Chapter 46: Fighting a mist

You know what? I'd forgotten all about chapter 46.  Interestingly enough, GWTW the movie contains what seems like 3/4 of the dialogue and action found here in chapter 46. This is  strange, transitional chapter, an abbreviated set-piece that tells us nothing directly about Scarlett and Rhett and their current situation.  But it does give us a remarkable opportunity to glimpse the true personalities of Melly and Belle, the two major supporting characters in the entire novel.  I think Scarlett and Rhett take Melly and Belle for granted.  I think the two main characters in GWTW believe that, deep down, they deserve better friends than mealy-mouthed Melly and the South's most widely known madam, but in reality I think a case could be made that the two of them are so selfish and driven that they're lucky to have friends at all. 

As I said in an earlier post, most of the people in GWTW and in the real world are unpredictable and difficult to figure out, like a calculus problem.  On the other hand, very few people are dependable and true on all times and in all occasions, but Melly and Belle are as predictable as a times table.  You need a doggone graphing calculator to figure out what Rhett is going to do and when/why he's going to do it, but we know that Belle is always going to support him without blinking.  Melly and Belle are lovely women, but the squeaky wheel gets the grease and nobody ever writes a blockbuster, world-beating novel about lovely, nice women.  There's a reason why allposters.com has 108 posters of Eleanor Roosevelt and 2,017 of Marilyn Monroe, but I'd rather be friends with Eleanor Roosevelt all the same.

Anyway, this Chapter is mostly exposition.  We get an update on Ashley's condition (he's going to be fine, although he lost a lot of blood), and Melly thanks Belle for helping out during that morning's court testimony.  Hmmmm.  Then Belle slips and tells Melly that she (Belle) also has a son, which--

No, stop.

We've been through this, y'all.  I'm not going to diagram this whole thing out for you again because I'm tired and I've already worked 60 hours at my regular job this week.  But listen, we're not getting anywhere like this.  Once and for all, Belle's son is not Rhett's son.  It can't be. If we can go back to math for a minute, let's just be clear that 2 + 2 in this case does not equal four.  2 + 2 is probably closer to 9 in this case than four, which is to say that Belle having a son and Rhett being a guardian of a child doesn't mean that they are the parents of said child.  It just means there's a whole hell of a lot more to the story that we don't know about.  So it's like 2 + 2 + (unknown amount)= ???. And anybody who tells you otherwise is grasping at straws.  Trust me. 

He is not the father.