A "Southern Bel/e With Her Irish Up":

Scarlett O'Hara and Ethnic Identity

ELIZA Russ1 LowEN McGRAw

MALCOLM COWLEY DUBS MARGARET MITCHELL'S 1936

novel Gone ~i"b the l'fl'ind an "encyclopedia of the plantation
legend" panially on the strength of Scarlett Oliara, its heroine
"with her seventeen-inch waist" 09). Scholarly examination of
the text has, however, discounted the popular conception of
Scarlett as d1e prototypical Southern belle that Cowley puts forth.
Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick and Anne Goodwyn Jones dismiss
Scarlett's belle persona by examining Mitchell's text in terms of
gender. Jones writes that Scarlett ·adopts the male role, as indi-
cated by her looking more and more like (her father) Gerald
and by the narrator's insistence that the Gerald in her soul won
over the Ellen (her mother)" (341). Sedgwick adds that "For
Scarlett, to survive as a woman <loes means learning to see
sexuality, male power domination, and her traditional gender
role as ali meaning the same dangerous thing. To . .. learn to
manipulate them from behind a screen as objects of pure signi-
fiers. as men do, is the numbing but effective lesson of her life"
(8). As both Sedgwick and Jones position her, Scarlett wields
power because she can work within and against her sociery·s
discourses of gender, using both her scripted one and its osten-
sible opposite. Scarlett's abiliry to transgress and command gen-
der consrruction secures her survival.
Scarlett's Irish identity, however, complicates this gender-cen-
tered model. While accounts of gender trespass provide a neat
explanation of how she stands apart from her fellow women,
none of her rebellion stands unaffected by her ethniciry. Mitchell
confbtes gender and et.hnic transgressions at time&--for example.
Scarlett's sometime husband Rhett Butler calls her .. an Irishman"
(920 >-but her text consistently reminds us that Scarlett's Irish
124 E/iza Russi Lowen McGraw
blood, mixed with her aristocratic heritage, makes her break
the mold of the belle. Biographical criticism of Mitchell tends to
imply that the Irishness in the novel simply reflects autobiogra-
phy-for example, Mitchell supposedly based the character of
Sc-.irlett upon her grandmother. As Darden Pyron writes in his
1991 Soulbern Da11gb1er, "it is hardly incidental that [Mitchell's]
Gerald O'Hara and her mother's people were both lrish Catho-
lic, large slave holding families" (249). Even if family histo1y
explains how Irishness entered Mitchell"s consciousness, Scarlen's
ethnic ide ntity goes beyond authorial happenstance to a revi-
sion of Southernness. Mitchell's novel argues that survivors of
the New South must have blood other than that of the defeated
Anglicized planters idealized by plantation legend. Within the
economy of the text, Scarlett's lrishness accounts for her trans-
gressive nature, and ensures she will thrive in post-bellum At-
lanta.
Gone liií1b tbe Windteems with ethnic categorization. Grace-
ful Ashley Wílkes thinks Rhett looks like "one of the Borgias"
(115), a Zouve named Rene Picard has a "Gallic twinkJe in his
black eyes and the Creole zest for living" (593), Scarlen thinks
of an employee that "Anyone could Jew him down on prices"
(7.34), and Rhen. criticizing Scarlett's stinginess. asks, "Are you
sure you haven't sorne Scotch or perhaps Jewish blood in you
as well as lrish?" (759). Although historians typically divide the
antebellum South into black and white, the compartmentaJiza.
tion of ethnicity in Mitchell's novel suggests a more complex
matrix. Interest in blood and the social position it dictates in-
forms gender, class, and ethnic issues. Toe text's preoccupation
with Scarlett's Irish blood reflects the genealogical concern of
her society as well as a contemporary belief in the predomi·
nance of stereotypical ethnic characteristics. Ethnic mixture be·
comes key to prospering in the future, an ungentle place that
requires gumption of Scarlett's defmition and makes her, as Jones
writes, represent "Atlanta, the New South, and finally post-Civil
War America" (339).
Scarlett's hardy Irish blood flows from her beloved father,
Gerald O'Hara. Gerald, with as "lrish a face as could be found
in the length and breadth of the homeland he had left so long
ago" (32), represents the most patent site of lrishness in the
South Atlantic Reviro, 125
novel. When Scarlett's slster Suellen encourages Gerald to sign
the iron ciad oath to the Union. he refuses upon hearing that a
neighbor whose ancestors carne from Northern lreland, or, as
Gerald calls him, "that God-damned Orangeman" has signed
(694). For Gerald, being an lrish-American includes maintain-
ing old country predispositions. At Scarlett's most "lrish"-typi-
cally vigorous or shrewd-Mitchell depicts her as behaving "like
her father."
