1.Introduction of the Author and the Novel…………………………………………1
2. Descriptions of Female Characters in 19th Century……………………………….3
2.1 Description of the Victorian Womanhood……………………………………….…..3
2.2 The Appearance of Female with Sense of Rebellion…………………………….. …4
3. An Analysis of the Personality of Two Female Characters………………………..6
3.1 Similarities in Features……………………………………...……………………….6
3.1.1 The feature of bravery…………………………………………...………………...6
3.1.2 The feature of the intelligence…………………………….……………………….8
3.2 Differences between the Two Female Characters……………………..………..……9
3.2.1 Analysis of the Selfishness and Independence of Scarlett…………………………9
3.2.2 Analysis of the Tolerance and Dependence of Melanie…………………………..10
4.Analysis of the Attitudes towards the Past………………………………………...12
4.1 Common Features of their Reliance on the Past……………………………………12
4.2 Different Features of their Attitudes towards the Past……………………………...13
4.2.1 Scarlett’s Awakening from the Past………………………………………………13
4.2.2 Melanie’s Obsession with the Past……………………………………………….13
5.Causes of their Different Destinies…………………………………………………15
5.1 Internal Causes..........................................................................................................15
5.2 External Causes.........................................................................................................16
6.Conclusion…………………………………………………………………………...17
Acknowledgements……………………………………………………………………18
References……………………………………………………………………………..19
1． Introduction
1. The Introduction of the Author and the Novel
Margaret Mitchell was born in a southern city Atlanta, Georgia in 1900. When she was young, she often heard people talking about the Civil War which made her interested in the war and people’s condition in that period. In the beginning of 1930s, she worked for the Atlanta newspaper office, which provided her lots of historical materials about American Civil War. She married John R. Marsh. in 1925 and began her second marriage. However, she resigned from the Atlanta newspaper office because of her broken ankle. Under her husband’s encouragements, she began to write Gone with the Wind for her own amusement in 1926. It took her 10 years to complete and it was published in 1936. Gone with the Wind was extremely popular among the people at that time who were trapped in the great economic depression. The novel offered them an opportunity to escape from the reality or provided them with courage to confront the depression. Two million volumes of the novel were sold out in the first year si
nce its releasement with the largest volume of 50 thousand a day. “Gone with the Wind was such an overnight success that its publisher George Platt Brett, President of Macmillan Publishing, gave all its employees an 18% bonus in 1936” [1]308. Thus, Margaret Mitchell was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for the sweeping novel in May 1937. So far, it was regarded as one of the most classic love novel in American literature.
Gone with the Wind is a romantic drama and the only novel by Margaret Mitchell. The story follows Scarlett O'Hara, the daughter of a plantation owner in Georgia during and after the Civil War. It is set in Jonesboro and Atlanta during the American Civil War and Reconstruction. The novel won the 1937 Pulitzer Prize and was adapted into an Academy Award-winning 1939 film of the same name. It was also adapted during the 1970s into a stage musical titled Scarlett; there is also a 2008 new musical stage adaptation in London’s West End titled Gone with the Wind. The novel once enjoyed the reputation of “the encyclopedia of the plantation legend” [2]161and is one of the most popular books of all time, selling more than 30 million copies. Over the years, the novel has also been analyzed for its “symbolism and treatment of mythological archetypes [3] .
Gone with the Wind, an all-time best seller by Margaret Mitchell, is a legendary recollection of the last brilliance of the Old South and it depicted a wide and prosperous picture of social life of South America, which had vividly reappeared that specific historical period. This novel mainly described the life of rebellious Southern belle named Scarlett O’Hara who was Tara plantation farmer’s daughter and her experiences with friends, family, lovers, and enemies before, during, and after the Civil War. The most striking part might be the heroine ---- Scarlett O’Hara’s unique life experience which is full of tears and blood, and her love story with Rhett Butler that touches almost every reader’s heart. And compared with other roles like Melanie as well as Ashley who were sharing the same social background in the southern society with Scarlett,her strong willingness and perseverance to strive for a better life became a shining part. It is widely acknowledged that Scarlett O’Hara was “resented as a strong willed, over bearing beautiful woman, also appeared coquettish, clever, selfish, amoral , and even loving to suit her needs” [4] 1 .
