Prissy (1850) is a teenage house slave. Light-hearted, squeamish, and inclined to exaggeration, Prissy acts as the film’s comic relief. She is Scarlett's personal slave throughout most of the story.
She is portrayed by actress Butterfly McQueen in the film.
In the Novel[]
Prissy was born in 1850 to Dilcey and an unnamed Black slave. It appears that there was no love between the parents as Dilcey frequently complains that Prissy is too much like her father. She was raised among the slaves at Twelve Oaks, owned by John Wilkes and served as a chamber maid to his eldest daughter India Wilkes.
When she was eleven or twelve, Gerald O'Hara purchased Dilcey after she married his slave Pork. He also generously bought Prissy as well, so mother and child wouldn't be separated. Prissy was given as a chamber maid to Scarlett O'Hara. Scarlett later used her as a nurse-maid to her own son Wade, even though Uncle Peter states Prissy is too young for such a position.
During the war years, Prissy joined her mistress in Atlanta. She assisted in the birth of Beau Wilkes and hid with Wade in the cellar when the bombs and granates hit. Later, she, Scarlett, Wade and Melanie Wilkes were rescued from Atlanta by Rhett Butler and brought to Tara.
During the war years, Prissy and her mother take care of the children (including Prissy's new half-sibling) while Scarlett and her sisters tend to the fields. After the war, Prissy initially stays behind at Tara but when Scarlett marries for a third time, to Rhett Butler, she brings Prissy along to Butler house.
Appearance[]
She reached behind her and jerked the little girl forward. She was a brown little creature, with skinny legs like a bird and a myriad of pigtails carefully wrapped with twine sticking stiffly out from her head. She had sharp, knowing eyes that missed nothing and a studiedly stupid look on her face.
Later:
Prissy was not the most adequate of nurses. Her recent graduation from a skinny pickaninny with brief skirts and stiffly wrapped braids into the dignity of a calico dress and starched white turban was an intoxicating affair. She would never have arrived at this eminence so early in life had not the exigencies of war and the demands of the commissary department on Tara made it impossible for Ellen to spare Mammy or Dilcey or even Rosa or Teena. Prissy had never been more than a mile away from Twelve Oaks or Tara before, and the trip on the train plus her elevation to nurse was almost more than the brain in her little black skull could bear. The twenty-mile journey from Jonesboro to Atlanta had so excited her that Scarlett had been forced to hold the baby all the way. Now, the sight of so many buildings and people completed Prissy's demoralization. She twisted from side to side, pointed, bounced about and so jounced the baby that he wailed miserably.
Trivia[]
- "Prissy" could be short for "Priscilla".
- Despite almost all adaptations portraying her as an adult woman, she is only supposed to be eleven/twelve at the start of the novel. [1]
v - e - d  | ||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
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| Characters |
| Scarlett O'Hara · Melanie Hamilton · Rhett Butler · Ashley Wilkes · Aunt Pittypat · Gerald O'Hara · Will Benteen |
| Locations |
| Georgia · Tara · Twelve Oaks · Atlanta · Five Points · Rough and Ready · Macon |
| Events |
| Introduction · Picnic of Twelve Oaks · Off to War · Move to Atlanta · The Confederate Ball · Messages of Death · Home on Furlough · Siege of Atlanta · Journey Back to Tara · The Neighborhood in Ruins · Death of a Yankee · A Fresh Start · Home from the War · The Return of Jonas · Rhett's Imprisonment · Fanny Elsing's Wedding |