Chaper 9 (Part 2): "Chatter on, son. Chatter on..."/$150 in Gold!

Rhett Butler talks a lot.

I've always considered him to be the classic hero, an archetype for romance who rivals Mr. Darcy as a template for male characters in women's fiction. But while Rhett is certainly tall, dark, and handsome, he is not the strong, silent type because he talks too much.  Or as Scarlett says:

"A gentleman always obeyed the rules and said the correct things and made life easier for a lady.  But this man seemed not to care for rules and evidently enjoyed talking of things no one ever talked about." 

Interestingly enough, Rhett's conversational style changes quite a bit over the course of the novel.  In the early chapters he is chatty, spouting off entire paragraphs on his personal philosophies and explaining his beliefs to Scarlett even though she isn't really listening.  At one point in chapter 9 he even gets super honest with his feelings and just blurts out an incredibly revealing, melodramatic quote (from a source that is totally unknown to me):

"Be mine, beautiful female, or I will reveal all." (Dictionary of epithets....)

But Scarlett is not listening. And besides, he's laughing when he says this so it's difficult for Scarlett--and the reader--to figure out if he's being serious or not. I automatically assumed that Rhett Butler had an ulterior motive for everything he did the first time I read GWTW, so I assumed that he was just pulling her chain and trying to be funny.  Now I understand that his jesting and sardonic humor are just his coping mechanism, but he paradoxically seems so well adjusted and comfortable in his own skin (especially during the first part of the novel) that it's very difficult to understand just why he would need a coping mechanism at all.

Anyway, Chapter 9 holds some very interesting biographical information for Rhett Butler.  While Scarlett's internal dialogue delivered most of the information we have about The Honorable Ashley Wilkes, MM primarily uses 3rd parties to tell us about Rhett.  In this section Dr. Meade (of all people!) throws down some glory  and tells us that Rhett is "the intrepid captain who has so successfully run the blockade for a year and who will run it again to bring us the drugs [they] need." So, thus far, this is what we know about Rhett Butler:

• He was born in Charleston in 1828. (1861 - 35)
• He is the black sheep of a good family.  
• His father threw him out of the house for bad behavior. 
• As of December 1862 he has been running the blockade for a solid year.
• He is well educated and has a good memory. 
• He's massive
• He is always well-dressed
• He is graceful
• He is wealthy enough to donate a solid gold cigar case to the CSA, even though he hates the CSA. 

 Essentially, Rhett Butler is one huge walking, talking contradiction.  And a wonderful character for MM because he's so confusing that we'd believe anything about him.  Whereas Ashley and Melly are two characters whose behavior we can always predict (even if we don't truly comprehend their motives), Scarlett and Rhett are unpredictable. MM has set it up so that we are ready and willing to buy everything they do over the course of the novel, including everything from murder, prostitution/pimping, Civil War heroics, alcoholism, frank discussions about abortion, and making millions while everybody else is starving to death. 

Rhett Butler is also amazingly clairvoyant, and one of his most famous quotes is located right here in the heart of Chapter 9.  He says it while they're dancing and it was left totally out of the movie since MGM wanted to focus more on the romantic aspects of the movie than on the economic realities of the Confederacy. But here it is:

"What most people don't seem to realize is that there is just as much money to be made out of the wreckage of a civilization as from the upbuilding of one." 

That's a pretty simple idea to understand, just like most other basic economic ideas.  But how in the world are we supposed to be able to tell which civilizations are about to have a downfall?

