“He swung her off her feet into his arms and started up the stairs. Her head was crushed against his chest and she heard the hard hammering of his heart beneath her ears.

“He hurt her and she cried out, muffled, frightened. Up the stairs, he went in the utter darkness, up, up, and she was wild with fear.

“He was a mad stranger and this was a black darkness she did not know, darker than death. He was like death, carrying her away in arms that hurt.”

And so Rhett Butler sweeps Scarlett O’Hara off her feet in one of the climactic episodes of Margaret Mitchell’s “Gone With The Wind.” With the help of the acting talents of Clark Gable and Vivien Leigh, this scene has been etched in the American psyche as one of the most romantic moments in fiction.

Now read the passage over again literally, forgetting the rest of the story, and something else becomes ominously apparent.

hett is raping Scarlett.

“He had humbled her, hurt her, used her brutally through a wild mad night and she had gloried in it,” Scarlett recollects the morning afterwards. Unfortunately, the passage also sounds dangerously close to a psychopathic rapist’s fantasy.

In fact, the scene is the classic representation of the “‘no’ means ‘yes'” rape myth that seems so hard to dispel. Instead of being shocked and revolted by the incident, Scarlett is shown realizing her love for Rhett because of it.

This is all the more disturbing because the novel is a truly well-written book and deserves its high regard. The detail of the historical background, the clear writing style, the dramatic plot, and above all, the thorough renderings of the characters are remarkable.

Mitchell’s brilliant description of independent-minded Scarlett is, ironically, what makes Scarlett’s change of heart all the more confusing and out-of-character.

Whatever Mitchell’s strengths as a writer, her acceptance of the “liberating” qualities of rape must be regarded as a flawed view of human personality.

Why this scene continues to be regarded as “romantic” is another matter.

The most common explanation of the scene is that Rhett and Scarlett are truly in love, therefore it wasn’t a rape. If Rhett and Scarlett were in love, does that give Rhett the right to rape Scarlett?

What seems more sensible is that rape, like any other form of physical or mental abuse, is wrong whatever the relationship between the perpetrator and the victim.

Besides, Mitchell clearly shows that Rhett is in drunken rage during the incident. Rhett’s attitude of embarrassment afterwards further underscores the truth that he did not consider his behavior an act of love.

This may seem like a trifling matter, but people’s attitudes toward fictional characters surely reflect their assessments of real people as well. Fiction may even play a significant role in the formation of those assessments.

A generation ago, the Civil Rights movement fostered overdue criticism of the portrayal of blacks in this Mitchell work. It is time to take the same critical attitude toward the “romantic” rape Scarlett is subjected to.