Gone With The Wind / Gone with the Wind - Tropes M to R

This page is for tropes that have appeared in Gone with the Wind.

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• Mama Bear: Most of the time Scarlett shows less motherly affection than a caterpillar. But when the Yankees try to take Wade's sword she goes into full Mama Bear mode and manages to convince the soldiers not to take it. It's one of the few times she shows that she does love her son. Other moments include when Tara is set on fire and Wade appears to have died, she's devastated—and relieved when it turns out he's okay.
• Mammy
• Manipulative Bastard: Scarlett and Rhett both revel in this. Naturally, it makes their relationship somewhat difficult.
• Man of Wealth and Taste: Rhett, while not a villain per se, is (along with Scarlett) one of the most morally ambiguous main characters and whenever possible extremely well-dressed. He's fashionable to the point where he's called about by Atlanta's female population for style tips and that when he is in prison, the jailers punish him by not letting him groom.
• Massive Numbered Siblings: The Tarleton family has 4 sons and 4 daughters. The O'Haras would have been this, if their three sons hadn't died in infancy.
• Maternally Challenged: Scarlett has children only because it's not really a choice for a married woman and mostly sees them as a nuisance. When she's pregnant with Frank's child, he hopes that she will be more interested in taking care of his than in running business, and he's shocked and disappointed when it turns out otherwise.
• Matte Shot: Over a hundred matte paintings were used to transform southern California into the Old South. The exterior of Tara was only built halfway. The exterior of Twelve Oaks didn't exist at all apart from the porch. Matte paintings were also used to fill in ceilings at a time when it was impossible to put a real ceiling on a studio set.
• May–December Romance: When Rhett and Scarlett meet, she's sixteen and he's thirty-five, and her second husband Frank Kennedy (who was in fact courting Scarlett's younger sister for several years) was significantly older than Rhett. Rhett actually describes himself as a "husband of the right age" for Scarlett as compared to Frank and her first husband Charles (who was about Scarlett's age). This is mainly Values Dissonance, as at the time women generally married at a much younger age than men.
  • Gerald and Ellen also count, in the book, it said that Gerald is twenty-eight years older than Ellen. When they got married he was forty-three and she was fifteen.
• Meadow Run: The scene where Ashley returns to Tara (and Melanie) after the war.
• Metaphorically True: "I'm not any more in love with you than you are with me" being one of many.
• Missing Mom: The O'Haras after the death of Ellen.
• "Mister Sandman" Sequence: Starts with scenes from the Old South, or leastways Hollywood's interpretation of the same.
• Mock Millionaire
• Morality Chain: At no point in the book or movie is Scarlett honestly a morally admirable human being, but after her mother Ellen dies, the puppies really start flying.
• Morality Pet:
  • While she usually treats her peers like trash, she treats her black slaves 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.
  • Careen is another one for Scarlett, in part because she's a Broken Bird. She volunteers to cover Suellen's cotton picking duties, which causes Scarlett to put her foot down on Careen's behalf.
  • Scarlett's unwilling to admit it, but Melanie becomes one for her. It gets to the point that she saves Melanie's life over a promise made to Ashley, and refuses to confess that she's in love with Ashley so as to not break Melanie's heart after the latter defended her from India's accusations.
• My Friends... and Zoidberg: "P.S. I also enclose Mrs. Hamilton's ring."
• My Girl Is Not a Slut: Subverted. Rhett doesn't particularly care about Scarlett's previous sexual relationships; he just wants her to be emotionally attached to him.
• Neck Snap: Bonnie, though it's due to a fall rather than someone intentionally snapping it.
• Never Be Hurt Again: "As God is my witness, I'll never be hungry again!"
• Noble Male, Roguish Male: Ashley is the Noble Male, while Rhett is the Roguish Male.
• Nonchalant Dodge: Played for Drama. Rhett barely moves to dodge Scarlett's slap. She loses her balance and tumbles down the stairs, leading to a miscarriage.