While at the antebellum beginning of the novel, Scarlett dis-
gustedly tells Gerald as he holds forth on the importance of
land ownership, ·you talk like an Irishman.• so that he has to
admonish her not to "be forgetting that you are half Irish, Miss!"
(39), love of land motivates Scarlett throughout the rest of the
novel. She steals and murders to preserve the family plantation.
Helen Deiss lrvin points to this earth-worship as a woman-
centered trait, since, as Gerald says of the Irish, "the land they
live on is like their mother· (39). While Irvin's emphasis on the
mythic nature of land helpfully elevares the passion for it to an
appropriately obsessive leve!. the O 'Haras' adoration of their
home is equally anributable to lrish tradition or lineage. Scarlett
inherits her passion for the land from her father, colluding Irish
and male-identified impulses.
Gerald calls his prized plantation Tara, which many critics
identify with ''terra," or earth. The original Tara, however, is an
ancient hall in County Meath, a gathering place for royalty and
legendary Celtic figures. Scarlett, named for Gerald's mother,
Katie Scarlett, whose family fought ar the Battle of the Boyne.
bears sinlilar history. Originally, Mitchell was going to call her
heroine "Pansy," but gave that up because of its identification
with a contemporary slur for male homosexuality. 1 Mitchell
writes that, "Scarlett, child of Gerald, found the road to ladyhood
hard" (61 ). The word "child" unsexes Scarlett, and "of Gerald"
privileges her father's lineage as the cause of her transgressive
nature. "Scarlett" is lrish and male-identified as a surname as
opposed to tl1e girlish "Katie" with which she is christened.
Scarlett remains very much the "child of Gerald" throughout the
novel as Mitchell attributes her gender manipulations--or
lrishness-{o Gerald's influence.
126 E/iza Russi ÚJwen McGraw
Class enters the matrix of lrishness in Mitchell's novel along-
side gender. ·America, in the early years of the century, • Mitchell
writes, "had been kind to the lrish" (46). While many impover-
ished laborers may have disagreed with this assertion, the South
did provide a certain opportunity for Irish immigrants. By 1860
there were 84,000 Irish-born people in the Southem states, a
total, as Dennis Clark writes "smaller than the numbers of lrish
in individual cities in the North" (99). lrish immigrants worked
on riverboats and railroads, and Clark depicts them as alienated
from the small plantation stratum. Amplifying this disparity, W.J.
Cash uses an lrish slave-owning figure to emblematize the sham
of ante·bellum Southem aristocracy in The Mind ojºtbe Soutb
(1941). If his putative "stout lrishn1ll!1" (14) could have a planta-
tion and a seat in the legislature by the time of his death, then,
Cash argues, aristocracy never truly existed.
Gerald's land ownership notwithstanding, Mitchell typically
associates lrishness with commonness, allying her reading of
Irishness in the South with Cash's. Scarlett befriends the nouveau
riche and scanda.lous "red-haired Bridget Flaherty, who had .. . a
brogue that could be cut with a butter knife" (869) , aod Irishness
reaches the very bottom of the white social continuum, as Scarlett
learos wheo she runs a sawmill. as · no lady should do" (659) .
She hires Johnoie Gallagher, a masculine, lower class
doppelganger of her own Irish identity. Their relationship be-
comes strained after "Johnnie, as Irish as she ... threatened to
quit, after a long tirade which ended, ·and the back of both me
hands to you. Ma'am, and the curse of Cromwell upon you'"
(944). Mitchell contlates the two characters through their
ethnlcity, and Johnnie's reprehensible nature-Ashley Wilkes
refuses to work with hinr-brings into relief the ugliness and
vulgarity with which she associates Irishness. Rhett reminds
Scarlett of the closeness between herself and lrish people such
as Johnnie: "The O'Haras might have been kiogs of Ireland
once but your father was nothing better than a smart Mick on
the make" (891). His barb exposes both Gerald and Scarlett as
pretenders to Southem aristocracy. and reminds Scarlett of her
tainted origin.
lrishness prevents Scarlett from entirely representing the South-
ern belle figure, as much as she may desire to fulfill its criteria.1
South Atlantic Review 127
Scarlett's Irishness, a reiterated and available ethnicity, informs
racial as well as gender and class proscriptions. In Hou· tbe lrlsb
Became Whíte 0995), Noel Ignatiev writes that "In the early
years lrish were frequently referred to as 'niggers turned inside
out'; the Negroes, for their part, were sometimes called ·smoked
Irish"' (41). While lgnatiev's work focuses on Northem urban
centers, the nineteenth-century collusion is clear: both groups
were considered "other" by the dominan! discourse. He also
notes that Shelley Fisher Fishkin's seminal question about Mark
Twain's character Huckleberry Finn in her Was Huck Black?
