Jessica

“But, Ashley, what are you afraid of?'

'Oh, nameless things. Things which sound very silly when they are
put into words. Mostly of having life suddenly become too real, of
being brought into personal, too personal, contact with some of the
simple facts of life. It isn't that I mind splitting logs here in
the mud, but I do mind what it stands for. I do mind, very much,
the loss of the beauty of the old life I loved. Scarlett, before
the war, life was beautiful. There was a glamor to it, a
perfection and a completeness and a symmetry to it like Grecian
art. Maybe it wasn't so to everyone. I know that now. But to me,
living at Twelve Oaks, there was a real beauty to living. I
belonged in that life. I was a part of it. And now it is gone and
I am out of place in this new life, and I am afraid. Now, I know
that in the old days it was a shadow show I watched. I avoided
everything which was not shadowy, people and situations which were
too real, too vital. I resented their intrusion.”
― Margaret Mitchell, Gone with the Wind

“Somewhere, on the long road that wound through those four years, the girl with her sachet & dancing slippers had slipped away & there was left a woman with sharp green eyes, who counted pennies & turned her hands to many menial tasks, a woman to whom nothing was left from the wreckage except the indestructible red earth on which she stood.”
― Margaret Mitchell, Gone with the Wind

“Suddenly she hated them all because they were different from her, because they carried their losses with an air that she could never attain, would never wish to attain. She hated them, these smiling, light-footed strangers, these proud fools who took pride in something they had lost, seeming to be proud that they had lost it.”
― Margaret Mitchell, Gone with the Wind

“It's a curse—this not wanting to look on naked realities. Until the war, life was never more real to me than a shadow show on a curtain. And I preferred it so. I did not like the outlines of things to be too sharp. I like them gently blurred, a little hazy... In other words, Scarlett, I am a coward.”
― Margaret Mitchell, Gone with the Wind