Chapter 16 of GWTW begins with a lengthy exposition of how the Civil War progressed during January and February of 1864. However, unlike her earlier discourses on the events of the war which had an almost impersonal, textbook quality to them, MM connects most of the events that happen on the battlefield in early 1864 with the characters we have gotten to know so well over the past 15 chapters. Significantly, although the Civil War has now gone on for almost three years, January and February of 1864 was the very first time that The War actually came to Georgia. Thus far the Civil War has only been fought in faraway, exotic places that Scarlett doesn't know particularly well, dots on the map like Vicksburg, Gettysburg, and Bull Run. She has lost many friends over the course of the war (I'm always particularly sad to see the Tarleton boys go!), but now the fighting has finally reached Northwest Georgia and things are starting to get real.
So now, instead of simply relating the results of battle after battle, MM begins in chapter 16 to tell us about how the realities of war have changed the people of Georgia. For instance, she informs us that:
- Rhett Butler "had sold his boats when blockading grew too hazardous, and...was now openly engaged in food speculation." (A smart man, Rhett!)
- And Gerald O'Hara who "had three years' crops of cotton stored under the shed near the gin house at Tara, but little good it did him. In Liverpool it would bring one hundred and fifty thousand dollars, but there was no hope of getting it to Liverpool. Gerald had changed from a wealthy man to a man who was wondering how he would feed his family and his negroes through the winter."
On the other hand, by the time we check in with Scarlett about halfway through Chapter 16, we find out that she feels as though her life is finally coming together. The entire world is on the verge of falling apart, but Scarlett doesn't care because she's still thinking about the kiss she shared with Ashley. As a matter of fact, she's so convinced that Ashley loves her and not Melanie that she spends most of her time trying to figure out exactly when and how she and Ashley are going to run away together after the war is over.
Unfortunately for Scarlett, real life intrudes cruelly on her dreams of future happiness. Because Melanie is pregnant! Scarlett is absolutely gobsmacked by this news, because she has apparently actually convinced herself that Melanie and Ashley aren't actually in love and don't have sex. Scarlett's naive astonishment is laughable to me now, but I remember being shocked by this turn of events the first time I read GWTW. And because MM is awesomely skilled, she also has Melanie drop a nice little tidbit of info, telling Scarlett that the baby will be due in either August or September of 1864, a time-span that undoubtedly sent shivers down the spines of every Georgia woman who read this novel in the 1930's. Nowadays this would roughly be the equivalent of a novelist having a pregnant character living in New York in the year 2001 announce that she's due to deliver in the second week of September.
Yikes!
Scarlett hilariously--and childishly--vows to go home to Tara after learning this news, but the very next day they get word that Ashley is missing in action. And Scarlett starts to feel guilty about her lust for Ashley, even to the point where she believes that God is punishing her for trying to steal another woman's husband. The first reports are "Missing--believed killed," but this is eventually changed to "Missing--believed captured," which gives the household hope, as well it should.
Scarlett spends most of her time worrying about Ashley, but Melanie actually goes down to the telegraph notes to get news about Ashley, despite her pregnancy and the fact that it isn't decent for pregnant women to be seen in public. She's frail and she faints in the telegraph office and Rhett Butler helps her home and carries her up the stairs to her bedroom and makes a deal with her: if Melanie agrees to take better care of herself, he'll use his connections to get information about Ashley's whereabouts. Melanie agrees and they eventually find out that Ashley has been captured and is now a prisoner in Rock Island. It's good that he's still alive, but Rock Island is far away in Illinois (all the way up there?!), there's a lot of snow in Illinois, and President Lincoln and the rest of the Yankee government have no interest in exchanging prisoners. So Ashley is in Rock Island and he's going to stay in Rock Island for the rest of the war, which is a nice little trick by MM. Ashley is reasonably safe because he is no longer on the front-line, but Scarlett and Melanie are rightfully nervous anyway because being a POW during the Civil War was certainly no guarantee of survival.
Anyway, this chapter features one of my favorite recurring motif's in the novel (and in the movie!): Rhett Butler carrying people.
MM constantly describes Rhett as a big, brawny guy, but she shows this fact even without telling because one of Rhett's major functions in the story is picking various people up bodily and carrying them off to a different place. It's early in the novel, so thus far he has only actually carried Gerald (when he was drunk that night) and Melanie (in this chapter, interestingly enough, he carries her up the stairs at Aunt Pitty's house), but (SPOILER) later in the story he carries Ashley, Bonnie, and Scarlett. It's a funny little character trait and a nice way of presenting his strength without forcing it down our throats. I read once that they did multiple takes of the scene in the movie where Rhett carries Scarlett up the stairs after Ashley's party. The first take was perfect, but apparently the director thought it would be funny to make Clark Gable carry Vivien Leigh up that huge staircase a bunch of times. Ha ha!
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