Now that Gerald is dead and buried, let's talk about Ashley Wilkes.
Ashley has been out of GWTW for a number of chapters now. Of course he's never been fully out of Scarlett's heart since she love, love, loves him, but our heroine has been too busy for the past few months to give him more than a passing thought. Her heart will always belong to the sleepy-eyed Ashley Wilkes, but between marrying Frank Kennedy and running his store and getting pregnant with his child, her childish fantasies have taken a back seat to the workaday world. As I said last time, I do believe that MM consciously drew a line between Atlanta Scarlett and Tara Scarlett, a line that very few characters ever cross. Scarlett's husbands certainly never cross that line, do they? Frank Kennedy did visit Tara in the aftermath of Sherman's March To The Sea, but at that point in the story he belonged to Suellen. Charles almost certainly visited Tara before, during, and after their wedding, but MM leaves all of that to our imagination. Rhett blurs every line in the book, but we're never treated to a scene of him hanging around, enjoying the red earth of Tara.
By contrast, Will Benteen, Suellen and Careen never leave Tara. They're frozen in time and space down there on the farm, existing at the edges of Scarlett's consciousness and functioning merely as reminders of her past and her present responsibilities.
But not everybody from The County, stays in the county. Gerald, Melly, and Ashley are three major characters who journey from Atlanta to Tara and back again, although I think it's highly significant that the Wilkes' cannot move between the two settings without Scarlett's help. Melly was born in Atlanta and she belongs mainly to the Atlanta scene in the book, and she only arrives at Tara in 1864 because Scarlett (and Rhett) are able to spirit her away just-in-the-nick-of-time. Ashley is of course County born and bred, and by the time we arrive in Chapter 41 Mr. Wilkes seems totally unable to generate any business prospects in Atlanta. He's a crappy farm hand and a dreamer and I think everybody in Atlanta knows that he wouldn't be much help as a banker or a cotton broker. Therefore, rather than using his personal connections to find work 20 miles away in central Atlanta, Ashley has no choice but to head to New York City (of all places!) to find work because "an old friend who made the Grand Tour with (him) has offered (him) a position in his father's bank."
Interestingly enough, Ashley's instincts are actually right for a change, assuming the reader ascribes to the long-view of things. The American economy during the latter half of the 19th century was transforming from the traditional agrarian lifestyle of the planter and farmer class into the highly stratified, "robber baron" economic structure that took over around the turn of the century. There was lots of money to be made during the 1870's and 1880's, but most of that money was going to be made in northern cities, and it was mostly going to be made by men who fought for the Union (or anyway, by the men who were wealthy enough during the war to pay for a replacement). Running a plantation was hard work, and it was almost impossible to run a large scale, profitable plantation without slaves. On the other hand, the Manhattan/North Shore/Gentleman's Club Northerners quickly developed a way to "work smarter" rather than harder, and Ashley is at least smart enough to recognize that getting in on the ground floor with Carnegie and Rockefeller is a better fit for his skill set (or lack thereof) than planting and hoeing and all the backbreaking effort that goes into farming.
He's right, but interestingly enough MM doesn't tip her hand in Chapter 41. MM wrote GWTW during the Great Depression, and she was therefore well schooled in the socio-economic realities of post Civil War America. Ashley and Melly could have made easy money in New York, and they probably could have avoided much of the trouble that happens in the last third of the book if they'd decided to leave during this chapter. As a matter of fact, all the characters in GWTW could have used a change of scenery, but with the exception of Rhett they almost seem glued to the ground. Of course the South was always a parochial society and people stayed put in their little towns and on their plantations for generations, and GWTW was certainly promoted as something of a love letter to Atlanta and the Old South, and having Melly and Ashley leave Atlanta at this point would have gone against the grain of the narrative, so I understand why they stay. Plus, Ashley can't leave because he's the catalyst of the remaining drama in the novel.
And yes, I do mean he's the catalyst and I'm very deliberately declaring that he's not the impetus of the final 30% of GWTW. I was going to say he was the impetus for what happens next, but then I turned to Google to get a precise definition of these words and I am firmly in the catalyst camp.
Impetus: the force or energy with which a body moves.
Catalyst: a substance that increases the rate of a chemical reaction without itself undergoing any permanent chemical change.
Now, ain't that the truth? When Ashley moves to Atlanta, his very presence in town causes so many different things to boil over all at once. Ashley is probably the most boring, stable chemical in MM's periodic table of character elements, but once you mix him in with Scarlett and Rhett and Frank and all the Reconstruction drama hanging over the entire state, things get real very quickly. Ashley undergoes the smallest changes over the course of the novel and it's easy to think of him as little more than a rag doll of a man who gets pushed and prodded by whichever way the wind is blowing, but in truth he's the center of all the crazy shit and ugly feelings that happen from Gerald's funeral until the end of the novel. And so many things could have been avoided if Ashley had the balls to be direct. Sometimes in life we have to be like Iyanla Vanzant and "Call a Thing a Thing," even if our words make other people uncomfortable. Scarlett and Ashley's post-funeral conversation is awkward and difficult, but he needs to stop leading her on. It was one thing when they were kids back in the first chapters of the novel, but this is getting ridiculous, isn't it?:
"But...you could gradually buy the mill from me and it would be your own and then--"
"Scarlett," he interrupted fiercely, "I tell you, no. There are other reasons."
