n I want to run and saying I feel faint after a waltz, when I could dance for two days and never get tired. I’m tired of saying, ‘How wonderful you are!’ to fool men who haven’t got one-half the sense I’ve got, and I’m tired of pretending I don’t know anything, so men tell me things and feel important while they’re doing it. “Some day I’m going to do and say everything I want to do and say, and if people don’t like it I don’t care.” She does as what she says with the development of the novel.[3]
Scarlett does not like the other girls at that time, who lead a life of waiting, they wait for men’s allegiance and acceptance; they wait for love and they wait for appreciation and compliment.[4] Scarlett is completely different from them at all; instead, she strives for love and happiness actively. When she hears the news that the man she loves, Ashley will marry his cousin Melanie, she confesses her love for him without pudency and she even mentions of eloping with him. She knows she must let him understand her love, thus it is possible for her getting his love. Her action is not different from the modern people.
Scarlett hates the rules of the society. When she becomes a widow who has to wear black weeds and can’t show her face in the public, she is very displeased. So she accepts Rhett’s invitation to dance with him openly and undoubtedly at the charity ball. When people are talking about her and scolding her, she doesn’t care at all. After the war, in order to rebuild and protect Tara, she even goes outside to manage a sawmill herself and does other business successfully. Although people at that time can’t endure women to appear in public for earning money, especially to the men, they can’t tolerate the women who can defeat them. Scarlett disregards of what people say, but just does what she believes.
Scarlett’s success proves that woman has the same intelligence and brightness as men. And her action is a heavy blow to the society that is man-centered. Her effort also breaks the traditional prejudice, which is admired by many readers.
2.2 Changing Concepts for the New Life
2.2.1 Before the Civil War
Before the Civil War, spoiled and beautiful Scarlett is a proud princess. She is also naïve and carefree for she is brought up in a rich family, in which they have many large fertile fields to grow cottons and many slaves that work for them. It is no necessary for her to think about anything but just to dress in new costumes to attract the sights of the boys and to join the balls.[5] Wherever she goes, she is always the focus and center among the young girls, and she is adored by many men, which irritates the other girls. So she gradually becomes a girl who is coddled, undisciplined, egotistic, fractious and narcissistic. She believes every man around the village will fall in love with her, and she can’t endure the talk without a topic of her. But her self-centered and exclusive character causes the tragedies of her love. After her failure to confess to Ashley, she doesn’t fall down or leave away which shows her courage for life at the first time.
2.2.2 During the Civil War
With the outbreak of the war, she loses everything she owns. War makes her become a widow who has to wear black weeds for her husband. In the summer of 1864, Sherman starts to attack Atlanta and everyone is fleeing the city. But Scarlett has to stay at Atlanta with Melanie for she has made a promise to Ashley to look after Melanie who is going into labor，she even braves the life danger to escort Melanie and her newly-born baby to go back to Tara in the flames of war. Her kindness conquers the selfishness, which shows her nice aspect. She is so horrible but she sticks to go back home, but what she sees in Tara is only the endless loneliness and desolation.
The war absolutely changes the way of her life and her affectionate homestead, Tara. The invasive Yankees destroy all of their treasure and cottons, leaving nothing but hunger to them. Her mother is dead and her father’s mind has gone; her two sisters and Melanie are ill; Melanie’s baby and her own child need to be fed; only several perplexed black slaves do not know what to do either. Scarlett is the only one that the family can depend on. Scarlett can’t lead a life comfortably as a child any more, for the reason that no one can protect her from threat.
Scarlett changes her concepts for the new life. She lays down her position of a lady of noble birth and changes her concepts of the old Southern life. She wants to feed her family and herself through her own work, which shows her realistic character towards life. When her sisters and the house servants complain, Scarlett even works in the fields of Tara herself to ensure a good harvest of cotton. To her, the memory of hunger is clearer than the memory of brain. She vows her famous line, "As God as my witness I will never be hungry again.”
When others cannot fa
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