I strongly dislike Gone With The Wind - there, I've said it.
At best, I've read forty pages of the novel before having to throw it down and go do something fun, like give myself a lobotomy. (No. I'm usually fine with historical fiction, thanks for asking. )
I'm very pained (to borrow a phrase from my past) by the Scarlett O'Hara - arrogance holds no charm for me. I don't believe it ever has. But she's a story for a different day.
Today, we're talking about the other O'Hara, Rhett Butler. And we're talking about him (and the film) in the context of the Civil War in American literature. Now, everyone knows that Rhett Butler is the epitome of roguish charm, women are supposed to love him despite himself etc. etc. Along those lines, a colleague / classmate commented today on how Ashely Wilkes in the film is effeminate and on how the film hints that he is gay.
And although, I agree with the idea that Wilkes is positioned as the non-Rhett-Butler, I find it terribly difficult to read him as a homosexual character.
In terms of gender performativity, Rhett Butler is interestingly positioned as simultaneously hypermasculine and the Julia Kristeva’s Other, demanding expulsion, or in this case defined as “who/what-not-to-be” within the context of the narrative. He is portrayed as opportunistic, rougish, practical (read: un-chivalrous) – everything that a good gentleman would not want to be.
By contrast, within the context of a glorified antebellum South, Ashley seems to emerge as an idealized embodiment of a land-owning Southerner. Portrayed as a less-knavish counterpart to Rhett Butler, Ashley is set up – despite his self-doubt, proclamations of cowardice and almost effeminate mildness of manner – as an ideal, if misguided gentleman. He becomes the honorable, good-boy figure: effeminate, maybe; full of foolish bravado, certainly, but a definition of patriotism in the face of “the enemy”.
And because of this definition of the character as a proper man, I hesitate to read him as gay, even in the face of Rhett Butler’s hypermasculinity. Because once we do, then Ashley ceases to be a counterpoint to Rhett Butler – because sexual orientation is such a huge part of definitions of gender, generally and masculinity, more specifically. Further, since the film seems to work on a framework of nostalgia for the (better ways of the) Old South, reading Ashley as potentially gay, significantly weakens that framework and work against the argument of the text.