"There's nothing after we die, Scarlett. You are having your hell now."
Rhett spoke those words to Scarlett in Chapter forty-seven of GWTW, when she was uncharacteristically distraught and remorseful after Frank's death. She felt guilty about marrying Frank and about stealing him from Suellen and about being the indirect (direct?) cause of his untimely demise, and Rhett gives her his views on the afterlife in an attempt at soothing her soul. Or anyway, it seemed like he was trying his best to make her feel better at the time, although looking back on things his intent is actually quite unclear. I love Rhett, but sometimes the man just kind of rambles, particularly when he's talking to Scarlett and especially when he's discussing something that's not immediately to do with the two of them. He's a realist, practical to his core in all things, so it's no surprise that he appears to be an atheist or a deist or an agnostic or what haves you. His ethics are a little screwy, but his values and deeply held beliefs never really waver throughout the story, and they serve him well in his day-to-day dealings with the world.
But sometimes his wonderful realism blurs into pessimism, particularly here in the final chapters of GWTW. It's fine to be a skeptic about the afterlife when you're wealthy and always make the right decisions and you're young and hungry and feel untouchable. But what in the world are you supposed to do when the unthinkable happens to you? How are you supposed to remain rational in a world gone mad?
Rhett probably thought his worst days were behind him, right?
He got kicked out and disowned when he was a kid, and he spent his 20s surviving by his wits and barely getting by in the West, so I think he probably figured he'd already survived the worst that could happen. And his realistic/pessimistic views about the afterlife and what happens after we die probably helped him to thrive in the Gold Rush and during the Civil War, but even the best laid plains laid in the best possible way by the best man in all of American literature can come undone in the blink of an eye.
And then what in the hell is he supposed to do?
Rhett doesn't know how to feel here, ya'll. I think that's the real reason he snaps after Bonnie dies. He's an atheist and a realist and he doesn't believe in an after-life, but if Bonnie isn't in heaven, then--where is she?
Hence the lights and candles.
Hence refusing to plan the funeral.
Hence Rhett struggling with feelings that more traditional Christians like Scarlett, Melly, and Mammy simply don't understand. Scarlett isn't much on God and certainly isn't much of a church-goer, but she definitely seems to believe in fate and the afterlife and other Judeo-Christian notions that have been baked into Western ideology for the past two-thousand years. So for Scarlett, Bonnie's death is an unfortunate incident, a horrible, horrible twist of fate, but a proper funeral will allow her to begin the healing process. After all, some small part of Scarlett probably believes that Bonnie is in heaven now with God and her grandparents, and that they will eventually be reunited in the great beyond.
Rhett doesn't have any such comfort.
He doesn't believe in the afterlife.
He doesn't believe in the linear progression of souls toward a peaceful afterlife.
He doesn't believe he'll see Bonnie again.
And if your mind works that way, how on earth can you be expected to put your child in the ground?
And, and here's an important notion to think about as we wind up our analysis of GWTW: remember that Rhett Butler is probably the most isolated character in the entire novel. He's a self-sufficient loner, and those attributes have served him very well for the entire book. But how devastating and weirdly surprising is it that Melly is only person who can reach him after Bonnie's death? He doesn't have any friends. Bonnie was his only real friend and she's dead. Scarlett can't help him sort himself out. And neither can his mother. Or Aunt Pitty. Or Belle Watling.
But then again, are we even sure he wants to be sorted?
Why or why not?
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And now it's time to pay tribute to the very best and very worst words Scarlett speaks in the entire novel. Interestingly enough, although this paragraph is filtered to us through Mammy's 3rd person recollection of something she overheard through eavesdropping, our remoteness from the scene does absolutely nothing to soften the blows. Actually, this is rendered all the more poignant and poisonous because Mammy is so distraught by the things she's heard at the Butler mansion that I don't even think she recognizes these words for how coldly accurate they are. And isn't it fascinating that we can hear Scarlett and Rhett's voices in these words, even though they're passed down to us through huge blocks of Mammy's dialect? How many novelists have you ever encountered that were clever enough to make their main characters so easily identifiable through word choice and syntax? How in the hell did MM craft this so perfectly?
Here we go (with translations back into MM-style English done by yours truly):
"You're a fine one to take on so," Scarlett tells Rhett after he continues to mutter on about how dark graves are and that Bonnie is afraid of the dark, "after killing her to please your pride."
And Rhett, bless his heart, is so wounded by her accusation that he doesn't even snap back at her with another of his witty, biting comments. Instead he simply questions Scarlett: "Haven't you got any mercy?"
And Scarlett says: "No. And I don't have a child, either. And I'm worn out with the way you've been acting since Bonnie was killed. You are a scandal to the town. You've been drunk all the time and if you don't think I know where you've been spending your days, you're a fool. I know you've been down there at that creature's house, that Belle Watling."
