Chapter 48 (part 2): "She learned everything about him except what he really was."

"In fact, in those two weeks in New Orleans, she learned everything about him except what he really was." 

Well, what is he?

GWTW is full of excellent sentences and wonderful paragraphs and little turns of phrase that blow my mind every time I read this novel. But no collection of words in GWTW has anything close to the impact and the weight of this particular line, delivered at this particular time, in this particular situation.  So as I break down the last half of this chapter, I think it's imperative that I start by unpacking the true meaning of this line.

First of all, let's begin by acknowledging the absurdity of Scarlett's statement.  She's only been married to Rhett for a little more than two weeks, yet she actually thinks that she knows everything about him after such a short amount of time? Granted, Scarlett and Rhett have spent a lot of time together since April of 1861, and Scarlett has picked up quite a bit about him over the course of their friendship, but you get the sense that she actually believes that two weeks are all she needs to understand every facet of Rhett's personality.  She has been studying Ashley closely for ages and she still can't quite figure out what makes him tick, and Ashley is practically an open book compared to Rhett.  The man's a professional poker player, for goodness sakes! You'd think Scarlett would realize that Rhett doesn't let her see anything he doesn't want her to see, but Scarlett had always overestimated her own smarts, hasn't she? She's brainy but she's the least emotionally perceptive person in the novel, and her conclusions about other people and their true selves and their motives are always a little bit off base.

But the real interesting part of this sentence is the use of the word what. 

MM says that Scarlett "learned everything about him except what he really was."

Why does she use what instead of who?

What does what really mean?

According to Google, what is a word with a lot of meaning. Who has an easy answer, I think. Who is about someone's permanent identity, right? Let's try it:

• Question: Who is Rhett Butler? 

•  Answer:  A Charleston-born aristocrat who rebelled against the old south and forged his own wicked path toward power and money.  He has black hair, a swarthy complexion, and a mustache. Maybe you've heard of him?

Okay, that was easy enough.  

• Question:  What is Rhett Butler? 

• Answer: What do you mean by what? 

 
I've often come back to my idea that romance novels/romantic stories are really just mysteries.  But unlike regular mysteries that are about solving crimes, the mystery in romance novels always winds up being the everlasting passion the hero has for the heroine.  The POV in women's fiction is usually planted firmly inside the heroine's head. We understand her motives, her desires, her fears, her loves better than she knows herself, but at the same time the hero's behavior is erratic and impossible to understand until, of course, you realize that he's been behaving so strangely only because he's madly in love with the heroine.  It's a story as old as Pride and Prejudice, but I would argue that it goes back even to the bible. After all, God spends the entire Old Testament behaving erratically and doing super weird stuff all the time (apples, floods, wars, famine, fire, falling towers, etc), but once Jesus shows up to explain that God is only doing this because he "so loves the world," we begin to see God's actions in the Old Testament clearly, as the actions of a deity who is in love with us. Or anyway, I think that's what we're supposed to get out of it.  So what is Rhett in this chapter?

He's:

1. A Raconteur (he tells all kinds of stories about "courage and honor and virtue and love in the odd places he had been, and follow them with ribald stories of coldest cynicism.");
2. A Lover ("ardent...tender...");
3. A Mocking Devil ("who ripped the lid from her gunpowder temper, fired it and enjoyed the explosion");
4. A Maid (he feeds her and brushes her hair which is sort of sweet, but also deeply strange in my opinion);
5. A tease (tickling her feet and tearing her "rudely out of deep slumber" when she least expects it);
6. A good listener; 
7. A bad listener;
8. An incredibly sardonic and sarcastic companion; 
9. Flippant; 
10. Daring; 
11. A bad boy in church; 
12. A good boy at the theater; 

And last, but certainly not least, he's:

    12. A Man

Through and through.  I'm not sure how Scarlett would define manhood, but for our purposes let's rely on Google's basic definition: A man is an adult human male. Which is to say, not a child.  Scarlett then goes on to compare him to the other males she's known, men like her father and the Tarleton's and the Fontaines and Charles and Frank.  They were masculine and they were all very good at doing all the things men are supposed to do, but the were all sort of childish in Scarlett's eyes.  MM calls them "boys at heart," full of antics and fun and silliness.  Actually, I think Scarlett does indeed define manhood in this section, doesn't she?

