"Tomorrow--well, tomorrow was another day. Tomorrow she would think of some excuse, some counter accusations, some way of putting Rhett in the wrong."
Scarlett is fighting for her social survival now, but it's so sad that she is trying so desperately to turn all of this around on Rhett. Of all the people involved in this situation, Rhett is the least culpable. He wasn't even there when Scarlett and Ashley got busted at the lumber yard. Scarlett and Ashley weren't committing any crimes at the lumber yard, but if we're talking crime and punishment then surely Rhett and Melly are the true victim's in this scenario. Sadly--and predictably-Scarlett's first instinct is to worry about Ashley and his reputation and whether or not Melly's husband is going to hate her now, which....sigh.
It's sad and it's unfortunate, but Scarlett's stance does make sense in a screwed up, immature way. Because Scarlett is in love with Ashley Wilkes. Still. She's living in Rhett's mansion and she's living like a queen on Rhett's money, but she is still in love with Ashley. And why not? Even now, even after all of this, there is still something appealing in Ashley, isn't there? I still love Joey McIntyre and the rest of the New Kids on the Block, and my heart still quickens whenever I see one of the boys I loved in grade-school posting a comment on Facebook, so it would be a lie to pretend that Scarlett is delusional here. Scarlett's love for Ashley is as real as anything else in the story. Now, that's not to say that it's not built on hopes and dreams and puffery, and Scarlett would do well to reevaluate her understanding of Ashley Wilkes as time passes, but that's not fair. Loving Ashley is part of her identity and her secret crush on Ashley has gotten her through some truly tough times, and the book would run out of steam if Scarlett suddenly fell out of love with Ashley after everything she's gone through to stay connected to him.
Anyway.
So here we go.
If Scarlett's love for Ashley is part of her identity, I think Rhett's love for Scarlett is as much a part of him as his mustache. Scarlett wouldn't be Scarlett if she wasn't chasing after Ashley, and Rhett wouldn't be Rhett if he wasn't head over heels in love with Scarlett. He cannot bring himself to hate Scarlett now. He still loves her. He knows he should hate her, but he still loves her and I think he's having trouble balancing his anger against his love. He's furious here, but he's also humiliated and I don't think Rhett ever learned to deal with mortification. He's all masculine swagger and Scarlett has backed him into a corner and he doesn't know what the hell he should do.
"He was drunk and showing it," MM tells us, as Scarlett enters the dining room, "and she had never before seen him show his liquor, no matter how much he drank."
I find this incredibly difficult to understand because Rhett drinks a lot. You hardly ever see him at night without a drink in his hand, and even Bonnie eventually tells him to stop coming home with liquor on his breath, but Scarlett has never seen him drunk? Hmmm. Is it that she's never seen him drunk, or is it that she misunderstands his personality so much she doesn't know what he's like when he's actually drunk? Ugh. She needs to start paying better attention to her husband, ya'll.
There's so much tension in this chapter, you guys. And I think the source of that tension lies in the fact that Rhett is acting like a stranger. We've been reading about Rhett Butler for one-thousand pages, and we know him almost as well as we know Scarlett by this point in the novel, but MM switches it up on us very quickly in this chapter. He's been wearing his mask for so long we actually started to believe that he really was aloof and cool and careless; we and Scarlett really do believe that "nothing mattered very much to him, that he thought everything in life, including her, an ironic joke." But MM flips it all around very quickly in this chapter, and we realize that his behavior up to this chapter has been little more than a facade.
Casablanca was on last week and I love that movie almost as much as I love GWTW, and my favorite scene is the scene where Rick Blaine is drinking on his own at night at his cafe. He's blind drunk and nursing his pain and you get the sense that he hates himself for still having such feelings for Ilsa, and it's so spot on for how Rhett is feeling in this part of the novel that it's easy to think of these two scenes as two halves of the same whole. Except--and here's the difference between these two stories and between these two characters--Rick's famous scene ends with Humphrey Bogart slumped over in harmless despair. On the other hand, Rhett's drunken scene ends with--
Oh good gracious.
Oh me, oh my.
This should be the end of GWTW, shouldn't it? MM could have very easily saved her readers and her characters all the sweet torture of the next few chapters by simply having Rhett pack his bags and leave Scarlett right here and now. But MM is a never-say-quit, never-say-die author and a vengeful God to boot, so instead of having mercy on her creation she takes everything up another level and toys with Scarlett and Rhett and Ashley and Melly until they're all broken and bruised and bloody and dying. Goodness.
************
"There was something in their depths she did not recognize, could not understand, something deeper than anger, stronger than pain, something driving him until his eyes glowed redly like twin coals." And how wonderful is that? Rhett's normally coal black eyes are now lit with fire and glowing red and I love everything about this. Everything. The drinking, the swearing, the violence,the heartbreak, the darkness, the unpredictability of the moments, the shock of realizing we barely know who Rhett really is, the creeping realization that Scarlett might actually be in mortal danger, the weird thrill when all our fears are realized and he gives into passion and drags her up the stairs.
It's delicious.
Yes, that's right. I said it. I know I'm not supposed to say it. And if this was anybody but Rhett I would probably be utterly repulsed by all of this, but in truth I love everything about this. I trust Rhett implicitly, and I never really get the sense that he'd actually kill Scarlett or anything like that. But it's not like such a result would be totally outside the realm of possibility either and there are more questions than answers in this chapter and it's wonderful and horrible and exhilarating and crazy and I love this so much I don't even know how to contain myself.
But listen:
Rhett begins his discussion of that day's events by putting some distance between himself and the events of the evening. He calls it a comedy as a matter of fact, "an amusing quality," which is all the more insane because he then describes a scenario that is anything but funny:
1.) the erring woman (being stoned by the village)
2.) the wronged husband (supporting his wife)
3.) the wronged wife (Oh Melly); and, of course
4.) the lover ("looking like a damn fool and wishing he were dead")
Where's the joke in any of this?
I have a pretty good sense of humor and my humor is pretty black and gallows because I was raised on Rhett Butler and Kurt Vonnegut, but even I can see that there's nothing funny in any of this. I suppose he's laughing because there's no irony in any of this. Everything played out exactly as even the simplest observer could have predicted, but I would argue that there's internal irony in this situation, isn't there? There's emotional irony in all of this. Rhett expected Scarlett to chase Ashley, but I don't think he expected to be humiliated. And I certainly don't think he expected it all to hurt so much. He wants and expects Scarlett's everlasting devotion to Ashley to sting a little bit; he expects it to be a paper cut, something that can be covered by a band-aid and easily forgotten. But he's bleeding out instead. Scarlett pricks him in his most vulnerable spot, and he's oozing blood all over and he's drinking to staunch the flow and he's talking to preserve his sanity and he's raging out so he won't lose consciousness. Tragic.
It's interesting to note that he lashes out at Scarlett here, but he doesn't actually insult her. Instead, he confronts her by forcing her to listen to the truth. He's mentioned Scarlett's aversion to the truth more than a few times since they got married, and now he seems to take pleasure in filling her head with truth after truth after truth. He wants her to see what he sees. He wants her to understand what he understands, and he's not going to rest until he's sure that she gets it. You can make an argument of course that his physical/sexual assault at the end of the chapter is the height of his cruelty toward Scarlett, but I really do think the frankness in his words, the honesty he's throwing out at her in this chapter, is his best weapon against his wife. His words aren't particularly shocking, but Scarlett doesn't like to hear them. She wants to escape from Rhett and the things he's saying, but he's not about to let her wiggle out of the room.
He's so mad he gets Biblical on Scarlett, taunting her for lusting in her heart after Ashley. The allusion is lost on Scarlett because she hasn't cracked a bible since, well, ever. Rhett, on the other hand, seems to read the bible a lot. He's got a Sky Masterson-esque mastery of the good book, and he's so well versed in the New Testament that you'd start to wonder if he trained for the priesthood at some point in his life. Anyway, take note that Matthew 5:28 might seem to be an on-the-nose verse for Scarlett's situation, but that particular parable of Christ is actually an admonishment for men to stop lusting in their hearts after women. Even Rhett cannot readily think of an example in which a woman lusted after a man the way that Scarlett lusts after Ashley. This is a case of first impression as we used to call it back in law school, and Rhett seems almost utterly perplexed by the novelty of a wife loving another woman's husband so much that it blots out her good judgment.
