Taking the Sass Out of Scarlett : SCARLETT: The Sequel to Margaret Mitchell’s ‘Gone With the Wind’, <i> By Alexandra Ripley (Warner Books: $24.95; 823 pp.)</i>

What we have here is not so much a novel as an artifact, less a work of the creative imagination than a contrivance of the vast American entertainment combine.

Several years ago, as the world knows, the decision was made by Margaret Mitchell’s two surviving nephews to allow a sequel to their aunt’s book. Their purpose, the story goes, was to preserve the integrity of “Gone With the Wind” before the copyright lapsed and it became carrion for unscrupulous literary vultures. There’s no reason to doubt that the heirs were indeed motivated by their concern for Mrs. Mitchell’s artistic legacy--that, and the $5 million they got from a publisher for selling it off. And so lawyers met, accountants tabulated, agents implored and perspired; eventually a contract was signed, money was exchanged, and the process was done. As Mrs. Mitchell’s heroine famously said: “Tomorrow is another day, another dollar.”

Alas! There remained this little matter of the thing itself: A book, an actual sequel, a stack of paper with words upon it, still had to be produced. This is how Alexandra Ripley, author of the reasonably named “Scarlett: The Sequel to Margaret Mitchell’s ‘Gone With the Wind,’ ” enters into the sordid enterprise.

Precisely what portion of the blame belongs to her is an open question. It’s true that she cashed her big check and wrote the book--probably in that order, and aided by a “collaborating editor” brought it in for the final draft, according to news accounts. But she seems more an accessory after the fact, at worst an unwitting accomplice. Accepting the assignment was a gamble that she at once couldn’t win and couldn’t lose. Either way, she gets rich; either way, her book falls short of its beloved forebear.

Perhaps “short” is the wrong word, for at 823 pages, “Scarlett” weighs in only 200 pages shy of Mitchell’s hulking creation. But “Scarlett” deserves all the resentment it will engender among the GWTW admirers who already are buying copies by the carload.

In the half-century since its publication, reading GWTW has become a rite of passage into American womanhood. In hardcover (as the “Scarlett” publicity machine eagerly informs us), GWTW still sells a whopping 40,000 copies a year. Mothers pass it to daughters, sisters to sisters, roommates to roommates; a stray male occasionally picks it up as well. Only an intellectual could be dull enough to resist its charms.

But Alexandra Ripley’s book ranks several miles below serious fiction and only a few inches above the cookie-cutter offerings from Harlequin. Ripley allows as how she was chosen for this impossible assignment because she is herself a Southerner, and one who writes bodice-rippers to boot. But she is, as she also admits, one of the rare Southerners who prefer the limp and insufferably benign Melanie Wilkes (nee Hamilton) to Scarlett. A reader could be forgiven such a lapse in taste, but in an author it is inexplicable. By the time this sequel opens, Melanie is, thank God, dead, which means that Ripley is stuck with a character for whom she has no sympathy.

The Scarlett of “Scarlett” bears few resemblances to Mitchell’s. The Irish temper is there, and so are the flashing green eyes. This Scarlett even gets off a few “Fiddle-dee-dees.” But her heart’s not in it. The real Scarlett roars with some nameless animal spirit, an indomitable will to survive that leads her to betray family, friends and lovers. Ripley’s Scarlett pines for Rhett, bursts into tears, feels relieved that someone else is paying her bills, hides behind the skirts of her mother-in-law. The real Scarlett would eat this chick for breakfast.

Rhett doesn’t fare much better at Ripley’s hands. He gets to say “My dear Scarlett” on occasion, but the legendary blockade runner is somehow reduced--how could this be?--to running errands and surprising her with gifts.

Several auxiliary characters from the earlier book reappear as well. Ripley is able to duplicate Ashley’s pale, thoroughly uninteresting demeanor, but his Leslie Howard-like futile nobility has been drained from him, replaced by large injections of Phil Donahue. Some characters, like Mammy, are bumped off at once; others, like Scarlett’s old beau Tom Fontaine, come in, say hidy, reminisce, then leave to no apparent purpose other than using up a few more pages.

And why not? Nothing else is going on. With no gift for character, Ripley can be expected to have no gift for plot. By the middle of the book, in an understandable but misguided attempt to hot-wire the story, she hauls Scarlett across the sea to be with her father’s family in Ireland. Conveniently, an Irish insurrection is breaking out. With all due respect to Irish insurrections, this is too little, too late.

Scarlett doesn’t belong in Ireland, no matter how many castles burn and shells explode around her. Scarlett belongs at Tara, or at least in Atlanta. Scarlett belongs where Margaret Mitchell left her, before the agents and lawyers and accountants got to her.

She belongs in “Gone With the Wind.”