I'm sort of a PBS nerd, so I've spent the last few weeks slowly making my way through the Hollow Crown BBC Shakespeare series. I've never been much on Shakespeare, but I think my general lack of enthusiasm for The Bard has more to do with the plays they forced us to read in junior high and high school than on Shakespeare's own scribbles. My English teachers forced us to read Romeo and Juliet, A Midsummer Night's Dream, and Macbeth, and in my opinion the jokes and romance in those stories are so antiquated they read more like "jokes" and "romance," and are so forgettable and old-fashioned that you almost regret having read them at all.
But the Hollow Crown features four of Shakespeare's best history plays: Richard II, 1 Henry IV, 2 Henry IV, and Henry V. The producers and directors of these new versions of the plays had sizable budgets, which meant they had enough money to use beautiful sets and hot and/or famous actors to play the most important parts. The biggest surprise for me was Patrick Stewart as John of Gaunt; he was only on the screen for about ten minutes, but he was there long enough to deliver one of Shakespeare's most famous speeches--the one where John of Gaunt goes on and on about England being so wonderful and amazing and ends with a description of "this blessed plot, this earth, this realm, this England".
Anyway, while I was watching Stewart deliver these lines, I started using my long dormant English major critical thinking skills to compare John of Gaunt's love of the England to Scarlett O'Hara's love of Tara. Chapter 32 begins with Scarlett coming to terms with Ashley's rejection from the prior chapter. Unfortunately for Scarlett (and fortunately for those of us who enjoy her interpersonal drama!), our heroine does not use this juncture as an opportunity to finally move past her obsession with Mr. Wilkes. A more mature woman would have tried to see their relationship plainly, but Scarlett is still a child in many ways, so she clings to her love for Ashley without stopping to consider the fact that their world has changed so drastically that affairs of the heart don't matter in the same way anymore.
But for all of Scarlett's stubborn idiocy when it comes to the "woolen-headed Mr. Wilkes," MM keeps Scarlett likeable and amusing in this section by reinforcing Scarlett's devotion to Tara. Scarlett would have gladly run away with Ashley only moments before, but the thought of leaving Tara behind forever "would have torn her heart," and this sentiment endears the protagonist to the reader in the same way that a shared love of England tied Shakespeare's audience to John of Gaunt in the Elizabethan age. Not many of us have had the fortune/misfortune of experiencing the "deathless love" Scarlett has for Ashley, but every reader has a hometown and something we think of as a homestead and I think MM was brilliant for teasing out this connection and making it easy for us to relate to Scarlett at a section of the novel when she seems to have lost touch with reality just a little bit.
I guess everybody eventually wants to go home again. Even Scarlett and Rhett.
Anyway, Scarlett doesn't have much time to spend feeling sorry for herself. Because Jonas Wilkerson and Emmie Slattery show up in finery at the door to Tara and all hell breaks loose! Before this moment MM's references to women outside Scarlett's social circle have been hilariously circumspect, but now she unloads on Emmie Slattery with both barrels blazing, throwing out so many cruel words ("dirty tow-headed slut whose illegitimate baby Ellen had baptized...overdressed, common, nasty piece of poor white trash...") that the tirade always catches me by surprise. Neither MM nor Scarlett are anything close to angels when it comes to internal dialogue, but all the terribly mean things that have been in the story thus far have usually been tempered by humor. But there's nothing funny in any of this, particularly since Scarlett then goes all biblical on Emmie and Jonas after they express their desire to buy Tara:
"I'll tear this house down, stone by stone, and burn it and sow every acre with salt before I see either of you put foot over this threshold."
That sounds like something out of one of the latter books of the Old Testament, doesn't it?
And that's good. Scarlett's rage is justified, particularly since she holds a grudge against Jonas and Emmie, and it's also good because it provides an excellent, rock-steady, totally believable motivation for the oh-so-important next few chapters of GWTW. So over the course of a half hour in Scarlett's life, MM has:
1.) Alerted us to the fact that the taxes need to be paid on Tara--and they've been raised "sky high."
2.) Told us that Ashley is still somewhat attracted to Scarlett but doesn't have any money to help pay the taxes (keep up the good work Ashley!) And:
3.) If Scarlett doesn't figure out a way to pay the taxes, Emmie and Jonas will be living in Tara.
All of these events are emergencies, and they happen in quick succession, and we know Scarlett is broke, and...how in the WORLD is she going to get out of this one?
And then we get our answer:
"Rhett Butler."
Awwwwwww Yeah!
Scarlett arrives at her indecent proposal to be Rhett's mistress rather quickly, but it's not as though she initiates this thought out of midair. After all, she hates Rhett at this point in the novel and doesn't seem to have sexual desires for any man besides Ashley (although even those are pretty chaste), so instead of immediately deciding to become his mistress she goes through a few logical steps before she jumps off the cliff into moral depravity. Initially she's going to sell her diamond earrings to Rhett for that year's tax money, but--you know what? The taxes are going to be due every year, aren't they? So she's going to need some way to get money out of Rhett in perpetuity, which is why she comes to the conclusion that she'll marry Rhett Butler in order to secure the money she needs to save Tara. She's planning on tricking Rhett into marriage and she's repulsed by the idea of becoming Mrs. Rhett Butler, but--well, matrimony on these terms isn't really much of a crime, is it? And anyway, not one couple in GWTW has married out of "true love," so perhaps Scarlett's activities here aren't as treacherous as they seem at first glance?
I don't know.
But I do know that Rhett Butler is on his way back into the novel, and that's a reason to give thanks!