Chapter 9 (part 1): Deliverance (Here we go!)/ Rhett Butler's return

Chapter 9 begins with Scarlett leaning against her bedroom window in Atlanta, watching sadly as a crowd of happy young people (maidens and beau) drive off for a picnic in the woods.  Scarlett bitches and cries because her widow status makes it impossible for her to have fun.  Melly and Aunt Pity misinterpret Scarlett's unhappiness and assume she's angry because she misses Charles Hamilton, and Scarlett doesn't try to dissuade them from this assumption.  But just when it seems like Scarlett will never be happy again, Mrs, Merriwether and Mrs. Elsing arrive and force Scarlett, Melly, and Aunt Pity into service at the Christmas Bazaar/benefit later that night.  Melly and Pitty don't want to do it because they're still in mourning for "Poor Charlie Hamilton," but eventually they relent.  Scarlett is thrilled because this gives her a chance to escape the house for a change.

So they all head off to the bazaar in their black morning dresses.  The hall is all decked out with Atlanta's finest decorations, and all the men are wearing their uniforms and the girls (with the exception of Scarlett, Melly, and Pitty) are wearing their best dresses.  There are candles and flowers and bunting and smiles and booths and many other things that set a scene of romance, and this is the backdrop and the environment that people who've never read GWTW incorrectly assume permeates the entire story.  Hell, MM even takes the time to tell us that the band is playing the song Lorena, and I found a nifty Waylon Jennings version on youtube that really helps set the mood.( Waylon Jennings--Lorena )

Interestingly enough, the next song we're told about is the Bonnie Blue Flag, a rollicking State's Rights anthem that moves everybody in the crowd to tears and gives them all goosebumps because, you know, Hurrah for succession and the CSA and all that.  Except Scarlett is not moved in the same way. Rather, "every woman present was blazing with an emotion she did not feel," and after several moments of watching the scene Scarlett realizes "that she did not share with these women their fierce pride, their desire to sacrifice themselves and everything they had for the Cause."

Now, after seventeen years of pondering Scarlett's character arc, I've come to the conclusion that this realization is probably the most important revelation we have from her character in the first part of the book.  Scarlett dislikes all the patriotism everybody else is showing, but not because she particularly dislikes the Confederacy.  She has hated the war from the first page of the book when the Tarleton's are discussing the coming conflict, but she hates because the war is an unnecessary hardship.  She wants green dresses and parties, not stints at the hospital and lice.  And who can blame her, really?  She just wants to go home again, like Dorthy and every other female protagonist in literature, and home is definitely not play-acting as Charles Hamilton's widow in Atlanta during the Civil War.

Good thing help is on the way in the form of A Stranger From Charleston.

Mitchell gives us a lengthy, lengthy description of Rhett Butler this time.  She gave us the equivalent of a flirtatious once-over back at the Wilkes BBQ, but now she describes his physical appearance in detail, discussing everything from his "lazy grace," to his mustache (small and closely clipped, almost foreign looking), to the fact that "he looked, and was, a man of lusty and unashamed appetites." "There was a twinkle of malice in his bold eyes as he stared at Scarlett, until finally, feeling his gaze, she looked toward him." 

There's a little bit of chatter between Scarlett, Melly, and Rhett, but then Melly breaks away to go sell pillowcases and Scarlett and Rhett are finally alone.  In lesser hands their conversation might have been merely expository, but MM gives them unique conversational styles--so unique that she eventually abandons all the speech tags (i.e. "...said Scarlett...") and lets them get on with the business of hating each other with a minimum of interference.  

Chapter 8: Scarlett moves to Atlanta

MM begins chapter 8 with the same sort of exposition she used throughout most of chapter 7.  Scarlett hates on Savannah and Charleston some more (just for GP), so she heads north on the train in May of 1862 in the hopes that she'll like Atlanta better "in spite of her distaste for Miss Pittypat and Melanie."

So far, Scarlett dislikes everyone and everything she encounters besides her parents and Tara. It seems as though her mood hasn't improved since that fiasco that occurred in the Wilkes library, and I can't blame her for her depression.  After all, assuming she was married in April of 1861 (a safe assumption), she has been a widow for a whole year and is a new mother and she honestly has no hope of ever enjoying an exciting time again in her life.  Scarlett is vibrant and young and it is no surprise that she dislikes Charleston and Savannah and latches onto Atlanta as a kindred spirit: it's full of bustle and change and so is our protagonist. Atlanta is the same age as Scarlett and MM makes Atlanta a parallel for her main character. I've visited many times and I've often wondered what the city would have been like if Sherman hadn't burned it to the ground.

