Chapter 62: Peachtree Street and all that...

I went to Atlanta last year.

We got an excellent deal and we stayed right in downtown Atlanta at the Marriott hotel and we ate at Waffle House every day and it was glorious because that particular hotel actually faces the plot of land Ashley and Melly own in GWTW.

And yes, I do know it for a fact.

Ashley and Melly used to live in the very spot where the Hyatt Regency Atlanta stands today.

How do I know this for sure?

Because their house is on the corner of Baker and Ivy Streets, directly behind Aunt Pitty's townhouse.  Baker Street is still there, but Ivy Street isn't Ivy Street anymore.  Instead it's called Peachtree Center Avenue, and it's all concrete and steel nowadays.  Anyway, Scarlett trots out the front door of the Wilkes home and begins her long, slow run home to Rhett, traveling up and down hills that are still very much in evidence today. 

You see how these photos are all on an angle? That's because Baker Street is on a long slope as you head west toward Peachtree.  It wasn't bad on our transmission, but I bet it would've been hell in heels and a corset.  Scarlett hasn't done a lick of exercise in this book since her cotton-picking days, so she picked a fine place and time to bust out some cardio, but I guess grief makes everyone react in weird ways. 

And Scarlett....

Guys, do you think she's correct here? Do you think her assessment of Rhett is right? Do you think that his helpfulness during all the darkest times of her life occurred because he loved her? And if so, when did he fall in love with her? And why? Was Scarlett particularly adorable at these times? If not, what does that say about him?

From the nearest I can tell, Scarlett and Rhett's mansion stood near the old Leyden House in downtown Atlanta, which would make it South West of the Wilkes home (and right at the Hard Rock where we ate dinner on Saturday night!).  However, I've always gotten the impression that Scarlett is running north and away from town during the final scene of GWTW; I've always felt she was racing in the general direction of MidTown and Georgia Tech, although obviously Atlanta didn't extend that far in those days.  In my imagination Scarlett is not running toward the Hard Rock, but is instead running in the general direction of Hardy Ivy Park, a park that means a lot to me because it was the turn around during weekends in the city back in the 90s and which is of historical significance because it's the alleged supposed location where Atlanta was actually founded.


Anyway...next time we truly, truly have no choice but to drag ourselves across the finish line and actually take up the final chapter of GWTW.  It's going to be painful and there will be much weeping and gnashing of teeth, but it's gotta happen sooner or later, right?

Chapter 61: "It's alright ma, I'm only bleeding."

10 Crazy Questions(and 10 crazier answers!) about Chapter 61

1.) Why is Scarlett in Marietta at the beginning of this chapter? 

     So by my latest count,  I've read GWTW 100 times over the past nineteen years. And I swear to you that I never once noticed that the final scenes of GWTW begin with Scarlett returning to Atlanta from Marietta.  I knew she returned to the city by train after she received the telegram from Rhett about Melly's illness, and I remembered very well that she'd gotten on the train "carrying no baggage except her reticule and leaving Wade and Ella at the hotel with Prissy," but I think my cognitive wires must have crossed up every single time I read this chapter. Because I could have sworn that Scarlett had been visiting Tara and was therefore symbolically reversing her famous journey from the heart of Atlanta home to Tara during Sherman's invasion.
     But no.
     No, she's returning from Marietta, a tiny little town that is on the other side of Atlanta from Tara.
     And so MM is doing two things with this apparent throwaway statement, isn't she?
    When we left Scarlett in chapter 60 she seemed as though she needed to blow town for a while; she seemed like she needed a vacation away from the dark and depressing atmosphere of Atlanta and Rhett's beautifully pathetic deterioration; she seemed, frankly, like she needed some head space and a chance to get her own thoughts together.  She's spent the past twelve years obsessed with Ashley and/or making money, but now she's been cut to the quick by Bonnie's death and Rhett's nadir and that's enough to make anybody want to get out of town for a while. I think MM is doing a marvelous job of showing Scarlett's exasperation and confusion without actually telling us what our girl is thinking and feeling because, well, Scarlett must be in terrible shape if she's so anxious to get out of Atlanta that she ran away to Marietta. I'm willing to bet that Scarlett originally escaped somewhere else in MM's first version of the book--perhaps to Charleston or Savannah or someplace like that. When Rhett gets away from Atlanta he really gets away and travels to New Orleans or New York or Paris or London, but Scarlett lacks imagination and curiosity so I suppose we shouldn't be surprised that her vision only extends to a town that is basically within shouting distance of her mansion on Peachtree.
    But more than all of that awesome characterization, MM is also giving us a nice little call-back to the Battle of Atlanta.  Because you know who else came in from Marietta?
     SHERMAN.
     And nobody else.
     There are only 14 other mentions of "Marietta" in the pages of GWTW, and all the rest of them are either direct references to Sherman's army marching out of the Mountains and down through Marietta on their way to capture Atlanta OR references to Marietta road in Atlanta on the night when Atlanta fell.  I assumed I'd forgotten some other reference to Marietta--like, perhaps Suellen or Careen had moved there? Or maybe Scarlett had some sort of business to transact in the city, but--no.  The last time MM wrote about Marietta, it was all about Sherman and his path of fire and death and destruction, and maybe--
    Except, no, not really, right?
    Sherman destroyed everyone in his path, but Scarlett is not a destroyer at the end of GWTW,  is she? She has been blazing a trail of trouble and kicking ass and killing mfers for twelve years (just like Sherman but with arguably better style!), but she's no longer the major actor in the story.  She's still the main character, but now her role has reversed.  Scarlett is no longer making things happen to other people--now she's the one who will be acted upon.  Which means....okay.  Well, if we resort to a simple, basic reading of all of this, perhaps MM was making a commentary about the cardinal directions and the sectional split? Sherman was bad and negative because he came from the North--but now the tables have turned.  And now even Scarlett has industrialized so much and changed so much that she's entering Atlanta from the north, coming to town for one final showdown that will be just as devastating as Sherman's March.

2.) How does Rhett know Melly is dying? 

     Rhett sends Scarlett a six letter telegram that says:

     "Mrs. Wilkes ill.  Come home immediately."  