Anyway, Rhett starts telling the truth about Ashley and Scarlett. And then he starts telling the truth about himself for the first time.
"And I was cast out because my coarse ardors were too much for your refinement--because you didn't want any more children. How bad that made me feel, dear heart! How it cut me!"
This is the very first time Rhett has ever admitted that Scarlett's behavior has hurt him. He's been pretending that Scarlett's celibacy is no big deal. He's been pretending that he's barely noticed the rejection, but now we see that he's been quietly nursing his pain and going mad. The first time I read GWTW I took him at his word. I assumed that he'd been tired of Scarlett for a while and that he was quite content to get his sexual fulfillment from the prostitutes at Belle's sporting house. But now he actually admits that he's howling at the moon this whole time.
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I'm going to Atlanta in a few weeks. And while I'm there, I'm going to spend half my time visiting GWTW sights in Jonesboro and downtown Atlanta and over toward the Flint River where Tara would have been located. The other half of my time will be spent at Warm Springs, where I will tour FDR's little White House because I'm a nerd and a history buff and can't think of anything cooler to do with a lost weekend in Georgia. I don't know if you watched Ken Burn's Roosevelt documentary series when it aired a few months ago, but even if you didn't I'm sure you've heard somewhere down the line about the weirdness of Eleanor and Franklin's marriage. They had six children together, but they were fifth cousins and she hated sex, and eventually she found out that FDR was having an affair with her secretary and for a few months it seems like the two of them were headed toward a divorce.
But they stayed together.
Eventually they decided to stay together.
And they went on to do amazing things. They went forth and were brilliant, as my old English professor at Mizzou Anne Mack used to say. They were marvelous. They were the real deal, the liberal dynamic duo, and between the two of them they invented the modern, fair American democracy. I love them to pieces. But their marriage sucked.
It sucked.
Everybody knew it was weird. Even they knew it was weird. They rarely spent any time together, even while he was president and he carried on his own affairs while she....well, I don't exactly know what is rumor and what is fact when it comes to Eleanor Roosevelt's life. She might have had love affairs with men and women over the years, but nobody has ever hinted at the idea that she wasted any of her romantic love on Franklin. They were barely friends, as a matter of fact.
And perhaps that was for the best.
Perhaps that's all any of us can hope for, when you get right down to it. You can't control who you love, after all.
The heart wants what it wants.
And nobody knows that better than Rhett Butler.
He doesn't want to want Scarlett any more. He wants to be able to walk away and leave her alone once and for all, but he can't do it. He can't quit her. Even after all of this, he still can't quit her. He should be utterly disgusted and annoyed with her now, but even as he rains bitter tirades of truth down on her you get the sense that he can't decide whether he wants to crush her head together like a walnut or make sweet, sweet love to her until she forgets all about Ashley. He thinks she's a child because she's hanging on to her love of Ashley, and as this conversation evolves you can tell that there's a part of him that wants to use sex to turn her into a woman. I'm not even sure that it's a real idea in his mind. I'm not sure he knows what he wants to do until he's actually doing it. Frankly, I think Rhett is so drunk and so angry in this chapter that at some point all his rationality and reason is replaced by nothing but biology, nothing but chemistry. Rhett Butler the cool husband has been replaced by Rhett Butler the riverboat gambler who in turn has been replaced by Rhett Butler the sexually frustrated alpha male animal, and this person (this stranger) is finally pushed aside by Rhett Butler the highly volatile chemical compound. His earlier behavior was fueled by anger and rage, but that changed into lust which changed into nothing more than a few highly combustible compounds.
It's like nuclear fusion, that's what this is like.
He implodes from within like Little Man or Fat Boy, and he's so big and strong and his rage is moving so fast that it quickly overtakes him and Scarlett. Rhett was nothing but collateral damage in the last chapter, but now he's a bomb in his own right and the fall out from his explosion eventually shakes Scarlett's foundation to the core and the aftershocks are so powerful and unpredictable Scarlett doesn't understand the full extent of the blast until the final chapter of the novel.
But for all his power and all his passion, I think Rhett's words in this chapter also reveal the fatal flaws in his thinking:
"We are both scoundrels, Scarlett," he says, in those wonderfully tense moments before he carries her up the stairs "...we could have been happy, for I loved you and I know you..."
But he's wrong. I don't think he and Scarlett could have ever really been happy together. Plus, isn't it interesting that Rhett still guards his heart by using the past tense here? His words and actions seem to point to a present tense love but he hides behind loved instead of being honest, because he's still too afraid that Scarlett will reject him outright. He's pretending to be past it all. He's pretending he's over it. He's pretending she can no longer hurt him, he's pretending he's walled off and closed-off and too cool for school, and I don't blame him for trying to protect himself because Scarlett can be vicious. And I don't think that his honesty in this moment would have changed Scarlett's mind because Scarlett doesn't give a shit about any of this. He's confessing his past feelings for his own benefit and MM is throwing it all out there for the reader's benefit, but none of this is for Scarlett's benefit because she's not ready to listen. As they say in Rhett Butler's New Testament, "if any man have ears to hear, let him hear,"
Scarlett is a smart lady and a wonderful protagonist, but she is not a good listener. She has very low emotional intelligence and things that other women might notice based on intuition and understanding seem to go right over her head. As a matter of fact, even after Rhett begins his sexual onslaught on the stairs, Scarlett's mind seems to resist comprehension. He comes at her so fast and with so much force her mind begins to blur at the edges, and I think it's telling that Scarlett's mind seems to go blank with darkness at this moment. We expect clarity. We expect illumination. We expect that Scarlett will finally be able to translate Rhett's desires into something we can understand, but instead "she was darkness and he was darkness and there had never been anything before this time, only darkness and his lips upon her."
Scarlett tries to speak, but he kisses her to stop her from speaking because even drunk Rhett Butler is smart enough to realize that words will only ruin the moment. So instead of more jibes and crazy talk, MM provides us with a list of Scarlett's internal feelings as they rush by:
* Joy
* Fear
*Madness
*Excitement
*Surrender
And what does it all mean?
****************************
I don't know, guys.
I don't know what happened once they reached Scarlett's bedroom. I don't think there was much more talking between the two of them, that's for sure. I don't think Rhett took a break and asked Scarlett's permission before he had sex with her, and we know for sure that they had sex because Scarlett winds up pregnant from this very night. And at any rate, in later parts of the novel Rhett himself looks back on this night as something shameful, and it certainly is easy to assume that he took her by force at least once.
But I'm not certain about any of this. I'm not sure. And I would also argue that Rhett's disgust with his behavior on this night might hinge more on his regrettable loss of control than on anything unlawful. And yet on the next morning when Scarlett wakes up, she says that "he had humbled her, hurt her, used her brutally through a wild mad night and she had gloried in it." But while I might think I know what that means, I think it's important to remember that the things that women of my generation find boring and run-of-the-mill were totally scandalous to MM and were outrageous and unacceptable to women of Scarlett's generation. Sex in the time of Beyonce and Kim Kardashian means one thing, but sex in the 1930's meant something different, and sex in the Victoria era meant...Jesus, I don't even know what. But I know that we've got so many (too many?) items on the sex buffett menu these days, and most of those dishes were too spicy and outlandish for the women who came before us. Like....I had chicken tikka masala and Taj Mahal beer for dinner last night, but those dishes didn't come to the US until the 1970s and Scarlett would have flipped out if she'd ever seen anything like that on her plate, if you know what I mean and I think you do.
So...I mean, I don't know. Rhett and Scarlett had sex and Scarlett certainly seems to enjoy some part of it, but I don't know if she explicitly consented to any of what went down. For all I know he locked her to the bedpost and spanked her 50 Shades style, but I don't know that Scarlett would go in for that sort of thing, honestly. So what did happen? Well, let's look at our options:
1.) Scarlett continues to protest vocally and Rhett continues to force himself on her over the course of the night. This is the ickiest option, to be sure.
2.) Scarlett eventually gives up her protest, and decides to surrender when he overpowers her because she knows there's no point to fighting him. In the end she enjoys it, but maybe she didn't enjoy it while it was happening.
3.) Something along the lines of what the wonderful Submit Guess casually tossed out in her fanfiction chapter back in 2009. Have I mentioned that this scene set my world on fire when I read it the first time? It was like I'd died and gone to lust heaven. This is my favorite take on what happened once Scarlett and Rhett got up stairs that night. He might have carried her upstairs and he might have slammed the door shut when they got to her bedroom, but once they got inside they were equals. They were partners in mutual sexual destruction, an idea that makes my toes curl with delight.
