Description

Shortly before publication, Mitchell had requested that the name of Scarletts kindhearted foil, Melanie, not be removed from the advertising copyshe is still there, described on the current dust jacket as a loyal friend and true gentlewomanbecause, Mitchell avowed, after all, shes the heroine of the book. (Thackeray had affixed the same label to the gentle and uncomplaining little martyr Amelia Sedley midway through Vanity Fair, in pointed distinction from another such green-eyed baggage as Mitchells Scarlett.) Scarlett OHara was enough of a public obsession and enough of a credible personality to be psychoanalyzed in learned journals, and to a psychiatrist who concluded that Americas new princess was a partial psychopath and a person of inward hollowness Mitchell responded with excited approval