One day in northern Georgia, 1861, Scarlett O’Hara is sitting at her family’s plantation, Tara, with twins Brent and Stuart Tarleton, talking about the prospect of the Civil War. Scarlett maintains that the war won’t happen, and that the subject bores her. The twins also share that Ashley Wilkes and Melanie Hamilton will be announcing their engagement at the Wilkes’ barbecue the next day. Scarlett is upset—she loves Ashley. After the twins leave, Scarlett goes to meet her father, Gerald O’Hara, who tells her she shouldn’t love Ashley because he is too different from her.
Ignoring her father’s advice, Scarlett flirts with everyone at the barbecue to make Ashley jealous, then corners him and confesses she loves him. Ashley admits that he loves her too but says that he and Scarlett are too different to be happy together. After he leaves, Scarlett is humiliated to discover that Rhett Butler—a strange man who’d been staring at her all day and who’d said the North would beat the South if there was a war—overheard her and Ashley’s conversation. Scarlett wants to run away but encounters Charles Hamilton, Honey Wilke’s beau. He asks her to marry him and she says yes, wanting to spite everyone. Meanwhile, news arrives that the Civil War has started.
Two weeks later, Scarlett marries Charles and Ashley marries Melanie. Both men leave for the war and Charles dies from pneumonia two months later. Meanwhile, Scarlett gives birth to Charles’s son, Wade Hampton, and becomes depressed: she has to pretend she’s mourning a husband she didn’t love, and she misses Ashley. To cheer her, Ellen sends her to Atlanta to stay with Melanie and Miss Pittypat. In Atlanta, life is difficult: Melanie annoys Scarlett and the wounded soldiers in the war hospital where she volunteers nauseate her, but she reconnects with Rhett Butler. He’s now a blockader who sneaks in goods from England for the Confederate army. Although she is repulsed by Rhett’s bad manners, she secretly agrees with him that the war is foolish. Their relationship scandalizes Atlanta, but Scarlett doesn’t care. She wants Rhett to say he loves her so she can control him, but he refuses; instead, he asks her to be his mistress.
Ashley comes to Atlanta on furlough. Before he leaves, he makes Scarlett promise to take care of Melanie, whose health is weak. Scarlett tells Ashley she still loves him and they kiss, but a few weeks later, Melanie learns she’s pregnant. As the war gets closer to Atlanta, Scarlett receives word that Ellen and her sisters have typhoid fever. Though Miss Pittypat evacuates, Scarlett and Melanie can’t leave, as Melanie is due to give birth any day. As the fighting reaches Atlanta, Melanie goes into labor. Dr. Meade is too busy tending wounded soldiers to help, so Scarlett and Prissy deliver the baby themselves. Meanwhile, the Confederates evacuate Atlanta. Feeling alone and scared, Scarlett finds Rhett and asks him to take them all to Tara. He drives them out of Atlanta as it burns, but before they get to Tara, Rhett decides to join the Confederates. He kisses Scarlett and tells her he loves her, then leaves her alone. Scarlett makes the harrowing journey to Tara with her the sickly Melanie and her newborn baby, passing burned plantations and hiding from Yankee soldiers.
When they get to Tara, Scarlett discovers that Ellen died the day before and Gerald is mad with grief. Mammy and Pork are there, but the Yankees stole all Tara’s food. Although things at Tara are bleak, Scarlett persists, telling herself she’ll think about it all tomorrow. She feels as though she grew up on her journey from Atlanta to Tara, and she vows to never be hungry again. When a Yankee soldier comes to Tara and tries to rob them, Scarlett shoots him with Charles’s pistol. Melanie also grabs a weapon to kill the intruder, leading Scarlett to admire her even though she’s jealous of her. The war drags on. An uneducated injured soldier named Will Benteen recuperates at Tara and then stays on to help rehabilitate the plantation, while Frank Kennedy—Suellen’s beau—visits on leave and proposes to Suellen.
To Scarlett’s relief, the South loses Civil War; it brought her nothing but grief. Ashley returns to Tara and to Melanie. In the spring, Scarlett plants and tends a cotton crop, and everything is looking up at Tara until Scarlett hears that Jonas Wilkerson—Tara’s old overseer—is raising the taxes on Tara, hoping to evict Scarlett and buy the place himself. When Scarlett asks Ashley for advice, Ashley says he isn’t brave enough to cope with his new reality. When Scarlett says she has nothing without Ashley, he gives her a handful of dirt and tells her that she still has the land. Determined to save Tara at whatever cost, Scarlett decides to get money from Rhett Butler, even if she has to be his mistress to do it. She makes a dress out of Ellen’s velvet curtains and goes to Atlanta with Mammy.