4.) What if they got upstairs and they brutalized each other? And what if Scarlett eventually gets the upper hand? Yes, Rhett is a very powerful man and he's dominating and intimidating, but Scarlett is just as formidable, isn't she? She's a force to be reckoned with and I think it's possible that our girl found a way to turn the tables on him. Even if she didn't realize she was doing it at the time.
That's probably my favorite idea of their bedroom adventure. If Rhett had been there in the morning or if he'd materialized sometime that day, being normal and cool I would assume that Scarlett simply lay there while he did his dirty work. But not only isn't Rhett cool with whatever went down, he stays out of their house for two whole days. And yes, you could argue that he stayed away from Scarlett because he was ashamed of what he'd done, because he was afraid to face-up to his own conduct, but when he does come back you get the distinct feeling that he's afraid of her.
He shows up in her bedroom looking good ("freshly barbered, shaved and massaged (?), and he was sober, but his eyes were bloodshot and his face puffy from drink."), but he greets her in a weirdly formal manner. He's trying to keep it all cool and casual so he can pretend the other night was just one of those things (*cough cough*), and Scarlett is so surprised by his suddenly aloof behavior she doesn't even notice how strangely he's acting. "And now he was back," Scarlett tells us, "insulting, sardonic, out of reach." He's cool and distant and apologetic because he feels guilty about what he forced her to do (*ahem*), but also because he doesn't know what she's going to do or say now that he's in her room once again. He's revisiting the scene of his crime, but he's not being honest about what really went down. This whole thing pisses Scarlett off (of course), but when she looks up at him it's still clear to everybody in the world except Scarlett herself that this man would die to hear her say something nice right here and right now.
For all of Rhett's masculine power, there are moments when he's nothing but a scared little boy and this is one of them. Scarlett looks up at him and his eyes are glittering with "that old, puzzling, watchful glint...keen, eager, a though he hung on her next words, hoping they would be--what was he hoping?"
He's hoping for love, Scarlett. That's all he's hoping for. That's all any of us are hoping for in this big, bad world.
Sunday, November 23, 2014
Chapter 53: "Ashley hasn't had a birthday party since--"
And....here we go.
This is what we've all been waiting for, isn't it? The first time I read GWTW, all those years ago, I could tell by this point that MM was leading us toward something. Something big. But I had absolutely no idea what that something was going to entail. I had no idea where she was taking us or why she was taking us there, but I was in such a hurry to ride with her that I stayed up all night reading. And this was during my high school years, you guys. I've always been something of a bookworm, but until I read GWTW I'd never picked up a story that I couldn't put down when my eyelids grew heavy or something good came on MTV.
But Scarlett and Rhett and Melly and Ashley were something different. This story was a radical departure from everything that had come before, which is saying quite a lot because I didn't read GWTW until after I'd read Romeo and Juliet, Gore Vidal's American History series, Dubliners, Their Eyes Were Watching God, and The Canterbury Tales. I always loved Gore Vidal's style and I enjoy Shakespeare more now that I've set my own hand at writing than I ever did as a spoiled American teenager, but in the history of English-language fiction nobody has ever wrapped up the threads of a plot the way MM does in the final chapters of GWTW. And she has set the stage so well, hasn't she? All four of our major characters has played the hero, the villain, the fool, and the loyalist by this part in the novel, and their lives are so interconnected we cannot imagine how any of this can change.
But we know it must.
We know it.
We can taste it, the same way you can taste rain in the air in the summer even before you hear the first rumble of thunder. I was trying to convince my sister the other day that MM crafts the first 2/3 of GWTW like a chess game because, you know, she moves the pieces around on the board until everything is strategically arranged just in time for the end game. My sister didn't agree with me.
"Actually, I think it's more like she...I don't know. Like she spent the first parts of the novel setting a beautiful table and now it's time for her to invite a bunch of crazy people in for dinner."
We're both right, I think. Either way, MM has set the scene beautifully over the course of the novel. MM's Atlanta is a living, breathing world full of people we probably know better than our neighbors, but she's such a genius that in all that scene setting she has never once let us forget the love quadrangle that is at the heart of this novel. And after nearly a decade of the four of them almost studiously avoiding conflict, there's too much tension now. Ashley has privately (and unwittingly) cuckolded Rhett in private, and now Mr. Wilkes and Mrs. Butler are going to accidentally humiliate Rhett and Melly in public.
This day has been coming for a long time.
A long, long, long time.
And now, finally, here we are.
So Ashley is having a birthday party.
Another birthday party. Happy birthday Ashley! I think it's so interesting that MM bookends most of the action of GWTW between two of Ashley's birthday parties. Ashley as a character so rarely does anything at all. He's a boring guy, a family man, and he doesn't own any brothels and he doesn't gamble or drink to excess, and he's unremarkable in practically every way. But Scarlett is obsessed with him. She's still obsessed with him. So although the reader can't help but be attracted to Rhett, there's a perverse logic to the notion that Scarlett's social downfall and personal destruction occurs because of the events surrounding Ashley's birthday party. Anyway, it's Ashley's birthday and he's a pillar in the community in addition to being a pillar in the novel, so Melly's throwing him a huge surprise party.
And Scarlett, Melly, India, Aunt Pitty, and Good Old Archie are largely in charge of decorating the party. That's a crowd of five which is a large number considering how small the Wilkes house is supposed to be. Plus, of the five people working on the decorations, one of them is the witless Pitty and the other two are Scarlett's sworn enemies. Has Scarlett forgotten how much Archie and India hate her? And, for all that Scarlett thinks of him as a desperado and a "smelly old hill-billy," Archie is true blue devoted to Melly. In fact, he's so devoted to her that MM has India remind us all about his adoration for the Wilkes family:
"I think he'd really like for somebody to insult you, so he could kill them to show his respect for you."
Melly blushes, but she knows it's true. And we know it's true. Which is what makes the way all of this plays out so very fascinating. Because you could argue, of course, that India is wrong, that Archie's devotion doesn't extend that far because he doesn't actually kill Scarlett even after he sees her hugging Ashley. But while Archie doesn't kill Scarlett with his own hands, he does hustle right off to tell Rhett what he saw and I'd be willing to bet that Archie only did this because he assumed that Rhett would kill both Scarlett and Ashley.
****************
I love GWTW the movie, but in my opinion neither Leslie Howard nor Vivian Leigh does justice to Scarlett and Ashley's big scene of nostalgia. Of course there are limitations to the emotions you can convey on screen and I don't think the directors of GWTW were particularly ambitious when it comes to all the little tricks Hollywood throws out there to jolt the audience into feeling whatever characters on the screen are feeling, so it's probably not LH's or VL's fault. But the two of them don't have much chemistry, and this is fine for the earlier scenes when it's all about sex and lust. But you never get the impression that there's a meeting of the minds when they're speaking their lines in this scene; you never get the sense that they understand each other. MM makes it very clear that Scarlett and Ashley's sexual tension is fading into friendship during this scene, but in the movie there's nothing to indicate to us that their embrace wouldn't have turned into more if they hadn't been caught by India and Aunt Pitty. We haven't been given any reason to believe that Scarlett is no longer madly in love with Ashley in the movie up to this point. By contrast, they do a magnificent job of depicting Ilsa Lund's ambiguous feelings and love for both Rick and Viktor in Casablanca, yet you never get the feeling that Scarlett is changing her mind at this point in GWTW.
Still a great film though, right?
Alright, the last time we saw Ashley he was bitching about Scarlett sleeping with Rhett, right? Well, he's no longer as angry about the Butler marriage as he seemed to be in the last chapter. Oddly enough, Ashley even goes out of his way to align himself with Rhett in this chapter, smiling as he reminds Scarlett that he and Rhett are "fundamentally alike." I wonder what's behind his change? I suppose you could say that Ashley's reversal is a weakness in the narrative and that MM has him switch up just because she wanted him to, but I disagree. I think she extinguishes Ashley's hatred in this scene because his change of heart reminds us that 1.) Ashley is a human being who changes his mind just like the rest of us human beings and 2.) that we have absolutely no idea what in the world is happening behind closed doors at the Wilkes' residence.
