The mixed reactions this film's very mention usually elicits from folks holds both merit and misconception. Certainly this is a film dealing in most part with the South and the Civil War and all of its various repercussions, but darker elements at play here involve, mainly, the roles of women in an ever-changing and often hostile, unpredictable setting. Southern dramas all the way back to colonial times usually seem to involve sniping women who take potshots at each other hushedly but must maintain a colossally gracious poker face while among polite society. To do anything else could disgrace the family name or, worse, pull their most hidden thoughts into the open, allowing society to dismiss them as the imps that the very system essentially renders them. Adding to this ridiculous and frustrating social paradox, their roles don't get better after they get the men they're trying to, as in order to get what they want from their husbands, they must resort to sexual manipulation as though it were course de nature.
In this context, the women never seem to develop any real maturity, strength of character, or lasting independence from the vulgar, tasteless monopoly that tradition and the unchecked power of male dominance has handed to them like a plaything. In this sense, slavery gets expanded to the context of all Southerners, but especially to that of females. It's just social custom that if a woman wants to be thought of as such that she must constantly prove her powers of conquest, whether she does so openly or not.
That being said, while most historians may agree that women and children are the first and foremost victims of war, in the case of Scarlett Katy O'Hara quite the opposite is true. The war is in many ways her freedom and her grace. It provides the distraction required for her to detach from a pre-ordained role and outgrow it in leaps and bounds. That's not always obvious while watching the rash little vixen, of course. Vivien Leigh pursues the less likeable qualities of the often dubious heroine with gusto, a gale force to be reckoned with at every turn of the camera. And my, oh my — the camera guy had his work cut out for him. Watching her sometimes it's not hard to think that she really might be on coke or at least some seriously concentrated ephedrine. Somewhere between her doting father who'd do anything to try and make her life more harmonious and her more rigid mother who'd prefer her daughter just make her proud, though, Scarlett has some hope to turn her life around and stop embarrassing them.
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