Scarlett O'Hara and writing yourself into the story

 "Mary Sue" is a trope in fan fiction (and elsewhere):
an original character (from outside the world of the show--a stand-in for the author?), plain (but there's something attractive about her), not specifically trained or educated (but able to do everything)--she appears from outside, wins the heart of the captain (or the first officer), and saves the ship.

Sometimes mocked, writing yourself into the story as the guest hero (Mary Sue) is an incredibly empowering thing to do for a young person.
Or for an old one.

In her essay "Gone with Gone with the Wind," [different title online, here] Meg Elison suggests Scarlett O'Hara is of the type. Elison first picked up her mother's copy of the book when she was nine years old.

"Written in 1936, Gone with the Wind predates the concept of Young Adult literature, or really even the idea of a young adult. But as the novel begins, Scarlett O'Hara is a sixteen-year-old girl caught between two cultures and about to embark on the greatest adventure of her life.
If that's not YA, I don't know what is.

"It indulges in some of the most common trope constructions of the genre: Scarlett isn't beautiful, except she definitely is. She is torn between two love interests who are both very attractive but appeal to different parts of her nature. She is set against insurmountable odds yet gifted with privileges of which she is never made aware.* She proves astonishingly competent at skills never taught to her: mathematics, running a business, shooting a trained soldier in the face.
Scarlett O'Hara is Katniss Everdeen in a hoop skirt. I fell in love with this book.

I read it the first few times as all kids read books: innocently."

Scarlett has great qualities a girl could emulate.
But the rest of the essay is about what Elison saw through progressive re-readings of the book, that I saw too:
a dawning awareness that Gone with the Wind is "a racist fiction," that Scarlett, for all her very real hardships, OWNS A PLANTATION and loyal slaves (like "Mammy" who doesn't even have her own name)... and that I, too, as a white person, have invisible privileges the culture does not even recognize.

Elison writes, "It took me far too long to see that even my optimism was a gift that helped me move toward the life I wanted."

Yes! Even my optimism that 2021 will be a better year is not shared by some of my Black coworkers who learned long ago that next year is going to be just like all the other years of their lives.

Mr Furniture said, "Biden won't make any difference to poor people."
Mr Furniture expects that eight years from now (supposing a reelection), he and his family will be in the same situation they're in now, or were in eight years ago. 

Who am I to argue with that, from inside my party view:  "But maybe if you meditated and ate less meat?"

What if instead I enter into his party? What’s happening there? Woo-sah!

It’s like being Mr Spock: what is this human experience?

It’s natural to feel some chagrin to realize you're the only kid at a certain party who got one. Gifts are good things. EVERYONE should have a gift!

Maybe if I have one and you don't, I can share. And wonder why it is that way...

And be curious—what gifts are in those other kids’ boxes?

"Learned helplessness" isn't just learned---it's taught. "Taught helplessness" might be a better name.
Maybe--often--it's unintentionally taught.
In the original experiment when dogs learned to stop trying to escape an inescapable shock, the researchers weren't even going for that effect--it was an unexpected side-effect of an entirely different experiment.

Cause dogs aren't dumb.
Why should they try, try again, if the answer is always the same?*

And it's hard work to try to change, even if change is possible:

"It takes real work, as a white person, to realize the racism in which you have been steeped all your life. It takes rereading the texts you hold dear. It takes literacy and critical thinking and listening to people of color to realize that not only is Gone with the Wind fiction, but most of what you know if fiction."

Right now, post-police murder of George Floyd, race is the focus of this work for a lot of people.
But you can enter the story--and see that it's a story--at any spot. "Oh, gee, all of a sudden I see this food I ate all my life is creepy weird."
(See, eggs.)
You could say, this is the work of growing up, waking up, to reality in general.

I mean, spaceship Earth is real, biology is real, viruses are real. But a lot of the social stuff around each of those things is made up, collectively or individually--and while we can't change the collective all at once--it's real too!––we can take a running leap into the story like fans do.
A Mary Sue with self-awareness--there's a character!

Scarlett O'Hara without self-awareness is Donald Trump, chewing up everything they meet, including the curtains.

_________________________

*Amazingly, though, some dogs did keep trying to escape. Like, ten percent? And some dogs had never tried in the first place.
So that's interesting.
It's the basis of psychologist Martin Seligman's work on "learned optimism":
If we can learn helplessness, can we learn resilience?
A lot of Seligman's field of positive psychology focuses on childhood. It's a lot, lot harder to change our minds once we're grown up, but the answer is a qualified yes.