Chapter 48 (part 2): "She learned everything about him except what he really was."

"In fact, in those two weeks in New Orleans, she learned everything about him except what he really was." 

Well, what is he?

GWTW is full of excellent sentences and wonderful paragraphs and little turns of phrase that blow my mind every time I read this novel. But no collection of words in GWTW has anything close to the impact and the weight of this particular line, delivered at this particular time, in this particular situation.  So as I break down the last half of this chapter, I think it's imperative that I start by unpacking the true meaning of this line.

First of all, let's begin by acknowledging the absurdity of Scarlett's statement.  She's only been married to Rhett for a little more than two weeks, yet she actually thinks that she knows everything about him after such a short amount of time? Granted, Scarlett and Rhett have spent a lot of time together since April of 1861, and Scarlett has picked up quite a bit about him over the course of their friendship, but you get the sense that she actually believes that two weeks are all she needs to understand every facet of Rhett's personality.  She has been studying Ashley closely for ages and she still can't quite figure out what makes him tick, and Ashley is practically an open book compared to Rhett.  The man's a professional poker player, for goodness sakes! You'd think Scarlett would realize that Rhett doesn't let her see anything he doesn't want her to see, but Scarlett had always overestimated her own smarts, hasn't she? She's brainy but she's the least emotionally perceptive person in the novel, and her conclusions about other people and their true selves and their motives are always a little bit off base.

But the real interesting part of this sentence is the use of the word what. 

MM says that Scarlett "learned everything about him except what he really was."

Why does she use what instead of who?

What does what really mean?

According to Google, what is a word with a lot of meaning. Who has an easy answer, I think. Who is about someone's permanent identity, right? Let's try it:

• Question: Who is Rhett Butler? 

•  Answer:  A Charleston-born aristocrat who rebelled against the old south and forged his own wicked path toward power and money.  He has black hair, a swarthy complexion, and a mustache. Maybe you've heard of him?

Okay, that was easy enough.  

• Question:  What is Rhett Butler? 

• Answer: What do you mean by what? 

 
I've often come back to my idea that romance novels/romantic stories are really just mysteries.  But unlike regular mysteries that are about solving crimes, the mystery in romance novels always winds up being the everlasting passion the hero has for the heroine.  The POV in women's fiction is usually planted firmly inside the heroine's head. We understand her motives, her desires, her fears, her loves better than she knows herself, but at the same time the hero's behavior is erratic and impossible to understand until, of course, you realize that he's been behaving so strangely only because he's madly in love with the heroine.  It's a story as old as Pride and Prejudice, but I would argue that it goes back even to the bible. After all, God spends the entire Old Testament behaving erratically and doing super weird stuff all the time (apples, floods, wars, famine, fire, falling towers, etc), but once Jesus shows up to explain that God is only doing this because he "so loves the world," we begin to see God's actions in the Old Testament clearly, as the actions of a deity who is in love with us. Or anyway, I think that's what we're supposed to get out of it.  So what is Rhett in this chapter?

He's:

1. A Raconteur (he tells all kinds of stories about "courage and honor and virtue and love in the odd places he had been, and follow them with ribald stories of coldest cynicism.");
2. A Lover ("ardent...tender...");
3. A Mocking Devil ("who ripped the lid from her gunpowder temper, fired it and enjoyed the explosion");
4. A Maid (he feeds her and brushes her hair which is sort of sweet, but also deeply strange in my opinion);
5. A tease (tickling her feet and tearing her "rudely out of deep slumber" when she least expects it);
6. A good listener; 
7. A bad listener;
8. An incredibly sardonic and sarcastic companion; 
9. Flippant; 
10. Daring; 
11. A bad boy in church; 
12. A good boy at the theater; 

And last, but certainly not least, he's:

    12. A Man

Through and through.  I'm not sure how Scarlett would define manhood, but for our purposes let's rely on Google's basic definition: A man is an adult human male. Which is to say, not a child.  Scarlett then goes on to compare him to the other males she's known, men like her father and the Tarleton's and the Fontaines and Charles and Frank.  They were masculine and they were all very good at doing all the things men are supposed to do, but the were all sort of childish in Scarlett's eyes.  MM calls them "boys at heart," full of antics and fun and silliness.  Actually, I think Scarlett does indeed define manhood in this section, doesn't she?

"Only Ashley and Rhett eluded her understanding and her control for they were both adults, and the elements of boyishness were lacking in them."

So Scarlett equates manhood with...elusiveness? She believes that a male is only a man if she can't control him through her usual sexy tricks? And what does it say about our heroine when we realize that the only two men she respects are also the only two men who don't play her game?


Hmmph.