2. Descriptions of Female Characters in 19th Century
2.1 Description of the Victorian Womanhood
During the 19th century, the perfect woman was known by Victorian standards as the “Angel in the Home” or modeled after American attributes of “True Womanhood,” according to Barbara Welter: “ in a society where values changed frequently, where fortunes rose and fell with frightening rapidity, where social and economic mobility provided instability as well as hope, one thing at least remained the same - a true woman was a true woman, wherever she was found” [5]21. If anyone, male or female, dared to tamper with the complex of virtues that made up True Womanhood, he was damned immediately as the enemy of God, of civilization. It was the fearful obligation, a solemn responsibility, which the nineteenth-century woman had - to uphold the pillars of the temple with her frail white hand.
The attributes of True Womanhood, by which a woman judged herself and was judged by her husband, her neighbors and society could be divided into “four cardinal virtues---piety, purity, submissiveness and domesticity. Put them all together and they spelled mother, daughter, sister, wife--woman. Without these virtues.... all was ashes. With them she was promised happiness and power” 11.
Thus, women during the 19th century were holding the Victorian virtues following the roles that women were stay-at-home w
ife and mother. They were always expected to serve men as their better halves. The prevailing Romantic belief and Victorian thoughts limited women to a marginal and subordinate social position. Generally, women at that era were people with no social status and what they did should focus on the males surrounding them.
2.2 The Appearance of Female with Sense of Rebellion
A saying goes: Arts originates from life. The female characters in the literary works during the 19th century were usually described as what the male---dominated society thought they should be. While with the promotion of various female movements prevailing around the world, profound economic and social changes brought by the Industrial Revolution, as well as the development of culture, like the Declaration of Women’s Rights passed in the first American women conference held in Tannesy and the publishment of “Darwinian’s Origin of Species in 1859 which had the effect of eroding the fixed principles that underwrote most traditional moral assumptions” 60.Thus, female experienced a substantial change among their minds, and began to strive for an equal rights as males enjoyed by breaking the fixed principles that underwrote most traditional moral assumptions as well as other ways. As a result, female characters with the sense of rebellion appeared in various kinds of literary works, like Charlotte Bronte’s classic novel--- Jane Eyre, Emily Bronte’s only novel --- Wuthering Heights as well as Tess of the d'Urbervilles written by Thomas Hardy.
Jane Eyre, the heroine of the same- named British classic novel, was a striking representative of the women characters in the shining world literature in 19th century. Jane Eyre, was a governess, a small and plain orphan girl brought up by her harsh and unsympathetic aunt. She was a small, plain, poor governess who began her life all alone,cared by nobody. However, the greatest difference between Jane and the conventional heroines lied in her clear awareness of autonomy and her reactions to the people around her. With a strong sense of self-fulfillment, not confined by the traditional restrictions of Victorian social constraints designed to keep women enclosed, she was keeping on striving for pursuit of equality in love, pursuit of autonomy and economic independence [9]32.
Catherine in Wuthering Heights was “a woman with a high origin, but what she behaved in her daily life as well as her love with Heathcliff showed her contempt for social conventions as well as her pursuit of wholeness in love” [10]14.
Tess, according to the Victorian social morality, was obviously regarded as “a fallen woman” [11]19 for her losing virginity before marriage. However endowed with independence and intellectuality by Hardy, she still found the strength to rise above her situation. In order to protect her true love from being attacked, and to enjoy her own love, she even sacrificed her life in the end. Generally speaking, all the heroines mentioned above were brave enough to break the Victorian social morality and became representatives of new woman characters at that time.
3. An Analysis of the Personality of Two Female Characters
Scarlett and Melanie---two main female characters in Gone with the Wind, were successfully created by Mitchell, representing two kinds of representative women at such a special era. At that time, in the old South, the culture was quite conservative. “Young men of the plantation-owning families were brought up to ride, shoot, play cards, race and bet on horses, and little more, while women were denied education and political rights and their behavior in public was bound by strict social rules”. Generally speaking, it was men’s world, and women accepted doctrines such as the beliefs that the men owned the property, while women managed it. In the novel, Melanie was a representative of traditional woman in the South while Scarlett O’Hara represented the other kind of female in that special era. Seen from appearance to inner hearts, as well as behaviors and even destiny, Melanie and Scarlett were quite different figures with their respective characters, but both shared several common features with each other to some extent.
3.1 Similarities in Features between the Two Female Characters
According to the narration of the author in the novel, Scarlett and Melanie, representatives of two different kinds of women in the South during the Civil War, shared a lot of common features and among which their characters of bravery as well as intelligence were particularly outstanding.