And then Rhett is like: "Yes ma'am, that's where I've been. And you needn't pretend anymore, because you don't give a damn. A bawdy house is a haven of refuge after this house of hell. And Belle has one of the world's kindest hearts. She doesn't throw it up to me that I've killed my child."
Melly is "stricken to the heart" by these words, so shocked to hear such nastiness between two people she adores that she doesn't even know how to approach the subject. As a matter of fact, Melly has no choice but to backtrack briefly as Mammy delivers these lengthy paragraphs and assess what she thinks she knows about the Butler marriage.
Which is nothing.
Melly is perceptive, but she can't know anything about the Butler marriage because it is unknowable. She thinks Rhett loves Scarlett, but that's based on outdated information. And besides, love and affection are moot compared to everything else that's swirling around the two of them.
They have problems.
Serious problems.
Inconceivable problems. The Wilkes' have money problems and health problems and conception problems, but the Butler's problems are not the kinds of things that can be easily solved by a new job or wider hips. Scarlett and Rhett aren't simply having trouble getting along. They're not simply incompatible. They're wasting away privately, in their own private hells, but they're also ripping each other apart and that's where the two of them cross the line. Scarlett is killing Rhett here.
She's. Killing. Him.
Rhett is Superman, but she's kryptonite. But she's worse than kryptonite because kryptonite is only an occasional problem in the DC comics, and Scarlett actually lives in Rhett's house. Plus, Superman is smart enough to stay the hell away from kryptonite, while Rhett--
Why is he still there?
Why is he still hanging around in that mansion with Scarlett?
I do realize that Bonnie has only just died and I understand why he wouldn't have considered leaving Atlanta before the funeral, but if he's against the funeral why doesn't he just leave town and go to New Orleans or New York or Havana or San Francisco or Paris or anywhere else on the planet that doesn't contain brutal accusations from his mean-as-hell wife and his dead kid?
Mike Skinner of The Streets has a wonderful few lines in his song Stay Positive that I think almost perfectly describe Rhett's situation here at the end of the book:
You're going mad.
Perhaps you always were.
But when things were good, you just didn't care.
This is called irony.
When you most need to get up?
You've got no energy.
Rhett has been fighting creeping, creepy malaise ever since he married Scarlett, hasn't he? He quickly realized he would never, ever get Scarlett's love, but he regrouped early in their marriage and dedicated himself to raising/spoiling Bonnie. It's easy to chase away demons when you have time, money, smarts, and a good goal in mind, and Rhett spends all his energy helping rebuild Atlanta so Bonnie will have the best chances in life. That was his goal. But it's all gone now. It's over.
It's all over and gone.
Because when you're dead, you're dead.
And Bonnie is dead.
She's not coming back.
Ever.
So what's he supposed to do now?
******************************************************************
I honestly didn't think MM would actually kill off Bonnie Butler, but she does. And she doesn't just kill her--actually, she kills her twice in rapid succession: once through a description of the sounds that accompany Bonnie's death ("a fearful sound of splintering wood," and "a hoarse cry from Rhett.") and then again in the very next paragraph by picking up her narrative "On the third night after Bonnie's death..." Lesser novelists might have lingered on the scene or picked up from Melly's perspective a few moments or even hours after Bonnie's death, but by pulling back from the scene she increases the impact of this child's death on these particular parents. We are no longer concerned for Bonnie since we know her ultimate fate, but what about Scarlett and Rhett? How will this affect the two of them?
GWTW the movie has a lot of problems, but the scene between Melly and Mammy on the stairs after Bonnie's death is one of my all-time favorites. It's got everything: excellent acting, wonderful costumes, good dialogue (mostly a mash-up of MM's words from the book), and a restrained poignancy that is utterly devastating. Plus it's all done in one long take which gives both of these wonderful actresses a chance to really act, to play off of each other, to demonstrate and share their pain. It really is beautiful.
And you know what?
Here's where I take issue with every well-meaning liberal who confuses GWTW with Birth of A Nation. I do have some issues with MM's depiction of African-Americans (more on this at a later date), but the Mammy character is wonderful and Hattie does a wonderful job in the role. Yes, Mammy is unfortunately named and yes, yes, yes, she does sometimes seem to slip into stereotype, but Mammy has more in common with the ethnic roles that were all the rage in period pieces at this time than with anything particularly egregious. If you turn on TCM at any random time you're bound to see horrendous depictions of immigrants from every patch of land in Europe, and you're constantly being force-fed drunken Irishmen and strict Germans and "kindly but backward" Scandinavians and "hot-blooded" Latins and passionate Italians and "sneaky" Arabs. Casablanca alone contains an entire United Nations (League of Nations?) of silly characters from different parts of the world, doesn't it?
In other words, how can you be offended by Mammy but not by Gerald?
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