So far, the Butler honeymoon as been idyllic despite all the drinking and carousing.  But then things go pear shaped all of a sudden on the last full night in the honeymoon when Rhett uses his spidey-sense or his vulcan-mind-meld capabilities and realizes that Scarlett is dreaming about Ashley as she drifts off to sleep in his arms.  And he gets mad.

Like, really mad. 

The final pages of their honeymoon plays out as brilliant foreshadowing for the events of the rest of their ill-fated marriage. 

Rhett catches Scarlett dreaming about Ashley which causes Rhett's "heavy arm beneath her neck [to] become like iron," which causes him to swear ("May God damn your cheating little soul to hell for all eternity" which isn't, like something you'd exactly say off the cuff, is it?) which causes him to leave the room in a huff (despite Scarlett's questions and protests) which causes him to reappear the next morning drunk and sarcastic which causes Scarlett to be "quite cool to him" which causes him to get even angrier as "she dressed under his bloodshot gaze and went shopping," which causes him to be gone when she returns which means that he does not appear again until it's time for supper which causes Scarlett to eat her large meal in silence which causes her to over indulge which causes her to drink way too much which eventually triggers her nightmare. 

And, sadly and predictably, Rhett is drunk or hungover when he comes in to rescue Scarlett from her nightmare. It's a very sweet scene as written, a sweet scene that most probably launched several generations of women into puberty.  What's better than a well-dressed Rhett Butler coming to Scarlett's rescue in Atlanta just before the town burns to the ground? How about a disheveled, hungover Rhett rescuing Scarlett from her nightmare in the darkness of the wee hours? After all, the real world holds a number of scary dangers, but nothing is more terrifying than unspecified, imagined threats.  Scarlett can face down armies and shoot a deserter in the face, but her dream shakes her to her core. 

Poor thing.

Good thing she's got such a strong, incredibly sexy, incredibly capable husband around to help!

His face is still unreadable, but his shirt is open to the waist (drool),  and his brown chest is covered with thick black hair (double drool), and....when I was a young girl my taste ran to squeaky voiced, safe boys like Michael Jackson (Thriller era, of course), and Joey McIntyre. But ever since I first read GWTW I've had a soft-spot for hairy guys with mustaches and drinking problems. I think this scene is probably the reason, more than any other.  He's just smoking hot here, really. And then to top it off, he doesn't calm Scarlett by talking about dream and love and nightmares or anything silly like that. Instead he brings her back to reality by discussing money, investments, and real estate. 

Sigh.

Now, the reality is that Rhett has been on a bender for at least 24 hours by the time we arrive at this conversation.  His eyes were crazy bloodshot yesterday morning, and they're still bloodshot by the time he calms Scarlett's fears, and that's not a good look, you guys.  For the sake of analysis, let's say Rhett has been doing roughly one shot per hour for the past 24. If we assume that Rhett has the same height and weight as Clark Gable (6'1" & 200lbs), then his BAC on that night would have been about 0.481%. Which is in the staggering/alcohol poisoning/sudden death range. He can handle his liquor, but if he continues to drink like this he is totally doomed.  I think Mitchell draws our attention to his bloodshot eyes in this chapter because she wants us to contrast this Rhett (still young, still with it Rhett) with the bloated, totally destroyed man who dumps Scarlett at the end of the book.  Here he's clearly alcohol dependent, but you get the sense that he can control his drinking.  But by the end of GWTW the liquor controls him, and his downfall is sad and heartbreaking. 

Chapter 48 (part 1): "Between them, Scarlett and Rhett had outraged every tenet of [the] code..."

I've been working too hard on other things that are not this blog, and this is the first free weekend I've had since the very start of summer.  I could have spent this weekend drinking shandies and reading on my back porch, but instead I've decided to carve out some time to update my blog.  So, welcome back everybody!

Chapter 48 of GWTW covers the Butler honeymoon in New Orleans.  New Orleans has loomed fairly large over the course of the novel, and it functions as an off-stage, anti-Atlanta, all fun times and scandal and rivers and brothels while Atlanta has been nothing but hard times and gossip and red-dirt since the beginning of the book.  It's no coincidence, of course, that New Orleans comes into focus during the Butler honeymoon. As Rhett reminds Scarlett and the reader in this chapter, he was "engaged in some of [his] nefarious schemes [in New Orleans] during the war," so we'd be forgiven for assuming that Rhett got up to some of his shady business dealings in Louisiana whenever he wasn't bugging Scarlett/saving Scarlett's life in Atlanta. New Orleans is the one place in the south (and perhaps the world) where Rhett can just be Rhett, so the Butler honeymoon functions as a nice little window into the actual life of Rhett.

So what do we learn?