0993)-"prompts another: Was Huck lrish.?" (58) , positing that
while Huck may have decided to go to hell for Jim, the lrish at
large made the opposite deásion, positioning themselves against
African-Americans in order to guarantee their own whiteness.
As a supporter of a racist economy, $carien conforms to this
segregated model. A Maine woman in Adanta during Recon-
struction tells Scarlett that she wants ·•a good lrish girl" (663),
and Scarlett replies, "you 'll find no Irish servants in At-
lanta. ... l've never seen a white servan! and I shouldn't care
to have one in my house" (663). To Scarlett, "Irish" means "white,"
while the woman from Maine views "Irish" as indicating "ser-
vant." For Scarlett to see things through the Maine woman's
prejudices instead of her own would allow her to lose what-
ever dass standing Gerald works to obtain and being Ellen 's
daughter grants her.
To the contemporary South, however, Scarlett's Irishness holds
the possibility of positioning her alongside the Southern
"other"-African-Americans. As lgnatiev points out, lrish people
fought this linkage. and Scarlett represents her fellow Irish people
in this respect. But Mitchell's treatment of Scarlett's ethnicity
borrows from depictions ofd1e tragic mulatta figures who popu-
late nineteenth-century novels. As Carla Peterson summarizes
it, the typical tragic mulatta plot · centers on a beautíful fair-
skinned girl ... who remains ignorant of her slave iden-
tity.. .. At the moment of narrative crisis, her slave condition is
discovered, or remembered, and she is remanded into slavery•
054).·' Scarlett is, of course, no slave. Rather, she owns slaves
and complies with the system that forces the paradign1atic tragic
mulatta into bondage. Mitchell's use of tropes from me tragic
128 E/iza RUSJi Lowm McGraw
mulatta plot, including appearance, mixture and passlng, serve
to underscore Scarlett's privilege because of her visible white-
ness. While blended ethnicity punishes the tragic mulatta in the
South, it ensures Scarlett's survival. Scarlett can choose to iden-
tify with white ness and thus reap the benefits of belonging to
the dominant culture without fear. She stands as a foil to the
tragic mulatta figure. close enough for Mitchell to foreground
her blended identity, but far enough to avoid the kind of crush-
ing prejudice that kills the tragic mulatta figure. Even as the
stakes are radically different for Scarlen, Mitchell's text appro--
priates the boundary-defiance of the tragic mulatta's identity to
demonstrate Scarlen's transgressiveness.
Authors traditionally encode the tragic mulatta through her
physical features, such as the "glossy ringlets of raven hair"
(11 1) and "large dark eye" (84) of William Wells Brown's Clote/
(1853). Mitchell marks Scarlett through her association with green,
the traditional hue of lreland, as Gerald reminds her as he sings
"The Wearin' o ' the Green." In her belle days, Scarlen wears
green sprigged muslin to complement her eyes, which are · as
green as the hills of Ireland" (84). Toe curtains she famously
fashions into a dress to ensnare Rhen are green, and when she
and Ashley share an innocent embrace that scandalizes Atlantans,
Scarlett wears a "dull-green changeable taffeta frock. ... [with
a] new pale-green bonnet" (907). While in David O. Selznick's
1938 film version of the novel, the dress Rhett forces Scarlett to
wear that night to Melanie's party is a garish scarlet, in the
novel she wears a "jade-green watered silk dress" (919) to face
society. Toe film equates Scarlett with scarlet as much as with
green-her hair ribbons are red as she banters with the Tarleton
twins in her belle days, and she wears a red dress after she has
married her sister's fiancé Frank Kennedy. In the novel, how-
ever, in her most "scarlet" (or lrish) moments, Scarlett wears
green, as patent ethnicity mingles with sexual availability.
