Gone with the Wind

Set in the antebellum American South, the story opens in 1861 at Tara, a Georgia cotton plantation. Scarlett O'Hara, the willful and vain daughter of Irish planter Gerald O'Hara, is deeply infatuated with the gentlemanly Ashley Wilkes, who is nevertheless engaged to his cousin, the gentle Melanie Hamilton. At a plantation barbecue celebrating the engagement, Scarlett privately declares her love to Ashley, who rejects her. Out of spite and to make Ashley jealous, she impulsively accepts a proposal from Melanie's brother Charles Hamilton. When news arrives of the attack on Fort Sumter, the men enlist and Charles dies of disease in camp, leaving Scarlett a young widow. She moves to Atlanta to stay with Melanie's aunt, where she is introduced to the irreverent blockade runner Rhett Butler, who has been watching her with sardonic amusement. Scarlett creates a public scandal by agreeing to dance with Rhett at a charity bazaar while still in mourning. As the Union Army besieges Atlanta in 1864, the heavily pregnant Melanie goes into a difficult labor. Scarlett delivers the baby with no medical help, and Rhett arrives to drive them out of the burning city by wagon. Mid-journey he abandons them to join the Confederate Army, leaving Scarlett to navigate the war-ravaged countryside alone with Melanie, the newborn, and two house slaves. She finally reaches Tara to find it looted and her mother recently dead from typhoid, her father mentally broken. Standing in the barren fields, Scarlett swears she will never go hungry again. During Reconstruction, the family struggles to save Tara from punishing tax levies. Scarlett learns that her childhood beau Frank Kennedy is now engaged to her sister Suellen but is saving money; she deliberately seduces him into marrying her so she can use his funds to pay the taxes. Frank is killed during a night raid on a shantytown—organized after Scarlett is sexually assaulted while driving alone through a dangerous area. With Frank dead, Rhett Butler, now wealthy from wartime profiteering, proposes to Scarlett and she accepts, partly for financial security. They move to Atlanta, where Rhett lavishes Scarlett with a grand mansion and fashionable clothes; their daughter, nicknamed Bonnie Blue Butler for her blue eyes, is born. Though Rhett genuinely loves both Scarlett and Bonnie, Scarlett's emotional detachment and her continued obsession with Ashley poison the marriage. When rumors circulated by Ashley's sister India Wilkes suggest a romantic scandal between Scarlett and Ashley, Rhett publicly humiliates Scarlett by forcing her to attend a party in her honor, then drunkenly carries her to the bedroom. The next morning Scarlett, who experienced a moment of passion during the encounter, reaches out to Rhett, but he leaves on an extended trip to London with Bonnie. On his return, Scarlett tells him she is pregnant again; during a bitter quarrel on the landing, she lunges at him, loses her footing, and tumbles down the staircase, miscarrying the baby. While recuperating she is indifferent to Rhett, who is wracked with guilt. Not long after, their daughter Bonnie is killed when she tries to jump a garden fence on her pony, mimicking Ashley's hunt riding. Rhett is shattered; the couple barely communicates. When Melanie Wilkes suddenly falls gravely ill and is dying, both Scarlett and Ashley are summoned. At Melanie's deathbed Scarlett finally understands that the idealized Ashley she loved was always an illusion and that she truly loves Rhett. She rushes home to tell him, but Rhett, emotionally exhausted and no longer believing she is capable of real love, announces he is leaving. Scarlett begs to know how she will live without him; Rhett delivers his famous farewell and walks into the morning fog. Desolate, Scarlett draws comfort from the thought of Tara, telling herself that tomorrow is another day, and resolves to go home and find a way to win Rhett back.

Sources: Wikipedia