• Noodle Incident: Rhett mentions that he has a ward, a little boy, in Charleston and snaps at Scarlett when she presses him for more information, declaring him to be " a perfect little hellion. I wish he'd never been born." This is never mentioned again except during his conversation with Wade after Bonnie is born, where he thinks of him briefly and is again displeased. (Quite uncharacteristic, as it's been well established that Rhett likes children) No further explanation is given about this, but Belle Watling mentions that she has a son who she keeps out of state (presumably to avoid exposing him to her life as a madam), leaving many fans to speculate that her son and Rhett's ward are one and the same, or that he's the child of the girl whose reputation Rhett ruined.
• Not Even Bothering with the Accent: Vivien Leigh and Olivia De Havilland are pretty good at sounding high-class Southern. Leslie Howard, on the other hand, not so much - the woodchopping scene is a particular stand out of "he's just English".
  • Clark Gable decided at the last minute that he would not be able to do a convincing Southern accent and chose to speak with his own Midwestern accent.
• Nothing Is the Same Anymore: Numerous assumptions and conventions are forever changed and destroyed over the course of the work (just look at the title!) but for Rhett and Scarlett's relationship, the major turning point is Bonnie's death.
• "Not If They Enjoyed It" Rationalization: Scarlett apparently enjoyed the "surprise sex" very much. How disturbing. Given Scarlett's Fatal Flaw above, though, it's understandable.
  • Due to the unfortunate nature of her relationship with Rhett being basically constant verbal abuse as both try to rationalize away and deny how much they love each other, what the audience is left hoping is that it is through physical touch and sex that they can communicate at least a little bit of what they feel, and that although Rhett was forcing himself on her, Scarlett was consenting nonetheless. This is how the 'sequel' Scarlett plays it according to Scarlett's point of view. Otherwise you are left with the uncomfortable conclusion that Scarlett's emotional conscience is so warped and she is so damaged that she confuses rape for passion. Scarlett also allows for this interpretation.
• Not What It Looks Like: Ashley comforts Scarlett when she cries, but India, Archie, and Mrs. Elsing think that they've interrupted a romantic interlude.
• Obfuscating Stupidity: Scarlett uses this, playing off the contemporary perception of women as pretty, helpless idiots, to her great advantage both in business and courtship.
  • Butterfly McQueen's portrayal of Prissy implies that she may be using this as a form of rebellion.
• Oblivious to Love: Scarlett in regards to Rhett. Not until the end of the book when she's remembering everything he's done for her does it finally dawn on her how much he loved her.
• Of Corset Hurts: Scarlett may not be especially bothered, but other female characters are mentioned as such.
• Officer and a Gentleman: Ashley. Additionally, when Scarlett visits the Yankee garrison, she is surprised to find that, contrary to what she has been told about their vicious, cruel natures, several of the Yankee officers fit this.
• Oh, Crap!: When Scarlett and Rhett are outside watching their daughter Bonnie riding the pony she just got and starting to realize that Bonnie's just like Scarlett's father. It is a cruel bit of Mood Whiplash, too, since this is the same scene in which the two are starting to patch things up between them.
  Scarlett: (dreamily) Just like pa... (bolts up, alarmed) Just like pa!
• Old Maid: Suellen especially worries about becoming this.
• Old Retainer: Mammy, after the war.
• Older Than They Look: In the book, Melanie is described as having a underdeveloped, childlike figure. Ashley is implied to prefer Scarlett's physical attributes.
• One-Steve Limit: A strange aversion occurs when we are introduced to Rhett; Cathleen Calvert's source for the gossip about his background happens to be a girl named Caro Rhett.
• Only in It for the Money: Rhett
• Only Known by Their Nickname:
  • Honey Wilkes' real name is never known to the reader, just that she's called "Honey" because that's what she calls everyone.
