Ashley Wilkes

Ashley Wilkes
Leslie Howard as Ashley Wilkes in the Gone With the Wind film trailer
First appearance	Gone with the Wind
Created by	Margaret Mitchell
Portrayed by	Leslie Howard Stephen Collins
Information
Gender	Male
Occupation	Aristocrat
Spouse(s)	Melanie Wilkes (deceased)
Children	Beau Wilkes
Relatives	John Wilkes (father) India Wilkes (sister) Honey Wilkes (sister; not in the film) Henry Hamilton (uncle) Sarah Jane (Pittypat) Hamilton (aunt) Charles Hamilton (cousin)

George Ashley Wilkes is a fictional character in Margaret Mitchell's 1936 novel Gone with the Wind and the later film of the same name. The character also appears in the 1991 book Scarlett, a sequel to Gone with the Wind written by Alexandra Ripley, and in Rhett Butler's People by Donald McCaig.

Ashley is the man with whom Scarlett O'Hara is obsessed. Gentlemanly yet indecisive, he loves Scarlett, but finds he has more in common with Melanie, his distant cousin and later his wife. However, he is tormented by his attraction to Scarlett. Unfortunately for him and Scarlett, his failure to deal with his true feelings for her ruins any chance she has for real happiness with Rhett Butler. Ashley is a complicated character. He is not sympathetic to the cause of the North. However, he isn't an ardent Confederate patriot, either. What Ashley loves about the South is the serene, peaceful life that he and his dear ones know at Twelve Oaks and similar plantations. At one point (following the war) he comments to Scarlett that "had the war not come he would have spent his life happily buried at Twelve Oaks."

In short, Ashley loves the South, but not necessarily the Confederacy. And he hates war, even telling his friends in the beginning of the book who are eager to start fighting the North that "most of the misery in the world has been caused by war", though he fights because of his loyalty to the above-mentioned peaceful life he had in Georgia.

He claims that he would have freed the slaves after the death of his father if the war hadn't freed them already. His willingness to free the slaves further demonstrates his impractical nature, because if the slaves were free, he would not be able to run the plantation. However, he has a great deal of affection for the slaves on his plantation, and the role that they played in his serene, bucolic life.