The Smuttiest Character in Canon

Ah, smut. The word gets bandied about regularly within the GWTW universe. As you can probably tell from the last, um, two days, we cover very serious and hard-hitting matters here. And today we're bringing you the definitive answer to a gnawing question: who is, in fact, the smuttiest character in canon? The answer may surprise you. It's waiting for you on the other side of the jump.

"She (i.e. Scarlett) opened her eyes and looked up into Melanie's face.  Her curls were singed, her face black with smut but her eyes were sparkling with excitement and she was smiling."

--Gone with the Wind, Chapter XXVII

Yes, that is right: Melanie Hamilton Wilkes is the smuttiest character in Gone with the Wind, according to our own dear MM. The aforementioned passage is one of only two mentions of the word "smut" in the book. The other occurs in a more sober context--Scarlett returning to Atlanta in search of tax money and taking in the devastation of the city, post-Sherman:

"Here and there her eyes gladly picked out a familiar store which had partly survived shell and fire and had been repaired, the fresh red of new brick glaring bright against the smut of the old walls."

-Gone with the Wind, Chapter XXXIII

So with her only competition for the crown being "old walls," we can safely and resolutely declare Melanie--the embodiment of the grace of the old South, a lady par excellence--to also be the smuttiest character in canon.