     Who told him? GWTW is a comedy of errors at times, stuffier and more ridiculous than anything in Downtown Abbey, and I therefore cannot imagine how Rhett found out that Melly is dying from her miscarriage in this final portion of the book.  There are three possibly explanations the way I see it, and I'm going to work through them all because I'm that kind of a gal.
     A.) Somebody we know told him. Yes, but who? Not Ashley, obviously. Not Melly either, although that's more likely than Ashley. Pitty and India are afraid of Rhett, so it wasn't them.  Perhaps it was Uncle Peter or another servant? Or maybe it was Dr. Meade or one of the other men from the Old Guard who sorta kinda like Rhett and also feel indebted to them because he saved their lives?
     B.) A public scene. Perhaps Melly collapsed while walking one day and Rhett happened upon the scene? This seems unlikely and a little too on-the-nose--until you remember that's exactly what happened after the battle of Gettysburg all those years/pages ago. Remember when Melly was pregnant with Beau but still wore herself out walking around downtown looking for word of Ashley? You do remember that? Well then, you'll remember that whole fiasco ended with Rhett rescuing her from a fainting spell and helping her home.  Everything is coming full circle now, so there's no reason to believe that this wasn't exactly what happened.
    C.) Rhett's intuition.  I love you Rhett, but I doubt your spidey sense told you Melly was dying.  Perhaps he could sense that Melly was pregnant. I'll give you that. But I doubt he could have known she was dying without talking to any of the principals.  He's smart and amazing and he knows everything, but come on.

     My money is on Dr. Meade telling him.  He's the only person who would actually know Melly's dire prognosis and be in close enough proximity for Melly to ask him to ask Rhett to summon Scarlett back to Atlanta.  Perhaps Ashley might have sent a messenger over to the Butler place to tell them the situation, but Ashley is so distraught in this chapter I doubt he could have pulled himself together enough even for that kind of communication.  So that leave Dr. Meade.  Yeah. Let's go with that for now. 




3.) How do you die from a miscarriage anyway?

     Melly is two months pregnant according to Rhett (!), so how does one die from a miscarriage? Miscarriages nowadays are depressing and horrible, but they're rarely fatal to the mother. Even Scarlett seems perplexed that Melly is dying from a miscarriage and Scarlett has had the same malady within the last year or so.  So what gives?
     Annnnnnd...you know what? My sister is 9 months and 3 weeks pregnant right now with her first child, and I'm therefore not in any position to do any research about miscarriage right now. If you're curious about what happened to Melly, Google "Septic Miscarriage." Ugh.
    (A three month pause and a quick edit to add: my sister did have her child, but not without complications on top of complications on top of 26 hours of labor and one of those dealies where they have to suck the baby out.  Anyway, my niece made it into the world in decent health, but I'm still not prepared to write anything about this entire experience.  Let's just say that the past three months have aged me about 100 years, and that you don't know the meaning of fear and pain until somebody you love is diagnosed with something horrible, and that all of this gave me a whole new perspective on Rhett's pain at the end of GWTW.  That's for damn sure.)

4.) Should Melly have gotten pregnant in the first place? 

     No, right?  We covered this before, but I think it needs to be said again.  Melly shouldn't be pregnant again.  She had a tough time before, and Doctor Meade already told her not to do this again.  Gimme a break, Ashley.  I know Melly wanted more kids and all that, but you've got to have some spine son.  Just say no, dawg.

5.) Why does Rhett pick Scarlett up from the depot? 

They didn't part on good terms, y'all.  And given the fact that he's planning on leaving her for good during that afternoon, it seems strange that he would bother meeting her himself.  It's not entirely out of character given...I mean, we just don't know who he is anymore, that's true.  But we know who he was.  And we know that he's always around to give Scarlett a helping hand or a ride whenever she needs one, even if they're pissed at each other.  Still, he could have sent the coach without going along for the ride.  Particularly since he's not going to go into the Wilkes' house to say goodbye to Melly.  This is one of those rare times when Rhett gives us exposition for no reason, isn't it? I can't think of another time when he's just shown up on the scene strictly to deliver information.  Although I guess he wanted to go there himself to make sure Scarlett understood how seriously ill Melly was, to make sure she hurried to Melly's house?

6.) Can MM's call-backs get any better? 

Scarlett's mind races as she enters Melly's bedroom, but her thoughts aren't metaphors to anything outside the novel. Instead, her mind flips to these wonderful comparisons to things that exist entirely inside GWTW: Melly's room is compared to Scarlett's room in the Butler mansion, Melly's pinched face reminds Scarlett of the "pinched look" she'd seen on so many faces in the hospital during the war.  And...Scarlett's time as a nurse at the hospital was so long ago, you guys! Oh my God! She's old, I'm old, we're old, and the Civil War is fading away fast, isn't it? The war was the central event in this story, but it's almost been forgotten completely by this point. Or, no, not forgotten exactly.  But sort of rolled up and placed into the background, kind of the way we all feel about 9/11.  I was in New York on 9/11 and I can still smell the burning and feel the terror if I close my eyes and try to remember.  But the memory isn't fresh anymore.  It doesn't hurt the way it used to.  It's just something that happened to me a long, long time ago when I was younger and the world seemed like a big place and life seemed like an adventure and....you know what? Just go listen to John Hartford's Lorena and join me as I cry my heart out for years gone by and people who have passed and...to quote the late Van Johnson, was I ever that young? Were we ever that young?

Were Scarlett and Melly and Rhett and Ashley ever that young and sparkly and funny and relatively carefree? There was a time in this novel when there was a 90/10 split between laughter and tragedy, but now...what? Where are we? Where are they? Where did it all go wrong? And why?

7.) What does Melly mean when she asks Scarlett to look after Ashley? 

Why is he such a doofus? Do ya'll realize that Ashley is so alarmingly stupid that his dying wife has no choice but to ask her best friend to protect him in the coming years? Do y'all realize that Ashley is such a pathetic figure that his wife's final conversation on this earth fails the Bechdel test? Ugh.  And as a follow up:

8.) Does Melly realize that Scarlett can't both look after Ashley and be kind to Rhett? 

Those are contradictions, girlfriend! The only way for Scarlett to "look after" Ashley is to basically be all up in his business like she has been for most of the book, since he's such a bumblefuck that he'll ruin everything if she doesn't qc his every move. And Rhett is so jealous of Ashley and so fed-up by this point that he'll probably turn suicidal if he hears Scarlett say one more word about Mr. Wilkes.  Melly, I know you're dying and everything, but you can't have it both ways.

Or can she?

Because maybe, by telling Scarlett to "be kind" to Rhett, Melly is really telling Scarlett to be kind to herself? It's like...Rhett is good for her. Or anyway, the Rhett that Melly knows is good for Scarlett.   The Rhett we know was good for her, but we don't know where the hell his head is at these days.  I'll be honest with y'all: by the time I read this chapter for the first time I was fed up with Scarlett and Rhett as a couple.  I wanted them to move to opposite ends of the earth like Ike and Tina after the divorce.  Which leads me to my next question:

9.) Has Scarlett been cruel to Rhett? 