Quite a bit, actually.  Mitchell drops several bombs in this chapter, filling out many details of Rhett's background which is refreshing since she's given us such a fuzzy sketch for so long. Rhett sticks out like a sore thumb in Atlanta because of his flashy clothes, loose morals, and all that gambling and whoring (and, you know, proudly owning a whore house), but he fits right in in New Orleans where Scarlett meets many, many men who "had the same hard reckless look Rhett wore. Their eyes were always alert, like me who have lived too long with danger to be ever quite careless." Now Rhett's eyes are usually described as bland/blank, but he's also very observant and watchful as a rule. Although I never quite get the sense that he's looking out for danger, but instead it seems as though he's just scanning his environment for information that can help him get over in his next scheme. I'm not faulting him for that, by the way. Just sayin'.

Anyway, Rhett and his homies trade gossip and stories about:

• Cuba
• Nassau in the blockade days
• the Gold Rush (California) 
• Gun running
• Filibustering
• Nicaragua
• William Walker/Truxillo
• Jesse James/Frank James/Quantril's band

Other men in the novel are Confederate veterans, so they reminisce about Gettysburg, Vicksburg, and the Army of Northern Virginia. So by having these men skip over these historical events and talk about all these shady/illegal activities, I think we're supposed to assume that Rhett's friends spent the past six years sitting out the war and making financial gains while all the other men of their generation were getting blown to bits.  The difference between Rhett and his unnamed friends, of course, is that we know for SURE that Rhett did all of those things and did his time in the Confederate Army. So while his buddies might be amoral swindlers, Rhett comes off as a smart guy who stayed away from the Civil War until his southern heart overtook his good sense.

Come to think of it, all four of the major characters in GWTW have a multi-layered, multi-faceted relationship to the southern cause, don't they? Scarlett didn't care one way or another about the Civil War at all--she pretended to care, of course, but she never really bought into the Southern cause. Mostly because she thought it was a waste of time, energy, resources, and men.  Melly spent most of the war devoted to Ashley, but she was never really a die-hard about the whole state's rights thing. Ashley fought on the front lines with Bobby Lee for most of the conflict, but he was always a reluctant soldier from the very beginning.  But of course, one of the most wonderful things about GWTW is that everybody in the story is wonderfully complex and conflicted almost all the time. MM doesn't spend much time helping us learn the thoughts and motives of the other characters in GWTW, but you do get the sense that she wanted us to realize that very few southerners were absolute, rabid supporters of the confederacy.  Everybody supported the war and all the men eventually joined up (or tried to join like poor Gerald), but everyone had their own motives and ideas about the general direction of the war.

Anyway, Scarlett likes New Orleans. She really, really, really likes New Orleans.  She likes the clothes, she likes the jewels, she likes the alcohol, and she likes the food.  MM actually performs a very clever and sophisticated maneuver by having Scarlett go on and on about food in this chapter.  After all, we could never forget how hungry they all were after the war, but--that was a long time ago now.  Scarlett has been married to Frank for some time, and the casual reader (i.e. one who didn't finish the book in three days like yours truly) would be forgiven for forgetting all about Scarlett's vow to Never Go Hungry Again.

But MM hasn't forgotten. And she uses this honeymoon interlude as a well-designed call-back to Scarlett's days of hardship.  Scarlett has been living a fairly cozy middle-class life in Atlanta for years now, but our heroine still can't quite shake the feeling that poverty will return.  This is what drives her through the last twenty percent of the book (we're at 82% here in this chapter!), the thing that makes her greedy and selfish even after she marries Rhett and she can afford to be kind and sensible.  Of course every character in the book has faced immense hardship, but I think the other characters in the book fail to see just how unique Scarlett's situation was after Sherman blew through Atlanta. 

Scarlett has tried hard to forget how tough things were back at Tara after the war. But I think of all the characters in the book, Scarlet's path after the fall of Atlanta was the most difficult because there were no obvious answers or solutions to her problems.  Rhett was in the Confederate army throughout most of 1864 and 1865, and nobody doubts the difficulty of fighting a war that has already been lost, but his objective during that time was pretty clear: don't die.   Ashley was in prison during the latter half of the war, but all he had to do was survive. I'm not saying survival in a POW camp during the 19th century was easy, but it's also not complicated.  Melly had just given birth to her baby during the Fall of Atlanta and she is very weak during 1864, 1865, and 1866. But again, her only objective was to stay alive. 

Not so for Scarlett.

No, Scarlett O'Hare couldn't even consider the idea of falling over and expiring. Once she got back to Tara she was in a world of trouble, and she had to spend her days and nights figuring out how to feed her family, how to avoid the scavengers in the neighborhood, how to keep Tara safe from harm.  Melly spent that time teetering between life and death, but Scarlett didn't have that luxury. The entire world--or anyway, the entire world of Scarlett's novel--depended on her, and the thought of giving up and dropping dead was never part of her program.  She was the captain of a sinking ship and she spent all her time focused on keeping Tara afloat. 

