Ashley jealous, and Mr Kennedy to get his lumber mill, indirectly causes the latter's death. She also tries to pull this on Rhett, though it doesn't work.
- Female Misogynist: She hates all women except her mother, considering them competition for male attention.Scarlett's was a completely feminized world and this irked her, for she neither liked nor trusted her own sex, worse still, she was always bored by it.
- Generation Xerox: According to the sequel, she was named after her father’s mother, Katie Scarlett.
- Good with Numbers: She's Book Dumb but she's sharp when it comes to business and finance. She can swiftly add a long column of figures in her head and has no difficulties with fractions, much to her second husband's dismay.
- Greed: Scarlett becomes obsessed with acquiring more and more material wealth to make sure that both she and her family will "never go hungry again." Somewhat more sympathetic than most cases as she has obviously been deeply traumatized (even years later, she routinely has nightmares about hunger and poverty) and is trying to protect herself in the only way she knows, but it still drives her to do things that are incredibly morally dubious.
- Green-Eyed Monster: She's spitefully jealous of Ashley's marriage to Mellie, her natural ability with children, and the fact that literally everybody adores her.
- Hereditary Wedding Dress: Taking the novel's detail of Scarlett marrying Charles Hamilton in haste and in her mother's wedding dress, costume designer Walter Plunkett went the extra mile by designing a gown twenty years older than the story's 1861 setting, made it to fit Barbara O'Neil (who plays Scarlet's mother Ellen) then altered it to fit Vivien Leigh.
- Hypocrite: At least there is a Hypocrisy Nod to what both are doing throughout the main novel.
- I Gave My Word:
- Scarlett promised Ashley to take care of Mellie during her pregnancy. Despite Scarlett's various amoral behavior, she does have a warped moral code that she takes very seriously, mostly the result of her upbringing; making a promise is very Serious Business and she prides herself on keeping her word.
- The first half of the story's ending and the entire second half of the story is built upon this, as just before the reconstruction of the South, in outrage and defiance, she makes the now fabled promise to herself and to God...As God is my witness, as God is my witness they're not going to lick me. I'm going to live through this and when it's all over, I'll never be hungry again. No, nor any of my folk. If I have to lie, steal, cheat or kill. As God is my witness, I'll never be hungry again.
- It's All About Me: She's pretty openly selfish and self-serving. When her first husband dies she's distraught because it means she can't go to parties or wear any color besides black. Generally, whenever a bad situation arises, her first and only thought is how it'll affect her. Rhett likes to make fun of her for it all the time.
- Kick the Dog: Scarlett is not a very nice person:
- In the first chapter she is revealed to have stolen another girl's near-fiancé merely because it irritated her to see a man showing interest in anyone but her. A girl who's neither beautiful nor popular and is said to have no chance getting another man but him.
- Emotionally neglecting her children from her first two marriages.
- And then going straight against her beloved Ashley's expressed will and manipulating him into working for/with her.
- Her brutally cruel treatment of Rhett after Bonnie's death—she outright calls him a murderer.
- Lie Back and Think of England: Before that certain night with Rhett, Scarlett never enjoyed sex; she viewed it as "servitude to inexplicable male madness, unshared by females".
- Love Epiphany: Scarlett finally has one when she realizes that she doesn't love Ashley, and has always loved Rhett. She also sort of has one with Melanie, but she realizes that Melanie is her best friend, and has always been there for Scarlett, defending her. Unfortunately, both of these come far too late.
- Loving a Shadow: It's clear to everyone who knows of her feelings for Ashley that she loves the idea of him more than the man himself. At the very end, she realizes that, had she ever understood Ashley, she would never have loved him.
- Middle Name Basis: Scarlett is her middle name. Her first name is Katie.
- Morality Pet: While she usually treats her fellow white people like trash, she treats black people far more decently, even to the point that Pork, her father's personal servant, told her when she gave him Gerald's watch as a present that if she would have treated white people like that, her life would have been much more pleasant.
- Operation: Jealousy: Scarlett marries Charles to make Ashley jealous.
- Outliving One's Offspring: Her third child Bonnie dies thanks to Rhett, a pony and a bar set a little too high.
- Please, Don't Leave Me: When Rhett decides to leave her at the end of the story, she literally begs him on her knees not to leave her.
- Promoted to Parent: Following her mother’s death, Scarlett becomes the woman of the house (or the woman of Tara) and her sisters do little effort in helping her.
- Sexless Marriage: Rhett and Scarlett's marriage becomes this after Bonnie is born, as Scarlett doesn't want any more children in order to stay looking young and thin for Ashley, and Rhett decides to seek company elsewhere, and then just stays for Bonnie.
- Parental Neglect: She is neglectful towards her son Wade and daughter Ella, who are omitted from the film but appear in the 2008 West End musical.