Oddly enough, there is very little online or in libraries about pre-1864 Atlanta.  Most of the information I've found has come from the reconstruction period, including this nifty Wikipedia map from 1874: (http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/07/Atlanta-wards-1874.jpg).

Anyway, Scarlett meets up with Uncle Peter as soon as she alights from the train in central Atlanta.  Uncle Peter uses quite a lot of dialect, but I think Mitchell is less successful here than she was with Mammy.  Maybe it's because Uncle Peter's speaking style doesn't convey much about the man himself: it's used entirely for comedic effect and it just doesn't ring true because it's too 1930's stereotypical/Stepin Fetchit/ugly to be anything other than nasty. 

Having said that, I actually do enjoy Uncle Peter as a character because he gives us a glimpse into the life of the urban slave--an existence that is rarely addressed in most literature and history books about slavery.  Most of the cities of the south were overwhelmingly black during the pre-war period (and many still are today) and I wonder what the true ratio of black:white was in Atlanta when Scarlett arrived there in 1862.  It was probably not as high as it was in more settled cities like Charleston and Savannah, but I'm sure it was much higher than that of New York and Boston during this time.  I could be wrong, but it's just a hunch.

One last thought about Uncle Peter: Before he died, Charles Hamilton told Scarlett that "the only trouble with [Uncle Peter] is that he owns the three of us (Charles, Melly and Pitty), body and soul, and he knows it." I'm going to assume MM dropped that little nugget intentionally, as a way to clue us all into the complex relationships most city dwellers had with their slaves during this period.

Prissy is presented in this section as a counterpart to Uncle Peter. She is dumb and young while he is wise and old, but both characters function merely as comic relief, and MM sometimes unnecessarily steps over the line with Prissy, at one point saying that the girl's "elevation to nurse was almost more than the brain her little black skull could bear." This description rubs me wrong chiefly because of the inclusion of the word "black," since Prissy's foolishness has absolutely nothing to do with the color of her skin. I will return to the matter of race and GWTW in a later post, but I couldn't let that little remark slip by unremarked.

Switching gears, I notice that MM does a great job of foreshadowing while describing Atlanta, sneaking in some little details that will become very important over the next section of the novel.  For instance, Scarlett notices the high number of hospitals for the war wounded located in the city. And furthermore "every day the trains just below Five Points disgorged more sick and more wounded," but after dropping this little tidbit of information into the book MM simply moves on without comment.  Any reader with a rudimentary knowledge of the Civil War knows that the south lost primarily because of the high number of CSA casualties, but MM doesn't concoct some lengthy discussion between Scarlett and Uncle Peter about the status of the war wounded here.  As a result, when the south does run out of men later in the book, the reader is almost as surprised as Scarlett by how quickly things fall apart.

Besides Uncle Peter and Atlanta, Belle Watling is the third major character to make her appearance in Chapter 8 of GWTW. Belle's hair is "too red to be true," and she's dressed in showy, loud clothing, and Scarlett is fascinated. 

Events move quickly in Chapter 8, and soon Scarlett is living with Melanie and Aunt Pittypat and nursing at the hospitals and swinging "palmetto fans until her shoulders ached and she wished that all the men were dead," which is hilariously selfish and a spot on emotion for anyone who's ever done any sort of repetitive manual labor. 

Chapter 7: "I'm wife...I've finished that..."

"Within two weeks Scarlett had become a wife, and within two months more she was a widow." 

