I just looked to see how that scene plays out in the book, and it's essentially the same. Maybe worse. Way too long to type out the whole thing, but a few bits of it:

He hurt her and she cried out, muffled, frightened. Up the stairs, he went into the utter darkness, up, up, and she was wild with fear. He was a mad stranger and this was a black darkness she did not know, darker than death.

Suddenly she had a wild thrill such as she had never known; joy, fear, madness, excitement, surrender to arms that were too strong, lips too bruising, fate that moved too fast. For the first time in her life she had met someone, someone stronger than she, someone she could neither bully nor break, someone who was bullying and breaking her. Somehow, her arms were around his neck and her lips trembling beneath his and they were going up, up into the darkness again, a darkness that was soft and swirling and all enveloping.

When she awoke the next morning, he was gone and had it not been for the rumpled pillow beside her, she would have thought the happeneings of the night before a wild preposterous dream.

The man who had carried her up the dark stairs was a stranger of whose existence she had not dreamed. And no, though she tried to make herself hate him, tried to be indignant, she could not. He had humbled her, hurt her, used her brutally through a wild mad night and she had gloried in it.

(And, reading this now, this is really not something that I should have been reading at 12. My teacher called my mother because I was reading "A Time to Kill," but no one had any objections to this.)

I was just thinking this morning that the bit of Gone With the Wind that I always remember is young Scarlett at the barbecue and the authorial aside that if she were to be successful in marrying Ashley she would become one of the boring matrons she so despised, but she never considered that. Rhett carrying her up the staircase I only remember from seeing countless clips of it.

I'll admit to being the freak, but reading that doesn't feel "rapeyness" to me. It feels like she just plain old turned on by being scared of him and enjoyed the hell out of herself. I get why it could, and the movie would have done better to show more of what happened when they got up the stairs.

Rhett was probably too rough with her, being drunk and angry, but I don't think the intent was rape. I know from my own experience that sometimes, anger stops being anger and starts being just really hot heat and the only way to cool off for both parties is to get naked and get dirty.

I agree, Aims. And while I know that the stairway scene (and what came just before it) should ping me, it doesn't, much.

I don't know how much that's due to it being so familiar, and how much is due to what I know about those particular characters and the way they interact, though.

Rhett was probably too rough with her, being drunk and angry, but I don't think the intent was rape.

Isn't that kind of the definition of date rape? The fact that we-the-reader know she's secretly enjoying it just makes it rape fantasy. It doesn't mean she has the ability to stop him.

[And in the interests of full disclosure, I loved that book with the burning passion of a thousand suns when I was in 5th & 6th grade. My best friend and I went as Scarlett and Melanie for Halloween and instead of trick-or-treat said we were collecting donations for The Cause. It wasn't until many many years later that I reread it and went "Oh. Er. Hmm."]

Betsy once talked about the whole "rape fantasy" aspect of much romance. Which is not about wanting (or condoning rape) but wanting somebody to want you so much that they'll break every rule. That their desire for you was complete. Well, she explained it better (as you'd expect) but that was the gist.

Well, *if* Scarlett had rape fantasies (which I don't think the text supports), it only counts as a *fantasy* if Rhett (1) knew she had such fantasies and (2) agreed to play them out with her. And it's pretty clear that Rhett was not trying to help Scarlett fulfill a fantasy.

I still hate GWTW because of that scene. I've never read the book.

it only counts as a *fantasy* if Rhett (1) knew she had such fantasies and (2) agreed to play them out with her.

In real life, sure. In the context of the narrative, the scene is from Scarlett's POV and the reader is meant to be turned on by it.

I was obsessed by it when I was thirteen or so. Leia/Han is totally cribbed from it, too. Well, maybe more so if Leia had an idealized crush on Luke first, but that would be human interaction and George Lucas doesn't write that. I too sort of thought of it as a sex game, but I don't know how I would get that thought as my mother's sex talk was more like "Better Know A Uterus" than talking about the emotions of it all...cable, probably, or some women's mag of my stepmother's.