Scarlett doesn't have true battle scars, but she does have Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. However, unlike the soldiers in the novel who probably cower at every loud bang they hear, Scarlett's PTSD is centered on food and money.  And while you might be able to avoid loud noises for the rest of your life, Scarlett encounters food and money every single day and she seems to take stock of her financial progress every time she sits down to a meal.

And so, after the last chapter featured nothing but blanc mange (yuck!) and cheap liquor, this chapter is all about decadence and excess and all the deliciousness New Orleans has to offer. We read details about the meals, as a matter of fact. We don't get any details about the Butler wedding, but we get a lot of information about the honeymoon meals.

In the space of one paragraph Scarlett eats:

• Gumboes
• Shrimp Creole (this link will take you to the Yelp page for my all-time favorite New Orleans restaurant!)
• Doves in Wine (Huh?Ew!) 
• Oysters in crumbly patties full of cream sauce
• Mushrooms
• Sweetbreads (which are totally not what you think they are) 
• Turkey livers
• Fish "baked cunningly in oiled paper and limes"
• Pastries with chocolate and meringue
• Champagne

Interestingly enough, Scarlett has spent a great deal of time drinking liquor since the fall of Atlanta. However, she's been drinking cheap, tame stuff compared to the champagne Rhett orders in New Orleans.  She gets twisted and turnt up on champagne one night and sings "Bonnie Blue Flag" at the top of her lungs and wakes up with a nasty hangover, and she's all humiliated because she's never seen a woman drunk except "that Watling creature on the day when Atlanta fell." And let's just pause right here and ruminate on how tight GWTW really is for a second.  GWTW is a sprawling book with a huge cast of characters, but MM doesn't waste words and she doesn't waste characters, and it's a nice call-back to have Scarlett halt in the middle of her honeymoon and compare herself to Belle.  Remember the SAT syllogisms ya'll? Well here in this chapter MM is executing a nice little multiple choice quiz for you.

Atlanta: New Orleans as: (Choose One, if you can)
A. Scarlett: Belle  
B. Ashley: Rhett 
C. South: North
D. Melly: Scarlett
E. All of the Above



Answer: A, B & E. But not necessarily C or D, for reasons that will become clearer as we get closer to the end of the book. 

Alright, I'm going to drink beer on my deck. I'll post my thoughts and analysis on the rest of this all-important chapter next time, gang. 

Chapter 47: What the hell is a blanc mange anyway?

What's a blanc mange?

We recently passed the 78th anniversary of GWTW's original publication.  The novel is older than my parents and the events of Scarlett's life take place approximately 150 years before the present day, but MMs word choice is strikingly modern, isn't it? The Civil War and the Reconstruction era are practically ancient history to us today, yet there are very few phrases in this novel that leave me scratching my head in confusion.  I spent the past month watching The World Cup and it is much more difficult for me to understand the rules of soccer and the worldwide fascination with all those flopping pretty-boys with funny names than it is for me to understand Scarlett and the gang. To put it another way, at this point I think I'd have a much better conversation with Ashley and Melly than I ever could with Messi and Neymar. 

Except--

What's a blanc mange?

Chapter 47 of GWTW opens with a very bummed out, fairly drunk Scarlet ruminating on her sins on the day of Frank's funeral.  She's feeling down and lonely, which is understandable given that 1.) her husband is dead, 2.) it's sort of all her fault, and 3.) even if it's not her fault, everybody else thinks it's all her fault.  Scarlett never has had any girlfriends in the novel beside Melly, and even Melly isn't there to comfort the recently widowed protagonist.  Everybody paid their respects to Frank, and in doing so many, many of the Atlanta town's folk brought blanc mange.  I had to google blanc mange in order to figure out what it was, and precisely what message MM was trying to send by emphasizing this particular dessert.  And here's what I found:

Blancmange (/bləˈmɒnʒ/ or /bləˈmɑːndʒ/, from French blanc-manger French pronunciation: ​[blɑ̃mɑ̃ʒe]), also known as shape, is a sweet dessert commonly made with milk or cream and sugar thickened with gelatin, cornstarch or Irish moss^[1] (a source of carrageenan), and often flavored with almonds. It is usually set in a mould and served cold (WIKIPEDIA). 

Blanc mange looks like a big white blob. I tried to convince my mother to help me make some this weekend, but she declined. Because who in the hell would want to eat something so bland and unappetizing? It's almost as if blanc mange is the Frank Kennedy of desserts, something that's just sort of boring and bland and there.  I'm not exactly certain what other desserts people in that part of the world traditionally eat during times of bereavement, but...it wouldn't have killed the neighbors to bring over some peach pie, right? I realize it's winter and peaches are therefore probably out of season, but still. 