 Mitchell begins Chapter 7 with something of a surprise ending.  Anyone reading GWTW for the first time would have assumed that Scarlett's marriage to Charles Hamilton was an IMPORTANT part of the novel. After reading chapter 6, I believe it would have been safe to believe that the remainder of the story would focus on Scarlett's life as Mrs. Charles Hamilton.  Scarlett does not love Charles and she only married him because she hoped her betrothal would infuriate Ashley, and a lesser novelist would have kept Charles Hamilton and his bumbling ways at the center of the story.  But Mitchell is superb at red herrings and misdirection, so she disrupts our expectations almost immediately by killing off Charles Hamilton and having Scarlett become a widow before the reader even has the opportunity to actually realize that the protagonist has gotten married in the first place. 

As a matter of fact, Scarlett's wedding is told entirely in flashback: "Afterward she remembered, as from a dream, the hundreds of candles flaring on the walls, her mother's face, loving, a little bewildered...and Ashley, standing at the bottom of the steps with Melanie's arm through his." Considering that most women's fiction (to this very day) is focused on weddings as the end point/goal for every story with a female main character, in GWTW there is little romance attached to Scarlett's initial marriage.  Poor Charles Hamilton doesn't even get a hero's death in battle, but instead dies "ignominiously and swiftly of pneumonia, following measles, without ever having gotten any closer to the Yankees than the camp in South Carolina." So rather than being Scarlett's life partner for the rest of the novel Charles Hamilton turns out to be nothing more than a plot device, a plausible way for Scarlett to have a child, move to Atlanta, gain some properties, and become closer to Melaine Wilkes. 

But before Scarlett moves to Atlanta to live with Melanie and Aunt Pittypat, she first visits relatives in Savannah and Charleston during this chapter.  Scarlett hates both of those older towns, and she thinks they are boring and strange and grumbles quite a lot about Charlestonian accents.  She finds them annoying and "affected," and perhaps this influences her later reaction to Rhett and his Charleston drawl, although I can't actually recall any internal dialogue about this off the top of my head.

I personally enjoy Savannah and Charleston and like them much more than I like Atlanta since they have more interesting architecture.  BUT both cities are sort of boring and slow compared to Atlanta, and they definitely lack the vibrant atmosphere of New Orleans and Nashville and Memphis and other southern towns.  This chapter is almost all exposition, but Mitchell saves it from being boring because she adds Scarlett's hilariously selfish and caustic approach to the world.  We know Scarlett was wrong for marrying Charles Hamilton when she didn't love him, and we know she is wrong for coveting Ashley when he is married to another woman, but Scarlett O'Hara is smart and funny and I found myself ultimately rooting for her in this section even though I know that her morals are all screwed up.  Mitchell's genius is at work in the first part of the novel, because she somehow makes the reader despise Melanie and Charles--two characters who are good and kind and polite--while loving Scarlett all the more despite her outrageous behavior.  We, like Rhett and Melanie, love Scarlett despite her shifty motives and terrible actions, and perhaps this adoration is why the ending of the story packs such a wallop for the reader. 

Chapter 6 (Part 2).....

It's another snowy, rainy, cold, dreary day here in Chi-town, so instead of celebrating St. Patrick's Day/celebrating Scarlett's heritage, I'm indoors writing on this blog.  Yay Midwest!

So....Part 2 of Chapter 6 undoubtedly Mitchell's hinge for this section of the novel. It's the point where all of Scarlett's best laid plans come to naught, the spot where all her hopes and dreams of becoming Mrs. Ashley Wilkes turn to dust and blow away.  I'd like to say that Scarlett begins this section as a girl but ends it as a woman, but that would be grossly inaccurate--and far too pat a turnaround for Mitchell's sophisticated approach.  In any other book (and with any other characters) the Showdown in the Wilkes' library between Scarlett and Ashley (and eventually Rhett and Scarlett) would have caused the lead character to reconsider her actions. But Ashley's flat out rejection of Scarlett doesn't actually do anything but stiffen her spine and make her decide to get Ashley if it's the last thing she does.  Which is amazing, but...there you have it.