3.1.1 The analysis of the feature of bravery
There is no d
oubt that Scarlett was a brave woman. She was a woman full of the aspiration to break the social rules, challenging the nineteenth-century society's gender roles repeatedly.Before the Civil War, rich and beautiful, Scarlett was practiced at using her feminine wiles to get what she wanted. During such a period of peaceful time, her courage which made her unique had rooted deep in her heart. Asked by Mammy and Ellen to be more gender and sedate and cultivated to be a truly desirable wife, Scarlett betrayed what she had to do by interrupting gentleman while they were speaking which was forbidden and behaved like a forward girl, she showed her love and said “I love you” to Ashley when she heard that he would marry Melanie.
When the Civil War broke out, as the battlefield situation was getting worse, the residents of Atlanta began to flee away. Same as others, Scarlett wanted to go back to Tara. But Melanie was going to have a baby, and her health condition was quite dangerous, so Scarlett retained to be at Atlanta to accompany, protect and help her. Originally, Scarlett feared Yankees, feared bombs and missed Tara, especially her mother terribly. But she at last nodded to stay there, with the homesick biting her heart and dangers she was facing. Someone may argue that Scarlett did do that just because of Ashley, because Ashley had once asked her to do that when he was serving in the army. And what the novel told us was just like that, for many times, Scarlett was captured in a dilemma of whether she should stay with Melanie and endangered herself or just left as others did. And from her own point, she thought that it is Ashley who made her brave enough to company Melanie to face with much unknown risk. However, through the end of the novel, we know that what she truly loved was the imagination of Ashley in her mind, an unreal one, so from a large point of view, the stimulus that made her brave enough to face the malicious enemy and to protect Melanie from attacks was her own courage from her inner heart. Also, to save herself, “Scarlett, a woman of 60s in the 19th century killed a Yankee marauder when he tried to rob her” [12]5.
After the Civil War, in order to survive and save her family, Scarlett started her own business. However, at that time,a woman, especially a wife should be guided by her husband’s superior knowledge and should accept his opinions in full and had none of her own, let alone to start her own business. No doubt, she had to be discussed or attacked by others when she went to the lumber business. Despite all these verbal attacks, she had no intention to stop what she did, instead, she even asked the Northerners to drink tea in the home to establish a successful business relation with them to get more money, never caring about others’ responses.
For another female character---Melanie, the representative of traditional female character in the South during that period of time, shared the personality of bravery with Scarlett.
Melanie was an impressive character in Gone with the Wind. She was a kind, soft, lovely woman who was devoted to her husband and family. Melanie was not a beautiful woman, but she was very brave even though she was “thin as a rail and delicate enough to be blown away by the wind” 798. For Ashley, Melanie is the whole for his life. When she died, Ashley even went mad. Melanie, a tiny, frailly built girl, considered her husband and child as all she had and could be strong enough to face various kinds of difficult situations, even sacrifice herself for them. Although she was not suitable to give birth to a child, with her mother’s nature as well as her love for Ashley, she bravely endured the hardness. After giving birth to the first child, an unforgettable terrible experience in her life, the doctor told Melanie that she would better not be pregnant again or she might be in danger. Regardless of the advice and her feeble health, she was still so excited and willing to have another baby for her husband. But she finally died of miscarriage.
So comparatively speaking, the courage from Scarlett is usually focused on her own life, while that from Melanie is mainly based on the consideration for others. In other words, Scarlett’s bravery originated from her inner heart, while Melanie’s originated from people around her.
3.1.2 The analysis of the intelligence
Scarlett was an intelligent girl. She was clever, and knew “how to smile so that her dimpl
es leaped, how to walk pigeon-toed that her wide hoop skirts swayed entrancingly, how to look up into a man’s face and then drop her eyes and bat the lids rapidly so that she seemed a- tremble with gentle emotion. Most of all she learned how to conceal from men a sharp intelligence beneath a face as sweet and bland as a baby’s” [13]45. She usually danced more gracefully than any other girl in the county. She knew how to flirt with even every man in the town.
Scarlett’s intelligence could also be figured out through her ability to cheat others. After the War, she devoted herself in the reconstruction when she was captured in the difficulty of paying the large amount of tax. To save herself from such a plight, she went to the jail to visit Rhett for money, but she didn't succeed. However, she stole her own sister’s fiancé---Kennedy by a fairy tale soon. Besides, when dealing with lumber business, she employed prisoners to work for her for less expenditure but more profit, sent out her money to mortgage as loan and traded with black men for money, she even cleaned up the money from the widows. Her ability to do lumber business by herself and could do even better than men also represented her high intelligence and proved that woman could be as good as men in business.