- Single-Target Sexuality: Despite flirting with just about every man she meets for fun, and marrying twice for spite or profit, the only man Scarlett is really attracted to for the majority of the book/film is Ashley. Or at least, she thinks she is only attracted to him; in her narration, she eats the eye candy whenever she sees Rhett, and at the end, she finally realizes she loves him and not Ashley.
- Smarter Than You Look: Starting out as a manipulative, Book Dumb Southern Belle, she reveals that she can do mathematical calculations in her head for business transactions, engage in Xanatos Speed Chess to save her home, and survive whatever the world throws at her.
- Southern Belle: Perhaps the most iconic example of the "Mauvaise Belle" ever seen both in literature and onscreen.
- Spoiled Brat: She is spoiled by her parents. When she is forced to fend for herself and take charge of her family after the war, she is rudely awakened.
- Survival Mantra: She tells herself, "I'll think of it tomorrow" or a variation thereof. At the beginning, she uses the phrase to soothe her conscience about doing unsavory acts; later, she tells herself that when her fears of losing her home, starving to death, and such get too hard to bear. She tells herself so in the very last lines of the book, after Melanie dies and Rhett leaves her. Tomorrow Is Another Day even was one of the proposed titles of the book.
- Too Much Alike: Part of why her romance with Rhett is ultimately a Destructive Romance: they're both scheming, selfish, manipulative people who can't (or don't) communicate their feelings well, and both have a nasty streak that cause them to lash out and hurt the other when they're angry at each other, and that (coupled with Scarlett not realizing she loves Rhett rather than Ashley) devolves into toxicity and causes Rhett to pull a Screw This, I'm Outta Here.
- What Is This Feeling?: Scarlett (in the novel) is described as undergoing various emotional sensations that are clearly indicative of her physical and later emotional attraction to Rhett, but fails to understand them, partially due to the way that women were emotionally repressed at the time, partially because Scarlett is perhaps the least introspective character ever.
- White Sheep: In the Alexandra Ripley sequel that shares her name, Scarlett becomes so bored with her aunt’s upper class social events, that she decides to spend the rest of her visit in Savannah with her O’Hara relatives, and she even journeys out to Ireland to help the O’Haras living there with their problems.
- What Beautiful Eyes!: Her striking pale green eyes are often emphasized in the narration.
Suellen O'Hara
Susan Elinor "Suellen"
Played By: Evelyn Keyes
- Annoying Younger Sibling: She has a perverse urge to boast and complain in front of Scarlett.
- Defrosting Ice Queen: In Scarlett, she and her sister finally make amends by giving her a share of Tara.
- Happily Married: With Will Benteen, and they even have three children as a result.
- Hate Sink: She is very dislikable for obvious reasons. It isn’t until the sequel Scarlett that she and her sister finally make up.
- Ice Queen: Like India, Suellen becomes this after Scarlett steals Frank Kennedy right under her nose.
- It's All About Me: She is very selfish. Scarlett assesses that Suellen only cares about having pretty dresses and "Mrs." in front of her name, and once she marries Frank, she'll turn her back on her family and Tara. Will Benteen, who is a good judge of character and likes Suellen to some extent, agrees with this.
- Jerkass Has a Point: Shortly after stealing Suellen's fiancee, Scarlett receives a letter from her, "full of venom and truthful observations upon her character," meaning that even Scarlett herself sees her point.
- Middle Child Syndrome: A pretty antagonistic one. She whines, she hates Scarlett even before she steals Frank Kennedy under her nose and is the lethal combination of a spoiled bitch and an Ice Queen.
- Spoiled Brat: She has all of Scarlet's worst traits with none of the Determinator qualities.
- Trophy Wife: Had Scarlett not married Frank, Suellen would have (willingly) become this trope.
- Took a Level in Kindness: She marries Will Benteen and makes amends with Scarlett in the eponymous sequel.
- Unwitting Instigator of Doom: She is willing to force her own father to sign the Iron Clad oath, which will proclaim the O’Hara’s loyalty to the Union, but Gerald calls her out on this. This leads to Gerald's death later on.
Carreen O'Hara
Caroline Irene "Carreen" O'Hara
Played By: Ann Rutherford
- Broken Bird: After the war, she doesn't cope well and becomes a nun.
- The Faceless: She does not physically appear in either version of Scarlett and only receives a handful of mentions about her life in the convent.
- Loving a Shadow: The curse of her family's women. She has harboured a crush on Brent Tarleton since forever and finally engaged to him after her sister gets out of the picture, but sadly he gets killed in war. She decides that she can't love anyone else ever and becomes a nun.
- Morality Pet: A mild one for Scarlett, who has to stand up to Suellen on her behalf when Suellen complains about picking cotton. In general, despite seeing both her sisters as rivals in romance, Scarlett is much nicer to her than Suellen.
