From the beginning of the novel,Scarlett is a mixture of old and new.Her mother,Ellen,comes from an established aristocratic family and her father,Gerald,is a self-made immigrant.Scarlett admires her mother’s refined manners and quiet strength,and she longs to please her,but this desire frequently conflicts with the strong,independent spirit Scarlett has inherited from Gerald.As Scarlett grows and society around her changes,she becomes less refined and more strong-willed.
Before the war,Scarlett obeys nearly all the rules of high-class Southern society,even the ones she finds unnatural.When the war begins,though,Scarlett finds that the social code relaxes,and she begins to indulge her natural instinct to break rules.Additionally,rule-breakers like Rhett become crucial to the South’s survival.Scarlett becomes increasingly heedless of social mores after she returns to manage Tara and the South loses ground in the war.She becomes self-reliant and business-savvy,traits that would be shocking in an Old South woman but that ensure Scarlett’s survival in the New South.During Reconstruction,Scarlett buys a sawmill and socializes with the Northerners in power,thumbing her nose at the rules of the Old South.Scarlett’s journey from prewar belle to scrappy survivor to hardened opportunist parallels the journey of Southern culture before,during,and after the Civil War.After the corrupt period of Reconstruction,Scarlett goes back to Tara to regain her heritage,reclaiming her Old Southern roots but tempering them with new experience.So too does her Southern culture regain control of its political structures and rebuild a society that mixes the old world with the new one.