Melanie’s intelligence could be mainly reflected from her skill to deal with interpersonal relations successfully as well as her ability to build a harmonious family.
As Carnegie, a famous American writer, has said in a famous book titled “the
weakness of the human being”, that “if you want to have a happy family you should never try to change your partner’s hobbits, ideas, et cetera” [15]25. Every person has his own characters and features. Being a spouse does not mean that husband should reshape his own personalities or belief or other routine according to the requirements of the wife. This might be one of the essences to maintain a rather harmonious relationship between husband and family.
When Melanie knew that Scarlet loved her husband, she did not take some measures to stop her husband from getting along with Scarlett. Because she trusted her husband, knew Scarlett’s love for Ashley was not real, and was clear that Scarlett really loved one was Rhett. When people gossiped that her husband had relationship with Scarlett, she was not angry as other women did. Instead,she neatly scotched the scandal by keeping Scarlet at her side all through the dreadful evening. Her behavior not only avoided a conflict with Scatlett and maintained a stable sister relation between them, but also grasped Ashley’s heart more tightly. And when she was dying, she skillfully and successfully made everyone be awake to their own minds and what they really thought in their hearts. Like she helped Scarlett understand that Ashley, the person she bore in mind for twelve years was not her true love, but one beautiful unreal image belonging to the South in the past .The person who she really loved was the one similar to her --- Rhett Butler.
Thus Scarlett’s intelligence was more like cunning, while Melanie’s was more grand, and easily to be accepted and approved.
3.2 Differences between the Two Female Characters
Except these similarities analyzed above, Scarlett and Melanie were quite different, differing from each other in various ways. In general, Scarlett could be defined as a selfish and independent female, while Melanie was tolerant and with a tendency of dependence on others.
3.2.1 Analysis of the Selfishness and Independence of Scarlett
Scarlett was a selfish woman, she did most things out of her self-centeredness. This feature could be clearly represented from her attitude towards marriage .
Marriage is a serious matter and also a nice dream to most young girls, but Scarlett treated her marriage as playgames. Scarlett was so immature that she married Charles Hamilton whom she didn’t love at all just to satisfy her inner requirements to hurt Ashley. She didn’t care about Charles’s love as well as Melanie’s who became her sister in law because of the marriage. The Civil War killed her first husband after two months of their marriage, and Scarlett became a widow at her sixteen years old. She endured the rules of being a widow, but the war changed her goal of life. In order to survive, to save Tara, she married her sister’s lover by subterfuge, never considering her sister’s feeling and her own sacrifice. Not long after her second husband’s death, she married Rhett for her third marriage. She thought that marrying him, she would never have to be bothered and worried about money , never to bruise herself against stonewalls. But she didn’t cherish Rhett’s true love to her and still indulged herself in the love to Ashley.
Scarlett was an independent woman to some extent. It can be shown when she returned Tar
a. The war absolutely changed the way of her life and her affectionate homestead, Tara. The invasive Yankees destroyed all of their treasure and cottons, leaving nothing but hunger to them. Returned, Scarlett found “Tara still standing, only just. Her mother had died, her sisters very ill, and her father loosing his mind. Her faithful servants Mammy, and Geralds manservant Pork managing to only just hold onto things” 57. Scarlett turned the house around from a crumbling decaying wreck, to a place of hope by her own efforts.
3.2.2 Analysis of the Tolerance and Dependence of Melanie
Melanie was a tolerant woman, in other words, she usually did things according to others’ interests, never considering herself. Using Scalett’s father’s words “She is a sweet quite thing, with never a word to say for herself” . When she was about to give birth, she refused to ask Scarlett to send for the doctor in order not to waste one minute for he to save more wounded people.
Melanie was a dependent woman which was reflected from her indivisible relation with the Southern culture and Scarlett. Her dependence upon the Southern society could be sorted out in a sentence: Melanie was born under such an environment and restricted by the Southern culture. Both her behaviors and her faithfulness to the Southern requirements showed this. “What Melanie did was no more than all Southern girls were taught to do---to make those about them feel at ease and pleased with themselves. It was this happy feminine conspiracy which made Southern society so pleasant” 581. Although this sentence showed Melanie’s worries towards Scarlett, to some extent, it also represented that she was strongly leaning on Scarlett. For Melanie, some misfortune happened to Scarlett might mean everything left.
