"Well none of us, as far as I can see, are doing what we intended to do right now, but I think we'll make out just the same. It's a poor person and a poor nation that sits down and cries because life isn't precisely what they expected it to be." --Tommy Wellburn
GWTW was written during the depression and the movie hit theaters almost exactly two years before the US entered WW2. MM was a well-connected and relatively wealthy southern woman, but she lived during a time when the economic system had collapsed and the whole world she'd known had been turned asunder. Uncertainty and fear were the twin engines of 1930's society (along with gin and whiskey now that Prohibition was over!), and you couldn't go two feet without seeing breadlines or hobos or starving children or any of those other things I only know about from old movies. It's difficult for me to envision a world without the familiar social safety nets of welfare and food stamps and social security, but this was the American pre-war reality. So while GWTW takes place during and after the Civil War, MM's opinions on survival and the importance of hard work and ruthlessness say as much--or more--about the 1930's as they do about the 1860's and 1870's.
So Scarlett starts running her saw mills in earnest in this chapter. She's pregnant again, so she has to race against the 9-month gestational clock to ensure she makes as much money as possible before she starts to show and is forced to stay in the house. And once again, MM portrays pregnancy as something to avoid, something to fear. Scarlett is an ambitious woman and pregnancy could be problematic and dangerous during this era, but every pregnancy in GWTW leads to inconvenience at the least (Wade/Ella/Bonnie) and sometimes spirals into something outright nefarious that threatens to kill or destroy everyone around (Beau, Melly's 2nd baby, Scarlett's miscarriage). Food for thoughts, although I won't be digesting it just yet.
Anyway, as I mentioned during my last entry, there's very little fat in GWTW. It's a lengthy novel with many twists and turns, but each line, each scene, each chapter, plays a part in the development of Scarlett's story. So smack in the middle of this chapter, we have an interesting scene in which Uncle Peter is driving Scarlett around Atlanta on her errands and he is insulted by some Yankee women ("I never saw a N***er till I came South last month and I don't care if I never see another. They give me the creeps."). Uncle Peter bristles at being insulted and is angry with Scarlett because she doesn't defend him from these brutal attacks. MM uses Uncle Peter largely as comic relief, but here his pride has been wounded, which means he refuses to drive Scarlett on her rounds ever again.
Which means Scarlett has no choice but to drive around Atlanta by herself.
Which means Rhett Butler hears about this and comes to Scarlett's rescue (again!), by escorting her on her rounds. Or anyway, he escorts her around whenever he's in town, which is not that often come to think about it.
"Frequently he was out of town on those mysterious trips to New Orleans which he never explained, but which she felt sure, in a faintly jealous way, were connected with a woman--or women."
He's such a man of mystery, for all his honesty. Rhett will answer any question Scarlett asks him, but he's such a confusing person Scarlett never seems to know what question she wants to ask. He spends "most of his time gambling in the rooms above the Girl of the Period Saloon" or hanging out with Yankees in Belle's, but they met by accident almost every day. Scarlett can't quite figure out why he's hanging around like that, but she doesn't complain either, and the two of them seem to have settled into something of a truce. And now that they're friends, he's back to dropping little nuggets of advice and conversation for the reader to enjoy:
"If you haven't done anything wrong, it's because you haven't had the opportunity, and perhaps they dimly realize it."
"Be different and be damned!" (Although I would argue that Rhett isn't any different from the men of his Charleston background. Maybe his only crime is that he actually excels at his activities. He's an excellent shot, he's good with money, he's good at gambling, he's good at almost everything. Maybe that's his sin.)
"It's so pleasant to feel sorry for people."
"I had a grandfather on the Butler side who was a pirate." (Really?)
"Hardships make or break people."
And then we get this one from Scarlett, on the subject of the word pregnant.
"Gerald had been wont to say delicately "in the family way," when he had to mention such matters, and ladies genteelly referred to pregnancy as being 'in a fix.'"
And speaking of pregnancy, isn't Rhett lovely in this section? I read this part in disbelief and awe the first time I picked up GWTW. Rhett has been nothing but a bastion of brute strength throughout the novel, but he's so gentle and patient and kind when he holds Scarlett's head over the side of the buggy that I couldn't help but be moved. Even Scarlett is touched by his sympathy. As a matter of fact she likes him so much she says he's as stimulating as a glass of brandy.
And this--Scarlett and Rhett are both alcoholics, ya'll. It pains me to say so, of course. But Scarlett and Rhett and Rick Blaine and almost every conflicted anti-hero from the 30's and 40's smokes like a chimney and drinks like a fish. They make hard liquor look glamorous and fascinating, but it eventually destroys their lives, doesn't it? Not so much Rick Blaine (although God only knows what happened to him after the end of Casabanca), but Scarlett's drinking gives poor Ella fetal alcohol syndrome, and it eventually bloats Rhett to the point where he's fat and unrecognizable. Oh well.
Events are moving fast now, though; and MM ends this chapter by telling us that Gerald O'Hara is dead.
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