In an upstairs bedroom at the Twelve Oaks plantation house, Scarlett O’Hara (Vivien Leigh) navigates her way around the sleeping bodies of her fellow southern belles who lie strewn, in disorderly fashion, across beds and sofas in the expansive and extravagantly furnished room. Having spent the day socializing, the belles of Clayton County have loosened their stays and surrendered to exhaustion in the heat of the Georgia afternoon. Slave girls, their own discomfort subjugated to the needs of the southern aristocratic class, stand at bedsides fanning the women to create a breeze. A young slave, no more than nine or ten years old, ceases her work momentarily when the heat threatens to overcome her, but she quickly regains her composure and continues fanning in steady rhythmic waves. Scarlett finds a mirror and checks her reflection. She is planning to confess her love to Ashley Wilkes on the eve of his departure for the Civil War – a war that will provide a powerful backdrop for Scarlett's personal transformation from cloistered southern belle to stalwart survivor of war and Reconstruction. Scarlett looks in the mirror and pinches her cheeks to create a blush, then rushes off to find Ashley.