When Scarlett arrives in Atlanta, Rhett is in jail for killing a Black man. Scarlett goes to visit him, hoping to convince him to marry her so she can have all his money if he’s hanged. Rhett quickly realizes her intentions and so refuses to give her the money. Humiliated, Scarlett leaves the jail and runs into Frank Kennedy. Hearing that he made a small fortune after starting a store, Scarlett lies to him that Suellen has married someone else and promptly marries him herself.
Scarlett sends money to Tara, runs Frank’s store, and once Rhett gets out of jail, she gets a loan from him to buy a sawmill. She shocks Atlanta with her “unwomanly” behavior; that is, running businesses like a man. Scarlett thinks it’s foolish that the old Southerners endure their poverty proudly and pretend they are still ladies and gentlemen; her only goal is to earn money. When she gets pregnant, she’s angry as this means she’ll have to stop working soon.
When Gerald dies suddenly, Scarlett goes to Tara for his funeral. She learns that Suellen tried to convince Gerald to sign an oath to cooperate with the Yankees, which would’ve gotten the family government money. He’d gotten so upset that he jumped his horse and broke his neck. Meanwhile, Carreen joins a convent, and Suellen and Will get engaged. Ashley prepares to leave for a job in New York, but Scarlett persuades him to manage her mill in Atlanta, ignoring him when he says he’ll lose all self-respect if he doesn’t do things for himself. Rhett later calls Scarlett a cheat since he’d asked her not to put his loan towards helping Ashley.
Back in Atlanta, Scarlett gives birth to Ella Lorena and promptly goes back to work. Frustrated by the cost of hiring free Black workers, she hires a convict gang and a cruel man—Johnnie Gallegher—to oversee them. In Atlanta, tensions between free Blacks and the Ku Klux Klan run high. The Democrats resist Reconstruction and refuse to ratify the Republican amendment that gives Blacks the right to vote. One night, when Scarlett is driving alone, a Black man and a white man attack her. Big Sam—one of Tara’s old field hands—saves her. When Scarlett gets home, Frank sends her to Melanie’s while he sets out with Ashley and the Ku Klux Klan to kill the men who attacked her. Yankee officers come to Melanie’s and wait to arrest Frank and Ashley. Frank is killed, but Rhett saves Ashley by bringing him home, pretending to be drunk, and saying they’d spent the whole night in Belle Watling’s saloon.
Although Scarlett feels guilty for indirectly causing Frank’s death, she accepts Rhett Butler’s marriage proposal the night after his funeral. She doesn’t love Rhett, but she wants his money. They go on a lavish honeymoon in New Orleans, where Scarlett befriends rich Carpetbaggers and Scallawags. When they get home, Scarlett builds an extravagant house with Rhett’s money and hosts parties for her new friends. She even invites Republican Governor Bullock to some parties, causing all her friends in the Old Guard—except Melanie—to shun her. Soon, she gives birth to a daughter, Bonnie Blue. Rhett loves being a father, but since Scarlett doesn’t want more children, she demands separate bedrooms. Secretly, she also still loves Ashley and wants to be physically faithful to him. Hurt by her decision, Rhett becomes increasingly attached to Bonnie. He decides to charm the Old Guard and to join the Democratic party in order to ensure that Bonnie has a good reputation when she grows up.
One day, Scarlett visits Ashley at the mill and someone discovers them crying in each other’s arms about the past and the old days. Melanie refuses to believe the rumors that Scarlett and Ashley are romantically involved, and she breaks ties with everyone who turns against Scarlett. However, Rhett explodes at Scarlett for being emotionally unfaithful to him. He yells at her, but they spend a passionate night together. After this night, Scarlett is happy to find out she is pregnant, but she and Rhett don’t trust each other enough to share their true feelings. In a shouting match with him, Scarlett slips on the steps, falls, and miscarries. She goes to Tara to recover.
When she returns, Rhett and Scarlett are at an icy impasse. Bonnie turns four soon after, and Rhett buys her a pony and teaches her how to jump. After begging for a higher jump, Bonnie falls and breaks her neck. Rhett is so devastated that he almost loses his mind, but Melanie is able to soothe him.
Scarlett wants to reconnect with her old Democrat friends, but none of them—except Melanie—like her anymore. And not long after, Melanie has a miscarriage and falls ill. As Melanie dies, Scarlett realizes how much she depends on her friend. Melanie makes Scarlett promise to take care of Ashley, who becomes even more useless and despondent after Melanie dies. Scarlett realizes she didn’t really love Ashley; loving him was just an old habit. She runs to Rhett, realizing that she loves him. But by the time she confesses her love for him, Rhett no longer loves her. He is worn out by her obsession with Ashley, and he wants to go back to his childhood home. Scarlett is distraught; she has lost absolutely everything. Finally, she decides she will go home to Tara, to Mammy and the old days, and pushes her sadness off—as she always does—to another day.
