What is the significance of rhett and melanie's relationship in Gone With the Wind?

Answer 1

Scarlett hates Melanie in the begining, for Scarlett thinks she is in love with Ashley Wilkes, Melanie's husband. Melanie, oblivious to Scarlett's love for Ashley, loves Scarlett like a sister. Toward the end of the book, Scarlett and Ashely are caught hugging each other, (And in those days if a married man hugged a woman, it would be considered cheating on his wife) and they were caught by India Wilkes, Ashley's sister, who tells Melanie. Melanie now knows of Scarlett's lust for Ashley, but still defends her and loves her. In the end of the book, when Melanie dies, Scarlett realizes that she loved Melanie, and that she never loved Ashley, but she loved Rhett Butler, whom she was married to at the time. But when she goes home, she tells Rhett that she loves him, not Ashley, and he doesn't believe her, and leaves her. Scarlett got what she desvered, because all of her life, she was a coniving, mean, manipulative, jealous woman, and Rhett Butler, though he loved her, was the only person who wasn't afarid of her enough to give her what she desered.

Answer 2

She was the "one true friend" Rhett had and Melanie was the one that pointed out to both Scarlett and Rhett how they really felt for each other.

Answer 3

She merely uses her obvious beauty to tease them, as she craves attention. They were suitors, but Scarlett never had real affection for either one.