"Only Ashley and Rhett eluded her understanding and her control for they were both adults, and the elements of boyishness were lacking in them."

So Scarlett equates manhood with...elusiveness? She believes that a male is only a man if she can't control him through her usual sexy tricks? And what does it say about our heroine when we realize that the only two men she respects are also the only two men who don't play her game?


Hmmph.

So far, the Butler honeymoon as been idyllic despite all the drinking and carousing.  But then things go pear shaped all of a sudden on the last full night in the honeymoon when Rhett uses his spidey-sense or his vulcan-mind-meld capabilities and realizes that Scarlett is dreaming about Ashley as she drifts off to sleep in his arms.  And he gets mad.

Like, really mad. 

The final pages of their honeymoon plays out as brilliant foreshadowing for the events of the rest of their ill-fated marriage. 

Rhett catches Scarlett dreaming about Ashley which causes Rhett's "heavy arm beneath her neck [to] become like iron," which causes him to swear ("May God damn your cheating little soul to hell for all eternity" which isn't, like something you'd exactly say off the cuff, is it?) which causes him to leave the room in a huff (despite Scarlett's questions and protests) which causes him to reappear the next morning drunk and sarcastic which causes Scarlett to be "quite cool to him" which causes him to get even angrier as "she dressed under his bloodshot gaze and went shopping," which causes him to be gone when she returns which means that he does not appear again until it's time for supper which causes Scarlett to eat her large meal in silence which causes her to over indulge which causes her to drink way too much which eventually triggers her nightmare. 

And, sadly and predictably, Rhett is drunk or hungover when he comes in to rescue Scarlett from her nightmare. It's a very sweet scene as written, a sweet scene that most probably launched several generations of women into puberty.  What's better than a well-dressed Rhett Butler coming to Scarlett's rescue in Atlanta just before the town burns to the ground? How about a disheveled, hungover Rhett rescuing Scarlett from her nightmare in the darkness of the wee hours? After all, the real world holds a number of scary dangers, but nothing is more terrifying than unspecified, imagined threats.  Scarlett can face down armies and shoot a deserter in the face, but her dream shakes her to her core. 

Poor thing.

Good thing she's got such a strong, incredibly sexy, incredibly capable husband around to help!

His face is still unreadable, but his shirt is open to the waist (drool),  and his brown chest is covered with thick black hair (double drool), and....when I was a young girl my taste ran to squeaky voiced, safe boys like Michael Jackson (Thriller era, of course), and Joey McIntyre. But ever since I first read GWTW I've had a soft-spot for hairy guys with mustaches and drinking problems. I think this scene is probably the reason, more than any other.  He's just smoking hot here, really. And then to top it off, he doesn't calm Scarlett by talking about dream and love and nightmares or anything silly like that. Instead he brings her back to reality by discussing money, investments, and real estate. 

Sigh.

Now, the reality is that Rhett has been on a bender for at least 24 hours by the time we arrive at this conversation.  His eyes were crazy bloodshot yesterday morning, and they're still bloodshot by the time he calms Scarlett's fears, and that's not a good look, you guys.  For the sake of analysis, let's say Rhett has been doing roughly one shot per hour for the past 24. If we assume that Rhett has the same height and weight as Clark Gable (6'1" & 200lbs), then his BAC on that night would have been about 0.481%. Which is in the staggering/alcohol poisoning/sudden death range. He can handle his liquor, but if he continues to drink like this he is totally doomed.  I think Mitchell draws our attention to his bloodshot eyes in this chapter because she wants us to contrast this Rhett (still young, still with it Rhett) with the bloated, totally destroyed man who dumps Scarlett at the end of the book.  Here he's clearly alcohol dependent, but you get the sense that he can control his drinking.  But by the end of GWTW the liquor controls him, and his downfall is sad and heartbreaking. 

Chapter 48 (part 1): "Between them, Scarlett and Rhett had outraged every tenet of [the] code..."

I've been working too hard on other things that are not this blog, and this is the first free weekend I've had since the very start of summer.  I could have spent this weekend drinking shandies and reading on my back porch, but instead I've decided to carve out some time to update my blog.  So, welcome back everybody!