I don't even know what to think anymore.  I don't even know how to feel about any of this shit (pardon my French).  It's...she hasn't been the nicest wife, but she has rarely been outright brutal to him.  She was extraordinarily bogus to him right after Bonnie died, but I don't hold that against Scarlett.  Not really.  She couldn't have been any different, really.

10.) Does Ashley love Melly? 

Absolutely.

But why is it such a surprise to hear him answer Scarlett's question after all these years? We know exactly how the novel ends and we've understood the Wilkes relationship far better than Scarlett has all these pages, but his admission still stings a bit, doesn't it? Like, how dare he love his wife?

Melly is wonderful.  She's a great woman, a peace maker, a fighter, an unreconstructed rebel, a good friend, an excellent mother, and the glue that's been holding Atlanta's society together for ages.  And yet...she is not Scarlett. 

And so, even after all this time, it's very, very difficult for us to conceive of the idea that Ashley loves Melly and not Scarlett.  And, sadly, I think Ashley is surprised by his words, too.  American men aren't supposed to be confused and they're never supposed to be fickle, but can it be that Ashley is just now realizing that he's loved Melly all along? Is he so disconnected from his own feelings that he has been denying his love for his own wife?

What in the hell is wrong with the people in this novel? 

Chapter 60: "She wondered why this should be..."

"And apologies, once postponed, become harder and harder to make, and finally impossible." 

Credit to Scarlett for finally maturing enough to consider apologizing to Rhett. But it's a shame--a terrible, painful shame--that Scarlett still doesn't understand Rhett or her relationship with Rhett enough to realize that she needs to apologize for much more than just the words she said after Bonnie's death.  She's been hurting him and slighting him for a long time, but she's blind to almost all of it, and she feels that Rhett's terrifying decline is a direct result of Bonnie's demise.

But he's been going downhill for a while.

The best thing about GWTW is that almost all of the characters change substantially over the twelve years of the novel. Scarlett and Rhett and Melly and Ashley stay the same of course because people like them do not fundamentally change their personalities, yet even within this sameness there's a great deal of transformation.  MM returns time and again to the idea of Rhett's profile being similar to the profile of roman emperor on a coin, and while the face on the coin changes from that of a young conqueror into a bloated despot it's important to remember that the value of the coin itself never actually alters. It's still the same money, but there are two sides to every coin and both sides are always present whether you like them or ignore them or not.

There are a lot of different ways to construct characters in works of fiction.  Superheroes like Batman and Superman and Spiderman are built on their layers and the conflict between their alternative personalities, but GWTW is not built that way. Rather, for Scarlett, Rhett, Melly, and Ashley their positive traits and negative traits are all tied up together in one bundle.  Rhett is a hedonist at heart.  He's a hardworking hedonist, but restraint and limits are not exactly his strong points. He reigned himself in while Bonnie was alive, but now that she's gone he just totally gives himself away to excess.

He drinks and drinks and drinks and whores and whores and whores. Or anyway, Scarlett seems to think Rhett is getting down with his pros over at Belle's, but that doesn't mean he actually is doing anything of the sort, does it?

 Not that it matters, bless his drunken heart.

He's regressing now, as we all do whenever we encounter something traumatic or we lose someone important to us. He's revisiting all the things that he thinks made him so happy when he was a younger man, but we sense that they certainly don't make him happy anymore (if they ever actually did, which is up for debate, of course). Whiskey and sex probably got him through his hardest times when he was learning how to make his way in the world, but he's older now and there's no satisfaction to be found.  His eventual departure to Charleston at the end of GWTW seems random the first time you read it, but it actually makes perfect sense because he's already traced his steps back to his earliest days in Atlanta and New Orleans, so he's got nowhere left to go but back home to Charleston. Back home to his mother and his family and all the things he threw away when he was young and hungry.

And I don't know, you guys.  It's just sad.

Terribly, terribly sad.

MM has taken us for a roller coaster ride that rivals anything I've been on at amusement parks around the world. We've gone up and down and around with Scarlett, we've been thrilled and we've been sickened and we've been surprised and we've been cynical and we've lived through a hell of a lot. We are 97% through GWTW now, but as you read these final chapters it is still impossible to figure out precisely what's going to happen in the rest of the book.  The possibilities still seem almost endless, but we're running out of time. Plus, the four of them have already been through so much, haven't they?

But Scarlett....

Oh dear. Oh dear, dear, dark, depraved, corrupt, crazy Scarlett.  

Scarlett seems to be taking Bonnie's death rather well, and her mental state seems surprisingly strong considering she just lost her child.  Except...you guys, I don't know. 

She seems so clueless in this chapter.  And so lost.

Scarlett has never been very perceptive, but her inability to understand herself and other people is quite shocking in chapter 60.  Its almost cruel, isn't it? The way she sort of expects Rhett to work through his grief in a manner of weeks, her confusion over his black depression, her stray desire to reach out to him despite everything that went down in the last chapter, just...all of it. 

One description that really breaks my heart is when Scarlett describes Rhett as looking "at her out of black blank eyes that made no opportunity for her to speak." And it hurts because it seems that Scarlett is being ridiculously obtuse and stubborn here. His eyes might be blank, but can't she tell he's in a living hell? Yes, he has a poker face.  Yes, his eyes are blank. But why is she pretending that she doesn't know that he's using his mask to hide his pain? Even the first time reader of GWTW understands Rhett and sympathizes with his feelings, but Scarlett....

Why does it have to be like this, you guys?

Is this when our alliances and allegiances and support flips for good? I don't know.

I love Scarlett you guys.  I really do. But I'm not so sure that MM loves her by the end of the novel. Because MM has created such a chasm between our understanding of Rhett and Scarlett's understanding of her husband, that we have no choice but to resent our protagonist.  Rhett Butler is God. And he's going understandably bat-shit insane in front of our eyes and Scarlett is doing absolutely nothing to stop it, and it just fucking sucks.  Although, what could she have done?

There's too much acrimony between the two of them now.  Scarlett is his wife, but in reality Scarlett is the very last person who could give Rhett Butler comfort at a time like this. Hell, I'm willing to wager that even Rhett's estranged father would have a better chance of pulling him back to reality than Scarlett.  She's been killing him slowly for a long time, and now that he's drunk and distant and crazy, what could she do or say to help?

And then, in a moment of utter selfishness and bitchiness that makes me think Scarlett is actually crazier than Rhett in this period after Bonnie's death, we get this incredibly funny, incredibly horrible little gem from the mind of MM:

"Oh for another girl, pretty and gay and willful and full of laughter, not like the giddy-brained Ella.  Why, oh, why couldn't God have taken Ella if He had to take one of her children?" 