I read 50 Shades of Grey last summer (just like everybody else in America), and I hated every word in that book.  I hated the heroine for putting up with that crap (you know what crap I mean!), because "Scarlett O'Hara would never..."

Except you know what? I'm not so sure that she wouldn't.  Scarlett is smart and dominant, but there's some part of her that apparently enjoys being hurt--and makes her come back for more.  Ashley hurts her feelings in this section by denying his love for her but that just makes her like him more. And Rhett hurts her even more than that (up for debate, but yeah) 10 or so years later, and that sends her into a tizzy of desire.  So...maybe she isn't so different from Anastasia after all?

Alright, so Scarlett sneaks into the Wilkes library, a big room full of books where (she notes) "the seven-foot sofa, Ashley's favorite seat, reared its high back, like some huge sleeping animal." What a wonderful, wonderful little throwaway description! Made all the more wonderful, may I add, when you realize that Rhett Butler is hidden on the other side of the sofa, taking a nap.  He's such an animal that even the furniture he sleeps on is turned into something big and alive.  LOVELY!

This is one of the few scenes in the book that nearly made it whole into the movie.  Mitchell blocks the scene pretty well, and it's a nice little set piece that reads like something out of a play.  Except, and here's where GWTW is awesome, Rhett Butler KNOWS HE'S IN A PLAY.  He comes off the couch laughing at the scene that he's just overheard, and he even throws Scarlett a "bow of exaggerated politeness," as though he just realized he's been accidentally assigned the 2nd lead in Our American Cousin. If the first five chapters hadn't taught us that the life and times of Scarlett O'Hara are going to be totally different from everything we've ever read before, Rhett's behavior in this scene--and Scarlett's reaction to him (the famous:"Sir, you are no gentleman" and then his "And you, Miss, are no lady")--make it clear that this book is going to be different from everything else on the shelf.

The party guests are asleep during this scene, but the County gets word that the War has begun almost as soon as Scarlett leaves the library. All the men get excited (Rhett and Ashley being the exceptions, as usual) and run off in a million different directions to hurry up and go play soldier.  And Scarlett is so depressed she accepts a marriage proposal from Charles Hamilton for reasons even she barely understands ("he only squeezed her hand until he drove her rings into the flesh").  And...the plot is now solidly in motion.  The War has started, Scarlett is going to be married to Melanie's brother, and all the men she grew up with are dashing off to join the CSA.  Good luck guys!

(Not!)

Chapter 6, ya'll....

Chapter 6 (Part 1):Scarlett Makes Plans--God Laughs....

Chapter 6 of GWTW picks up right where Chapter 5 left off.  It's been close to two years since I've written in this blog, so I'm clearly not as good at consistency as Margaret Mitchell is, but at least I'm trying....

Anyway, as chapter 6 begins, Scarlett, her sisters, and her father are pulling up to the Wilkes Plantation and are greeted by a "haze of smoke hanging lazily in the tops of the tall trees," and she "smelled the mingled savory odors of burning hickory logs and roasting pork and mutton." These sentences seem merely descriptive at first blush, but Mitchell then takes the time to contrast John Wilkes hospitality (his bbq that morning will be held "on the gentle slope leading down to the rose garden, a pleasant, shady place") with the Northern/Yankee rudeness of Mrs. Calvert who hates the smell of bbq and makes her guests sit far away from the house whenever she has parties. GWTW is a sprawling book and it can be very difficult to keep track of the tertiary folks with walk-on parts like Mrs. Calvert and John Wilkes, but it is clear that Mitchell herself always had a clear idea about the story arcs of even the smallest bit players in her book.  It's a minor detail at this point for Mrs. Calvert to dislike bbq, but that little idea does highlight the difference between Mrs. Calvert and the rest of her neighbors--a difference that will become more important later in the book.

Anyway, the food at this bbq is absolutely delicious.  One thing I've always loved about books in the South is that the characters always know how to cook and eat, and GWTW is no exception to this rule: bbq sauce, Brunswick stew, hoecakes and yams (for the servants)...yummers!

