Chapter 5 of Gone With the Wind is divided into 2 basic parts. Part 1 takes place in Scarlett's bedroom as she picks out her outfit for the barbecue, and while many other characters are part of Scarlett's internal dialogue and logical assessment of the day's fashion (she is seeking the approval/admiration of Ashley, Melanie, and her mother and tries to find an outfit that will please all three), Mammy is the only other character with a speaking bit in this part of the book. This is not the first time we've read dialogue between Scarlett and Mammy (they speak during the first few pages of the novel), but this is the first time we get a great sense of Mammy as a character.
And she is a character.
I normally abhor any and all dialects in print, but I must admit that Mitchell did a fairly decent job with Mammy's accent. MM was from the south and she obviously has a good ear for Southern, African-American language, and she uses her own experiences and knowledge here to great effect. Compare Mammy's speech patterns in GWTW to, say, the speech patterns found in Northern novels like Uncle Tom's Cabin, and it's obvious that Mitchell wasn't working purely from stereotypes, but rather was genuinely attempting to transcribe the way African-Americans in her part of the South spoke during the mid-19th century. And, more than that, Mammy's bossy, brash personality comes through vividly thanks, in part, to her speech patterns, particularly when her speech patterns and word choices are compared to those of Pork, Dilcey, Prissy and several other African-Americans in the novel. Mammy is a strong, fearless character and she goes toe-to-toe with Scarlett here--and even bests her--in a manner that no one else in the book (save, of course, Rhett) comes close to matching.
Part 2 of Chapter 5 consists of Scarlett riding to the barbecue while she drifts between daydreams of her not-too-distant marriage to Ashely and listening to her father and Mrs. Tarleton discuss horses and breeding. Interestingly enough, I've read a lot of analysis of GWTW, but I've never once read anything about the symbolism of horses in the novel. Now of course, there might not be anything to analyze given that the presence of horses is an absolute necessity in a novel taking place during the mid-19th century, but at the same time I do believe that MM's use of horses as topics of conversation and as role players at critical times in the plot do make them more than background objects to the main thrust of the narrative.
Gerald and Bonnie are, of course, eventually destroyed by their love of horses and taking risks. Rhett rescues Scarlett from the burning of Atlanta by bringing her a horse. Plus, importantly, he even shows up smelling like horses (and brandy and leather) on that night in 1864. Obviously, horses represent mobility and security and money, but they also just as obviously represent recklessness and uncertainty and death in GWTW. And here, in Chapter 5, Mrs. Tarleton and Mr. O'Hara launch into a long, long, long conversation about horses and breeding and the Wilkes', a conversation Scarlett barely hears, but one which proves very important later on in the novel as we the reader start to confront the notion that Ashley may not be the best possible suitor for Scarlett after all.