I'm all for joking on Ella and Wade, but come on, Scarlett.  Come on MM.  Say it ain't so.  Nobody could be that mean. It makes me laugh every time I read it because it's so unexpected and blunt and wild and weird, but my God! If that's the way Scarlett's mind works, then...who is this woman, really? Bonnie's death should make her appreciate Wade and Ella more, shouldn't it? Either Scarlett is not thinking clearly or she is truly monstrous and it's almost impossible to figure out which and I'm confused and scared because what in the world is happening to them? What is happening to all of us?

"He was bitter now," MM tells us as she describes Rhett from the perspective of the local women who watch him as he moves through the town, "Where he had been pleasantly jeering, brutal where his thrusts had once been tempered with humor." 

The first time I read GWTW I was young enough and inexperienced enough and stupid enough to believe that the decay that creeps into the final chapters of the novel were particular to Rhett and Scarlett.  I thought their alcoholism and desperation and unhappiness and bitterness and hopelessness and rudeness were products of their environment. I thought they were cautionary tales.  I thought they became broken shells of themselves because they'd lived such hard, dramatic lives and lost a child, but now that I'm older I understand that their pain is universal.

Chapter 59: "You are having your hell now."

"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?

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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?

Chapter 58: Cold War/Christmas of 1871

Scarlett spends a large part of chapter 58 reminiscing about the past.  But because Scarlett is Scarlett--and because the Butler marriage has been what it has been--her nostalgia centers on the old arguments and disagreements they had during their first years of marriage.  Other people might have focused on other things. For instance, Melly remembering the Good Old Days of her marriage would undoubtedly remember sweet words muttered over Shakespeare and hot tea in her parlor or the other similar activities that pass for exciting fun in the Wilkes residence.  But Scarlett remembers all the messed-up, tripped out, horrible arguments the two of them had before things really went sour.

It makes you think, doesn't it?

Of course, the reader understands what Scarlett means, don't we? I'm partial to Civil War Rhett, with his unexplained absences and random musings and rebellious streak, but Honeymoon Rhett was also quite wonderful in his own way.  At the time Scarlett was irritated with his contradictory behavior and weird little twists in temper, but he was also hilarious and intriguing during those days. But now--

Well.

"His impersonal courtesy toward her that had begun during her convalescence continued and he did not fling softly drawled barbs at her or sting her with sarcasm." And while Rhett's barbs and sarcasm might have infuriated Scarlett during the first years of their marriage, she's at lest perceptive enough to understand that he was only behaving that way because he "he had done it because he cared what she did and said," but now that he's stopped doing that "she wondered if he cared about anything she did."

And what are we, the reader, supposed to think about all of this?

Chapter 58 is largely an expository chapter, a breather chapter, a short bridge between all the Ashley Party/Rape/Miscarriage drama and the Bonnie/depression/Melly drama of the final sections in the book, and as such not much happens within these pages. And yet, the reader is aware of dark clouds gathering somewhere off in the distance.  I switched to the digital/kindle version of GWTW a while ago, but I just picked up my oldest paperback copy of the novel and opened it to the start of chapter 58, and there's a wonderful tension between the bulk of the pages of the book on the left side where everything we could have imagined has already happened to our four leads and the comparatively miniature number of pages remaining on the right side.  Most other novelists would probably be winding down the story by now, but after traveling so far with MM we know that she's probably just ramping up for one last, catastrophic explosion. We don't have any inkling about what's coming, but we know something is going to happen.  Something bad.

MM doesn't get a lot of credit as a masterful writer these days, since most modern evaluations of GWTW either focus entirely on the movie or spend so much time addressing/apologizing for the racial issues in the story that they never actually tell us anything about MM's skills.  But to my mind spots like chapter 58 are where she proves that she was an extraordinary artist, somebody on par with any 20th century American novelist you can name.  Hemingway's novels were revolutionary and some people prefer Fitzgerald, but there stories tend to peter out and cross the finish line with a limp and a thud.  By contrast, MM is on the very last five percent of a novel that stretches across twelve turbulent years in American history and she still has surprises for us.  If To Kill a Mockingbird and The Sun Also Rises and The Great Gatsby coast to their finish based on kinetic energy built up during their respective climaxes, GWTW is a book that rounds the final bend with a renewal of potential energy and this chapter is basically MM's equivalent of pulling back her bow for one last bullseye that's going to blast us right in the heart. 

Anyway, Scarlett spends most of Chapter 58 being observant, which is not her natural state.  She watches as Rhett begins to spend more time with members of the Old Guard, and she begins to worry because she associates them all with the Klan.  As a matter of fact, Scarlett's analytical skills are so poor that she begins to actually think that Rhett ("Da Gawd" as Desus Nice would say) will meet the same sorry fate as Poor Old Frank Kennedy. Frank Kennedy got killed because he was in the Klan, but mostly because he was sort of dumb and single-minded and because he was trying to prove his own value to the "team", and Rhett is none of those things, but Scarlett can't tell the difference right now. A husband is a husband and she doesn't want to be a widow for the third time because she doesn't want to "lose her store or his money", and I guess we could be shocked at Scarlett's selfishness, but she's right.  Remember, losing Rhett doesn't mean anything to Scarlett at this particular period in time because Scarlett doesn't think she ever had him in the first place.  And even if a small part of her knows he was at least a little bit enthralled by her in the early days of their marriage, all of that is gone now.  As far as she knows, Rhett has never really been in love with her. True he revealed his deepest feelings to her after Ashley's party, but he was drunk and crazy and sneering and bitter about all of it so it's only reasonable that Scarlett would ignore all of that and focus on the things she knows are true. So she's a little bit rude to focus solely on the loss of his money and her store, but that shows you how messed up the Butler marriage has been and demonstrates how narrow her life has become, doesn't it?

She doesn't even have the mills anymore, for goodness sakes.  Post-war Scarlett had a lot of things to worry about, but she never has to worry about having the money to cover Tara or keep her store in the black anymore, and Ashley is no longer really in her orbit, so what is she supposed to do with her time?

