He author examines Margaret Mitchell's bestseller Gone with the Wind (1936) and provides an analysis of very difficult and tangled relationships between the author and her heroine. The “polyphony” of Margaret Mitchell's and Scarlett O'Hara's epic voices wrapped in inverted romantic masochism constitutes the narrative of the novel. Close reading of the “rape” episodes (WAR, RACE, MAR-RIAGE) shows the whole complexity of gender-based violence stereotypes in author's text. Using her sex appeal as a weapon to get what she needs, yet acting childlike and naive, Scarlett O'Hara remains in a “woman-child” contradictory state, forever searching for a “substitute mother” (Mummy, Melanie, Rhett)