So, here we are.
Finally.
According to my Kindle, the beginning of Chapter 43 marks the 73% mark in GWTW. It also marks what I consider to be the beginning of the end--which is to say, the beginning of the final third of GWTW. Although, wonder of wonders, the Butler marriage evidently only makes up one quarter of GWTW as opposed to the 1/3 number I've been carrying in my head since the Clinton administration. I suppose I'd mentally chopped up the novel into three parts and assigned one slice to each of Scarlett's three husbands, but it's fascinating to find out that MM didn't parse it all out so evenly. The book does seem remarkably balanced after you've finished reading it though, and as I re-read this section I wonder if MM deliberately divided the book into quarters instead of third in order to account for all the time Scarlett spends pining for Ashley?
Or maybe I'm thinking too deeply about all of this.
So, alright, here we are at the beginning of Chapter 43. There's very little in the beginning of Chapter 43 to indicate that anything unusual or story/life-changing is about to occur, really. Other Southern authors would have gone totally Gothic here and introduced out-of-season-mad-dogs or blood moons or whatever. And even Shakespeare or one of his ilk would have treated us to something supernatural in the setting, something like an eclipse or a weird clump of stars in the East or...something. But MM has written such a strong story with such an incredible plot that she doesn't even feel it is necessary to tip her hand in an obvious way that strange things are about to happen. And yet, because she's a writer's writer, she still indicates that Scarlett's situation in Atlanta (as Rhett finally makes his sexy way back to the heart of the story) isn't quite as calm as it seems.
"It was one of those rare December days..." she tells us, "...the sun was almost as warm as Indian summer..." And yet, there is death all around Scarlett as she sits with Ella on Aunt Pitty's porch.
- Dry red (i.e. dead) leaves "cling to the oak."
- "Faint yellow green still persisted in the dying grass."
Which is a shame because their conversation crackles with life, doesn't it?
After pages and pages of slow moving, predictable, rather boring conversations with comparatively boring characters, Rhett and Scarlett's conversation here fairly jumps off the page. As a matter of fact, this is one of the first instances where Scarlett admits that she's missed Rhett, although she only admits it through the omniscient narrator. Anyway, I was going to heap a bunch of criticism down on Scarlett for missing so many chances with Rhett and for treating their every interaction like it's a horrible chore, but Scarlett has manners in this section, ya'll. Because she actually asks Rhett how he's been!
"How are you Rhett?" She asks at the beginning of their conversation. "You've been away a long time."
This is a normal greeting between friends, almost a rhetorical question, but in this particular case I don't think Scarlett was merely fulfilling the expectations of polite society when she asks Rhett how he's been. I really don't. I think she genuinely wanted to know what her old friend Rhett has been up to since she's last seen him. And I never noticed until this evening that he doesn't answer her.
He doesn't.
He admits to having been away for a long time, but he doesn't mention how he's been getting along. Has he had a good time in New Orleans and Cuba and wherever else he's visited? Did he run into trouble? Did he make good dough playing poker or double his money on an investment or...whatever? Did he do anything at all?
He doesn't tell Scarlett. And I can't tell here if we're supposed to read a lot into this, or if MM was just trying to cram a bunch of characterization into this fairly small space. Rhett is honest to a fault a lot of the time, but he's always so vague about where's he's been and what he's been doing and especially about how he's feeling. It's not evasion really, it's more like omission. I guess.
Anyway, what's a plug-ugly? Rhett calls Johnnie Gallagher a plug-ugly in this section, and I've been hearing that term once-in-a-while for most of my life, but I still don't know what it is.
A quick Google search indicates that the plug-uglies were a New York City gang, one of those Gangs of New York gangs that basically ran Gotham during the mid-19th century. One of those guys who brawled with Bill the Butcher and Leonardo DiCaprio, and--okay. You know what? Who gives a care about Johnny Gallagher and all of that, when this is the chapter that reveals Rhett's reasons for going to New Orleans to all of us?
Here we go!