Chapter 48 of GWTW covers the Butler honeymoon in New Orleans.  New Orleans has loomed fairly large over the course of the novel, and it functions as an off-stage, anti-Atlanta, all fun times and scandal and rivers and brothels while Atlanta has been nothing but hard times and gossip and red-dirt since the beginning of the book.  It's no coincidence, of course, that New Orleans comes into focus during the Butler honeymoon. As Rhett reminds Scarlett and the reader in this chapter, he was "engaged in some of [his] nefarious schemes [in New Orleans] during the war," so we'd be forgiven for assuming that Rhett got up to some of his shady business dealings in Louisiana whenever he wasn't bugging Scarlett/saving Scarlett's life in Atlanta. New Orleans is the one place in the south (and perhaps the world) where Rhett can just be Rhett, so the Butler honeymoon functions as a nice little window into the actual life of Rhett.

So what do we learn?

Quite a bit, actually.  Mitchell drops several bombs in this chapter, filling out many details of Rhett's background which is refreshing since she's given us such a fuzzy sketch for so long. Rhett sticks out like a sore thumb in Atlanta because of his flashy clothes, loose morals, and all that gambling and whoring (and, you know, proudly owning a whore house), but he fits right in in New Orleans where Scarlett meets many, many men who "had the same hard reckless look Rhett wore. Their eyes were always alert, like me who have lived too long with danger to be ever quite careless." Now Rhett's eyes are usually described as bland/blank, but he's also very observant and watchful as a rule. Although I never quite get the sense that he's looking out for danger, but instead it seems as though he's just scanning his environment for information that can help him get over in his next scheme. I'm not faulting him for that, by the way. Just sayin'.

Anyway, Rhett and his homies trade gossip and stories about:

• Cuba
• Nassau in the blockade days
• the Gold Rush (California) 
• Gun running
• Filibustering
• Nicaragua
• William Walker/Truxillo
• Jesse James/Frank James/Quantril's band

Other men in the novel are Confederate veterans, so they reminisce about Gettysburg, Vicksburg, and the Army of Northern Virginia. So by having these men skip over these historical events and talk about all these shady/illegal activities, I think we're supposed to assume that Rhett's friends spent the past six years sitting out the war and making financial gains while all the other men of their generation were getting blown to bits.  The difference between Rhett and his unnamed friends, of course, is that we know for SURE that Rhett did all of those things and did his time in the Confederate Army. So while his buddies might be amoral swindlers, Rhett comes off as a smart guy who stayed away from the Civil War until his southern heart overtook his good sense.

Come to think of it, all four of the major characters in GWTW have a multi-layered, multi-faceted relationship to the southern cause, don't they? Scarlett didn't care one way or another about the Civil War at all--she pretended to care, of course, but she never really bought into the Southern cause. Mostly because she thought it was a waste of time, energy, resources, and men.  Melly spent most of the war devoted to Ashley, but she was never really a die-hard about the whole state's rights thing. Ashley fought on the front lines with Bobby Lee for most of the conflict, but he was always a reluctant soldier from the very beginning.  But of course, one of the most wonderful things about GWTW is that everybody in the story is wonderfully complex and conflicted almost all the time. MM doesn't spend much time helping us learn the thoughts and motives of the other characters in GWTW, but you do get the sense that she wanted us to realize that very few southerners were absolute, rabid supporters of the confederacy.  Everybody supported the war and all the men eventually joined up (or tried to join like poor Gerald), but everyone had their own motives and ideas about the general direction of the war.

Anyway, Scarlett likes New Orleans. She really, really, really likes New Orleans.  She likes the clothes, she likes the jewels, she likes the alcohol, and she likes the food.  MM actually performs a very clever and sophisticated maneuver by having Scarlett go on and on about food in this chapter.  After all, we could never forget how hungry they all were after the war, but--that was a long time ago now.  Scarlett has been married to Frank for some time, and the casual reader (i.e. one who didn't finish the book in three days like yours truly) would be forgiven for forgetting all about Scarlett's vow to Never Go Hungry Again.