Llke the racial classification o f the tragic mulatta, Scarlett's
ethnicity embodies mixture. The opening lines of Gone Wílb
tbe Wínd-"Scarlett O'Hara was not beautiful, but men seldom
realized it when caught by her charm as the Tarleton twins
were"-are explained ethnically: ·1n her face were too sharply
blended the delicate features of her mother, a Coast aristocrat
South Atlantic Review 129
of French descent, and the heavy ones of her florid Irish father"
(5). For Mitchell, it is this "heavy," "florid" lrishness that ac-
counts for Scarlett's ruthless behavior, while the mesalliance of
Irishness and Coast aristocracy she embodies produces not
beauty, but an exotic sexual appeal. When Scarlett confesses to
Ashley that she loves him, "suddenly ali the years of Ellen's
teachings fell away, and the forthright lrish blood of Gerald
spoke from his daughter's lips" 017). Later, she worries that
she acted · common enough . . . like white trash" (126). Scarlen
fears that desire is vulgar. but this same "Irish" desire produces
a lust for subsistence that Scarlett's ladylike neighbors lack.
Mitchell employs the lan guage of racial passing, another com-
mon feature of the tragic mu lana narrative. to describe Scarlett's
position in Southem society. Toe question of pretending, or
passing, haunts the South, where racial identity stood as the
primary identifler of station. and although Scarlett's Irishness is
something she may try to repress, she cannot contain it. Ashley's
sister India tells Scarlett, "you aren't one of us and you have
never been" (787). As Mitchell writes, "There was no one to tell
Scarlett that her own personality .. . was more attractive than
any masquerade . . . she would have been pleased but un-
believing... . for at no time, before or since, has so low a pre-
mium been placed on feminine naturalness'' (83). She tries to
pass as a lady, subduing her "Irishness" unJike mixed-race
women characters who take pride in their minority heritage,
most famously the title character of Frances Ellen Watkins
Harper's fofa LeRoJ ' 0892). Harper rewrote the tragic mulatta
narrative; her mixed-race title character takes pride in her lin-
eage. In contrast. Scarlett sporadically aspires toward the whit-
est part of her lineage, desiring at times to be like her mother.
Ellen, who personifies upper class femininity and elegance. As
Scarlen peddles lumber to feed her family, she thinks "sorne
day ... she would .. . be a great lady as Ellen had
been. . . . There would be warm afternoons when ladies would
call ... . Now, there was no time to be a great lady" (668).
Scarlett's attempts at passing as Ellen fail. Mammy, the novel's
voice of reason. tells her "Ah ain' never thought ter say it to
none of Miss Ellen·s blood.... You ain' nothin but a mule in
hawse harness. ... An' dat Butler man, he come of good stock
130 E/iza Russi Lowm McGraw
and he ali slicked up like a race hawse, but he a mule in hawse
hamess, jes' like you... . you is bullhaided like yo' pa• (836).
Blood prevails. Gerald's makes Scarlett stubbom, Mammy reg-
isters surprise at Scarlett's behavior because of Ellen's, and. like
Scarlett, Rhett is similarly a mule in spite of his genteel Charles-
ton heritage. "Mule" and "mulatto" come, of course, from the
same root, and imply that Mammy sees both Scarlett and Rhett
as somehow miscegenated. Mixture breeds the "conflict as fre-
quently raged in Scarlett's bosom when the blood of a soft-
voiced, overbred Coast aristocrat mingled with the shrewd, earthy
blood of an lrish peasant" (89). Because of her whiteness, how-
ever, Scarlett can channel this mixture into survival, whereas
Ciare Bellew, in Nella Larsen's Passing (published seven years
before Gone With the Wíntl in 1929), commits suicide after her
societally determined racial identity is discovered. In her mo-
ment of crisis, Scarlett's lrishne~enoted by her unladylike
ways and "gumption"-surfaces. While the tragic mulatta must
traditionally endure real bondage, community mores chafe
Scarlett. Toe tragic mulatta, whom critics position as a subscriber
to the sentimental heroine's cult of domesticity (more akin to
the genteel Melanie Wilkes than Scarlett), often dies once her
identity becomes public. In contrast, Scarlett's mixed identity
ensures her survival in a South that no longer subscribes to
ante-bellum codes, while her better-bred neighbors starve around
her.
