Exactly how steamy is this story?
PG-13
Scarlett doesn't much like sex. As the novel says, "All that passion meant to her was servitude to inexplicable male madness, unshared by females, a painful and embarrassing process that led inevitably to the still more painful process of childbirth" (11.29). So it's no surprise that the novel is relatively low-key with the sex when it comes to romance.
That's not to say, however, there's no sex at all. Rhett makes sardonic remarks about how Southern women think all the time about being raped by Yankees (19.81-19.88), for example, and he also admits openly to visiting the prostitute Belle Watling. Plus there's the supposedly romantic high point of the novel, where it's suggested that Rhett rapes Scarlett, and that she enjoys it (54.67). Nothing is explicit, though, so the book stays at PG-13—intermittently sexy, but always repressed.