No wonder our girl hasn't had much to eat, right?

So perhaps Scarlett's inebriation in this scene isn't really her fault.  The first rule of drinking is to eat something first in order to coat your stomach and avoid getting tipsy too fast, and who in the hell would want to eat blanc mange? 

Every college student in America knows that you have to pace yourself when you binge, but in the 19th century nobody apparently told women when and how to drink because, as we learn later, there was absolutely no possibility that a woman like Scarlett (i.e. upper class, white, attractive, feminine) would ever turn to hard liquor to escape the pressures of her life.  Lots of men were alcoholics I guess, but the men Scarlett knows are cultured, mannered alcoholics in the style of the boys from Southern Charm, not the sullen, dangerous drunks our girl encountered the day Sherman took Atlanta.  Actually, come to think of it, I'm not sure if we're supposed to think that Scarlett is actually the only female alcoholic in upper class Atlanta. After all, we know very, very little about the private lives of the women in this novel, and there's a distinct possibility that every single one of them drinks booze for breakfast. 

Anyway, so here we are. 

The stage is set, isn't it? Frank Kennedy is dead, Scarlett is on the cusp of retiring and heading home to Tara, and she's actually sort of remorseful for once. As a matter of fact, Scarlett's depression and binge drinking have combined to give her a sort of clear-eyed sobriety that allows her to step outside of herself and her own problems and her obsession with Ashley for a few precious moments.  Scarlett normally doesn't pay much attention to Rhett whenever he's around. She rarely takes much time to consider his motivations or evaluate his words, and she's always sort of distracted whenever he starts talking. But not here. And as their conversation unfolds Scarlett has a few of her rare moments of insight. 

"Sometimes she thought that all the people she had ever known were strangers except Rhett." 

And this is where...I mean, just think about that for a moment. Scarlett loved both of her parents, she loves Ashley, and she loves/respects Melly, but all those relations are strangers except Rhett.  Of course Scarlett muddies the waters almost immediately by padding this observation with a spot-on but somehow off base evaluation of Rhett as "someone who was bad and dishonorable and a cheat and a liar," and yes he is all of those things.  Or is he?

He may be bad. I'll give you that. He owns a whorehouse and gambles for a living, so he's not exactly an angel. But whom has he dishonored? And didn't the folks he cheated sort of deserve to be cheated? Interestingly enough, of all the characters in GWTW who are supposed to be honorable, Rhett is the only one who's not a slave owner. I realize MM's views on the institution probably differ from mine (probably), but surely that counts for something? And as for lying...actually, I've found that Rhett tells more truths per sentence than anybody else in the novel. He talks in riddles most of the time, but what's wrong with that? Even Jesus spoke in riddles and metaphors to get his point across, ya'll.

So Scarlett's assessment of Rhett is incorrect. But she thinks it's correct because she is still unable to see him clearly, because she cannot see the true nature of things, because she is still caught up in doing a weird comparison between Rhett and Ashley. Ashley is supposed to be the honorable one, so Rhett therefore must be a horrible cheat and all of that, I guess. 

So anyway, this is going to be a long post because Chapter 47 contains another one of those lengthy conversations that form a linchpin in the novel.  The flow of the conversation goes like this:

I. Scarlett confesses her sins. Rhett makes her feel better.

II.  Scarlett explains away all her bad behavior by telling him about her nightmare. 

III.  Rhett asks Scarlett to marry him.  She says no. Because she doesn't love him.

IV. He kisses her.

V. She changes her mind.  After all, he's rich and she's "fond" of him.

He's quite the kisser, isn't he?

I don't love everything about GWTW the movie, but Gable and Leigh do a great job with this scene.  Gable looks very debonair when he arrives in Pitty's parlor, but he's also very physical and imposing and masculine which is quite a difficult combination.  Very few actors can manage to be charming, funny, sexy-as-sin, dominating, and dominated all in the same scene but he does it here.  Maybe Steve McQueen, maybe Indian Jones/Sabrina Harrison Ford, definitely Robert Redford, but other than that I can't think of anybody off the top of my head who could have pulled this off. And Leigh is just as good, saucy and scatter-brained and vulnerable but still incredibly strong, standing up for herself and charting her own course even when it's clear that her character has absolutely no idea what in the hell is happening.  Because--

Why does Rhett want to marry Scarlett? 

Really. I'm asking. Because I honestly don't know. 

