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.