But--forget the food!

Mitchell has set a beautiful scene of Scarlett going on the attack at the Wilkes house.  She is frantically searching for Ashley (and for Melanie and Charles), and she's flirting with every man she sees in her ultimately misguided (I was going to say unsuccessful, but that would have been going too far) attempt at making Ashley jealous.  But none of that matters because, ladies and gentleman, A Stranger From Charleston has now entered the story.
   
     "....her eyes fell on a stranger, standing alone in the hall, staring at her in a cool impertinent way that brought her up sharply with a mingled feeling of feminine pleasure...and an embarrassed sensation that her dress was too low in the bosom. He looked quite old, at least thirty-five. He was a tall man and powerfully built...[and he had] wide shoulders, so heavy with muscles, almost too heavy for gentility. When her eye caught his, he smiled, showing animal-white teeth below a close-clipped black mustache.  He was dark of face, swarthy as a pirate, and his eyes were as bold and black as any pirate's appraising...a maiden to be ravished..."

Oh my!

It has taken five and a half chapters, but Mitchell has finally introduced the man who would ultimately become Scarlett's 3rd husband and bitterest foe.  The first time I read GWTW I had absolutely no idea how the story was going to play out in the end. I'd heard Rhett Butler's name a million times and Clark Gable and Vivian Leigh were on the cover of my paperback copy, but I certainly didn't know what role he would play in the story.  And to Mitchell's credit, she doesn't tip her hand in the slightest in this initial description.  Scarlett herself does not have a particular reaction to Rhett Butler's appearance.  In the movie Leigh and Gable give each other a fairly flirtatious going over in the hall at Twelve Oaks, but in the book it's not clear if Rhett is going to be a major character or a minor character, friend or foe.

Hell, he doesn't even speak a word of dialogue for another several hundred words.

He just looks at Scarlett, she looks at him, and then he's called away to another room.

That's pretty doggone amazing, isn't it?

We do learn more about Rhett Butler when Scarlett meets up with  Cathleen Calvert (Mrs. Calvert's step-daughter!) and begins gossiping.  We learn that Rhett is a scamp with a bad reputation, that he isn't received (Oh Dear!), that he was expelled from West Point, and that Rhett took a Charleston girl out buggy riding, got her into a compromising situation when their buggy broke down, came home and refused to marry her, and then shot the girl's angry brother in a duel....

And then Mitchell closes this description with a little internal dialogue from Scarlett. It seems that instead of being horrified by Rhett Butler's actions in Cathleen's story, Scarlett respects Rhett for not marrying a fool and wishes that she had somehow thought of a way to get Ashley to compromise her.  Which is amazingly progressive and hugely funny, and also wonderful foreshadowing for all the tricky things Scarlett will do during the rest of the book.

In addition to Rhett Butler's grand entrance, chapter 6 also includes the (much less grand) entrance of Miss Melanie Hamilton, Ashley's future wife and Scarlett's nemesis.  Melanie is Scarlett's foe in this section of the story, so she gets quite a bit more description than Rhett--although not much more, to tell the truth.  She has "too large brown eyes" and a "cloud of curly dark hair" and a sweet, timid, plain face.  Her body is childishly undeveloped (FORESHADOWING!), and she's having a quiet chat with her fiance in a corner of the yard, much to Scarlett's chagrin.

GWTW is a story about the South during and after the Civil War, and it succeeds on many levels. But I think chapter 6--and, indeed, most of the first part of the book--are amazing because they mimic the way life feels when you are a teenager.  The characters Scarlett encounters in this book remind me of the people you meet during your first year of college. They are all strangers and it's impossible to tell straight away which ones will be in your life for the long haul and which ones will disappear after a year or two.  It's impossible to know which ones will be friends, which will be foes, and which will exist forever in the murky gray areas between those two extremes.