- Oblivious to Love: Much to Scarlett's irritation, Careen doesn't notice Will's regard for her, nor does the thought of marriage ever occur to her.
- Satellite Character: She and Suellen are mostly seen together in the film adaptation, which does not depict her leaving Tara to become a nun.
- Shrinking Violet: Ellen and Mammy find her easy to mold into a Proper Lady due to her sweet and shy nature.
- Spoiled Sweet: She is (before the war) a naive, spoiled, rich, upper-class girl and a total sweetheart.
- Stopped Caring: She is soft-spoken, shy, obedient and frail, both physically and emotionally, and never loses these traits after the war. After the deaths of her mother, father and beau, she becomes increasingly withdrawn and ends up a nun.
- Unrequited Tragic Maiden: After Brent Tarleton, the guy she is in love with, dies in the war, she is left with a broken heart and eventually becomes a nun.
Scarlett's Beaux
Brent Tarleton
Brent Tarleton
Played By: Fred Crane
- The Prankster: He and Stuart got kicked out of four colleges for being this.
- Fiery Redhead: He and his brothers are very free spirited.
- Second Love: He was engaged to Careen at some point before his death.
Stuart Tarleton
Stuart Tarleton
Played By: George Reeves
- The Prankster: He and Brent got kicked out of four colleges for being this.
- Fiery Redhead: Same as his brother.
- Second Love: He’s got eyes for Scarlett, but he is also a Plan-B for India Wilkes.
The House Servants
Mammy
Mammy
"If you don't care what folks says about this family, I does! I has told ya and told ya that you can always tell a lady by the way she eats in front of folks like a bird, and I ain't aimin' for you to go to Mr. John Wilkerson's and eat like a field hand and gobble like a hog!"
Played By: Hattie McDaniel
The housemaid of the O'Hara family.
- Cassandra Truth: She makes lots of correct observations that Scarlett then ignores.
- Hero of Another Story: She is the protagonist of the prequel Ruth’s Journey, which explains her backstory and real name.
- Maid: The O'Hara family's main house servant.
- Mammy: Might not be the Trope Namer, but she's definitely the Trope Codifier.
- Old Retainer: She's been the housemaid of the O'Haras since Scarlett's birth (or when Ellen was a little girl) at the very least. She even stays after the Civil War the abolition of slavery.
- Sassy Black Woman: She's pretty outspoken, especially considering the fact that she's a slave before the Civil War. That said, in the movie, she is arguably the most sensible and level-headed character. Even Rhett points out she's got more common sense than virtually everyone else in the household.
- Servile Snarker: She's a servant, and she can get snarky sometimes.
- Undying Loyalty: She's loyal to the O'Hara family to the very end.
Pork
Pork
Played By: Oscar Polk
- Old Retainer: After Scarlett and Rhett move to Atlanta, he along with Prissy, Dilcey and Mammy continue to serve them.
- Undying Loyalty: Like Mammy, he is very loyal to the O’Hara family, even after the abolition of slavery.
Dilcey
Dilcey
Pork’s wife and Prissy’s mother.
- Adapted Out: From the film, but not entirely. Prissy mentions her while helping Scarlett with the birth of Beau Wilkes.
- Corporal Punishment: When Prissy is complaining about having to pick cotton, Dilcey seizes a cotton stalk and whips her with it. After that Prissy stops complaining quite so much.
- Foolish Husband, Responsible Wife: Not as prideful as her husband and doesn't see picking cotton as beneath her during times of hardship.
- Like Father, Unlike Son: She's capable, stoic and dignified whereas Prissy is generally unhelpful, shrill and flighty (though in fairness, Prissy is just a teenager at this time).
- Old Retainer: She stays true to the O’Hara family, even after the Civil War and the abolishment of slavery.
Prissy
Prissy
Played By: Thelma 'Butterfly' McQueen
The daughter of Pork and Dilcey who accompanies Scarlett to Charleston.
- Cute, but Cacophonic: She's a sweet looking girl, but her voice is so high pitched, whiny, and screechy that half the time she sounds like a dying chipmunk.
- Last-Second Word Swap: After another of Scarlett's orders, she starts singing, and holds the "f" at the beginning of the song as though she were about to say "fuck you".
- The Load: She screams and shrieks a lot (Her high pitched voice doesn't help) and does nothing to help.
- Obfuscating Stupidity: It's implied that she's not as useless as she seems, and appears to passive-aggressively defy Scarlett's orders. She stops whining and becomes calm very quickly whenever she's told what she wants to hear. She also pretends not to know about "birthing babies", only to casually dish out useful childbirth advice at a later, less convenient time.
- Parental Substitute: She is given the role of Wade’s wet nurse and she takes care of him a lot better than Scarlett.
- Screaming Woman: During her, Scarlett and Melanie's exodus to Tara.
Cookie
Cookie
The O’Hara family’s cook.