I guess she could worry about her children, but Scarlett was the Kate Middleton of her day. Sure, Wade, Ella, and Bonnie are technically hers, but they're watched over by a battalion of nannies and mammies day and night, so it's not like Scarlett has a lot of responsibility for the little tykes.  And besides, Wade is busy being educated/indoctrinated into the ways of the Old South, Ella is busy being silly (poor Ella!), and Bonnie is too busy defying authority and learning to jump her pony to require much effort from Scarlett.  In another marriage in another era, Scarlett would have undoubtedly been pregnant again, but that's not going to happen, so---

*Shrug*

And so that's where this chapter leaves us: with Scarlett watching and waiting, with Rhett "recant[ing] his Republican heresies," and with the whole entire town smiling at Bonnie and Rhett's close relationship.  I don't suppose MM could have left the whole thing right here and spared us all the emotional turmoil of the final few chapters detailing the decline and fall of the Butler household, but this might be the Last Clear Chance for something like happiness for Scarlett and Rhett. 

Chapter 57: "He was so very large and male, and excessively male creatures always discomposed her...."

(Sorry about the delay, ya'll.  But between two bouts with strep-throat/laryngitis, 70-hour work weeks, a lengthy vacation to France, and an excessive amount of jet-lag, I've been too busy/sick to keep pace in this blog.  But let's be patient: GWTW isn't going anywhere, and MM's great novel is sometimes easier to appreciate and digest after you take a pause to breathe a bit between chapters.)

Chapter 57 picks up not too long after Chapter 56 ends, but somehow things between the Scarlett and Rhett have gotten even worse.  The vivacious, unstoppable Scarlett O'Hare we've all come to know and love is now "pale" and "thin," and exhausted.  And the tension between our two main characters is so high that even Wade and Ella, two heretofore nearly oblivious bystanders to the dramas playing out in Atlanta, are clinging to Prissy because "there was something frightening in the cold, impersonal atmosphere between their mother and their stepfather." And as for Rhett....

Well, although we've finally gotten a good glimpse of the terrified, self-hating, self-blaming outcast at the core of his being, the Rhett in this chapter is more pensive than anything.  MM could have jumped straight from Scarlett's miscarriage directly to [SPOILER REMOVED], but that would have been overdoing it, right? I mean not necessarily for the veracity of the novel since MM is good enough to overcome the sin of poor pacing, but Rhett is already mentally worn out after the miscarriage. If the other tragedy had occurred right after Scarlett's tumble down the stairs, I don't see how he could have avoided completely losing his mind by the end of the novel.

Anyway, Scarlett is weak, Wade and Ella are suddenly hyper-aware of their surroundings, Rhett is pensive and depressed, and even the normally confidant and pleasant Melly begins this chapter filled with "confusion and dismay" when she spies Rhett coming up her walk.  The world of our four main characters has been turned asunder and each of them undergoes major personality changes after Scarlett's miscarriage. They're shocked I think, but more than that I think they're all suddenly quite aware that more terrible events could be lurking just beyond the horizon.

And that's what makes Rhett ride up to Melly's house, of course.  They've all just barely survived the fallout from the Scarlet--Rhett--Ashley triangle, and Rhett in all his wonderful wisdom is trying to nip the remaining potential trouble spots in the bud.

Sigh.

Anyway, Melly "rose to meet him, noting with surprise, as always, how lightly he walked for a big man." And I've always adored the way MM describes Rhett as moving so quickly, but I'm never quite sure about what she's attempting to convey.   He's built like an SEC linebacker, but he's got the grace of Neymar Jr. , and I think she means that although physics dictates that Rhett should be lumbering and plodding, his spirit/will/personality keeps him walking lightly.  But then again, in Scarlett's eyes his quiet, light walk is a left-over from his Wild West/gambling days, a call-back to the time when his life depended on him being able to sneak around undetected by his enemies. 

Or, you know, something like that.

Anyway, bottom line is that Rhett is sad and tired and the reader is sad and tired and Melly is sad and tired and gawd, isn't this whole conversation wonderful?

Rhett and Melly have probably spoken one-on-one before, but we've never been privy to such an interaction before.  It's a refreshing comparison to Scarlett and Ashley's awkward conversations, isn't it?  Scarlett and Ashley have lust in common but little else, which means that their words are always a little stilted and their conversations rarely stray from safe ground.  On the other hand, Rhett and Melly respect and love each other and they both genuinely have the others best interest at heart. So even while preserving the proprieties of the day, there's still something simple and pure and honest about the way they talk to each other.

Do ya'll watch Mad Men?

Because there was a moment in the finale episode when Don calls Peggy Olson on the telephone and confesses all his sins in a tumble of words that Peggy barely understands.  Peggy is totally confused by the whole thing, but she loves Don so much that she forgives him all his trespasses (real and imagined) and tells him to return to New York ASAP.  He doesn't of course (or does he?), but their fundamental ability to understand each other reminded me so much of Rhett and Melly that I couldn't help but be moved by the whole thing. 

Anyway, Rhett might have alighted from his horse like Neymar, but he sits down "heavily" as he and Melly begin to chat and we get the sense that the weight of the whole world is on his broad shoulders.  The other characters might have a sense that something is going to go (even more) wrong down the road, but Rhett the championship poker player has evidently already identified precisely what is going to happen and is apparently determined to make sure that he helps the four of them avoid disaster. It's as though they're riding on a train and he can see a dangerous s-curve bend in the tracks miles ahead of the rest of the passengers.  And, as Jacob Clifton always used to say, the thing that makes you awesome is also the thing that makes you suck.  Rhett's ability to read minds and anticipate the future has kept him alive and prosperous for his entire adult-life, but prescience is a blessing and a curse.  And besides, perhaps it could be argued that because Rhett has become so good at reading the tea leaves and predicting the future he begins to lean on his 6th sense as something of a crutch.  He's an excellent poker player and good at investing, but even the trickiest card game can be defeated by skill and a little bit of good luck.  But life isn't a poker game. 

You do hear that metaphor from time to time, of course. Everybody from Kenny Rogers("You gotta know when to hold 'em, know when to fold 'em,") to the Streets ("you've gotta organize your twos and threes into a run and then you'll have f**ked him some") tells us all the time that life is a poker game, but life is not a card game at all.  Life is random.  It's not a hand of cards and it's not a roulette wheel: it's a lottery.  There are 311,875,200 possible hands in a game of stud poker, but you can over come a poor shuffle by out-witting your opponent.  But in the lottery you only get one shot and there's absolutely no way to increase your odds of winning.

As a matter of fact, most smart people would agree that you can't win the lottery.  Other people might win the Powerball jackpot, but you will not. 