"But I will satisfy your vulgar curiosity since you ask such pointed questions. It isn't a sweetheart that takes me to New Orleans. It's a child, a little boy."
"A little boy!" The shock of this unexpected information wiped out her confusion.
"Yes, he is my legal ward and I am responsible for him. He's in school in New Orleans. I go there frequently to see him."
"And take him presents?"
"Yes," he said shortly, unwillingly.
"...Is he handsome?"
"Too handsome for his own good."
"Is he a nice little boy?"
"No. He's a perfect hellion. I wish he had never been born. Boys are troublesome creatures."
WTF?
Whiskey Tango Foxtrot? (As my heroes in the Navy Seals might say)
So....like...wait a minute..what?
Questions:
1.) Who's kid is this?
2.) Seriously, who's kid is this?
3.) No, I'm still totally not convinced. Who's kid is this again?
4.) Seriously: WTF?
There's so much beauty in this, ya'll. The Rhett we've known is a rogue. He's carefree. He's not without his own morality and honor code, but he definitely plays by his own rules. He's the manliest man that ever manned in the pages of GWTW, but he's not a traditional man in their highly traditional society. So...what in the heck is he doing here? He's the legal guardian of this kid? This is such a huge shift, isn't it? We've been told over and over again that Rhett goes to New Orleans to party and play, but it turns out that none of that is true. I suppose being the legal guardian for a child doesn't necessarily preclude the option of sporting around the town, but--but still.
This is nuts, you guys.
This is huge.
It comes out of nowhere the first time you read it, like a bolt from the blue. But MM is a very good, very careful author, so there's still a degree of realism around even this ridiculously shocking turn of events. Rhett spends a lot of time in New Orleans and he goes there frequently, but Scarlett and her gang in Atlanta have misdirected us into believing that Rhett only goes to New Orleans because he wants to get hammered and go on a permanent Mardis Gras. That's part of the foundation in his characterization, isn't it? He's supposed to be an irresponsible rogue who doesn't give a whit for anybody's feelings and is selfish down to the bone. But a selfish guy wouldn't act as legal guardian for a kid, full-stop. Especially given that all the evidence points to the conclusion that Rhett is not the father of the unnamed boy.
Yeah, that's right. I said it. I'm taking a stand right now and throwing down the gauntlet and drawing a little line in the sand. Rhett Butler is not this kid's father. If this was actually Rhett's kid, well...
I think if this unknown boy was actually Rhett Butler's actual child, Rhett would be forthright about the whole thing. He's not keeping his out-of-wedlock child a secret to uphold his reputation because he doesn't have a reputation to uphold. And even if he did have a reputation to uphold, the latter part of GWTW shows us that Rhett would never abandon any child of his to a New Orleans boarding school. True he says he visits the boy frequently, but given his devotion to Bonnie (and even Wade and Ella), I seriously doubt he would want to be more than fifty miles away from his kid if he could help it. So--no.
This is not Rhett's boy. There are context clues to indicate that he's talking about Belle's son, and I don't doubt that for a moment. And I also don't doubt for a moment that Rhett would go above and beyond the call of duty to take care of his friend Belle's son, especially since Belle's notoriety makes it impossible for her to personally take care of her son on her own. She can send money and toys or whatever, but she can't just show up at the boarding school since that would lead to humiliation for everyone present. As a matter of fact, given the evasive way both Rhett and Belle speak about this child, there's more than a good chance that the boy doesn't even know his mother's a prostitute at all, let alone the famous Belle. Right?
This is Belle's son, but not Rhett's son. So who's the boy's father? We don't know. And we'll never know. I'm 99% sure it's not Rhett or any of his kin, but it's clearly the child of somebody Rhett either loves or loved or someone he respects and quite possibly owes a debt of gratitude (which may be what we're all thinking about when we say "love" anyway). In any case, this small bit of information flushes out Rhett Butler's back story and shows us so much about his character and the lengths he will go through to fulfill his responsibilities to the important people in his social circle. I have this theory that Romance Novels are really just mysteries with more kissing and less death, mysteries where the question is not who but why and the answer is always because he's in love with the heroine. So, why does Mr. Darcy act so aloof whenever he sees Elizabeth? And why does he go through such great lengths to avoid her? And why does he work so hard to help the Bennett sisters when he's tried so hard to hate them all? Because he's in love with Elizabeth Bennett.