But MM hasn't forgotten. And she uses this honeymoon interlude as a well-designed call-back to Scarlett's days of hardship.  Scarlett has been living a fairly cozy middle-class life in Atlanta for years now, but our heroine still can't quite shake the feeling that poverty will return.  This is what drives her through the last twenty percent of the book (we're at 82% here in this chapter!), the thing that makes her greedy and selfish even after she marries Rhett and she can afford to be kind and sensible.  Of course every character in the book has faced immense hardship, but I think the other characters in the book fail to see just how unique Scarlett's situation was after Sherman blew through Atlanta. 

Scarlett has tried hard to forget how tough things were back at Tara after the war. But I think of all the characters in the book, Scarlet's path after the fall of Atlanta was the most difficult because there were no obvious answers or solutions to her problems.  Rhett was in the Confederate army throughout most of 1864 and 1865, and nobody doubts the difficulty of fighting a war that has already been lost, but his objective during that time was pretty clear: don't die.   Ashley was in prison during the latter half of the war, but all he had to do was survive. I'm not saying survival in a POW camp during the 19th century was easy, but it's also not complicated.  Melly had just given birth to her baby during the Fall of Atlanta and she is very weak during 1864, 1865, and 1866. But again, her only objective was to stay alive. 

Not so for Scarlett.

No, Scarlett O'Hare couldn't even consider the idea of falling over and expiring. Once she got back to Tara she was in a world of trouble, and she had to spend her days and nights figuring out how to feed her family, how to avoid the scavengers in the neighborhood, how to keep Tara safe from harm.  Melly spent that time teetering between life and death, but Scarlett didn't have that luxury. The entire world--or anyway, the entire world of Scarlett's novel--depended on her, and the thought of giving up and dropping dead was never part of her program.  She was the captain of a sinking ship and she spent all her time focused on keeping Tara afloat. 

Scarlett doesn't have true battle scars, but she does have Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. However, unlike the soldiers in the novel who probably cower at every loud bang they hear, Scarlett's PTSD is centered on food and money.  And while you might be able to avoid loud noises for the rest of your life, Scarlett encounters food and money every single day and she seems to take stock of her financial progress every time she sits down to a meal.

And so, after the last chapter featured nothing but blanc mange (yuck!) and cheap liquor, this chapter is all about decadence and excess and all the deliciousness New Orleans has to offer. We read details about the meals, as a matter of fact. We don't get any details about the Butler wedding, but we get a lot of information about the honeymoon meals.

In the space of one paragraph Scarlett eats:

• Gumboes
• Shrimp Creole (this link will take you to the Yelp page for my all-time favorite New Orleans restaurant!)
• Doves in Wine (Huh?Ew!) 
• Oysters in crumbly patties full of cream sauce
• Mushrooms
• Sweetbreads (which are totally not what you think they are) 
• Turkey livers
• Fish "baked cunningly in oiled paper and limes"
• Pastries with chocolate and meringue
• Champagne

Interestingly enough, Scarlett has spent a great deal of time drinking liquor since the fall of Atlanta. However, she's been drinking cheap, tame stuff compared to the champagne Rhett orders in New Orleans.  She gets twisted and turnt up on champagne one night and sings "Bonnie Blue Flag" at the top of her lungs and wakes up with a nasty hangover, and she's all humiliated because she's never seen a woman drunk except "that Watling creature on the day when Atlanta fell." And let's just pause right here and ruminate on how tight GWTW really is for a second.  GWTW is a sprawling book with a huge cast of characters, but MM doesn't waste words and she doesn't waste characters, and it's a nice call-back to have Scarlett halt in the middle of her honeymoon and compare herself to Belle.  Remember the SAT syllogisms ya'll? Well here in this chapter MM is executing a nice little multiple choice quiz for you.

Atlanta: New Orleans as: (Choose One, if you can)
A. Scarlett: Belle  
B. Ashley: Rhett 
C. South: North
D. Melly: Scarlett
E. All of the Above



Answer: A, B & E. But not necessarily C or D, for reasons that will become clearer as we get closer to the end of the book. 

Alright, I'm going to drink beer on my deck. I'll post my thoughts and analysis on the rest of this all-important chapter next time, gang.