(Before we begin, let me shamelessly plug a little bit of fanfiction I'm cobbling together on FanFiction.net.
I've posted the first 2 thousand words in my GWTW fanfiction story, titled The Autobiography of Rhett Butler, CSA. It can be found at http://www.fanfiction.net/~historicalromancegal33. Let me know what you think!)
It's been some time since I've posted in this blog, but that doesn't meant that I haven't been advancing my analysis of GWTW. I finally finished my latest read of the novel a few weeks ago, and then I celebrated a birthday and went on vacation for a while, so I haven't had time to post or write or do anything more than work, eat, and sleep. However, on my way back from vacation our plane did fly right over Charleston, SC. Most people probably had no idea it was Charleston, but I recognized the Ashley and Cooper rivers because Rhett Butler is from the area. Which means I've spent more time gazing at maps of Charleston than I should have down through the years.
Anyway...
By the time we begin reading chapter 13, the first-time reader of GWTW has absolutely no idea what to think about Rhett Butler. MM has given us plenty of material about everyone from Ashley Wilkes to Prissy to the Tarleton twins, but while Rhett is easily the most mysterious--and therefore interesting--character in the novel, Scarlett herself doesn't spend much time thinking about him. He's the thorn in her side because he knows about her devotion/love for Ashley, but Scarlett doesn't actually care too much about him. He's just part of the landscape of Atlanta, a background player who lurks and starts trouble and argues with her and makes fun of the south.
However, while Scarlett doesn't think about Rhett too much, the rest of the town is apparently very worked up about his recent comments regarding the sanctity of the war and the comparative value of Confederate soldiers vs. Yankee soldiers. Chapter 13 opens with Dr. Meade "taking action" by writing a letter to the newspaper which the editor actually publishes. Interestingly enough, the editor puts the letter on the 2nd page of the paper, which is odd because "the first two pages of the paper were always devoted to:
advertisements of slaves, mules, plows, coffins, houses for sale or rent, cures for private disease, abortifacients and restoratives for lost manhood."
Now I'm trying to keep this blog spoiler free--or anyway, as spoiler free as it should be given that this book is nearly three quarters of a century old--but it's pretty good foreshadowing that the bulk of the novels upcoming plot points are pretty much spelled out in the above list. And, even more significant given the character arcs of the story, it's even more fascinating because all of that run-of-the-mill, slightly depressing advertising is pushed to the side so Dr. Meade's column about Rhett Butler can be put in a prominent place in the paper. Rhett Butler represents a break from the norm in Scarlett's otherwise totally normalized and formalized world, so it's fitting that Rhett displaces all those mundane things for sale, isn't it?
Anyway, Dr. Meade uses this space to run down Rhett Butler. But he doesn't just run down his character, he also gives us some tantalizing, exciting details about how Rhett has accumulated so much wealth when every other character in the story is about to go stony broke. You see, we already know that Rhett is a blockader, but now we learn that "he not only ran his four boats and sold the cargoes at unheard-of prices but bought up the cargoes of other boats and held them for rises in prices. It was said that he was at the head of a combine worth more than a million dollars..."
Hold up!
Rhett is at the head of a combine worth more than a million dollars? In today's money that's $22,668,709.08. While that's not quite Mark Zuckerberg money, that's good dough for an era when a prime slave in New Orleans ran you about $1100. So...Rhett Butler is rich and getting richer every day. And thanks to Dr. Meade we know that he's running his blockade chiefly out of Wilmington instead of Charleston. Which could be an important plot point if I were inclined to write fanfiction...
Anyhow, after we read Dr. Meade's letter, Scarlett eventually confronts Rhett about his behavior. But, true to her selfish nature, she doesn't reprimand Rhett for having his disloyal thoughts about the Confederacy. As a matter of fact, she doesn't even get mad at him for dissing the Confederacy--instead she's just pissed because his bad behavior means that he's become an outcast in Atlanta, which means people give her funny looks whenever they see the two of them together. But Rhett ignores Scarlett and drops some more interesting nuggets of advice that our girl receives sarcastically.