But in Gone With the Wind, the answer to Rhett Butler isn't so simple, is it? Why does Rhett Butler save Scarlett's bacon so many times? Because he's in love with her. But unlike Mr. Darcy, Rhett's love extinguishes well before the last page of the novel. And yet he sticks around for some time after Bonnie's death. True he's disagreeable and an alcoholic mess by the end of it, but he still pays the bills. He doesn't abandon Scarlett right away. Why?
Because Rhett Butler is a fundamentally decent, highly responsible person.
I'll come back to this idea down the road, but I think it's an important concept to nibble on for now.
Anyway, as if to reinforce my earlier point, notice that Rhett doesn't explain how he's been even when he begins discussing his father's death. In a different novel with different characters, their conversation would have gone something like this:
"How have you been, Rhett?"
"Not great, thanks for asking. My father died, so that sucks. I'm glad he's dead since I hated him, but still it's not exactly a freaking carnival when you lose one of your parents."
But instead of a straight answer, his responses start spinning off in a variety of different, almost contradictory directions. He's not sorry his father died and his father wasn't sorry to die, and Rhett tries to shrug it all off but there's a huge block of text smack in the middle of this conversation that includes a lot of tangled vines that I still don't even know how to begin unraveling. Suffice it to say, I try not to spend much time thinking or talking about the people I hate, but Rhett goes on for some time here in this section, doesn't he? I just read this section out loud to myself, and it took me a solid 5 minutes to get through this whole thing. That's not very long, but it's incredibly long given that GWTW's speaking sections are usually so very brief. He's trying to give Scarlett a breakdown of everything his father was about, but instead the things he says and doesn't say illuminate his character more than they reflect any particular attributes about his father, his mother, Charleston or the southern post-war mindset. Rhett is trying to pretend he rejected Southern society before it rejected him ("All the things father wanted me to do and be were such boring things."), but I'm not convinced. Especially since in the end (SPOILER) Rhett claims that he's leaving Atlanta and returning to his Charleston roots. So even as he's racing around the world, gambling and disgracing his family and whatever, there still must be a part of him deep down that wonders about what might have been. And perhaps sometime during his marriage to Scarlett the "might have been" turns into the "should have been?"
Anyway, this post has gone on long enough. But before we go I'd like to point out a few of my favorite things from this chapter:
- "Dulce et decorum est--" I had never heard this phrase before I read GWTW for the first time. I don't think I read Wilfred Owen's marvelous poem until I was in college. Now obviously this latin quote didn't originate with the British WWI writer, but I'm sure MM at least had the poem in mind when she had Rhett drop the phrase. Or maybe not. Anyway, John Green from Crash Course (and "The Fault in Our Stars") theorizes that modern cynicism grows directly out of the confusing, seemingly pointless battles of WWI, so Rhett is all the more interesting because he embraces cynicism and sarcasm a full fifty years before the rest of us caught on.
- "And I've heard the dead are happy. Do you suppose Ashley Wilkes is happy?" How's that for foreshadowing? Rhett is being deliberately flippant about death here, isn't he? Although I suppose (in fact, I know for sure) that it's easy to be rational about death when you're not faced with the death of someone you love. His nonchalant, pithy remarks about life and death undoubtedly echo back at him after Bonnie dies. After all, if he was convinced that the dead are happy, he wouldn't have gone so completely off the rails after his daughter's death. Of course he'd be sad because he misses her, but surely he wouldn't be so fixated on not putting her into the dark ground if he truly thought there was nothing after death or believed that the dead are happy.
- "My pet, I've been to the devil and he's a very dull fellow." I have no idea what he's referring to here, but it sounds good doesn't it? The Devil vs. Rhett Butler is a great idea for a short story.
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