  • Not even Bonnie's own parents remember that her real name is "Eugenie Victoria"—this is outright stated in the book—having bestowed the nickname "Bonnie" on her shortly after her birth.
  • Also, Sarah Jane Hamilton, known as "Pittypat" ever since childhood, due to the sound her feet would make.
  • Suellen's real name is Susan Elinor, while Carreen's is Caroline Irene.
  • Young Miss Fontaine is called this even at 50-something years old because she married the younger son.
• Only Sane Man: At the meeting of all the leading men in the region to discuss whether Georgia should secede, Ashley and Rhett are the only two who aren't frothing at the mouth for it - everyone else literally thinks the war will be won in one month. Ashley supports the Confederacy but laments that peaceful negotiations have failed, because any war would be a bloodbath - even if they can wear down the north like they wore down the British, the Independence War was a grueling seven year long conflict. Rhett, meanwhile, bluntly points out that the south is screwed if they fight the north: there isn't a single cannon factory in the entire south, all they have is cotton to export to Europe for war materials, but the north's stronger navy will soon put an end to that. Not that anybody listens.
• O.O.C. Is Serious Business: In the novel, to deflect a policeman's suspicion on the night of the Klan raid, Rhett pretends to be drunk and starts singing. Scarlett knows something is up because Rhett gets quiet when he's drunk, not loud and rowdy.
• Opening Monologue: "...look for it only in books, for it is nothing more than a dream remembered. A Civilization gone with the wind."
• Operation: Jealousy: Scarlett marries Charles to make Ashley jealous.
  • And then she fawns over Ashley to make Rhett jealous, despite saying she doesn't love Rhett and is obsessed with Ashley. There's a very good reason why you could be forgiven for thinking that Scarlett has retained the mind of a 17-year-old.
• Overly Long Name: By the end of the book, Scarlett's full name is Katie Scarlett O'Hara Hamilton Kennedy Butler. Somewhat averted in that no one ever calls her by it, in or out of universe.
• Papa Wolf: Rhett fills this trope, spoiling Bonnie rotten, he fires a nanny in the movie and a servant in the book for leaving Bonnie alone in the dark. He also has a revelation about his role in society after a discussion with Wade.
• Parental Favoritism: Gerald for Scarlett, whom he treats like the eldest son he didn't have. But really every parent or parent figure in the O'Hara household seems to treat Scarlett like the most important sibling, like Carreen for her sweetness but not think much about her and find Suellen annoying.
• Parental Substitute: In the book, Melanie becomes one for Wade, whose mother (Scarlett) views him as little more than an inconvenience.
• Passive-Aggressive Kombat
• Period Piece: While both the book and movie are largely regarded to be this, they're arguable cases since they don't capture the reality of the time so much as an idealization of it.
  • It's easy to forget this, but the Civil War was still just barely within living memory at the time, with the film premiering the same year as the 75th anniversary of the Battle of Atlanta, the same temporal distance as 2019 has to D-Day. Someone ninety years old when the film came out would've been twelve when the real war started. Harry Davenport, the oldest member of the credited cast, was born in 1866, which would make him three years older than Bonnie Butler. At least two uncredited cast members, Luke Cosgrave and William McClain, were actually alive during the Civil War. McClain was born in Mississippi, making him the only cast members to have lived in the Confederate States of America, although he probably didn't remember it too well seeing how he was two years old when the war ended.
• Pimped-Out Dress: Just Scarlett alone wears several fancy dresses.
• Playing Drunk: Rhett, Ashley, and Dr. Meade fake being drunk in order to disguise the fact that Ashley has been shot while engaged in an act of vigilantism against the men who attacked Scarlett.
• Please, Don't Leave Me: A famous example of the trope. See the trope's page quote.
• Politically Correct History: One common criticism of the film. It's gotten to the point where "Gone With The Wind" is synonymous with a view of The American Civil War history that glorifies the Confederacy and downplays the importance of slavery.
