(Well, it's been a while, hasn't it?
My sister got married, so I was busy for most of August this year. And when I wasn't helping with the wedding planning I've been working between 12 and 16 hours per day. Plus I've had terrible sinus headaches and blah, blah, blah. You know what? I've got no excuse. I should be writing more. I'm sorry. Thanks for sticking with me.)
Chapter 49 begins in a unexpected place, doesn't it?
Chapter 48's honeymoon setting was highly predictable given all that had come immediately before. Scarlett agrees to marry Rhett at the end of Chapter 47, so a honeymoon sequence is a logical next step. Chapter 48 is mostly ambiguous and the reader (and Scarlett) has trouble deciding whether the Butler marriage was a good idea. But chapter 48 ends with a truce between our two leads, so the first time I read GWTW I expected the next few bits to contain even more scenes from the Butler marriage.
And whatever I was expecting, I certainly wasn't expecting....this.
Mitchell is very, very good at not tipping her hand. She knew she was playing with a royal flush of a plot, so she pauses, pivots, and holds back during the first half of Chapter 49. Instead of immediately showing her cards and giving us more fireworks from the Butler honeymoon, MM slow plays us and deliberately decides to hoist the reader into the hotly contested discussion at the....Ladies' Sewing Circle for the Widows and Orphans of the Confederacy.
Hmmmph.
That's moxie though, isn't it?
You've got to be really confident to leave Scarlett and Rhett's bedroom where all sorts of undoubtedly interesting and incredible stuff is happening and retreat into a gossipy discussion with a bunch of tertiary characters. Melly is at this meeting of course, but Melly isn't in the first few pages of this discussion, so this Chapter functions as a call-back to Rhett's earlier comment about learning gossip from a ladies sewing circle and as a brilliant way for MM to reintroduce the Atlanta ladies who are going to make the next few years of Scarlett's life into a living hell of suspicion and acrimony. I do realize that Scarlett has been living in Atlanta with Frank Kennedy for some time now, but up to this point Mrs. Elsing, Mrs. Merriweather, Mrs. Bonnell, Mrs. Meade, and the entire rest of the Old Guard gang have been nothing more than window dressing. They're our Confederate Greek Chorus, really. For much of the novel they are just the old biddies who shake their heads at Scarlett's increasingly outrageous behavior.
But now they're absolutely gobsmacked by the marriage. Like, the fact of the marriage itself is troubling to them. How dare he/she/them? And when you read their words you begin to see the other side of the Scarlett/Rhett/Scallawag/morality situation. We understand why Scarlett marries Rhett. And we understand (or we think we understand) Rhett and his dicey politics and his symbiotic relationships with Carpetbaggers and Governor Bullock and all those other people. We understand and our understanding makes us love Scarlett and Rhett. But the other people in Atlanta don't understand it at all. And while Mrs. Meade and Mrs. Elsing and the rest of the gang don't have that Rhett/Scarlett/Jay-z/Beyonce money, they're all surviving and thriving in the New Atlanta without having to compromise their morals and ideas.
Double hmmph.
Anyway, MM also uses the Old Guard's discussion in the beginning of this chapter to sew the seeds of the upcoming conflict between India, Melly, Scarlett, and Ashley. Interestingly enough, MM makes it clear that everyone including Melly believes that India hates Scarlett because Scarlett stole Stuart Tarleton from her. But in reality, India also hates Scarlett because she is fast. And because "India was torn between the desire to shield Ashley by her silence and to extricate him by telling all her suspicions to Melanie and the whole world. That would force Scarlett to release whatever hold she had on Ashley."
And isn't that interesting?
There are times in GWTW when you start to believe that the whole Scarlett/Ashley thing is all in Scarlett's head. And then of course there are situations where other people call Scarlett out on her obvious devotion toward Mr. Wilkes, but even when Will and Rhett comment on the Scarlett/Ashley relationship they're usually only scolding Scarlett for having a crush on Melly's husband. But I think this is the very first time we hear that Ashley might actually have the hots for Scarlett, isn't it? Most of the time the other characters ask Scarlett about her relationship with Ashley ("is he trifling with you?" Gerald asks during the beginning of the book and the movie), and Scarlett is never really in a position to speak honestly about her interactions with Mr. Wilkes. And even on those rare occasions when she does blurt out the truth about Ashley's "love" we learn quickly to take it all with a grain of salt because, while Scarlett is an amazing character who we love to pieces, she isn't a reliable narrator when it comes to Ashley. Scarlett is a pessimist and a cynic most of the time, but when it comes to Ashley she's all sunshine and flowers and hope.
But now things take an interesting turn because even an impartial observer like India thinks there's something a little "extra" about the relationship between Mrs. Butler and Mr. Wilkes. The Scarlett/Ashley relationship cooled considerably during the Frank Kennedy years, but MM is now turning up the heat and moving it to the front burner, and I think this increases anticipation and anxiety for the reader in a unexpected way. The Ashley/Scarlett (non) affair is finally coming to the forefront so that's sort of a relief, but it's also terrifying since Scarlett is now married to Rhett. And if the previous honeymoon chapter taught us anything, it's that Rhett Butler is out of his goddamn mind.
"Rhett had said that the Old Guard would never surrender and he was right," MM tells us at the start of the 2nd section of chapter 49, after Melly works her magic and convinces the other ladies in the sewing circle to be polite to the Butlers. And isn't it interesting how right Rhett Butler is for the first 80% of GWTW, and how very, very wrong he is throughout the last 20% of the book? Rhett is a bad boy who breaks all the rules, but I would argue that he only succeeds in situations when he encounters rules he's memorized. Rhett is from upper-class Charleston, so he knows everything about the Old Guard and the Atlanta social scene, so he knows exactly which rules to break for maximum fun and profit. But there are no rules for being married to Scarlett and I think that explains why things go so poorly for him during the final chapters of GWTW. He has a talent for making money and making enemies, but he's all thumbs when it comes to earning Scarlett's devotion and I get the sense that he's constantly surprised by her antipathy. Rhett has been rock steady throughout the book, but now that he's married to Scarlett his personality starts to change.
He starts talking to himself, for one thing.
Which....I mean, his conversational style has always been sort of strange. But he was also normally direct and honest with his words. But after Scarlett builds her crazy mansion he starts making snide remarks (i.e. the house has more mirrors than Belle Watling's establishment), then he calls the house a nightmare. And then:
"A stranger without being told a word about us would know this house was built with ill-gotten gains," he said. "You know, Scarlett, money ill come by never comes to good and this house is proof of the axiom. It's just the kind of house a profiteer would build."
How's that for foreshadowing? Rhett is kidding here, of course. But he's such a natural, talented prognosticator he almost accidentally foreshadows the disasters to come.
Incidentally, this chapter also contains one of my favorite little lovely nuggets from GWTW. The bit where Rhett advises Scarlett to rename her store Caveat Emptorium (which is Latin for "Buyer Beware"), and where Scarlett actually gets the sign drawn up before Ashley quietly tells her the real meaning. This is such a lovely paragraph because not only does it give us a nice little laugh at Scarlett's expense--and not only does it give us an opportunity to see just how embittered Rhett is becoming, but it also gives us a link between Rhett and Ashley. These guys are opposites in almost every way, but MM reminds us explicitly via this anecdote that the two men speak the same language despite their differences. And the connection and understanding between the two men is what makes their actions later in the novel so believable.
GWTW the movie is in theaters this weekend in celebration of the 75th. I'm giving up football on Sunday to watch Clark Gable on the big screen, and you should too.