"What reasons?"
"You know my reasons better than anyone in the world."
"Oh that? But--that'll be all right," she assured swiftly. "I promised, you know, out in the orchard, last winter and I'll keep my promise and--"
"Then you are surer of yourself than I am. I could not count on myself to keep such a promise."
So...what are his other reasons?
Scarlett thinks Ashley's "other reasons" are spelled L-O-V-E. And perhaps this is the surface meaning of his words, but then again maybe not. I don't pretend to know anything about Ashley and Melly's private life (LIES! I think about it all the time!), but we know for sure that doctor Meade doesn't want Mrs. Wilkes to consider having any more children. Which means...I mean, we can all kind of guess what it means. And we all know that men of a certain background often kept mistresses whenever their wives couldn't or wouldn't deliver all promised wifely duties, I don't think Ashley has the time or money to keep a woman on the side. So....there's that. Scarlett discounts this reality because Scarlett doesn't really enjoy marriage (ahem), but Ashley probably thinks about it non-stop. So instead of L-O-V-E, I'd bet my next paycheck that Ashley's "reasons" have to do with L-U-S-T, something that he's too proud and too well-bred to spell out to Scarlett.
But--and this is the biggest but of the novel, and the reason why I think Ashley gets a bad rep--that doesn't mean Ashley doesn't love Scarlett. I think he loves her--like a sister. He probably wants to have sex with her, but that doesn't mean he pines for her or thinks about her unless she's standing right in front of him. His silence is misguided since it should be obvious to him that he needs to clear the air and let Scarlett know that his feelings for her have nothing to do with her feelings for him, but that doesn't mean he doesn't care about Scarlett.
At least I don't think so. And neither does he, I don't think. GWTW is fiction, but it stands out because of the realism in the words and actions of the characters. Unfortunately, the real world isn't filled with confidant, swash-buckling, take-no-prisoners people like Scarlett, Rhett and Gerald. Instead, most people in the world aren't self-assured enough to be honest with themselves, let alone other people. Everything in real life is muddled and confusing, and there is very little certainty in anything, and there certainly isn't any certainty in love. I'm Ashley's biggest critic, but whenever he avoids the truth he's being true to life. So that's something, isn't it?
Anyway, Scarlett pitches a fit when Ashley rejects her offer of working in the mill and says he's moving to New York. Melly comes to Scarlett's aid, and she chastises Ashley for making good old Scarlett cry. Eventually, the Wilkes move to Atlanta and Ashley realizes that he is lost forever because he'll never have a chance to stand up on his own two feet.
Boo-freakin'-hoo.
They move to Ivy Street in Atlanta, in a "little brick house...directly behind Aunt Pitty's house," which means the Wilkes' have moved right into Scarlett's backyard. This? Is a mess. I know Atlanta was much smaller in those days than it is now, but come on, Ashley. Do the right thing for once, and at least get a nice little house somewhere down the way so you aren't constantly running into Scarlett and her green eyes whenever you look out your back windows.
Oh, and good old India moves in with them, a small little detail that means absolutely nothing to the first-time reader but which means everything to the rest of the plot. Everybody scattered to the four winds during and after the Civil War, but while the outside world has gotten a lot bigger, the world of upper class Atlanta is contracting very quickly. Back in the County the Wilkes lived a fair distance from Tara. And even while they all lived at Tara, the vast grounds of the old plantation provided plenty of breathing space and elbow room. But now everybody is six years older than they were at the beginning, they're a hell of a lot poorer, and they're living cheek to jowl with their best friends and sworn enemies and yuck, yuck, yuck. This is all so yucky, isn't it? To return to my earlier chemistry metaphor, MM is doing a pretty sneaky mad-scientist routine here in Chapter 41. Just when it seemed like Ashley and Melly might actually leave the South and go AWOL like so many of the old friends who've drifted out of the story by this point in the book, MM decides to pluck them out of the peaceful poverty at Tara and puts them right back in the center of things. It's a hair-raising turn of events, but the first-time reader of GWTW would have no reason to be alarmed because there doesn't seem to be anything inherently dangerous in the largely expository second half of Chapter 41. The Wilkes residence becomes the heart of Old School, upper-crust Atlanta, but even this turn of events seems natural and not at all catastrophic, mostly because Melly was already fairly popular in Atlanta during the first section of the book, so her triumphant return seems like a foregone conclusion.
And yet--
And yet--
Melly hasn't changed, not much anyway. Not yet. But Atlanta has changed a lot. And Scarlett has transformed during the last few chapters, and there's something almost sinister lurking in the shadows at Melly's parties. MM portrays it all in a straightforward manner, and she rarely even compares pre-War life to post-War life with anything other than broad strokes in this section of the book, but a sophisticated reader (and certainly a sophisticated reader who's read this book hundreds of times), cannot miss the difference. I was never any good at chemistry, but you don't have to be Marie Curie to realize that Stressed Scarlett + Trusting Melly + Depressed Ashley + Stupid Frank + Yankees + Inflation + Rhett Butler= ABSOLUTE CHAOS.
It takes a while for all hell to break loose, but we know it's coming.
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