Which is to say, Ashley may have been snacking sour grapes in the last chapter because he was dealing with sexual frustration or some sort. I think it's safe to say that between Ashley and Melly you could say---actually, I don't even want to say it. It's sort of icky for me to pry into the sexual affairs of the Wilkes family, isn't it? MM purposefully side-steps frank sexual discussions and an immature reader could be excused from assuming that even Scarlett and Rhett only had sex a few times, but I would also argue that while MM avoids a discussion of sex for the sake of sex, she also seems quite comfortable addressing the consequences of sex. Which is to say, MM doesn't talk about what happens between the sheets, but she does discuss babies and pregnancy and, as I said in my last post, Scarlett certainly seems to think that sex=pregnancy.
Right?
So while we know for sure that Scarlett and Rhett hooked up a few times, Melly and Ashley probably haven't done the deed since Beau was born. And that boy is 8 or 9 by this point in the story, which is a good enough reason for Ashley to have been in such a bad mood in the last chapter. And if stuffy, stiff, holier-than-thou Ashley has been driven to madness and hatred by the absence of sex, then what on earth is Scarlett's sexual prohibition going to do to Rhett?
***************
Actually though, nobody in Atlanta thinks about what any of this is going to do to Rhett.
Even Scarlett doesn't think about Rhett except as an after thought, and she lives with him! Rhett was my first concern when I read about Scarlett and Ashley getting busted by the Keystone Cops, mostly because he's my dream man but also because he's so unpredictable and crazy I had no idea how he was going to react to all of this. I genuinely feared for Scarlett's safety as I read about her walking up the steps in their empty home, which is fascinating because up to this point Rhett hasn't done anything remotely violent to Scarlett. As a matter of fact,we haven't actually seen him lose control in anyway, although we have heard rumors about the murders he's committed outside the pages of the narrative. We've seen laughing Rhett and quiet Rhett and exhausted Rhett and patriotic Rhett and fatherly Rhett and prisoner Rhett and good son Rhett and bad son Rhett and rich Rhett and boyfriend Rhett and friend Rhett and lover Rhett and honeymoon Rhett, but this our first opportunity to see angry Rhett.
But if nothing else, to this point Rhett Butler has been predictably unpredictable. That's part of his charm, isn't it? We know him well by this point, but in reality we don't know him at all. We like him and we trust him, but we don't know who he really is or what he's really like deep down. Every time we get a glimpse of his internal world he either walls himself off immediately or buries the truth in lies, and we cannot read him even after all these years. A lot of people might link Rhett's poker face to his poker career, but I think MM has shown us that Rhett probably started concealing his feelings in childhood. It couldn't have been easy growing up on the Charleston Battery under the thumb of a father who clearly hated everything about him, and I think Rhett learned early on to disguise his feelings or to stop having feelings altogether or, even better, that's probably how he learned to smile so convincingly in moments of distress. That's sort of the only thing we know about Rhett, isn't it? That's his only poker tell that we can decode even at this late date: if he's smiling, something truly terrible is happening.
Anyway, Rhett knocks before he enters Scarlett's room. And then "he entered and closed the door." Now, keep in mind that this entire conversation occurs upstairs in Scarlett's enormous mansion, and he could have very easily kept the door open most likely since all the servants are keeping their distances from Scarlett's room, but he closes the door behind him anyway. Why?
I think Rhett seeks privacy in this moment because he knows he's going to have to give Scarlett a pep talk in order to get her out of bed. The entire town of Atlanta knows that Scarlett got caught playing kiss face with Ashley that afternoon, but Rhett seems to believe it's important that nobody besides the two of them realizes that Scarlett is terrified. As he says: "While I may endure a trollop for a wife, I won't endure a coward," and I'm still not exactly sure why bravery means so much to him. But it does. He doesn't care if his wife is caught smacking lips with another man, but the idea of Scarlett staying home when everybody expects her to stay home and be guilty is too much for him to take.
Rhett keeps his cool for the most part throughout the rest of this chapter, but as he helps Scarlett get dressed for the party, he seems to enjoy hurting her. His movements and his gestures become increasingly violence, but it's pretty difficult for me to decide if his rage is building steadily inside of him as he interacts with Scarlett in her bedroom and then jerks her elbow and leaves a bruise as he guides her into Miss Melly's party or if he's already blind with anger when he walks into the room and is merely squeezing it down and holding it in until the party is over and he's back home and can finally let all his emotions brim over.
It's also interesting to note that even during this conversation, Rhett is still holding Scarlett at arm's length and he never once comments on his own feelings. He's pissed on behalf of Bonnie and the other kids, and his pissed at Scarlett because of what he thinks she's done to Melly, but he never even alludes to what he's thinking or feeling about any of this. Probably because he doesn't want to reveal too much, but also because, quite probably, he's feeling so many emotions he doesn't even know what to think.
Poor Rhett.
This is what we've all been waiting for, isn't it? The first time I read GWTW, all those years ago, I could tell by this point that MM was leading us toward something. Something big. But I had absolutely no idea what that something was going to entail. I had no idea where she was taking us or why she was taking us there, but I was in such a hurry to ride with her that I stayed up all night reading. And this was during my high school years, you guys. I've always been something of a bookworm, but until I read GWTW I'd never picked up a story that I couldn't put down when my eyelids grew heavy or something good came on MTV.
But Scarlett and Rhett and Melly and Ashley were something different. This story was a radical departure from everything that had come before, which is saying quite a lot because I didn't read GWTW until after I'd read Romeo and Juliet, Gore Vidal's American History series, Dubliners, Their Eyes Were Watching God, and The Canterbury Tales. I always loved Gore Vidal's style and I enjoy Shakespeare more now that I've set my own hand at writing than I ever did as a spoiled American teenager, but in the history of English-language fiction nobody has ever wrapped up the threads of a plot the way MM does in the final chapters of GWTW. And she has set the stage so well, hasn't she? All four of our major characters has played the hero, the villain, the fool, and the loyalist by this part in the novel, and their lives are so interconnected we cannot imagine how any of this can change.
But we know it must.
We know it.
We can taste it, the same way you can taste rain in the air in the summer even before you hear the first rumble of thunder. I was trying to convince my sister the other day that MM crafts the first 2/3 of GWTW like a chess game because, you know, she moves the pieces around on the board until everything is strategically arranged just in time for the end game. My sister didn't agree with me.
"Actually, I think it's more like she...I don't know. Like she spent the first parts of the novel setting a beautiful table and now it's time for her to invite a bunch of crazy people in for dinner."
We're both right, I think. Either way, MM has set the scene beautifully over the course of the novel. MM's Atlanta is a living, breathing world full of people we probably know better than our neighbors, but she's such a genius that in all that scene setting she has never once let us forget the love quadrangle that is at the heart of this novel. And after nearly a decade of the four of them almost studiously avoiding conflict, there's too much tension now. Ashley has privately (and unwittingly) cuckolded Rhett in private, and now Mr. Wilkes and Mrs. Butler are going to accidentally humiliate Rhett and Melly in public.
This day has been coming for a long time.
A long, long, long time.
And now, finally, here we are.
So Ashley is having a birthday party.
Another birthday party. Happy birthday Ashley! I think it's so interesting that MM bookends most of the action of GWTW between two of Ashley's birthday parties. Ashley as a character so rarely does anything at all. He's a boring guy, a family man, and he doesn't own any brothels and he doesn't gamble or drink to excess, and he's unremarkable in practically every way. But Scarlett is obsessed with him. She's still obsessed with him. So although the reader can't help but be attracted to Rhett, there's a perverse logic to the notion that Scarlett's social downfall and personal destruction occurs because of the events surrounding Ashley's birthday party. Anyway, it's Ashley's birthday and he's a pillar in the community in addition to being a pillar in the novel, so Melly's throwing him a huge surprise party.
And Scarlett, Melly, India, Aunt Pitty, and Good Old Archie are largely in charge of decorating the party. That's a crowd of five which is a large number considering how small the Wilkes house is supposed to be. Plus, of the five people working on the decorations, one of them is the witless Pitty and the other two are Scarlett's sworn enemies. Has Scarlett forgotten how much Archie and India hate her? And, for all that Scarlett thinks of him as a desperado and a "smelly old hill-billy," Archie is true blue devoted to Melly. In fact, he's so devoted to her that MM has India remind us all about his adoration for the Wilkes family:
"I think he'd really like for somebody to insult you, so he could kill them to show his respect for you."