At the end of the book, when Melly's dead and he's leaving and they're both sitting down at the Table of Honesty, he tells us that he wanted to marry her because he was in love with her and wanted to make her happy.  And I think it's clear at this point in the novel to all but the most obtuse and naive reader (i.e. readers like me when I was 16) that Rhett is definitely infatuated with Scarlett.  He likes talking to her, likes messing with her head, thinks she's pretty, etc. And he certainly wants to have sex with her, although he's clearly a sensual being and he owns a whorehouse so it's not like his libido is a big surprise.  But why does he want to marry her?

Really.  I'm stumped. 

The Rhett at the end of the book says this was all about love, but by the time GWTW ends Rhett is an old man remembering a much earlier period in his life. I mean he's not really old and not all that much time passes between this scene and the end of the novel, but he's practically a senior citizen by the time 1873 rolls around.  There's a certain inevitability about earlier events that sets in as you age, and there's a lot of back dating and misremembering. Lines get blurry and it can be very, very difficult to remember exactly why you did something and why you felt the way you did.  I can't find the exact quote, but Ernest Hemingway once said that visiting your own battlefield is just as difficult as visiting an old love affair. You can remember what you did and how you did it, but it's almost impossible to reconnect with your old feelings be they terror and rage on the Western Front or passion and desire in a former relationship.  1873 Rhett says he was madly in love with Scarlett from their first meeting back at 12 Oaks, but I'm not so certain he's a reliable narrator in this case.

I guess I should wrap this one up now, because I could probably go on forever recapping an analyzing this conversation.  I think this scene definitely encapsulates everything that goes wrong between the two of them: Scarlett is devoted to Ashley and an independent woman who is convinced that Rhett is too bad to love, and Rhett is the blank-faced poker player who never explains his motives or admits to feeling anything besides lust for Scarlett.  It's all very strange. This is a marriage proposal scene, and marriage is supposed to be a meeting of the minds just like any other contract, but neither of the principals appear to have any idea about what they want from this relationship. And they certainly don't negotiate. They just agree to marry and...that's a recipe for disaster. 

Chapter 46: Fighting a mist

You know what? I'd forgotten all about chapter 46.  Interestingly enough, GWTW the movie contains what seems like 3/4 of the dialogue and action found here in chapter 46. This is  strange, transitional chapter, an abbreviated set-piece that tells us nothing directly about Scarlett and Rhett and their current situation.  But it does give us a remarkable opportunity to glimpse the true personalities of Melly and Belle, the two major supporting characters in the entire novel.  I think Scarlett and Rhett take Melly and Belle for granted.  I think the two main characters in GWTW believe that, deep down, they deserve better friends than mealy-mouthed Melly and the South's most widely known madam, but in reality I think a case could be made that the two of them are so selfish and driven that they're lucky to have friends at all. 

As I said in an earlier post, most of the people in GWTW and in the real world are unpredictable and difficult to figure out, like a calculus problem.  On the other hand, very few people are dependable and true on all times and in all occasions, but Melly and Belle are as predictable as a times table.  You need a doggone graphing calculator to figure out what Rhett is going to do and when/why he's going to do it, but we know that Belle is always going to support him without blinking.  Melly and Belle are lovely women, but the squeaky wheel gets the grease and nobody ever writes a blockbuster, world-beating novel about lovely, nice women.  There's a reason why allposters.com has 108 posters of Eleanor Roosevelt and 2,017 of Marilyn Monroe, but I'd rather be friends with Eleanor Roosevelt all the same.

Anyway, this Chapter is mostly exposition.  We get an update on Ashley's condition (he's going to be fine, although he lost a lot of blood), and Melly thanks Belle for helping out during that morning's court testimony.  Hmmmm.  Then Belle slips and tells Melly that she (Belle) also has a son, which--

No, stop.

We've been through this, y'all.  I'm not going to diagram this whole thing out for you again because I'm tired and I've already worked 60 hours at my regular job this week.  But listen, we're not getting anywhere like this.  Once and for all, Belle's son is not Rhett's son.  It can't be. If we can go back to math for a minute, let's just be clear that 2 + 2 in this case does not equal four.  2 + 2 is probably closer to 9 in this case than four, which is to say that Belle having a son and Rhett being a guardian of a child doesn't mean that they are the parents of said child.  It just means there's a whole hell of a lot more to the story that we don't know about.  So it's like 2 + 2 + (unknown amount)= ???. And anybody who tells you otherwise is grasping at straws.  Trust me. 

He is not the father.

Chapter 45: "For a brief moment, nothing made sense."

And so, here we are.

Another pivotal moment in the story.  Another rescue. 

A few weeks ago, I introduced a theory to my sister and a few other interested parties with backgrounds in American literature.  My theory is that Gone With the Wind is a story of three rescues. 

Rescue 1: Rhett Butler rescues the girls from the Fall of Atlanta. 

Rescue 2: Rhett Butler rescues Atlanta high-society after the failed KKK raid here in chapter 45.