Mixture, Mitchell's novel indícates, provides strength for the
brutal world of the post-bellum South. By deploying Irishness
in conjunction with gender, class. and preeminently etllflic is-
sues, Mitchell demonstrates that Scarlett's Irish resolve ultimately
grants her endurance as magnolia-white Southem belles such
as Melanie Wilkes wither away. Scarlett succeeds because her
blended identity contains a visible amount of rraditional and
valued Southern whiteness as well as other-tainted strength.
Mesalliance. oxymoronically anathema to and embroiled in nine-
teenth-century white Southern culture , ultimately prevails. As
Rhett tells Scarlett when she begs him to forget one of her fits of
pique. "No, it is one of my most priceless memories--a deli-
cately nurtured Southern belle with her Irish up" (195).
Fántlerb,11 llniuersíO'
South Atlantic Rroitw 131
NOTES
1 Also, in Henry James' Pot1ro1/ o.fa La~¡· 0881), Pansy is the name oí
Isabel Archer's decidedly un-Sc<lrlenlsh siep-daughter.
'Working aga!ns1 Scarle1t's lrish ident!ty, popular cul!Ure has cast her as a
troditional belle. A search íor ·Scarlen O'Haro· on 1he Internet revea Is "Scarlen
O'Haro·s Home Page.· whlch contalns photogrophs o f Saroh Katluyn Smith,
who bllls herself as ·1he l 990's living model of Scarleu O'Haro. • The Opryland
hotel in Nashville hlls a jewelry store caUed "Miss Scarlett's." and in Con.fed-
e1Y11es /11 tbe A/líe< New York: Pantheon, 1997), Tony Horwítz writes about a
" ·ornan who carns a living dressing up as Scarlett and dining with 1ourists.
' For more on the trogic mulana figure. see Hazel V. Carby, Reco11slrucli11g
rF01111111óood(Ne,v York: Oxfon:I, 1997) as well as Peterson. Seminal repre-
sen1a1ions appear in textS including Brown's C/otel. ( New York: Carol, 1969):
Charles Chesnun·s House &>bímttóe Cedal3"(Ridgewood: Gregg Press. 1968):
Lydia Maria Child's Romane<' o.f tóe Republlc, 1867 (lexington: UP of Ken-
tuc~-y. 1997); and Fronces Ellen Watkins Harper's !ola Lelioy, 1893 <New
York: Oxford. 1988).

WORKS CITED
Brown. Willlam Wells. C/otel. 1s;3. New York: Carol Publishing. 199;.
Gowley, Malcolm. ·Going Wlth the Wind.· Recas1111g. Gone INló tóe lr-7,ul 111
A111ertca11 Culture. Ed. Dan:len Ashbury Pyron. GainesvUle: UP oí Florida,
1993. 17-20.
Fiedler, Leslie. "lñe Antl-Tom Novel and the Great Oepre.ssion." Gene Ir-lió tbe
IFind as BoolJ a11dFilm. Ed. Richard Harwcll. Golumbi:I: U of South Carolina
P. 1983. 244-;3.
Go11e lr-tló tóe Wind. Dir. Victor Fleming. MGM, 1938.
lgnatiev, Noel. Hou· tóe Irisó Recame Wblle. New York: Rootledge, 1995.
ln~n. Helen Deiss. ·Gea in Georgia: A Mythic Dimenslon of Gone With the
Wlnd." kecas/i11g: Gc11e UWó tbe Jf-711<1 í11 Amerlca11 Citlture. Ed . Dan:len
AShbury Pyron. Gaínesville: UP oí Florida, 1993. 57~.
Jones. Anne Goodwyn. Tomorrou· fs Anotóer .Oay. Baton Rouge: Loulsiana
Sta te UP. 1981.
1.,1rsen, NelL-t. Possi11g. 1929. New Brunswick: Rutgers UP. 1994.
Mitchell, Margaret. Go11e Witó the Wí11d. 1936. New York: Macmilfan. 1964.
Peterson. Carla l. Doers o.ftóe IR>ni· A.frtco11-Ame1tco11 Wómen Speokers and
W'rfters /11 the A'ortó ( 1830-1880). New York: Oxford UP, 1995.
Pyron. Darden Ashbury. ·Toe lnner War oí Southem History.· R;,caslf11g:
Go11e INtb tóe 1r-111d Ílt AmPrlcan Culture. Ed. Darden Ashbury Pyron.
Gainesville: UP of Florida. 1993. 18'>-202.
- - -. Sotttbern Daugóter. New York: Oxíon:I UP, 1991.
Sedgwick, Eve Kosofsk-y. &>tu't'ell .He11. New York: Columbia UP, 1985.