Melly blushes, but she knows it's true. And we know it's true. Which is what makes the way all of this plays out so very fascinating. Because you could argue, of course, that India is wrong, that Archie's devotion doesn't extend that far because he doesn't actually kill Scarlett even after he sees her hugging Ashley. But while Archie doesn't kill Scarlett with his own hands, he does hustle right off to tell Rhett what he saw and I'd be willing to bet that Archie only did this because he assumed that Rhett would kill both Scarlett and Ashley.
****************
I love GWTW the movie, but in my opinion neither Leslie Howard nor Vivian Leigh does justice to Scarlett and Ashley's big scene of nostalgia. Of course there are limitations to the emotions you can convey on screen and I don't think the directors of GWTW were particularly ambitious when it comes to all the little tricks Hollywood throws out there to jolt the audience into feeling whatever characters on the screen are feeling, so it's probably not LH's or VL's fault. But the two of them don't have much chemistry, and this is fine for the earlier scenes when it's all about sex and lust. But you never get the impression that there's a meeting of the minds when they're speaking their lines in this scene; you never get the sense that they understand each other. MM makes it very clear that Scarlett and Ashley's sexual tension is fading into friendship during this scene, but in the movie there's nothing to indicate to us that their embrace wouldn't have turned into more if they hadn't been caught by India and Aunt Pitty. We haven't been given any reason to believe that Scarlett is no longer madly in love with Ashley in the movie up to this point. By contrast, they do a magnificent job of depicting Ilsa Lund's ambiguous feelings and love for both Rick and Viktor in Casablanca, yet you never get the feeling that Scarlett is changing her mind at this point in GWTW.
Still a great film though, right?
Alright, the last time we saw Ashley he was bitching about Scarlett sleeping with Rhett, right? Well, he's no longer as angry about the Butler marriage as he seemed to be in the last chapter. Oddly enough, Ashley even goes out of his way to align himself with Rhett in this chapter, smiling as he reminds Scarlett that he and Rhett are "fundamentally alike." I wonder what's behind his change? I suppose you could say that Ashley's reversal is a weakness in the narrative and that MM has him switch up just because she wanted him to, but I disagree. I think she extinguishes Ashley's hatred in this scene because his change of heart reminds us that 1.) Ashley is a human being who changes his mind just like the rest of us human beings and 2.) that we have absolutely no idea what in the world is happening behind closed doors at the Wilkes' residence.
Which is to say, Ashley may have been snacking sour grapes in the last chapter because he was dealing with sexual frustration or some sort. I think it's safe to say that between Ashley and Melly you could say---actually, I don't even want to say it. It's sort of icky for me to pry into the sexual affairs of the Wilkes family, isn't it? MM purposefully side-steps frank sexual discussions and an immature reader could be excused from assuming that even Scarlett and Rhett only had sex a few times, but I would also argue that while MM avoids a discussion of sex for the sake of sex, she also seems quite comfortable addressing the consequences of sex. Which is to say, MM doesn't talk about what happens between the sheets, but she does discuss babies and pregnancy and, as I said in my last post, Scarlett certainly seems to think that sex=pregnancy.
Right?
So while we know for sure that Scarlett and Rhett hooked up a few times, Melly and Ashley probably haven't done the deed since Beau was born. And that boy is 8 or 9 by this point in the story, which is a good enough reason for Ashley to have been in such a bad mood in the last chapter. And if stuffy, stiff, holier-than-thou Ashley has been driven to madness and hatred by the absence of sex, then what on earth is Scarlett's sexual prohibition going to do to Rhett?
***************
Actually though, nobody in Atlanta thinks about what any of this is going to do to Rhett.
Even Scarlett doesn't think about Rhett except as an after thought, and she lives with him! Rhett was my first concern when I read about Scarlett and Ashley getting busted by the Keystone Cops, mostly because he's my dream man but also because he's so unpredictable and crazy I had no idea how he was going to react to all of this. I genuinely feared for Scarlett's safety as I read about her walking up the steps in their empty home, which is fascinating because up to this point Rhett hasn't done anything remotely violent to Scarlett. As a matter of fact,we haven't actually seen him lose control in anyway, although we have heard rumors about the murders he's committed outside the pages of the narrative. We've seen laughing Rhett and quiet Rhett and exhausted Rhett and patriotic Rhett and fatherly Rhett and prisoner Rhett and good son Rhett and bad son Rhett and rich Rhett and boyfriend Rhett and friend Rhett and lover Rhett and honeymoon Rhett, but this our first opportunity to see angry Rhett.
But if nothing else, to this point Rhett Butler has been predictably unpredictable. That's part of his charm, isn't it? We know him well by this point, but in reality we don't know him at all. We like him and we trust him, but we don't know who he really is or what he's really like deep down. Every time we get a glimpse of his internal world he either walls himself off immediately or buries the truth in lies, and we cannot read him even after all these years. A lot of people might link Rhett's poker face to his poker career, but I think MM has shown us that Rhett probably started concealing his feelings in childhood. It couldn't have been easy growing up on the Charleston Battery under the thumb of a father who clearly hated everything about him, and I think Rhett learned early on to disguise his feelings or to stop having feelings altogether or, even better, that's probably how he learned to smile so convincingly in moments of distress. That's sort of the only thing we know about Rhett, isn't it? That's his only poker tell that we can decode even at this late date: if he's smiling, something truly terrible is happening.
Anyway, Rhett knocks before he enters Scarlett's room. And then "he entered and closed the door." Now, keep in mind that this entire conversation occurs upstairs in Scarlett's enormous mansion, and he could have very easily kept the door open most likely since all the servants are keeping their distances from Scarlett's room, but he closes the door behind him anyway. Why?
I think Rhett seeks privacy in this moment because he knows he's going to have to give Scarlett a pep talk in order to get her out of bed. The entire town of Atlanta knows that Scarlett got caught playing kiss face with Ashley that afternoon, but Rhett seems to believe it's important that nobody besides the two of them realizes that Scarlett is terrified. As he says: "While I may endure a trollop for a wife, I won't endure a coward," and I'm still not exactly sure why bravery means so much to him. But it does. He doesn't care if his wife is caught smacking lips with another man, but the idea of Scarlett staying home when everybody expects her to stay home and be guilty is too much for him to take.
Rhett keeps his cool for the most part throughout the rest of this chapter, but as he helps Scarlett get dressed for the party, he seems to enjoy hurting her. His movements and his gestures become increasingly violence, but it's pretty difficult for me to decide if his rage is building steadily inside of him as he interacts with Scarlett in her bedroom and then jerks her elbow and leaves a bruise as he guides her into Miss Melly's party or if he's already blind with anger when he walks into the room and is merely squeezing it down and holding it in until the party is over and he's back home and can finally let all his emotions brim over.
It's also interesting to note that even during this conversation, Rhett is still holding Scarlett at arm's length and he never once comments on his own feelings. He's pissed on behalf of Bonnie and the other kids, and his pissed at Scarlett because of what he thinks she's done to Melly, but he never even alludes to what he's thinking or feeling about any of this. Probably because he doesn't want to reveal too much, but also because, quite probably, he's feeling so many emotions he doesn't even know what to think.
Poor Rhett.
Sunday, November 16, 2014
Chapter 52: "You're too anxious to make money and too fond of bullying people":Denouements, climaxes, and falling actions in GWTW.
Let's go back to high school tonight, shall we?
According to Merriam-Webster online, the denouement is the "final outcome of the main dramatic complication in a literary work," with the classic example included in the online definition being from Romeo and Juliet ("In the play's denouement, the two lovers kill themselves.."). I've tried over the years to put my hands on precisely what I think the true denouement is in GWTW, but each and every effort has heretofore come up empty and deeply unsatisfying. Mostly because I've never been able to decide on which of Scarlett's dramatic complications is the actual main complication.
I love Casablanca almost as much as I love GWTW, but for all the mysteries and chaos and action that occurs during Casablanca even a first-time viewer of the movie has no trouble correctly identifying the airport scene (i.e. "here's looking at you kid") as the denouement.