• Pop-Cultural Osmosis Failure: Scarlett never understands cultural references. Early on, when Ashley says that Rhett loooks like a Borgia, she asks if the Borgias are relatives of his.
• Poor Communication Kills: There are minor examples in the main novel where this crops up, although Scarlett's emotional compass is so distorted it is difficult to tell whether instances of her not telling important information is this trope, her scheming manipulation, or her fear of letting herself be hurt or vulnerable.
  • Scarlett also has a rather telling instance with this concerning her daughter Cat. Did no one think that telling Scarlett that every person in the entire town of Ballyhara thinks her daughter is a fairy changeling, fear and hate her, and the children have been routinely trying to kill her? This isn't a secret, but somehow the topic never comes up in all the years of the girl's childhood until there is literally a mob with pitchforks at the doorstep. When Scarlett wants to go all Mama Bear after hearing from Grainne what the townspeople are doing, Grainne tells her to let it go.
• The Prankster: Stuart and Brent Tarleton, which got them kicked out of four colleges.
• Precision F-Strike: "Frankly, my dear, I don't give a damn." By 1930's standards, at least. This proved a problem for the movie as the last word was forbidden by The Hays Code, but the code was modified specifically so that the word could stay. There's a long-held rumor that the studio had to pay $5,000 in fines (in 1930s money), but in fact the fines were waived due to the line being straight from the novel.
• Pretty in Mink: Scarlett wears a few furs after she marries Rhett, to show her new wealth, such as an ermine-trimmed jacket, and later an ermine muff.
• Princess in Rags: Scarlett after the war leaves the plantation destitute.
• Professional Gambler: Rhett was one of these early in his life after being cast out by his father.
• Promoted to Parent: Scarlett and India become the heads of their respective households after their mothers die.
• Proper Lady: Melanie, as befits a foil for Scarlett.
  • Ellen O'Hara, Scarlett's mother.
    • Oddly enough, Charles Hamilton could be a male example.
• Protectorate: Scarlett will do anything up to and including murder to protect Tara.
  • Additionally, after Scarlett saves her from the Siege of Atlanta, Melanie becomes determined to do everything in her power to protect Scarlett.
• Pyrrhic Victory: Essentially Scarlett's fate at the end of the book, as she always wanted money, social status, Ashley, and to have Melanie out of the way. She gets it all and the ending leaves her as a more unhappy woman than she was ever before.
• Questionable Consent: During their argument, Rhett and Scarlett get drunk (Rhett having had a lot a lot to drink in the evening than Scarlett) and she leaves for bed alone. During which, Rhett forcefully kisses her and carries her up to their bed intended for sex whether she liked to or not and Rhett wasn't going to take no for an answer. The following morning, Scarlett awakens satisfied despite being resistant and frightened of Rhett's advances the night before. And Rhett apologizes to Scarlett, visibly regretting his actions from last night.
• Regal Ringlets: Scarlett sports these from time to time. America has never had proper "royalty" or "nobility" as such, but the antebellum Southern gentry came pretty damn close, and it wouldn't be surprising if she chose the hairstyle deliberately.
• Really Gets Around:
  • Rhett owns a brothel. This is part of the reason why Scarlett doubts that he really loves her, since he uses Belle Watling as his rebound girl twice when they have serious fights.
  • Scarlett is the G-rated, 1800s upper class lady version of this, because she has "beaus in five counties." In the novel, some of her peers actually describe her as "fast".
• Retargeted Lust: Scarlett is downright terrified when Rhett calls her out on this:

  "Don't you suppose I know you've lain in my arms and pretended I was Ashley Wilkes?"

• Riddle for the Ages:
  • Belle Watling’s secret son and Rhett Butler’s (unseen) legal ward are implied to be the same person, but this goes unresolved.