4．Analysis of the Attitudes towards the Past
Born and brought up in such an social environment, both Scarlett and Melanie were sharing some typical characters of that era, like they knew how a southern woman should behave in front of others, especially of men very well. However, under the influences of their different personalities, they chose quite the opposite way to live or pursue a better life. They held disparate views to the past, but they also shared some common features on their attitudes towards past, like both were reliant to the past to some extent.
4.1 Common Features of their Reliance on the Past
Undoubtedly,Melanie was a typical southern woman at that
time. Her family had always “valued education and sought to provide their members with the finest available. For several generations they had intermarried with the like-minded Wilkes family” . So She was a firm guardian of the traditions of her family.Besides, she was a guardian of the past social culture. She talked softly, behaved gracefully, even moved one single step by strictly sticking to what the society told her to do .Her good breeding, her book learning, and all the sterling qualities she possessed all represented her strong reliance on the past.
While as a dependent female, Scarlett did not abandon the past completely. To some extent, she still enjoyed reliance on the past. Generally, her reliance on the past could be classified into two categories: reliance on Tara and Ellen. “Land is the only thing in the world that amounts to anything”, “This is the only thing worth working for, worth fighting for, worth dying for” 604. So obviously, she was reliant on Ellen, a typical representative of the past female character, she might be longing to be a perfect woman as Ellen to some extent.
In general, both Scarlett and Melanie held a reliant view on the past with different levels.
4.2 Different Features of their Attitudes towards the Past
Scarlett and Melanie’s attitudes towards the past were quite different from each other which could be explained by the quite opposite results of their lives, that was Scarlett’s survival and Melanie’s death. So what caused such different results? It might be their determination to change the reality or just let it be.
4.2.1 Scarlett’s Awakening from the Past
After the war, when new system was brought in, it seemed that it was a must to change the way of earning money by doing business instead of the plantation left. Scarlett successfully finished such an significant transit. Facing the plight of paying large amount of money to plant on lands, she chose to marry Frank and started doing lumber business which was difficult to imagine at that time. However, she didn’t care whether she would be admired or vituperated, she stuck to what she decided. And she even stated that “you can’t be a lady without money” 480. All the thoughts she held and her deeds indicated that she had exactly abandoned what the tradition asked her to do. Instead her behavior featured the bourgeoisie from the North.. “Tomorrow is another day” also indicated her attitude towards the past, which was no matter what happened today, tomorrow would be hopeful.
4.2.2 Melanie’s Obsession with the Past
From the novel, we could also figure out Melanie’s subversion of the past. When Scalett was in need of an assistant while doing lumber business by herself, she didn’t think what Scarlett did turn over the Southern culture as others, instead she helped Scarlett to persuade Ashley to be her assistant. But, regrettably, she could not abandon the past completely. In order to earn more money from business, Scarlett usually invited those Republicans who started the War and destroyed what they used have to her house. Such a behavior not only engaged people in the town , but also engaged the generous Melanie. So, she decided to try to persuade her sister in law to change her min
d :
“Can you forget what these people did to us? Can you forget darling Charlie dead and Ashley’s health ruined and Twelve Oaks burned? Oh, Scarlett, you can’t forget that terrible man you shot with your mother’s sewing-box in his hands! You can’t forget Sherman’s men at Tara and how they even stole our underwear! And tried to burn the place down and actually handled my father’s sword! Oh, Scarlett, it was these same people who robbed us and tortured us and left us to starve that you invited to your party! The same people who have set the darkies up to lord it over us, who are robbing us and keeping our men from voting! I can’t forget. I won’t forget. I won’t let my Beau forget and I’ll teach my grandchildren if God lets me live that long” [13]679.
“Of course, I remember! But all that’s past, Melly. It's up to us to make the best of things and I’m trying to do it. Governor Bullock and some of the nicer Republicans can help us a lot if we handle them right” [13]680.
Those arguments clearly showed that the main difference of their attitudes towards past is that Scarlett usually tried to forget the bitter past which might be a block on her way to develop while Melanie were used to remembering what the history liked and would remember it forever. That was also an important reason for them to choose different ways to live and foretold Melanie’s failure to survive in such a new era.
5. Causes of Their Different Destinies
In the end of the story, Scarlett survived from the bitter life, while Melanie died from giving another baby for Ashley. In other words, Scarlett grew from the new world while Melanie died with the past. Their destinies indicated that nobody could pull back the development of the society. What caused their different destinies? From my point of view, the causes could be divided into two categories.