Same with Romeo and Juliet, Richard III, The Lion in Winter, Forrest Gump, and any given episode of The Young and the Restless. Every reasonably well-edited reality show has a readily discernible plot, and even a teenager could probably correctly locate the moment when the momentum of the narrative shifts and the end result becomes inevitable. But GWTW is not only about one thing. The movie focuses on the Scarlett/Rhett relationship and their sticky, mutually destructive marriage is the main complication in Scarlett's life, but I don't think this depiction is accurate for MM's book. GWTW isn't like Romeo and Juliet. It isn't about one big thing, and it certainly isn't only about the Scarlett/Rhett love story. Instead it's about several major things. And, more to the point, it's about Scarlett's relationships with the other three main characters. As we saw in Chapter 51, every aspect of Scarlett's life is connected to every other thing that happens in a manner that is more cosmic and less practical than even MM would probably care to admit. The Butlers and the Wilkes' are bound together because they all live in Atlanta and have known each other for a very long time and Ashley works at the mills and all of that, but they're also connected on a different plane (although I'm not sure if it's higher or lower, to tell you the truth). So for all that Ashley has tried to keep his distance from Scarlett, the mere mention of his hatred of Rhett is enough to send Scarlett off into a vow of celibacy, which is enough to make Rhett go ape with insecurity, which is enough to cause him to try to forget all about Scarlett and focus all his attention on Bonnie which....
Anyway, we'll get to all of that soon enough. But for now, let's just focus on the way MM set the scene that opens Chapter 52, the scene that I would argue could very well be the true denouement of GWTW. MM usually doesn't spend too much time setting down the details of her scenes, and she definitely doesn't linger on descriptions, but in my mind's eye there's something almost charmingly Valazquez-esque about the way she's placed the Butler clan around the sitting room on this rainy afternoon.
Wade: lonely, moping, bored, picking up books (instruments of learning that are misplaced here, since this scene does not take place in a library) and letting them bang to the ground. Poor lil Wade, ya'll.
Ella: busy in the corner with her dolls. So while Wade is bored, Ella is boring. Does Ella have a speaking anywhere in GWTW? I don't think she does. Even Beau gets a few lines, doesn't he?
Scarlett: sitting at her secretary adding up a long column of figures.
Rhett: lying on the floor(!), swinging his watch by it chain (!), just out of Bonnie's reach (!).
And that's....okay, so I know a lot of people don't think GWTW is a great work of literature, but isn't that a wonderfully subtle piece of foreshadowing? Bonnie Butler will be blessed with every gift except length of years and, of course, a watch is the universal symbol of time in Western art, and isn't it so poignant that this is Rhett's watch and it is being swung by Rhett himself?And over the course of the novel we have seen Rhett say and do a million different things in a million different places, but this is the first time we've heard of him lying down. Scarlett and Rhett are married, but in the few scenes MM has given us that take place inside the Butler bedroom Rhett is never sleeping or lying down. But here he's prone, which is also foreshadowing since he'll eventually be knocked down/laid low by Bonnie's death. Everything we need to know about the end of GWTW is here in this room, and everything that happens throughout the rest of the book simply confirms what we already know about Scarlett, Rhett, Ashley, and Melly, doesn't it?
Lovely.
Anyway, moving on quickly, isn't it fun how Wade, Rhett and Scarlett have such very definitions of bravery/courage in this scene? Wade Hampton is a product of post-Civil War Atlanta and he lost his father in the War. Therefore, in his opinion true courage means being severely wounded in battle while fighting against the feds for the CSA. All the bravest men are dead on the alter of their country ("dulce et decorum est..." after all), but I guess Wade thinks that the only heroes are those who actually died while fighting against the Yankees. By contrast, Scarlett is a tough woman who was forged through the fiery crucible of the Reconstruction South, so she has very little patience for Wade's definition of bravery. She always did think Charles Hamilton was a fool, and the reader knows that Wade wasn't anybody's definition of a brave soldier, plus Scarlett instinctively seems to believe that only survivors like Scarlett are truly courageous. After all, everybody can die and will die, but not everybody has the gumption to live.
And as for Rhett....
Well, true to form, Rhett doesn't tip his hand and give us his definition of bravery. Instead he gets in a dig at Scarlett ("He married your mother, didn't he? Well, that's proof enough of heroism."), and then turns his attention elsewhere. I'd argue that Rhett Butler has more physical courage than anybody else in GWTW (except maybe the young Gerald), but he also seems to understand that a willingness to fight isn't really worth much. He doesn't spend much time debating heroism because he's too mature and complex to give much thought to boyish fantasies about courage and fighting. Duels and fighting and gun play and all that other stuff has been a part of his life for so long that you get the sense that he's almost annoyed to think about it.
Anyway, Rhett decides then and there that he's going to start using all his charm and smarm to get back in the good graces of Southern Society. Rhett Butler is a reliable character that we can count on to make the right choices for the right reasons most of the time, so even though I'm pro-Yankee and anti-Confederate and a Northerner and living in Chicago in the 21st century, Rhett's desire to have his children included in Southern Society carries a lot of weight with me. After all, unlike Scarlett and Melly and the rest of our gang, Rhett has spent a lot of time in a lot of different places around the world. He's spent time in California, New York, Paris, and London, and he still seems to believe deep down that Southern Society is the best. Or anyway, he seems to truly believe that Southern Society is the best fit for his family, and who am I to argue with such logic? Besides, Rhett is what the kids today call a boss. He's a guy who understands the world and his place in it, and he always seems to know just what to do to come out ahead, and I think it's incredibly pleasurable to watch him try to concoct a plan to shoehorn Bonnie, Wade, and Ella back into genteel Atlanta's good graces.
Up next....Ashley's birthday party. Laissez le bon temps rouler?
According to Merriam-Webster online, the denouement is the "final outcome of the main dramatic complication in a literary work," with the classic example included in the online definition being from Romeo and Juliet ("In the play's denouement, the two lovers kill themselves.."). I've tried over the years to put my hands on precisely what I think the true denouement is in GWTW, but each and every effort has heretofore come up empty and deeply unsatisfying. Mostly because I've never been able to decide on which of Scarlett's dramatic complications is the actual main complication.
I love Casablanca almost as much as I love GWTW, but for all the mysteries and chaos and action that occurs during Casablanca even a first-time viewer of the movie has no trouble correctly identifying the airport scene (i.e. "here's looking at you kid") as the denouement.
Same with Romeo and Juliet, Richard III, The Lion in Winter, Forrest Gump, and any given episode of The Young and the Restless. Every reasonably well-edited reality show has a readily discernible plot, and even a teenager could probably correctly locate the moment when the momentum of the narrative shifts and the end result becomes inevitable. But GWTW is not only about one thing. The movie focuses on the Scarlett/Rhett relationship and their sticky, mutually destructive marriage is the main complication in Scarlett's life, but I don't think this depiction is accurate for MM's book. GWTW isn't like Romeo and Juliet. It isn't about one big thing, and it certainly isn't only about the Scarlett/Rhett love story. Instead it's about several major things. And, more to the point, it's about Scarlett's relationships with the other three main characters. As we saw in Chapter 51, every aspect of Scarlett's life is connected to every other thing that happens in a manner that is more cosmic and less practical than even MM would probably care to admit. The Butlers and the Wilkes' are bound together because they all live in Atlanta and have known each other for a very long time and Ashley works at the mills and all of that, but they're also connected on a different plane (although I'm not sure if it's higher or lower, to tell you the truth). So for all that Ashley has tried to keep his distance from Scarlett, the mere mention of his hatred of Rhett is enough to send Scarlett off into a vow of celibacy, which is enough to make Rhett go ape with insecurity, which is enough to cause him to try to forget all about Scarlett and focus all his attention on Bonnie which....
Anyway, we'll get to all of that soon enough. But for now, let's just focus on the way MM set the scene that opens Chapter 52, the scene that I would argue could very well be the true denouement of GWTW. MM usually doesn't spend too much time setting down the details of her scenes, and she definitely doesn't linger on descriptions, but in my mind's eye there's something almost charmingly Valazquez-esque about the way she's placed the Butler clan around the sitting room on this rainy afternoon.
Wade: lonely, moping, bored, picking up books (instruments of learning that are misplaced here, since this scene does not take place in a library) and letting them bang to the ground. Poor lil Wade, ya'll.
Ella: busy in the corner with her dolls. So while Wade is bored, Ella is boring. Does Ella have a speaking anywhere in GWTW? I don't think she does. Even Beau gets a few lines, doesn't he?
Scarlett: sitting at her secretary adding up a long column of figures.
Rhett: lying on the floor(!), swinging his watch by it chain (!), just out of Bonnie's reach (!).
