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?