...and the tragedy to sixteen year old Katie was how unhappy Scarlett was with everything she'd been supposed to want, once she had it.

Yeah, she wanted him because she had decided somewhere around age 15 that she wanted him, and once she decided she wanted something she had to pursue it until she got it. Even if she really should have stopped to think at some point and realized that there was no good reason to want him.

I get that, I do. I understood that that was the point.

But I was always, ugh, REALLY? Him?

One of the things that fascinated me at 12 was that she could just smile and turn on the charm and get people to do stuff for her. It took her like a week to steal her sister's fiance. Took no time at all to convince Charles Hamilton to marry her. Ashley fell for it to some extent, but he wouldn't break off his engagement with Melanie because his feeling that he should do what he was supposed to do was even stronger. (Pretty much everything Ashley did, he did because it was what he was supposed to do. Even things that he directly said were wrong, if they were what a gentleman would do in that situation, than he did it.) Rhett was the only man who never fell for that stuff -- he could see through it every time.

That's why she liked Rhett... straightforward, no namby pamby proper malarkey. Just liquor, money, snark and that trip up the stairs.

Scarlett was alluring as hell. By its very definition, allure holds fascination.

Who do you think are the most alluring characters in fiction?

Much like the story of Buffy and Spike, the story of Rhett and Scarlet could have been that of people who really found their equals and were really able to make a go of it. Of course, that was not the sotry their creator's wished to tell or what came out at all, but just what I tended to long for.

Alluring reminds me of what I think of as the Ur- good at heart evil guy, Edmund "stand up for bastards" from Lear. But I may be crazy. I always think he informed the anti hero from Rochester to Rhett Butler to Chuck Bass.

The book would have been better if Ashley had come back as a zombie. I still hold this to be true.

Gone with the Undead, coming to a bookstore near you Spring 2010.

I think the scene that bothered me the most about Ashley was when they went to burn down the Freemen's village after Scarlett was attacked. Ashley had been totally lost since the war ended -- he knew that he was supposed to be a southern gentleman, and there was no place for that type of southern gentleman in the post-war era, but he would rather fall into genteel poverty than do anything that violated the rules he knew. He wouldn't do any sort of physical work, he wouldn't take a lot of jobs in selling and trading because a gentleman did not deal with money in that way, he lamented a whole bunch of times that there was no place for him, but it never occurred to him that he could change. There was one scene where he said that the war wasn't about slavery to him, because he'd always thought that slavery was wrong, and he'd planned to free all the slaves on Twelve Oaks after his father died and left the property to him. My reaction was pretty much, "Yes, that's absolutely the right thing to do, but what were you planning to do then? Sit around while Twelve Oaks crumbled around you?"

But, anyway. Scarlet is attacked by the guy, and then Big Sam saves her. It's pretty clearly implied that Big Sam at least beats the guy up pretty badly, if he doesn't kill him. The problem ought to be over. But Ashley and the other men of his ilk jump at the news that a southern white lady has been violated (or attempted violation) -- unlike everything else that's happened in the previous few years, they have a rule for this! Nevermind that there's no danger anymore from the guy who actually attacked her -- they are gentlemen and they must avenge this! And they burn down a village, risk their own lives, possibly kill some other people (it's not too clear about that), all so that they can feel like they have a place in the world again.

(I was interrupted by a phone call while typing this. Probably x-posted with a zillion other things.)

Gone with the Undead, coming to a bookstore near you Spring 2010.

I would totally write that, except that it would require me to re-read GWTW. That's a dealbreaker.