I lean toward the “too good to live” definition of Mary Sue, with characteristics of the writer optional. However, even if Jo is based on the young Alcott, that doesn’t preclude Beth from being a different aspect of Alcott’s personality.
OMG! Lazarus Long is a Mary Sue! :smack:
Actually, as slow on the uptake as I am, I figured that out in the first chapter of Time Enough For Love.
I think Melanie is a Mary Sue. While it’s true that Scarlett varyingly holds her in contempt and loves her madly in spite of herself, the rest of Georgia is not so ambivalent. EVERYONE loves Melanie. Scarlett’s contempt for her is clearly due to Scarlett’s jealously, and Scarlett is the lesser for it because Melanie is so obviously a paragon of womanhood. Melanie is the Angel With The Heart of Gold, befreinding poor whores and injured soldiers and dying for the Love of Life and Children.
It might be more apparent in the book than the movie, but Melanie really was the personification of the (idealized) Old South - generous, loyal, brave, loving and genteel. She’s also dead by the end, just like the Old South. And I think that the fact that she dies in childbirth - fragile, exhausted, but bringing a new life into the world - is not an insignificant note. The Old South died as the New South was born.
Scarlett is really an anti-hero. She’s coarse and rude and mean and petty and jealous and conniving and manipulative and opportunistic. She’s the North, petticoats and barbecues or no. She invades men’s lives and takes them over, transforming them against their will. She even marries a Yankee and lives his extravagent, gallavanting lifestyle. Yet, in the end, she cannot take Ashley away from Melanie. The spirit of the Old South cannot be overcome by the Yankee Scarlett, even in death.
So Melanie is a very large Mary Sue, standing in for a whole culture that is “too good to be true.” (An actual line of Scarlett’s referring to Melanie.)
Ayn herself admitted that Dominique was herself “on a bad day”, leading me to think that her ultimate Mary Sue was Dagny in ATLAS.
Talk about timing. Fox just ran that crappy Ricky Gervais Simpsons episode.
Fanfic. Check.
Idealization of the author. Check.
Hate the character with ever fiber of my being. Check.
It’s a Gary Stu!
It’s self-insertion, but Gervais is mocking himself. His character is hardly idealized; he’s a browbeaten, self-important wimp, and most notably, he’s not funny.
Wait, which of Scarlett’s husbands was a Yankee? 
Maybe I’m overdue for a re-read.
Rhett Butler, wasn’t he? OK, he was from Charleston, so maybe Yankee is overstating it. But he’d lived in the north and went to (and was kicked out of) West Point, and was “not received by any decent family” he was “so fast” with the ladies. In mean, he took a lady out riding in the late afternoon and then refused to marry her! :eek: He is highly skeptical of the dreams of the Southern men, and only becomes involved as a blockade runner for profit, and finally goes to fight for the South out of nothing but guilt, when he knows they have no chance of winning. And at least in the movie is played with a Northern accent.
I think there’s a case to be made that he and Scarlett as a unit represent the North, as Ashley and Melanie represent the South. But to be honest, I haven’t thought it all out - it just came to me while writing that first post this morning.
But this goes to the OP’s question. If Melanie represents all that’s good about the South, she is, by most definitions posted and that I can find, absolutely NOT a “Mary-Sue.” A Mary-Sue is a character that represents the idealized version of the author.
But in the end, Rhett was more Old South, and went looking for the Old South. Remember, he told Scarlett that “money could buy everything or at least a good substitute,” then later said “Money can’t buy what I want for [Bonnie, their daughter].”
By the colloquial usage of “bug.” But to an entomologist, all bugs are insects, but not all insects are bugs. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hemiptera
But Beth’s death is sad enough to send the book into the freezer, it doesn’t do anything. Mary Sues usually die saving the world or creating peace or causing deep realizations in people or something - they don’t so much die as they are sacrificed for a cause. And others recognize their otherwise unnoticed wonderfulness during their death scene (or while staring at the corpses weird eyes).
The world really does revolve around Mary Sue.
While LMA may have over-lionized her little sister, Beth doesn’t come off the same way that the aforementioned Marissa does. It’s one thing to write about yourself or someone you love - it’s another to do so without objectivity or a sense of self reflection.
Now THAT’S a thread idea…“What If Stephen Ratliff Had Written…?”
Little Women would have become Little Admirals, with Jo marrying her Fleet Training Officer and Beth succumbing to Denebian Fever…
Is Rhett Butler a Yankee?
I looked over my own Trek fanfics, and unfortunately, there are Sue-ish elements to some of the guest characters. But they get smacked around a lot and don’t form emotional attachments to any established character nor do they brilliantly solve the stories’ main problems, so I don’t feel so bad about it.
I remember one of the early novels though, that introduced a female character (who worked for some kind of ultra-powerful little-known proto-Section-31 intelligence branch of Starfleet) who was (as close to a direct quote I can recall) “by far the most beautiful woman James Kirk had ever seen”.
Ew. I never sunk that low.
No, as was mentioned before, he was from Charleston. And I agree with the poster before who said that Melanie wasn’t a Mary Sue…she was, as was said, along with Ashley, a symbol of the Old South.
I don’t know if Margaret Mitchell saw herself as Melanie or not. Considering that she’s so romanticized the whole civilization, and Melanie’s the only lovable character in the book, it’s a good guess Mitchell at least wanted to believe she was like Melanie, but I have no cite for that.
My intention was to rebut the RealityChuck’s assertion that Melanie couldn’t be a Mary Sue under the “too good to be true and dies a heroic death” defintion, “I don’t Melanie was treated with enough worship to really be a Mary Sue. There was a certain amount of contempt for her, so she doesn’t qualify.” The contempt was only Scarlett’s - I don’t think we’re supposed to agree with it. (But I quoted the wrong post the first time. Sorry.)
I don’t think we’ve reached full agreement as to what a Mary Sue is. Lots of people are giving examples that are not clearly the author’s doppleganger.
That seems to be the question. Morally, and in how reviled he is by the good southern folk, I think he counts. See my previous points for why I think he should count as a Yankee, even though he’s technically from Charleston (Which is technically north of southern Illinois, isn’t it?) While he may not have been a Yankee by birth, he was a very Yankeefied southerner in his beliefs and actions. But I’m willing to have that sentance stricken on a technicality. 
Yes, in the end, I agree, Rhett redeems himself and becomes “properly” southern again. Scarlett’s redemption is ambiguous. (And no, I never read the “second book”.)
But, if Melanie can’t be BOTH a Mary Sue and a symbol of the Old South, then I’ll stick to the later.
The term is being defined so broadly and in so many ways here that it could be said to include any first-person fiction or any fiction with a character resembling the author. It’s kind of crazy, and given some of the definitions, there’s no reason to feel bad about it.
I’ve written one piece of fanfiction in my life, and I took great pain to avoid the definition of “Mary Sue” as I then understood it (author-resembling character who shows up and amazes everybody or becomes a hero admired by all). As I remember it, the character I created was neither heroic nor helpful.
P.S.: By the “too good to live” standard, Evangline in Uncle Tom’s Cabin might be the ultimate example. She’s up there with Tiny Tim, and Stowe wasn’t as tactful or nuanced a writer as Dickens. Still, Tim might be the champ because he ‘dies’ to teach Scrooge a lesson, then lives for a cutesy scene at the end of the book. It’s a toss-up, if you ask me.
:eek:
:: searching for a spoon so I can gouge out my mind’s eye ::