Rescue 3: (SPOILER) Melly rescues Rhett after Bonnie dies. 

(I know a lot of GWTW novel fans have quibbles with the motion picture, and I find many parts of the movie problematic.  But I also believe that each of these three rescues are rendered almost perfectly on screen.  There's a reason why these are three of the most famous movie scenes in history, and that reason is because they are so very, very tense.  Largely because these are the scenes that were most faithful to the novel.  And also because these are scenes that actually let the actors act.  I love Clark Gable, but I don't always love his acting, especially in his later, post-war films.  But he had moments of absolute brilliance, particularly in the late 30's and in The Misfits, moments when you can feel his charisma emanating from the screen.  He's not in the same league with Vivian Leigh, Olivia DeHavilland or Hattie McDaniel in GWTW, but he's always vibrant and always interesting and always so gosh darn good looking.  But there are times in GWTW when he absolutely kills it and actually becomes Rhett Butler, and this botched KKK raid is one of those moments.)

So here we are. The last chapter left us up to our elbows in the nasty world of Reconstruction-era Georgia, with Our Girl being attacked by vagrants moments after she implicitly agreed that working convicts to death was A-Okay.  But now we're up to our necks in the foulest part of the world, because we quickly learn that Frank and Ashley and all the other men we know (i.e. the "safe" men) are avenging the attack by "cleaning out" the shantytown. And this is gross on so many levels. I don't know what we're supposed to think "cleaning out" means, and I don't know what MM thinks it means, but my takeaway is that this is organized KKK violence. Which is to say, terrorism and attempted eradication of undesirables. I'm not making light of Scarlett's fear, but c'mon guys. Really? Big Sam saved Scarlett from...actually we're not at all certain about what's going to happen.  But he does save her from something bad. Which means nothing bad happens to Scarlett. 

So why are they going to burn down the shantytown again? Scarlett and her upper-class friends think the shanty is filled with nothing but prostitutes and violent drunks, but what do they know about it? Nothing except what they've gathered from the rumor mill.  And yet they think this is the right thing to do? Oh boy. They're really in the sh#t now, aren't they? But then again, given their moral codes and the culture of fear that has understandably permeated every moment of their lives, what else could they have reasonably been expected to have done? Ashley and Melly are the closest thing to liberal pacifists in Scarlett's social circle, and even they are out for blood now.  As a matter of fact Ashley is leading the raid. Because he's brave but oh so foolish. 

Scarlett couldn't help being obsessed with money which meant that Scarlett couldn't help riding past shantytown and leasing convicts which meant that Scarlett the impulsive and greedy citizens of shantytown couldn't help but attack her when she drove by in her buggy which meant that Big Sam couldn't help but help which meant that Frank Kennedy couldn't help getting mad and declaring that enough was enough which meant that Ashley couldn't help agreeing with him which meant that the men had no choice but to charge over to shantytown and show them who is boss. 

Haven't these guys ever heard of punching-up? Haven't they ever heard that people who live nice lives in mansions shouldn't take out their frustration on the folks in shantytown? Haven't they ever heard that...actually, I don't know why I'm asking this question.  The Confederate-era south was a close-knit echo chamber, and anybody who didn't share their ideas about the world was shunned as an outsider, a Negro (ahem) lover, or a Yankee.  They're getting riled up and there's no moderating force around to tell them that their rage is misplaced and misdirected. Nobody around except Rhett and lord knows they'd never consider listening to somebody like him. 

So the boys are off at a KKK rally and the girls are stuck at home, reading Les Miz. But of course Scarlett is the very last to realize what's going on, because Scarlett lacks the impersonal view and never really considers the repercussions of her actions.  Scarlett is intelligent and driven, but she has such a low degree of emotional intelligence she doesn't even realize Frank and Ashley are in the Klan, let alone that they are going out there to avenge the attack.  She really does think the boys are at a political meeting. Which they kind of are since war is politics by other means, and this is war. 

Anyway, this is one of those times when the movie strongly parts from the book. The book makes it clear that this is all about the KKK, but the movie puts the emphasis elsewhere, chiefly by having Mammy sub in for Archie during this all-important scene.  Archie isn't even in the movie at all of course, which is a shame because he's such a rich and interesting character. But he's also a bitter racist, and by the time GWTW got to Hollywood in 1938/1939 the California folks smartly side-stepped all the nasty, icky KKK stuff and made it look like Frank and Ashley are...well, it's pretty clear they're up to something but let's just say you would never know there were white robes involved.  Besides, if Mammy is playing such a pivotal role in the action, surely this can't be a Klan rally. Right?