- Demoted to Extra: She appears only once in the movie, being ordered by Mammy to start the fire for Ellen’s arrival. Also, in the film’s version of events, it is safe to assume that she was freed after the Yankees took residence at Tara.
- Old Retainer: Stays loyal to the O’Hara’s after the war.
In the fields
Jonas Wilkerson
Jonas Wilkerson
Played By: Victor Jory
- Asshole Victim: After all the trouble that he causes for Scarlett, Tony Fontaine murders him for being a black sympathizer.
- Can't Get Away with Nuthin': In the film, at least. His impregnating a poor white girl on Tara plantation is more than enough grounds for the O’Hara family to dismiss him. However, when he later turns up married to the same girl he had Defiled Forever, they still hold the fact that he married "trash" against him.
- Even Evil Has Standards: Being a Yankee, he is sympathetic with the African-Americans of the South...which unfortunately costs him his life.
- Hate Sink: There's a good reason why Ellen fired him, he is easily dislikable. Not to mention he is in some ways responsible for the deaths of both Ellen and Gerald.
- Jerkass Has a Point: In the film, he calls the O'Hara family out for holding onto their old classist snobbery against him and his wife even though the old class structure doesn't apply anymore, as he's now Nouveau Riche and they're Impoverished Patricians.
- Karma Houdini Warranty: Scarlett finds no means to punish him after the hell that has been cast on Tara and her parents. But the karma gods are not mocked, and he ends up getting killed by Tony Fontaine for supporting rights for black people.
Emmie Slattery
Emmie Slattery
Played By: Isabel Jewell
Jonas Wilkerson's mistress, later wife.
- Defiled Forever: Her reputation is ruined after marrying Jonas.
- Death by Childbirth: Reversed. She gives birth to Jonas' child, but the baby doesn't make it.
- Hated by All: None of the O’Hara’s seem to like her very much because her family is “white trash”.
- Lower-Class Lout: From the POV of the O'Hara family (minus Ellen) and Mammy, she's a "trashy" girl from a poor farming family who has had at least one illegitamate child with Jonas and is entirely to blame for Ellen catching an illness and dying. She also shows up to the plantation with her husband in flashy new clothes, looking unrepentant (though she probably had no idea about how Ellen died
or that Ellen being exposed to her illness led to her contracting it and dying given her lack of education). - Nouveau Riche / Rags to Riches: Becomes rich after marrying Jonas.
- Outliving One's Offspring: Early in the story, she gives birth to a stillborn baby.
- Small Role, Big Impact: Her stillborn child leads to Jonas getting fired by Ellen. Then later on in the novel, she gets Ellen sick with typhoid, which leads to her death.
- What Happened to the Mouse?: After Tony Fontaine murders Jonas for supporting the African-Americans of the South, we never read anything about the recently widowed Emmie's fate.
Tom Slattery
Tom Slattery
Emmie’s father.
- Adapted Out: He and his two sons (Emmie’s brothers) are not seen in the movie.
- Hated by All: He and his kin are hated by the O’Hara family because of their “white trash” reputation.
- Lower-Class Lout: The O’Haras see him and his family as this trope.
Big Sam
Big Sam
Played BY: Everett Brown
- Deadpan Snarker: Shows this from time to time.Field Hand: Quittin' time! Quittin' time!
Big Sam: Who says it's quittin' time?
Field Hand: I says it's quittin' time!
Big Sam: I's the foreman. I's the one who says when it's quittin' time at Tara. *Beat* Quittin' time! - Large and in Charge: He's notably larger and more muscular than virtually every other male cast member.
- Small Role, Big Impact: Some of his scenes provide some significance for Scarlett, including informing her of her mother’s health during the evacuation of Atlanta, and then later saving her from being raped in the shantytown.
Will Benteen
Will Benteen
- Adapted Out: He does not appear in the movie but he does appear in the televised adaptation of Scarlett.
- Babies Ever After: His marriage to Suellen produces three children.
- Hypercompetant Sidekick: He defers to Scarlett as the head of the house while proving much better at farming and trading than her. His coming to Tara relieves a lot of the burden of sustaining the household from Scarlett.
- The Reliable One: Scarlett and the other people in Tara increasingly rely on him during his convalescence, and eventually Scarlett hires him as the new overseer when she moves to Atlanta. Even the neighbors appreciate his competence and common sense
- Replacement Goldfish: For Jonas Wilkerson after his firing and subsequent death.
- Secret-Keeper: He guesses Scarlett's devotion to Ashley, but never confronts Scarlett about it or tells anyone else.
- Settle for Sibling: He's in love with Carreen, but she decides to become a nun. He then marries Suellen because it would look improper for them to be living at Tara while unmarried. The later chapters show them at least reasonably content with each other.
- Uptown Guy: He marries Suellen even though before the war, there would be no way he could have snagged a woman of her social status.