First and foremost, he reiterates his earlier statement about finance. He says:
"I told you once before that there were two times for making big money, one in the upbuilding of a country and the other in its destruction. Slow money on the upbuilding, fast money in the crack-up. Remember my words. Perhaps they may be of use to you someday."
It does turn out to be incredibly useful for Scarlett, but it will be several years before she takes advantage of his advice.....
Thursday, May 30, 2013
Saturday, May 4, 2013
Chapter 12: Easy Peasy....
MM pulls back at the beginning of Chapter 12.
She has spent the past several chapters doing a fairly deep dive into the lives of the four people at the heart of GWTW, and she balances out these past details by doing some "boom-shot", expository essaying about the Civil War's impact on Atlanta. MM wrote GWTW during the 1930's, and while this was a full 70+ years since the time of the war, there were still people living in Atlanta during this era who would have been intimately familiar with the events of the war. People who were roughly the same age as Wade and Beau, people who had been too young to actually be involved in the war, but who were also impacted by it all. People who could remember the terror of the times, the sound of cannon, the sight of soldiers, the hunger, and the chaos of the era. MM had grown up listening to first-hand accounts of the war, and she breaks away from her account of Scarlett's love life in order to tell us something about the events of 1862.
But she does eventually break away from the war in order to get back to the action. And the action in most of GWTW does not occur on battlefields far away from Georgia. Rather, Rhett Butler is the source of most of the activity in this novel, and MM brings him into the spotlight in a curious way here. She reveals tantalizing details about his background, but she presents them as though they are inconsequential because Scarlett sees him as inconsequential. For all that:
"There was something about him that she could not analyze, something different from any man she had ever known."
Scarlett doesn't have time to analyze her relationship with Rhett. She's too preoccupied with Ashley and nursing to worry too much about Rhett, the same way she's too focused on Ellen's approval to pay any attention at all to Melanie. "There was something breathtaking in the grace of his big body which made his very entrance into a room like an abrupt physical impact," which is one of my favorite descriptive lines in all of fiction, but MM only mentions all of this in passing. And interestingly enough, Rhett's back-story is related brilliantly through the awesomeness of Southern gossip in this chapter, a nice little way to remind us of just how closely tied the people in the South were during this era. People in Atlanta start writing their friends in Charleston in order to garner more information about Rhett Butler, and their friends relate the details of his life with the quickness. We read:
Willie Guinan (like, who is this guy anyway?): "Do I understand, sir, that you mean the Cause for which our heroes have died is not sacred?"
Rhett Butler: "If you were run over by a railroad train, your death wouldn't sanctify the railroad company, would it?"
Oooh. Burn.
He's equating the CSA with...a railroad company. They ain't gonna like that, bro. You'd better be careful Rhett! He goes on to say:
"All wars are sacred..to those who have to fight them. If the people who started wars didn't make them sacred, who would be foolish enough to fight? But, no matter what rallying cries the orators give to the idiots who fight, no matter what noble purposes they assign to wars, there is never but one reason for a war. And that is money. All wars are in reality money squabbles."
I read those lines for the first time in the mid-1990's, during a time when the realities of war were just something I read about in books. I've remembered his words over the years, and they've become truer as time has gone by. Every war is a money squabble at heart. However, as Rhett and the others learn over the course of the novel, these money squabbles can also be rolled up with all sorts of reasons and given meaning in unexpected ways. Maybe the Civil War really was only a money squabble at heart, but it also wound up freeing my ancestors, destroying the south, killing or maiming an entire generation of men, and reconfiguring the shape of the American democracy. Greed is often a cause for war, but it's not always the only cause--and it's certainly not always a big part of the final outcome of a clash.
