Gone With the Wind was in theaters this week, and I drafted/bribed/blackmailed my best friend into attending the showing on Sunday at the Icon theater on Roosevelt . Incredibly, he'd never seen Gone With the Wind before, so I was totally jealous that his first exposure to Scarlett/Rhett/Melly/Ashley would be via the big screen with a lively (near) capacity crowd. I'm not exactly sure how much he enjoyed the movie. As a matter of fact, I'm not even sure if he knows how much he enjoyed the movie. GWTW is four hours of high drama with a lot of major plot developments and it will probably take him a full year to digest everything that happens in the story. Nevertheless, he did have one strong opinion that he voiced several times over the course of the film.
"Ashley is a twerp," my bestie said more than once while Vivian Leigh and Leslie Howard were doing their thing live in technicolor. "What does she see in that guy anyway?"
In related news, one of my co-workers is reading 50 Shades of Gray for the first time this week. She reads chapters during her lunch break, and she scowls at her kindle as she reads the novel because every single sentence in that book is false and/or stupid. And when she's finished, the two of us laugh at E.L. James and her silly plot and her one-dimensional characters and we wonder what in the world anybody sees in Christian Gray.
I personally understand what Scarlett sees in Ashley Wilkes. Ashley was the gleamingly handsome, graceful, all-too-perfect, blonde, gray-eyed, boy next door at the beginning of the novel, and he remains almost the same guy for the entire book. Of course Ashley changes some over the course of GWTW, but he's mostly notable for staying exactly the same. And I think that's what Scarlett likes about him: he's the same predictable, lovely, handsome guy he's known since she was a child.
And yet....
And yet.
Ashley is consistent from top to bottom, and that's why his character is so uninteresting. Suzanne Brockmann wrote a wonderful essay years ago about the difference between Alpha males and Beta males, and I think that's the most basic, essential difference between Rhett and Ashley. And yet, below the surface Ashley and Rhett are a lot alike.
MM spends the last twenty percent of the novel emphasizing the similarities between the two men, but because we see them through Scarlett's eyes we never do get a clear picture of either. But we do know that Ashley Wilkes is exactly who he says he is, and that he is consistent in thought, word, and deed. On the other hand, who is Rhett?
And what does he want?
And why does he want it?
Rhett is consistently inconsistent. Every single aspect of his being is a contradiction, and for that reason he is infinitely interesting. By contrast, Christian Gray from 50 Shades of Gray is just like Ashley because he is exactly who he appears to be. The real Rhett Butler is hidden under thick layers of bluster, lies, machismo and sarcasm, and I don't know that we ever get to explore his core. Christian Gray is boring because he doesn't surprise us. Even his secrets aren't surprising. Even the Red Room isn't surprising, because Christian seems sort of strange and creepy from the first page. Rhett is a beta male hidden beneath an alpha costume, and that is why he intrigues us long after we finish the novel.
Rhett Butler has been a man of action for all of GWTW, but now that he's married to Scarlett he spends much of his time "watching her closely." And...isn't that sweet? As a matter of fact, his adoration is so frank and obvious, Scarlett literally cannot compute his behavior. MM actually stops the action to tell us that Scarlett can't even figure out why Rhett married her. After all,
"Men married for love or a home and children or money but she knew he had married her for none of these things. He certainly did not love her."
"Whatever love means," right Scarlett?
What does Scarlett think love means? I agree that Rhett should have been direct and admitted that he loved Scarlett when he proposed, but...come on, Scarlett. She eventually concludes that Rhett married her because he wanted to have sex with her, but this is ridiculous on its face because the man owns a brothel.
Sigh.
What does Scarlett think love means? I don't know. But this chapter starts Rhett Butler's long, strange, sad, sad, sad mental collapse, and I think he starts to break apart because Scarlett's anti-child, anti-marriage, anti-love attitude throws the Alpha and Beta parts of his psyche into direct conflict.
Scarlett finds out she's pregnant and she rushes in to deliver the news to Rhett (who, it must be noted, is lounging in her bedroom. That's how close they were. That's how much he loves her. They live in an enormous mansion, and this is a guy who is one of the most self-sufficient characters in any novel ever, and yet when we start this scene he's patiently waiting in her bedroom like a loyal puppy waiting for his master. He's afraid to admit it, but he loves her so much it almost hurts to read the words. Poor thing.). She's pissed off as she's explaining the whole situation, "but he said nothing."
Scarlett keeps babbling, and she's so nervous and frightened that she starts imagining things. Rhett is quiet and pensive and tense this whole time, but Scarlett chastises him for laughing even though he's doing nothing of the sort. As a matter of fact, instead of laughing "his face hardened slightly and his eyes became blank," and by now the reader realizes that Rhett only throws up his poker face when he's feeling particularly emotional. I'm not sure if he understands Scarlett's (understandable) apprehension, or if he is totally confused by it, but it's clear that he feels the desperate need to hide everything from Scarlett. He goes full Alpha here and his mask is successful for a few moments, but then Scarlett starts talking about getting an abortion and he flips out.
Interestingly enough, Rhett doesn't seem purely pro-life. He objects to Scarlett's abortion, but only because he's afraid that Scarlett might die as a result of the procedure. But then again, it's almost impossible to tell if those are his true feelings or if those are the only feelings he chose to demonstrate at this time. I have no idea. But I do know that up to this point we've seen Rhett lose his cool on only a handful of occasions, and every time he has lashed out in anger or frustration or lust or emotion he reels himself back in quickly and it's over in a flash. But I think he's reacting in this section to the double whammy of 1.) Scarlett being pregnant and 2.) Scarlett wanting an abortion, and he has trouble getting himself under control.
He does manage to compose himself eventually, because he's that kind of a guy. But isn't it interesting that he's so afraid of revealing his true emotions to Scarlett that he resorts to picking her up and pulling her so close that she can't see his face? His face is totally blank, but he's still terrified of giving too much of himself away. Rhett has always seemed so suave and cool and calm, but the reader suddenly realizes that our fearless hero is basically walking a tightrope of emotion. And we also realize for the first time that it's conceivable that Scarlett has the capacity to push him over the edge.
Yikes.