Let's ruminate on that reality as we go through the rest of GWTW.  
**********************************
Alright, so as Melly comes to terms with the little deception Rhett is asking her to help him perform, she begins to ruminate about the mean things other people always said about Rhett.  "People had said he was brutal and sneering and bad mannered and even dishonest" and Melly is silently pleased that she never believed the worst about Rhett.  Except, you know what? I wouldn't normally ascribe these adjectives to Rhett Butler, but we've certainly seen that side of his personality, haven't we? The night after Ashley's party he was all of these things (and so much more!), and Scarlett even called him out on it while she was plotting her escape.  The Rhett we met during that crazy night was brutal (some would even call him a rapist), he was sneering, he was bad mannered, and he was definitely dishonest. Although of course his dishonesty is less about deceit and more about self-preservation, it was certainly dishonest of him to return to Scarlett's room three days after their big night and try to casually write the whole thing off as a forgettable drunken episode.  And so, although the reader likes Rhett as much as Melly does, we can't help but wonder if Mrs, Wilkes would love him so much if she actually got to witness his crazy-side first hand.  Melly knows Rhett is an alpha-male, but I think she'd be afraid of him if she ever actually saw how alpha he can be when he's pushed too far. 

After all, look at how the fearless Scarlett behaves around Rhett now. She can't quite figure out her own feelings, but she knows for a fact that she doesn't want to be alone with him. And she doesn't dare stop chattering when he picks her up from the train station, because she's afraid of letting silence fall between the two of them. 

What is she afraid of?

Scarlett says "she did not know how he felt toward her," but that's been the status quo between the two of them for a long time, so why is the present situation so different? What has changed? Of course Rhett has confessed his love for Scarlett, but he took it back almost as quickly as he admitted it, and in the grander scheme of things....

I don't know.

Scarlett is irritated and confused by the fact that Rhett hasn't apologized for the whole sorry episode, but what in the world does she expect him to say? Interestingly enough, movie Rhett does come right out and apologize to Scarlett for all the havoc and all the crazy arguments and the fighting, but then again movie Rhett is not nearly as complex or as troubled as book Rhett.  Movie Rhett would make a better husband than book Rhett, but book Rhett is infinitely more fascinating, isn't he? Movie Rhett is a sweetheart, but book Rhett is...well, we're 94% into GWTW and I'm still not certain about what makes Rhett K. Butler tick. 

We know what makes Scarlett tick: money and common sense. For instance, Scarlett sells the mills to Ashley at the end of this chapter, and Scarlett is depressed about it but she's too confused by the sudden alliance between Rhett, Melly and Ashley to successfully protest this turn of events.  Scarlett has been sort of hoodwinked into this sale, but she also finds herself defending her business ethics and the use of convict labor and explaining the relationship between low-overhead and high-profits to Melly and Ashley.  And Scarlett is right, you guys.  She's wrong, of course, since modern business ethics and public policy and public opinion tells us that low-cost labor is wrong, but surely we can't expect the daughter of a Georgia plantation owner to do a 180 and suddenly decide to value the worker and give her employees a fair shake? Scarlett grew up on a huge plantation and she loved every moment of her childhood and she's smart enough to at least recognize that her family wealth was built on low-cost slave labor.  There are laws protecting workers now, but in Scarlett's world there was only the law of the jungle, and I find it hilarious that Melly and Ashley are so scandalized by the whole situation.  Slavery is wrong and convict labor is wrong, but nobody likes a hypocrite, ya'll. 

But if Scarlett is all about logic and money and common sense and survival, what is Rhett really about? What does he want? Why did he come back to Atlanta in the first place? And why has he stayed for so long?  What's his long term plan? Scarlett has sold the mills to Ashley and Melly, so...what's next? Did he really plan on simply existing, on simply riding everything out until Bonnie grows up and gets married? Or did he anticipate that Scarlett would one day wake up madly in love with him? What is he doing?

*********

I'll be back soon. I promise.

Chapter 56: "But soon, even this rage passed into apathy..."/ The Curious Case of the Enigmatic Captain Butler

"Rhett was gone for three month and during that time Scarlett had no word from him." 

(And I've been gone for even longer than that! Apologies to all, and thanks for sticking with me. You guys are amazing.)


Gone With the Wind is largely a straightforward, linear story.  It's deceptively plain, a basic story about a woman living in Georgia before, during and after the Civil War, and the story and the setting are so dramatic Mitchell didn't need to rely on literary tricks to build tension or suspense.  I've been reading a lot of Shakespeare lately, and I'm always surprised by how much The Bard depends on dreams and mystics and foreshadowing and fate and other ballyhoo to pull his stories toward their conclusions. But MM forgoes most of those devices in GWTW.  But here, very late in the game, she begins a chapter with some very nice, understated foreshadowing.

Rhett is gone in Chapter 55.

He has taken Bonnie with him and he has essentially disappeared off the face of the earth, and his absence is felt very keenly by all interested parties--and especially by the reader, I think.  Rhett has been a mystery-man since he married Scarlett, but he's been present in Atlanta nonetheless. Scarlett hasn't interacted with him much over the past several chapters, but he's there. He's always there. Jocular and jealous and laughing and rude most of the time, but he's there.  Dependably--almost pathetically--inhabiting the background of the novel, as real and necessary as Peachtree Street (and perhaps twice as marginalized in Scarlett's eyes).

But he's gone now.

Shockingly.

The first time I read GWTW I was frightened by the distinct possibility that Rhett would never return, for one reason or another. Rhett is the mainstay of the novel (along with Melly, of course), but GWTW is littered with the graves of characters we always assumed would play a permanent part in Scarlett's life, isn't it? Ellen, Gerald, the Tarleton boys, Charles Hamilton, Frank Kennedy.....each of them were important to the plot and each of them could have existed until the final page of the novel if circumstances and MM's plotting had decided otherwise. As written, GWTW forms a nice square of four essential characters with everyone else dropping off as so very much window dressing during the last ten percent of the novel, but there's no real reason (barring literary themes and other ideals I'll address once my journey through the story comes to a conclusion) that Rhett and Ashley have survived while everyone else is dead and buried.  That's the beauty of GWTW I think, that's the appeal of the darker elements in the story: the seemingly random ways in which MM introduces characters--and then kills them off--is reminiscent of the ways in which people live and die in real life.  I still like to believe that people and things come in and out of our lives for a reason, but I'm becoming a bit nihilistic in my old age.  The order of my American, Mid-western youth has given way to chaos, and I'm afraid I'm a bit like Ashley and I'm not cut out for these times.  I saw The Second Best Marigold Exotic Marigold Hotel this afternoon and I despised it, the same way I despise all novels and movies filled with cliche and obviousness and easily anticipated plot twists. And yet...

They certainly make life easier, don't they?

