Margaret Mitchell

Rhett Butler is a fictional character and one of the main protagonists of Gone with the Wind by Margaret Mitchell. In the beginning of the novel, we first meet Rhett at the Twelve Oaks Plantation barbecue, the home of John Wilkes and his son Ashley and daughters Honey and India Wilkes. The novel... describes Rhett as "a visitor from Charleston"; a black sheep, who was expelled from West Point and is not received by any family with reputation in the whole of Charleston, and perhaps all of South Carolina. Rhett's enthrallment with Scarlett O'Hara begins when he overhears her declaration of love for Ashley in the library while the rest of the "proper" girls take a nap. He recognizes that she is willful and spirited and that they are alike in many ways, including their disgust for the impending, and later ongoing, war with the Yankees. They meet again when Scarlett has already lost her first husband, Charles Hamilton, while she is staying with Charles' sister Melanie and their Aunt Pittypat in Atlanta during the war.
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George Ashley Wilkes is a fictional character in the Margaret Mitchell's 1936 novel Gone with the Wind and the later film of the same name. The character also appears in the 1991 book Scarlett, a sequel to Gone with the Wind written by Alexandra Ripley, and in Rhett Butler's People by Donald... McCaig. Ashley is the man with whom Scarlett O'Hara is obsessed. Gentlemanly yet indecisive, he loves Scarlett, but finds he has more in common with Melanie, his distant cousin and later his wife. But he is tormented by his obsession with Scarlett. Unfortunately for him and Scarlett, his failure to deal with his true feelings for her ruins any chance she has for real happiness with Rhett Butler. Ashley is a complicated character. He is not sympathetic to the cause of the North. However, he isn't an ardent Confederate patriot, either. What Ashley loves about the South is the serene, peaceful life that he and his dear ones know at Twelve Oaks, and similar plantations. At one point he comments to Scarlett that "had the war not come he would have spent his life happily buried at Twelve Oaks." In short, Ashley loves the South, but not necessarily the Confederacy.
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Melanie Hamilton Wilkes is a fictional character first appearing in the novel Gone with the Wind by Margaret Mitchell. In the 1939 film she was portrayed by Olivia de Havilland. Melanie is Scarlett O'Hara's sister-in-law and eventually her best friend. Born Melanie Hamilton around 1844, she and her... brother Charles Hamilton are among the last members left of the relatively affluent Hamilton family. The family has always valued education and sought to provide its members with the finest available. As a result, they have gained a reputation for producing a fair number of intellectuals and several noted lawyers. For several generations they have intermarried with the like-minded Wilkes family. Unfortunately, this practice of apparent inbreeding has eventually resulted in the birth of progressively sicklier children. Melanie and Charles' parents die when their children are still young. Their father, Col. William R. Hamilton, was described as a hot-tempered, fiery soldier "with a ramrod for a backbone". The two siblings are placed under the joint guardianship of Henry Hamilton and Sarah Jane "Pittypat" Hamilton, their father's brother and sister.
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India Wilkes is a fictional character in the novel and film Gone with the Wind. She is the sister of Ashley Wilkes and the rival of Scarlett O'Hara. In the novel, India despises Scarlett for stealing the attentions of Stuart Tarleton. India also resents Scarlett for marrying Charles Hamilton, the... man that everyone assumed would marry her sister, Honey Wilkes. In the film, India is in love with Charles Hamilton and despises Scarlett for marrying him. The book mentions that the only word that could be used to describe her looks was "plain". After Scarlett's marriage to Charles, in the novel, Stuart resumes courting India but dies in the American Civil War before they can make their relationship official. Since it is assumed that Stuart would have married India had he lived, she is given the respect accorded to widows. Once afforded this status, she grows more sharp-tongued, and is able to say things that most unmarried women cannot. India moves in with Ashley and Melanie after they move to Atlanta. When Scarlett engagement to Rhett Butler is announced, India endorses cutting them both from respectable society.
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