Scarlett as victim?

In case you've been living in a cave, it's the 150th anniversary of the beginning of the Civil War this month, and every drop of blood drawn by the sword must be paid by a drop of ink from the journalists' pen. This was the flagship article in the 18 April issue of Time magazine, which oddly describes Scarlett O'Hara as depicted as a plucky heroine and victim of the war.

Granted, I have a much better memory of the book than the movie, which admittedly cut out a good deal of her shenanigans, but Scarlett O'Hara is as much a "plucky heroine" as is Emma Bovary or Anna Karenina. Which is to say, not at all. What she is mostly, like the other two protagonists, is a strong-willed woman who destroys other people's lives and happiness to get what she wants, which then turns out not to make her happy after all. Granted, she ends the book still alive, unlike Emma and Anna (and thus available for an ill-conceived sequel), but I hardly think anyone takes her as a role model. Likeable? Yes, in spades, but you spend the whole book shouting at her, "You idiot! Don't do that!" And yet, she inevitably does. Plucky? Sure. Heroine? Meh. Victim? Only of herself.