  • Also a meta example according to the Internet Movie Database: “There is ambiguity over exactly when Vivien Leigh was contracted to play Scarlett O'Hara. One theory holds that David O. Selznick had already secretly signed her for the role as early as February 1938, and that the nationwide "Search For Scarlett O'Hara", during which thousands of dollars were spent "testing" aspiring actresses for the part, was actually a well orchestrated publicity stunt on Selznick's part to keep alive interest in a very expensive film he did not yet have the money to produce. Supposedly, Selznick realized that the American audience might have difficulty accepting a British actress in such an important American role. Therefore, he made it look as though Leigh was discovered spontaneously during the filming of the Atlanta fire, which she "happened" to be visiting together with Laurence Olivier, with whom she was having an affair at the time. Another interesting story is that Selznick's brother Myron Selznick, an agent, introduced Leigh to David during the filming of the Atlanta fire and said, "David, meet your Scarlett O'Hara". The truth of the matter is actually unknown, and may never be resolved.”
• Rose-Tinted Narrative: Scarlett's love of the deep South, the way she was brought up to ignore the atrocities committed in the name of slavery, and the melodramatic style of narrative all lend to this in order to show Scarlett's world view. This then rather becomes an issue when the novel was made into a movie, where the opening card was a lamentation of the Antebellum South, particularly "Here in this pretty world Gallantry took its last bow...Here was the last ever to be seen of Knights and their Ladies Fair, of Master and Slave". Whatever words most people would use to describe the Antebellum South, pretty and gallant likely wouldn't be among them.
• Rule of Symbolism:
  • Before Scarlett goes off to the barbecue, she had to get her corset laced up, which was a painful process, requiring Mammy to help. They were pretty tight on her, but symbolically, the corset represents femininity and the place of women in Southern society which was very restricting. Scarlett doesn't like the way women have to be "helpless, clinging doe-eyed creatures" strapped so tight into their enforced artificial femininity that they can barely move.
  • Rhett was a white man, but he looks black. This minor detail is important considering the novel's racist tone. Rhett's darkness links the novel's fascination with race and sex. In the novel, most of the "good" black people that remain loyal to the central characters and who (supposedly) enjoy being slaves are asexual. Mammy and Uncle Peter appear to have no sexual interests at all; they happily spend their lives serving white folks, never once even thinking about the possibility of falling in love themselves, or raising their own families. Prissy also seems uninterested in flirtation. The sole exceptions to the whole good-black-people-don't-have-sex equation are Prissy's parents, Pork and Dilcey.
  • At Tara, Scarlett shoots a Yankee raider, using the pistol her first husband Charles equip but never used. Charles is presented in the novel as a mooncalf-like, feminized drip. Charles' pistol is a symbol of his masculinity or rather, his lack of it. Scarlett on the other hand was bold enough to fight off the Comanches, proving to be braver and more more daring than her husband.
  • When the green velvet curtains first show up, they're connected for Scarlett to her mother, Ellen, and to her comforting childhood. Then Scarlett realizes that she can pull the curtains down and turn them into a new dress, so that she can go to Atlanta in splendor and convince Rhett to marry her and pay the taxes on Tara so she won't lose the land. So the curtains are one of Ellen's last gifts to Scarlett; She wears her mother's curtains to save her mother's house. But at the same time, wearing the curtains in order to shamelessly attract a man and not necessarily even for marriage is a betrayal of her mother's ladylike code of behavior. She's not so much using her mother's memory as defacing it. So the curtains are a symbol both of Scarlett's ingenuity and of her betrayal, and also of how she has to betray the past in order to save it. The curtains are both her pride and shame.
  • Throughout the novel and film, black characters' speech is written with phonetic misspellings. The writers wanted to make the black characters appear uneducated, inarticulate, and childlike.
• Running Gag: Nearly every time Scarlett is confronted with something unpleasant, often something that she's said or done or enabled, she pushes away whatever prick of conscience she's had by declaring, "I'll think about it tomorrow."
• Running the Blockade: Rhett spends most of The American Civil War running the US Navy's blockade, delivering supplies from Europe and elsewhere to the Confederates.

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