She has spent the past several chapters doing a fairly deep dive into the lives of the four people at the heart of GWTW, and she balances out these past details by doing some "boom-shot", expository essaying about the Civil War's impact on Atlanta. MM wrote GWTW during the 1930's, and while this was a full 70+ years since the time of the war, there were still people living in Atlanta during this era who would have been intimately familiar with the events of the war. People who were roughly the same age as Wade and Beau, people who had been too young to actually be involved in the war, but who were also impacted by it all. People who could remember the terror of the times, the sound of cannon, the sight of soldiers, the hunger, and the chaos of the era. MM had grown up listening to first-hand accounts of the war, and she breaks away from her account of Scarlett's love life in order to tell us something about the events of 1862.
But she does eventually break away from the war in order to get back to the action. And the action in most of GWTW does not occur on battlefields far away from Georgia. Rather, Rhett Butler is the source of most of the activity in this novel, and MM brings him into the spotlight in a curious way here. She reveals tantalizing details about his background, but she presents them as though they are inconsequential because Scarlett sees him as inconsequential. For all that:
"There was something about him that she could not analyze, something different from any man she had ever known."
Scarlett doesn't have time to analyze her relationship with Rhett. She's too preoccupied with Ashley and nursing to worry too much about Rhett, the same way she's too focused on Ellen's approval to pay any attention at all to Melanie. "There was something breathtaking in the grace of his big body which made his very entrance into a room like an abrupt physical impact," which is one of my favorite descriptive lines in all of fiction, but MM only mentions all of this in passing. And interestingly enough, Rhett's back-story is related brilliantly through the awesomeness of Southern gossip in this chapter, a nice little way to remind us of just how closely tied the people in the South were during this era. People in Atlanta start writing their friends in Charleston in order to garner more information about Rhett Butler, and their friends relate the details of his life with the quickness. We read:
- about His father: "A charming old gentleman with an iron will and a ramrod for a backbone.
- about His mother: from one of Charleston's best families.
- That Rhett chased gold in California in 1849, then went to South America and Cuba and got into "scrapes about women, several shootings, gun running to the revolutionists in Central America and, worst of all, professional gambling..."
- At the onset of the war, Rhett bought a small swift boat, and now owned four boats and is cleaning up in the blockade.
- He sails out of Charleston and Wilmington.
- He took cotton from the south and ran it into Nassau, England, and Canada on dark nights.
- He spent money freely.
- He rode a wild black stallion (cool! I want one!).
- He wore clothes which were always the height of style and tailoring.
- He knows a lot about clothes and is "an excellent substitute for Godey's Lady's Book."
Willie Guinan (like, who is this guy anyway?): "Do I understand, sir, that you mean the Cause for which our heroes have died is not sacred?"
Rhett Butler: "If you were run over by a railroad train, your death wouldn't sanctify the railroad company, would it?"
Oooh. Burn.
He's equating the CSA with...a railroad company. They ain't gonna like that, bro. You'd better be careful Rhett! He goes on to say:
"All wars are sacred..to those who have to fight them. If the people who started wars didn't make them sacred, who would be foolish enough to fight? But, no matter what rallying cries the orators give to the idiots who fight, no matter what noble purposes they assign to wars, there is never but one reason for a war. And that is money. All wars are in reality money squabbles."
I read those lines for the first time in the mid-1990's, during a time when the realities of war were just something I read about in books. I've remembered his words over the years, and they've become truer as time has gone by. Every war is a money squabble at heart. However, as Rhett and the others learn over the course of the novel, these money squabbles can also be rolled up with all sorts of reasons and given meaning in unexpected ways. Maybe the Civil War really was only a money squabble at heart, but it also wound up freeing my ancestors, destroying the south, killing or maiming an entire generation of men, and reconfiguring the shape of the American democracy. Greed is often a cause for war, but it's not always the only cause--and it's certainly not always a big part of the final outcome of a clash.
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