And that's....okay, so I know a lot of people don't think GWTW is a great work of literature, but isn't that a wonderfully subtle piece of foreshadowing? Bonnie Butler will be blessed with every gift except length of years and, of course, a watch is the universal symbol of time in Western art, and isn't it so poignant that this is Rhett's watch and it is being swung by Rhett himself?And over the course of the novel we have seen Rhett say and do a million different things in a million different places, but this is the first time we've heard of him lying down. Scarlett and Rhett are married, but in the few scenes MM has given us that take place inside the Butler bedroom Rhett is never sleeping or lying down. But here he's prone, which is also foreshadowing since he'll eventually be knocked down/laid low by Bonnie's death. Everything we need to know about the end of GWTW is here in this room, and everything that happens throughout the rest of the book simply confirms what we already know about Scarlett, Rhett, Ashley, and Melly, doesn't it?
Lovely.
Anyway, moving on quickly, isn't it fun how Wade, Rhett and Scarlett have such very definitions of bravery/courage in this scene? Wade Hampton is a product of post-Civil War Atlanta and he lost his father in the War. Therefore, in his opinion true courage means being severely wounded in battle while fighting against the feds for the CSA. All the bravest men are dead on the alter of their country ("dulce et decorum est..." after all), but I guess Wade thinks that the only heroes are those who actually died while fighting against the Yankees. By contrast, Scarlett is a tough woman who was forged through the fiery crucible of the Reconstruction South, so she has very little patience for Wade's definition of bravery. She always did think Charles Hamilton was a fool, and the reader knows that Wade wasn't anybody's definition of a brave soldier, plus Scarlett instinctively seems to believe that only survivors like Scarlett are truly courageous. After all, everybody can die and will die, but not everybody has the gumption to live.
And as for Rhett....
Well, true to form, Rhett doesn't tip his hand and give us his definition of bravery. Instead he gets in a dig at Scarlett ("He married your mother, didn't he? Well, that's proof enough of heroism."), and then turns his attention elsewhere. I'd argue that Rhett Butler has more physical courage than anybody else in GWTW (except maybe the young Gerald), but he also seems to understand that a willingness to fight isn't really worth much. He doesn't spend much time debating heroism because he's too mature and complex to give much thought to boyish fantasies about courage and fighting. Duels and fighting and gun play and all that other stuff has been a part of his life for so long that you get the sense that he's almost annoyed to think about it.
Anyway, Rhett decides then and there that he's going to start using all his charm and smarm to get back in the good graces of Southern Society. Rhett Butler is a reliable character that we can count on to make the right choices for the right reasons most of the time, so even though I'm pro-Yankee and anti-Confederate and a Northerner and living in Chicago in the 21st century, Rhett's desire to have his children included in Southern Society carries a lot of weight with me. After all, unlike Scarlett and Melly and the rest of our gang, Rhett has spent a lot of time in a lot of different places around the world. He's spent time in California, New York, Paris, and London, and he still seems to believe deep down that Southern Society is the best. Or anyway, he seems to truly believe that Southern Society is the best fit for his family, and who am I to argue with such logic? Besides, Rhett is what the kids today call a boss. He's a guy who understands the world and his place in it, and he always seems to know just what to do to come out ahead, and I think it's incredibly pleasurable to watch him try to concoct a plan to shoehorn Bonnie, Wade, and Ella back into genteel Atlanta's good graces.
Up next....Ashley's birthday party. Laissez le bon temps rouler?
Saturday, November 8, 2014
Chapter 51: "You like dogs, don't you, Scarlett?"
Happy National Novel Writing Month, Everybody!
Chapter 51 is an awfully short chapter, isn't it?
And yet, so much happens. It's a linchpin chapter, one that is replicated almost verbatim in one of the more memorable scenes in the movie, but it's nothing more than a few quick conversations and a couple paragraphs of Scarlett's internal dialogue.
But it's so scandalous, isn't it?
Scarlett doesn't want to get any fatter, so Scarlett doesn't want to give birth to anymore kids. Which means Scarlett has decided that she doesn't want to have sex with Rhett anymore. Or does it? I know absolutely nothing about Victorian era birth control and sex education, but Rhett is the chief investor for Atlanta's most profitable brothel so surely he was well-versed in these matters? He's anti-abortion because old school abortion was so hazardous, but I'm absolutely certain he knows at least a few ways to avoid pregnancy? And if people in 1870s Atlanta didn't know anything about birth control, then how come there's such a huge time gap between Melly's first pregnancy and Melly's final pregnancy?
Unless....
You're not honestly suggesting to me that Melly and Ashley have been faithfully celibate this entire time, are you? Its true that Dr. Meade specifically told Melly she shouldn't have any more children. And it's also true that Ashley and Melly are notoriously straight-laced vanilla folks who never met a rule they didn't adore, but come on. And yes, it's also true that Melly nearly died while she was in child birth with Beau, but are you seriously going to try to convince me that they never slipped up and....
Actually, I don't know anymore. MM gives Melly a little internal dialogue back in Chapter 50 wherein Melly expresses her desire to have a girl. As a matter of fact, Melly "was quite willing to risk her life for another child," but "Ashley would not hear of it." Scarlett knows about Dr. Meade's medical opinion and Scarlett therefore seems to reasonably conclude that Ashley and Melly are abstaining from all sexual relations because of Melly's precarious health, but I'm not so sure about that.
Because you can have sexual relations without having actual sex, can't you?
Rhett is Scarlett's third husband, so she has to know something about sex and what happens in the bedroom and about what does and does not lead to pregnancy. But it's interesting to realize that for all her smarts and wild experiences, Scarlett has a childlike grasp on the realities of sharing a bed with a man. She thinks sex is black-and-white: you're either not having sex at all or you're having sex and are therefore in danger of getting pregnant. Sex is not like that and there's a huge gray area out there of course, but Scarlett doesn't seem to grasp the concept of being physically close to her husband without risking having another child.
I think that's why the conversations with Ashley and Rhett go so poorly. None of these characters have any idea what the others are talking about or why they're talking about it. It reads as high drama, but in fact it's also pure comedy: a series of misunderstandings that ends with every single person unhappy despite their best efforts.
And anyway, what in the hell is going on with Ashley in this chapter? Ashley is usually so cool and calm and detached about everything, but all of a sudden he starts calling Rhett out after Scarlett starts advising him on how best to deal with sick workers ("a couple of licks will cure most any sickness short of a broken leg,"she says in what has to be one of her most carelessly cruel throwaway lines). And Scarlett lets him talk all that trash about Rhett, even though Rhett doesn't have anything to do with her "penny-pinching ways," and then---
Oh, the things Ashley says in this chapter!
What is going on here? Let's lay out Ashley's transgressions here, because this is some real BS.
Mmmmm mmmm mmm!
When did Ashley turn into such a hater? And doesn't he know none of this is true? And, and, and...
I'm not an Ashley Wilkes hater, but I'm not an apologist either. I'm surprised the notoriously dilly-dallying Ashley Wilkes has picked this particular moment--and this particular subject--to assert an opinion. I suppose we're supposed to assume that Ashley is somewhat jealous of Rhett/Scarlett? Ashley has seemed largely content with the trajectory of his life since the opening pages of GWTW, but perhaps he is not quite as happy with his life as we'd previously been led to assume. After all, Ashley has played by all the rules and he's done exactly what society has expected of him, but where has all that obedience gotten him? On the other hand, Rhett Butler has bucked that same society, but somehow he's still a virile millionaire who's living in the biggest house in town and who's shacking up with the very fertile Scarlett. It's simply not fair.
But fair is for children.
And MM knows that. And so does Scarlett. And so does Ashley in his finer moments. GWTW is about a lot of things, but fairness and equality and opportunity are not the morals of this particular story. I would also argue that GWTW is not in the tradition of Survival of the Fittest like Ayn Rand or something similar to that. More than anything, I think MM preaches the twin gospels of flexibility and self-reliance, so in the grand scheme of the novel the "woolen-headed Mr. Wilkes" is always, always, always destined to fail.
C'est la vie, Mr. Wilkes.
But of course, Ashley doesn't know he's in a novel.
And neither does Scarlett, come to think of it.
I don't know where Scarlett thinks she is in this chapter, come to think of it. She has already realized that Rhett isn't like Charles and Frank. He isn't afraid of her. As a matter of fact, there have been more than a few times in this novel when the fearless Scarlett is afraid of him. But she apparently forgets about all of that now that Ashley's meddling bs has revived her spirit. She rushes home to tell Rhett that she's not going to be sleeping with him anymore, and Rhett goes ape.