5.1 Internal Causes
Researchers found that one’s personality was mainly shaped by gene, family environment and education. Scarlett was born and brought up in a rather loose family environment, her Irish father had “a habit of treating her in a man-to-man manner” [13]23 and her mother thought there would be enough time to teach her to be a lady. These kinds of education caused her to be a self-centered person, an individualist so that she never cared about the feelings of others. In order to survive, she purchased the love which should not belong to her. Also her strong willingness made her an outstanding woman full of energy who could overcome all the challenges of life; moreover, she could take care of her family without a man. Facing the death of her friend in heart ---Melanie, arousing from the blind love to Ashley, seeing her true love left, she didn’t give up, she just said “Tomorrow is another day”. Her personality decided she would be a woman never to be blown down which helped her survive.
As for Melanie, like her family tradition, she was born and brought up in a strict family environment. As the Wilks, she was taught to be a lady and had to read some books just to meet the needs while talking with men. She was cultivated to be a perfect woman at that time. So she had a strong reliance on the family, the past and what they once cherished. When facing the enormous changes brought by the War, she didn’t know how to deal, but chose to depend on Scarlett, on those surrounding her. Although knowing it would be dangerous for her to have child, she still determined to bear another child for her man as most women did in the past. Unfortunately, she died from it. In other words, she died from the old tradition. It seemed that at such a complex time, people had to change themselves to adapt to the society or just go with the past like Melanie.
Personality decides one’s destiny. Scarlett’s and Melanie’s destiny is the best exemplification of it.
5.2 External Causes
For Scarlett, those external causes which caused her to be mature and survive included the breakout of the war, the destruction of civilization, her graceful mother’s death, Rhett’s everlasting inducement and support.
“The civil war was a catalyst for Scarlett’s growth” 69 and Rhett’s inducements accelerated her progress of setting her foot on the road to rebellion. For example, Rhett did his best to help Scarlett, the widow in mourning take off black and came back to the dance party, he also impetuously argued that the traditional and feudal woman’s virtue was stone-broke, and sh
ould be given up early.
As for Melanie, the external causes also included the breakout of the war, the destruction of the Southern culture. But as an idea from philosophy goes “External factors play a role through the internal factors”. Under the influence of her personality, facing the same War with Scarlett, influenced by her sister in law-Scarlett’s deeds, Melanie still surrendered to herself, her personality. She thought it was the War that put what she cherished in the past into ashes, she yearned the past plantation and refused to accept the reality. She could never forget the past, she was tightly bound to the past living style which foresaw her destiny.
All in all, Scarlett’s and Melanie’s different personalities shaped by gene and environment were the key factors to their destinies. Besides, the War had a great impact on them from different aspects as well. With different views towards life, the old was gone with the wind, while the new was honored to march on.
6．Conclusion
By comparing the similarities as well as differences in personalities, attitudes towards life, etc. between Scarlett and Melanie---the two main female characters in Gone with the Wind, the conclusion can be drawn that Scarlett who has received various kinds of comments from scholars could be defined as a new woman in the old time. She was once criticized as “a valiant general of bourgeois on the other shore” [19]36 .She owned the timely characters that made her isolated from other Southern women as well as the plantation history, also it were those characters that helped her overcome difficulties during and after the War. While for Melanie who has not been commented on much could be described as an old woman in the new time. She was so nostalgic that she indulged herself in the beautiful old south and failed to pull herself out to face new life. At last, she was doomed to disappear with the old system like the wind.
However, there are qualities that worth us learning from both female characters. In today’s society that is full of fierce competition, Scarlett’s perseverance as well as her attitudes of never surrendering to life could help people to deal with the hardness and keep an enthusiastic attitude towards life and be successful like Scarlett. While from Melanie, her kindness, devotion, generosity etc. should be advocated to help people establish as well as keep a harmonious interpersonal relationship to create a real harmonious society.
Acknowledgements
I would like to express my greatest thanks to a number of people. Without their help and support, this thesis could not have reached its completion.
My initial thanks go to my supervisor Ye Yiqun, who patiently supervised my dissertation and was at times very willing to offer me illuminating advice or suggestions. Without her help, I could not have finished this dissertation.
I am also indebted to other teachers and my classmates who have not only offered me their warm encouragements but also shared with me their ideas and books. They are Chen Ping, Tan Cuiting, Yan Yuxuan, and many others.
My greatest personal debt is to my grandparents and parents, who have cultivated a soul of sensitivity, hospitality, and honesty out of me, and offered a harbor of happiness and sweetness for me.
The remaining weakness and possible errors of the dissertation are entirely my own.
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