原文: SCARLETT O’HARA was not beautiful, but men seldom realized it when caught by her charm as the Tarleton twins were. In her face were too sharply blended the delicate features of her mother, a Coast aristocrat of French descent, and the heavy ones of her florid Irish father. But it was an arresting face, pointed of chin, square of jaw. Her eyes were pale green without a touch of hazel, starred with bristly black lashes and slightly tilted at the ends. Above them, her thick black brows slanted upward, cutting a startling oblique line in her magnolia-white skin—that skin so prized by Southern women and so carefully guarded with bonnets, veils and mittens against hot Georgia suns.
Seated with Stuart and Brent Tarleton in the cool shade of the porch of Tara, her father’s plantation, that bright April afternoon of 1861, she made a pretty picture. Her new green flowered-muslin dress spread its twelve yards of billowing material over her hoops and exactly matched the flat-heeled green morocco slippers her father had recently brought her from Atlanta. The dress set off to perfection the seventeen-inch waist, the smallest in three counties, and the tightly fitting basque showed breasts well matured for her sixteen years. But for all the modesty of her spreading skirts, the demureness of hair netted smoothly into a chignon and the quietness of small white hands folded in her lap, her true self was poorly concealed. The green eyes in the carefully sweet face were turbulent, willful, lusty with life, distinctly at variance with her decorous demeanor. Her manners had been imposed upon her by her mother’s gentle admonitions and the sterner discipline of her mammy; her eyes were her own.
【傅东华译】:“那郝思嘉小姐长得并不美,可是极富于魅力,男人见了她,往往要着迷,就像汤家那一对双胞胎兄弟似的。原来这位小姐脸上显然混杂着两种特质:一种是母亲给她的娇柔,一种是父亲给她的豪爽。因为她母亲是个有着法兰西血统的海滨贵族,父亲是个皮色深浓的爱尔兰人,所以遗传给她的质地难免不调和。可是质地虽然不调和.她那一张脸蛋儿却实在迷人得很,下巴颏儿尖尖的,牙床骨儿方方的。她的眼珠子是一味的淡绿色,不杂一丝儿的茶褐,周围竖着一圈儿粗黑的睫毛,眼角微微有点翘,上面斜竖着两撇墨黑的娥眉.在她那木兰花一般白的皮肤上,画出两条异常惹眼的斜线。就是她那一身皮肤,也正是南方女人最最喜爱的,谁要长着这样的皮肤,就要拿帽子、面罩、手套之类当心保护着,舍不得让那大热的阳光晒黑。
一八六一年四月一个晴明的下午,思嘉小姐在陶乐垦植场的住宅,陪着汤家那一对双胞胎兄弟——一个叫汤司徒,一个叫汤伯伦的——坐在一个阴凉的走廊里。这时春意正浓,景物如绣,她也显得特别的标致。她身上穿着一件新制的绿色花布春衫。从弹簧箍①上撑出波浪纹的长裙,配着脚上一双也是绿色的低跟鞋,是她父亲新近从亚特兰大买来给她的。她的腰围不过十七英寸,穿着那窄窄的春衫,显得十分合身。里面紧紧绷着一件小马甲,使得她胸部特别隆起。她的年纪虽只十六岁,乳房却已十分成熟了。可是不管她那散开的长裙显得多么端庄,不管她那梳得光滑的后髻显得多么老实,也不管她那叠在膝头上的一双雪白的小手显得多么安静,总都掩饰不了她的真性情。她那双绿色的眼睛虽然嵌在一张矜持的面孔上,却是骚动不宁的,慧黠多端的。洋溢着生命的,跟她那一副装饰起来的仪态截然不能相称。原来她平日受了母亲的温和训诲和嬷嬷的严厉管教,这才把这副姿态勉强造成,至于那一双眼睛,那是天生给她的,决不是人工改造得了的。”