Chapter 29: "....And the war was over."

In GWTW the Civil War ends with a whimper. 

Interestingly enough, MM does not connect the end of the War with Lee's surrender at Appomattox Court House on April 9, of 1865. Rather , MM does not consider the Civil War to be truly at an end until "General Johnston...surrendered in North Carolina," which Wikipedia dates as April 26, 1865.  I'm a Yankee and I was always taught that the Civil War ended when General Grant and Abe Lincoln said it did, which was when the Army of Northern Virginia waved the white flag and everybody in the Union started celebrating. But of course MM was a southerner who was writing about a cast of very proud Confederates, so it's only natural that she'd date the end of the War to the date of Johnston's surrender (which also happened to be the largest surrender of the war), since Johnston's army represented the last possible chance for defense against Sherman and the gang.

Anyway, the Fontaine boys are the first ones home from the front, and they deliver the news of the end of the war to the folks at Tara.  The other ladies are sad that their dream of Confederate independence is over, but Scarlett doesn't care.  The war is over, and that means she doesn't have to worry about various armies burning her house or stealing her food or her horses, and Scarlett is too practical to shed tears over lost dreams and southern pride:

"Yes, the cause was dead but war had always seemed foolish to her and peace was better." 

And so, once again, Scarlett's blase attitude toward the end of the war highlights my contention that Gone With the Wind is not actually a civil war novel.  People want to believe that GWTW is a romanticized, dewy-eyed portrait of the Confederacy, but in my mind nothing could be further from the truth.  GWTW isn't about the Civil War--it just happens to take place during the Civil War.  It's like Mad Men: Don Draper is a contemporary of JFK, but it would be false on all fronts to pretend that anything that happens at Sterling, Cooper, Pryce, Draper has anything to do with the Kennedy administration.

The War is over, Scarlett has food, shelter and the security that her property won't be destroyed by an invading army, and:

"If Ashely was alive he'd be coming home!" 

The first time I read GWTW I honestly thought Ashley was dead at this juncture of the novel.  He's been out of the frame for nearly two whole years and nearly every other man from the first section of the novel is dead, wounded or missing, so why not Ashley?

Interestingly enough, MM builds suspense through this part of the novel by having Scarlett visit all the other plantations in the area, meeting and greeting her old friends.  There are several poignant episodes in this chapter, where Scarlett visits the families we met in the beginning of the book and reflects on how much has changed over the course of the war. When Scarlett goes over to the Tarelton house she visits the graveyard, and while the description of the three new stones above Brent, Stuart, and Tom ("they had never found Boyd or any trace of him) is really quite moving and sad even for Yankees like me, Scarlett can. Not.  Believe the Tarleton's have "wast[ed] precious money on tombstones when food was so dear..."

She's right to be practical, of course. But it's astonishing that Scarlett can't comprehend the notion that tombstones can be just as important--or more important--than food or money.  Scarlett is a mother herself by this point in the novel and she's recently lost her mother, but all she can think about is how silly it is to buy a headstone.  Scarlett's lack of sympathy is hilarious, but perhaps her harsh reaction is another little signpost MM left along the way to show us how very different Scarlett is from the typical, sentimental Southern Belle? 

The South is unraveling, the boys are all dead or sick, and Scarlett is preoccupied with day-to-day living.  This part of GWTW lacks the charm, grace, and romance of the earlier section, but here MM has stripped away all the manners and silly rules that dominated the first part of the novel and Scarlett and her friends are obliged to get by with nothing but their wits and hard work.  GWTW came out during the depression and I firmly believe Scarlett's focus and drive are the reason GWTW became so popular, which means that this middle section of the novel is the cornerstone of MM's masterpiece and not the "mushy-middle" most people make it out to be.  Anyway, next time the girls finally get word of Ashley, Will Benteen comes on the scene, and Uncle Peter pays a visit and brings some comic relief.