Oh wait, no he doesn't.
In the movie Rhett goes ape and throws his glass of whiskey against Scarlett's portrait on the wall, but novel Rhett doesn't do any of that. Instead "his eyes began to gleam oddly," and he starts to interrogate Scarlett while wearing his usual cool, pretending as though none of this matters to him except as an academic exercise.
This isn't the first time Rhett's eyes "gleam" but I think his eyes almost perpetually gleam from this chapter until after Bonnie's demise. Interestingly enough, although Rhett Butler is presented to us as an inscrutable poker player, but he does have tells, doesn't he. That's why he's intriguing, even long after you've put down GWTW for the first time. If Rhett really were as blank and empty as Phil Ivey or David Benefield or your average American prep school graduate, he'd be boring as hell. But Rhett does alter his expressions. It's just that it's impossible to decode what the changes in his face actually mean. His eyes gleam oddly. His eyebrows raise. His mouth turns down. He smiles. But it's very hard to put together the puzzle most of the time. I don't blame Scarlett for not understanding Rhett's moods most of the time, actually.
But then again, Scarlett, how do you think your husband is going to react when he realizes you don't want to sleep with him anymore? Particularly since said husband knows this whole situation was prompted by a conversation with your dream man?
Rhett reacts coolly to Scarlett's decision, but we can tell he's pretty pissed about this whole thing. Particularly since he leaves in a huff, threatening and vaguely dangerous as he walks out the door, reminding Scarlett and the reader that:
"If I wanted you, no lock would keep me out."
Oh boy.
Chapter 51 is an awfully short chapter, isn't it?
And yet, so much happens. It's a linchpin chapter, one that is replicated almost verbatim in one of the more memorable scenes in the movie, but it's nothing more than a few quick conversations and a couple paragraphs of Scarlett's internal dialogue.
But it's so scandalous, isn't it?
Scarlett doesn't want to get any fatter, so Scarlett doesn't want to give birth to anymore kids. Which means Scarlett has decided that she doesn't want to have sex with Rhett anymore. Or does it? I know absolutely nothing about Victorian era birth control and sex education, but Rhett is the chief investor for Atlanta's most profitable brothel so surely he was well-versed in these matters? He's anti-abortion because old school abortion was so hazardous, but I'm absolutely certain he knows at least a few ways to avoid pregnancy? And if people in 1870s Atlanta didn't know anything about birth control, then how come there's such a huge time gap between Melly's first pregnancy and Melly's final pregnancy?
Unless....
You're not honestly suggesting to me that Melly and Ashley have been faithfully celibate this entire time, are you? Its true that Dr. Meade specifically told Melly she shouldn't have any more children. And it's also true that Ashley and Melly are notoriously straight-laced vanilla folks who never met a rule they didn't adore, but come on. And yes, it's also true that Melly nearly died while she was in child birth with Beau, but are you seriously going to try to convince me that they never slipped up and....
Actually, I don't know anymore. MM gives Melly a little internal dialogue back in Chapter 50 wherein Melly expresses her desire to have a girl. As a matter of fact, Melly "was quite willing to risk her life for another child," but "Ashley would not hear of it." Scarlett knows about Dr. Meade's medical opinion and Scarlett therefore seems to reasonably conclude that Ashley and Melly are abstaining from all sexual relations because of Melly's precarious health, but I'm not so sure about that.
Because you can have sexual relations without having actual sex, can't you?
Rhett is Scarlett's third husband, so she has to know something about sex and what happens in the bedroom and about what does and does not lead to pregnancy. But it's interesting to realize that for all her smarts and wild experiences, Scarlett has a childlike grasp on the realities of sharing a bed with a man. She thinks sex is black-and-white: you're either not having sex at all or you're having sex and are therefore in danger of getting pregnant. Sex is not like that and there's a huge gray area out there of course, but Scarlett doesn't seem to grasp the concept of being physically close to her husband without risking having another child.
I think that's why the conversations with Ashley and Rhett go so poorly. None of these characters have any idea what the others are talking about or why they're talking about it. It reads as high drama, but in fact it's also pure comedy: a series of misunderstandings that ends with every single person unhappy despite their best efforts.
And anyway, what in the hell is going on with Ashley in this chapter? Ashley is usually so cool and calm and detached about everything, but all of a sudden he starts calling Rhett out after Scarlett starts advising him on how best to deal with sick workers ("a couple of licks will cure most any sickness short of a broken leg,"she says in what has to be one of her most carelessly cruel throwaway lines). And Scarlett lets him talk all that trash about Rhett, even though Rhett doesn't have anything to do with her "penny-pinching ways," and then---
Oh, the things Ashley says in this chapter!
What is going on here? Let's lay out Ashley's transgressions here, because this is some real BS.
- Ashley blames Rhett for...brutalizing Scarlett by his contact.(Whaaat?)
- "Everything he touches he poisons." (Look who's talking, ya'll!
- "He's twisted your thoughts into the same hard path his own run in."
- "Knowing your beauty and your charm are in the keeping of a man who--"
Mmmmm mmmm mmm!
When did Ashley turn into such a hater? And doesn't he know none of this is true? And, and, and...
I'm not an Ashley Wilkes hater, but I'm not an apologist either. I'm surprised the notoriously dilly-dallying Ashley Wilkes has picked this particular moment--and this particular subject--to assert an opinion. I suppose we're supposed to assume that Ashley is somewhat jealous of Rhett/Scarlett? Ashley has seemed largely content with the trajectory of his life since the opening pages of GWTW, but perhaps he is not quite as happy with his life as we'd previously been led to assume. After all, Ashley has played by all the rules and he's done exactly what society has expected of him, but where has all that obedience gotten him? On the other hand, Rhett Butler has bucked that same society, but somehow he's still a virile millionaire who's living in the biggest house in town and who's shacking up with the very fertile Scarlett. It's simply not fair.
But fair is for children.
And MM knows that. And so does Scarlett. And so does Ashley in his finer moments. GWTW is about a lot of things, but fairness and equality and opportunity are not the morals of this particular story. I would also argue that GWTW is not in the tradition of Survival of the Fittest like Ayn Rand or something similar to that. More than anything, I think MM preaches the twin gospels of flexibility and self-reliance, so in the grand scheme of the novel the "woolen-headed Mr. Wilkes" is always, always, always destined to fail.
C'est la vie, Mr. Wilkes.
But of course, Ashley doesn't know he's in a novel.
And neither does Scarlett, come to think of it.
I don't know where Scarlett thinks she is in this chapter, come to think of it. She has already realized that Rhett isn't like Charles and Frank. He isn't afraid of her. As a matter of fact, there have been more than a few times in this novel when the fearless Scarlett is afraid of him. But she apparently forgets about all of that now that Ashley's meddling bs has revived her spirit. She rushes home to tell Rhett that she's not going to be sleeping with him anymore, and Rhett goes ape.
Oh wait, no he doesn't.
In the movie Rhett goes ape and throws his glass of whiskey against Scarlett's portrait on the wall, but novel Rhett doesn't do any of that. Instead "his eyes began to gleam oddly," and he starts to interrogate Scarlett while wearing his usual cool, pretending as though none of this matters to him except as an academic exercise.
This isn't the first time Rhett's eyes "gleam" but I think his eyes almost perpetually gleam from this chapter until after Bonnie's demise. Interestingly enough, although Rhett Butler is presented to us as an inscrutable poker player, but he does have tells, doesn't he. That's why he's intriguing, even long after you've put down GWTW for the first time. If Rhett really were as blank and empty as Phil Ivey or David Benefield or your average American prep school graduate, he'd be boring as hell. But Rhett does alter his expressions. It's just that it's impossible to decode what the changes in his face actually mean. His eyes gleam oddly. His eyebrows raise. His mouth turns down. He smiles. But it's very hard to put together the puzzle most of the time. I don't blame Scarlett for not understanding Rhett's moods most of the time, actually.
But then again, Scarlett, how do you think your husband is going to react when he realizes you don't want to sleep with him anymore? Particularly since said husband knows this whole situation was prompted by a conversation with your dream man?
Rhett reacts coolly to Scarlett's decision, but we can tell he's pretty pissed about this whole thing. Particularly since he leaves in a huff, threatening and vaguely dangerous as he walks out the door, reminding Scarlett and the reader that:
"If I wanted you, no lock would keep me out."
Oh boy.
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