Most novels (my own included!) plod toward an easy ending, but GWTW veers off into unprecedented territory in this final act, doesn't it? This is a story full of tragedy and odd little twists of fate, but the shifts that occur during these final pages are quite astonishing in my humble. I think that's because all of the things that happen happen internally.  The events that have impacted or killed off the characters thus far have all been things that happened far outside of almost anyone's control: the assault on Fort Sumter, the failure of the Army of Northern Virginia, the Siege of Atlanta, the Blockcade, Sherman, Reconstruction, the KKK...all of these are huge historical events that swept up Scarlett and the rest of the gang and rearranged their lives even though none of the four major characters in the novel had much of anything to do with anything that occurred.  The County Boys might have supported the agitators in Charleston back in 1861 and the entire Wilkes BBQ whoops it up with excitement when they learn that the Civil War has started and that they're finally going to get the chance to whip some Yankees, but it's not as though Ashley and Charles Hamilton and the Tarleton boys played an essential part in it.

But now....

Now that everybody in GWTW is (relatively) rich and (relatively) safe, they can use all their time and energy worrying about their internal lives and sorting out their feelings.  It's sort of like the Wars of the Roses.  Or the Real Housewives of Atlanta. Or the Season 2 premiere of Southern Charm where everybody got drunk and started complaining about what everybody else was doing.

Like that.

So we open with Rhett Butler and Bonnie having gone MIA, leaving Scarlett alone with only Melly and Ashley, her two children from her previous marriages, and her millions of dollars.  And so, in true Scarlett form, she starts picking on people as an outlet for her manifold frustration.  She picks on Ashley ("his helplessness in the face of the present situation irked her...") she picks on Ella ("a silly child...") and Wade ("he looked at her with Charles' soft brown eyes and squirmed and twisted his feet in embarrassment...").  Of course it's important to note that Melly alone escapes Scarlett's cutting analysis in this section, but Scarlett has been so scornful and sarcastic about Melly throughout the novel you barely notice the absence of Melly hate here.

*********************************

By contrast, the reader can't help but notice Scarlett's confusion about Rhett.  She doesn't know how he feels about her, and she therefore doesn't know how she feels about him, which...the two things are related, of course.  But Scarlett has spent the past thousand pages pining after Ashley who is married to another woman and who denies any attraction to her at every turn, so it's not as though she is exactly a realist in this regard. So why is she waiting to know Rhett's feelings for her before she resolves and defines her feelings for him?

Yet perhaps you could argue that Scarlett's ambivalence about Rhett in this section is a reflection of her increased maturity? After all, Scarlett begins the novel with a childish, idealized perspective on Ashley Wilkes.  To steal one of Al Franken's best comedic bits, Scarlett loves Ashley in GWTW the way a three year old loves her mommy: She loves him absolutely, she loves everything about him, she thinks he's the best, the most handsome, the most daring, the most courageous, the most wonderful, etc.  But now that she's maturing, she begins to see that there's more to life than bright line rules, and she's learning to understand that hardly anybody is all good or all bad and that almost everybody is somewhere in the middle.  Ashley hasn't changed much given all that that happened around him and to him over the course of GWTW, but the bloom is coming off the rose now.  The cracks are beginning to show. And even Scarlett is starting to notice his incompetence. 

But because Scarlett is Scarlett, Ashley gets a raw deal in this chapter because Scarlett starts comparing him to Rhett and....well, everybody on earth pales compared to Rhett Butler.  It's not fair, really.  Scarlett is mad at Ashley for not taking control of the situation, but it's not realistic to expect that Ashley would be able to solve any of these problems all by himself. He's not quick witted, he's not clever, he's not experienced, and he knows very little about the world; that's what makes him Ashley. 

********************************************

I re-watched The Lion In Winter (1968) on Friday night. It's a great movie, filled with amazing performances and amazing dialogue and it's got Anthony Hopkins and Kate Hepburn and Timothy Dalton and Peter O'Toole and...you should watch it, is what I'm saying.  It's different from GWTW, but it's very similar on a lot of levels.  Like, for instance, it features a husband and wife duo that hates each other almost as much as they love each other, a couple that won't stop poking and prodding until they leave us all in a puddle of despair and tears.

Tears!

There are parts of GWTW that make me roar with laughter, but the last 10% of the book is one long weep-a-thon for me.  I've read GWTW hundreds of times, but all the cruel words and horrible threats and slights and hidden emotions in these last parts still make me blubber.  They still make me sad.  I wouldn't trade the twists and turns in these final chapters for anything in the world, but there's still part of me that always hopes it won't all go so sour so quickly.

And yet, here we are.  Chugging toward the unbearably heavy ending.  As a matter of fact, MM uses gravity to great effect in the scene where Rhett and Bonnie return from their wonderful trip abroad and encounter Scarlett who has "hurried from her room to the top of the stairs," while Bonnie is "stretching her short plump legs in an effort to climb the steps." So Scarlett is at the top, Bonnie is climbing upward, and Rhett is at the bottom of the stairs.  Lurking.  Like a panther.  Or the devil.  Or something.

*Sigh*

Why can't they just be nice here, y'all? Why does this all have to end this way?  Why can't they just be blandly civil and save us all a lot of heartache?

But they can't, of course.  They are who they are, and we are who we are, and none of us can change no matter what. And so, instead of disengaging and peeling away from the situation, they both fly straight into danger with guns blazing like Hans Solo flying into the Death Star. 

Interestingly enough, Rhett shoots first.  Let's rate their insults on a scale of 1 to 10, shall we?

• "You are looking pale, Mrs. Butler.  Is there a rouge shortage?" 3/10. This isn't the worst thing he could have said, but it's not great either.  You haven't seen her in three months and you can't think of one nice thing to say?
• "Can this wanness mean that you've been missing me?" 4/10.  Same insult, but I'm going to give it an extra point because he repeated his dig a second time. So now he's mean and annoying.  C'mon, Rhett.  I love you, but come on.  
• "If I'm pale it's your fault and not because I've missed you, you conceited thing." 1/10. Scarlett's momma raised her better than that, but he's definitely asking for it.  Besides, Rhett is conceited. So it's not like she's exaggerating here. 
• "Indeed! Well, who' the happy father? Ashley?" 8/10.  This is cold, you guys.  Especially given everything that happened before he left town.  He's only telling the truth, but not every truth needs to be told.  
• "Damn you....no woman would want the children of  a cad like you....I wish it was anybody's baby but yours!" 9/10.  Burn, burn, burn.  She got him good, didn't she?  
• "Cheer up...maybe you'll have a miscarriage." 10/10.  Congratulations, Rhett.  You won! 

But what did you win?

