Scarlett O'Hara is a fictional character and the protagonist in
Margaret Mitchell's
1936 novel
Gone with the Wind and in the later
film of the same name. She also is the main character in the 1970 musical
Scarlett and the 1991 book
Scarlett, a sequel to
Gone with the Wind that was written by
Alexandra Ripley and adapted for a television
mini-series in 1994. During early drafts of the original novel, Mitchell referred to her heroine as "Pansy", and did not decide on the name "Scarlett" until just before the novel went to print.