The two of them keep trying to best each other, but to no avail.  What did he hope to accomplish by saying something mean like that? Rhett Butler is usually so strategic and calm, but he's unraveling now and it's shocking to see.  Scarlett is pushing him and goading him, but we don't expect him to push her right back, do we? And when he does it's....ugly.  It's an ugly mess.

We've seen him be base and mean before, on the fateful night of Ashley party.  But you know what? He was drunk that night. So that was our excuse and our explanation. But he doesn't seem to be drunk now.  He's sober as a judge there on the stairs, but he can't control himself anymore.  She's humiliating him and insulting him, but it still hurts to see him sink so low in this chapter.  And then---

Scarlett falls down the stairs and miscarries. 

And again, consider the positioning of the two of them there on the stairs.  The movie does a great job of spacing and pacing in this scene, and there's so much drama in this moment.  Scarlett is on top of the stairs when they begin arguing and Rhett comes up to her level, but then she takes a swing at him.  But instead of connecting she falls.

All.

The.

Way.

To.

The.

Bottom.

She tumbles so quickly even the all powerful, all wonderful Rhett Butler can't break her fall.  He lunges backward to protect himself from her claws, and then Scarlett breaks a rib "and, too dazed to catch herself, she rolled over and over to the bottom of the flight." 

All.

The.

Way.

To.

The.

Bottom.

******************************************

And then the characters begin to float in space.

GWTW is a hardcore realist book, but everything becomes unglued in the latter half of this chapter, mostly as a reflection of Scarlett's delirium.  These pages are filled with heavy, heavy material and ideas and things that are pulling Scarlett and Rhett apart at the seams.  It's like...well, you know how black holes are the heaviest things in the universe? Black holes are heavy gravity and their trying to pull us all into their orbit and they look scary, but you know what will happen to you if you actually do find yourself at the edge of a singularity like the one at the center of the Milkyway Galaxy?  

You'll float.

The person inside of a blackhole believes they pass through the blackhole instantaneously, but to an outside observer it would look like you'd just stopped.  As though you were just floating there at the edge of a blackhole for all of eternity. 

And this is kind of what happens here in this part of chapter 56.  Scarlett and Rhett have reached their own black holes individually and alone.  There's no day, there's no night, there's no before, there's no after. There's only this grotesquely massive, outrageously dangerous thing they'll both have to circle around until the end of time.  And, what's much worse, black holes grow.  They get larger. They eat more stuff.  The accumulate mass. And they swallow everyone and everything and every thought and every idea and they are so big and black and dense that not even light can escape from their grasp. 

This miscarriage is their black hole.  Scarlett is cold  and confused and Rhett is jealous and confused and neither of them is big enough or confident enough or courageous enough to admit that they are very sorry and that they have no idea what in the hell they're doing.  And so Scarlett doesn't call for Rhett even though she wants him.  And instead of barging into Scarlett's room and sitting with her, Rhett stays in his room across the hall.  Alone. 

This breaks my heart every time, you guys. 

Seriously. 

That's why it has taken me so long to write this blog post.  How in the world am I supposed to analyze my feelings on what I consider to be the most wonderfully devastating pages in all the literature that's ever been written in the English speaking world?  You can have your Mr. Darcy's, your Kilgore Trout's, your Sam Starret's, your Rick Blaine's, your Cross Sugarman's, your TeaCakes, your Henry's IV, V, and VI's.  But I say to you here and now, that nothing holds a candle to Rhett Butler on his knees, weeping, with his head in Melly's lap. 

Isn't it interesting that Melly's kindness is the thing that actually breaks him?

Rhett has been sitting across the hall from Scarlett's room, watching the door and smoking cigars and not asking questions because the events have shocked him into silence.  Rhett has had a silver tongue for a thousand pages, but Scarlett's miscarriage has rendered him a deaf mute. 

But while he's being oh so quiet, MM gives us enough clues  to let us know that it's loud as hell inside his brain.  This is a classic study in show don't tell, isn't it? Up to this point Rhett has always been smooth and polished but now? He's a mess:

• "The room was untidy, littered with cigar butts and dishes of untouched food." Not eating.
• "The bed was tumbled and unmade and he sat on it." Not sleeping.
• He was "unhsaven and suddenly gaunt." Filthy.  
• "He looked so like a damned soul waiting judgment--so like a child in a suddenly hostile world." Scared.  

Remember how Scarlett complained during their honeymoon that Rhett wasn't like other men because he didn't play like a child? Scarlett thinks of Rhett as a mature adult, but I think it's fascinating that Scarlett's sickness is the thing that finally turns him into a child.  MM is too much of an author to go this far, but I'm pretty sure that in lesser hands we would have definitely gotten a line about how the fear in Rhett's big brown eyes was identical to the fear Scarlett always sees in Wade's eyes when she speaks to him. 

Anyway, so...Rhett starts drinking whiskey.  We don't know how long Scarlett has been teetering between life and death, but surely days have gone by.  But as I said earlier, our characters are floating in space and it's not clear if it's been 48 hours or five days or whatever else.  But we know Rhett hasn't slept or ate or drank anything but whiskey over the past few days, and we can tell that he's about to melt down.  I once stayed up 72 hours straight during finals back at college and I was damn near hysterical by the end of it all. But I was eating and drinking normally all the time, so I can't imagine Rhett's state of mind in this section. 

But it can't be good.

Melly tells him that Scarlett is better. But Rhett either doesn't hear her or doesn't understand her or has just been pushed so far past his breaking point that nothing Melly said was going to make any sense to him anyway.  So instead of reacting calmly or with happiness, he starts to really melt down. 

He cries, but because he's Rhett Butler and he's larger than life, he doesn't simply weep.  No, our beloved goes into a full-body, shoulder shaking, desperately choking sob that scares the daylights out of Melly.  Rhett carries himself so lightly most of the time, that we never suspect that he's ever felt guilty or miserable about anything he's done.  But now we see that we've been wrong. He's full of sorrows. 

And he's vulnerable. 

Very, very vulnerable. 

Scarlett believes that Rhett doesn't display his emotions because he doesn't have any emotions, but now we see that she's wrong. Now we learn that Rhett has a lot of feelings about everything, and it's been eating away at him for God knows how long; and we begin to wonder about how hard he's had to work to keep all of this so deep below his surface.  And, more to the point, now that he's had this explosion, how in the world will he be able to reel himself back from the abyss?

Even Melly is shocked when she hears Rhett's snide remarks about Scarlett's miscarriage.  And you'll notice that at no time during their conversation does Melly even attempt to give Rhett advice.  She simply sits there and listens to him, but she never tells him what to do to get back in Scarlett's good graces.  She never tells him how to fix what has gone so horribly wrong. 

Because it can't be fixed. 

*Sigh*