I'll get to all of that in a later blog post. A much later blog post.  So for now let's return to Scarlett and her taut nerves and the slow, slow way in which our heroine finally figures out what in the hell is going on in front of her.  At first she's annoyed with Frank for leaving her at Melly's house on a night when she's already scared out of her wits. Next she's totally cheesed off at the other women around the table for not allowing Scarlett to wallow in her fear and tell them what happened to her out in shantytown.  But then she slowly realizes that everybody in the room is weirdly tense, a situation that Aunt Pitty (of all people!) describes perfectly when she says that "[Melly] and India are as jumpy and cross as two old sticks." MM is so good at those little folk descriptions, ya'll!

Scarlett realizes that Archie and India are both mad at her. But that's no big deal because Archie and India both hate Scarlett like poison.  Then she finally sees that Melly is also tense, and she begins to realize that "something was afoot," although it takes her forever to realize what's going on.  Now, why on earth did the men think it was a totally fine idea to tell Melly what's going on, but everybody conspires to hide the truth from Scarlett? Or maybe Melly guessed at what's about to happen and only Scarlett is too thick to figure it all out. Or not thick exactly, since there's no indication that Scarlett is stupid. But she is self-absorbed, so that prevents her from realizing that people have entire lives that exist even outside of her presence.  Scarlett and India get into it like a few sorority sisters arguing bitterly about who hates whom and why, but their feud is interrupted when Rhett comes racing up the stairs.  In a cape!

Why is he doing this?

I don't...I mean, okay. If we accept the notion that he's in love with Scarlett (I don't think there's any debate about it, but there is some confusion about what love means to him at this point in the novel), then why in the world is he racing off to help Frank and Ashley? He should totally want to see those guys killed, right? Wouldn't his life be so much easier if the two of them were in jail? If Frank were in jail he and Scarlett would finally be free to..do whatever it is he thinks she'll agree to do with him. Which probably isn't much, come to think of it, but still. 

So do you think he's stepping in to help the boys because of his loyalty to Melly? I think that's probably closer to the truth, although I don't think this is quite on the nose either.  You know what I think? I think Rhett is motivated here by the same impetus that drove him into the Confederate Army at the end of the war. Which is to say, it's a little bit gallantry, a little bit loyalty, a little bit love, a little bit humiliation, and a whole lot of crazy.  Even Rhett himself admitted that he'd lost his mind when he left Scarlett by the side of the road on the way to Tara back in 1864, and I think there's something totally nuts in everything he does on this night to save the boys.  Plus, Rhett's face is blank in this section. As a matter of fact, Scarlett/MM take time to tell us that "she had never seen a blanker, more expressionless face than Rhett's," and we all know that the more emotionless RKB pretends to be the more he has going on underneath the surface. 

Mmmm hmmm.

After Rhett leaves Archie breaks the whole situation down for Scarlett and the reader. There are three possible options for the boys at this point, and not one of them is a good look.

1.) Rhett was telling the truth and the boys have walked into a trap.  The Yankees are waiting for them out by the old Sullivan Plantation, and they're all going to die because of Scarlett. 

2.) Rhett was lying, and he's a spy. Which means that this is a huge trap, one big enough to capture the boys, the girls, and almost everybody in  polite southern society. 

3.) Rhett was telling the truth, and he's not a spy.  This scenario would spare the boys lives, but they'll have to live forever on the run in Texas. 

Things come to a head not too long after Rhett leaves because the Yankees come up, threatening to search the house, which they can totally do since Georgia is no longer a state and these ladies are no longer United States Citizens which means they don't have the same rights most of us currently enjoy.  The Union Army can search any rebel houses they want, I guess.  Although what in the hell they expect to find on the premises is a mystery to me.  When I went to law school all the cases we read about illegal searches were about guns or drugs, and I think the boys took their guns and Klan sheets with them, and I seriously doubt Ashley was a cocaine kingpin.  I wouldn't put drug dealing past Rhett, of course, but that's an issue for another day. 

The Yankees surround the house at this point, and things get super tense while we wait to see what's going to happen.  And then there's a breakthrough just like in the movie, a moment when we hear Rhett and the boys singing loudly and pretending to be drunk and all that.  The movie does a pretty good job of covering what happens, and I don't think a blow-by-blow recap is necessary here since we all know how it plays out.  You know what though? I love MM but can I call BS on two things that happen here?

1.) How in the world did Ashley escape all of this with nothing more than a flesh-wound on a part of his body that won't normally be seen by the outside world? Which is to say, why is it that whenever anyone gets shot in a novel and lives, the wound never changes their lives? It changes them internally sometimes, but how many works of fiction have you read where somebody gets shot, but the bullet miraculously doesn't shoot off their face or their arm or harm anything important? Would it have been so terrible for Ashley to have lost an arm here? There were millions of amputees after the Civil War, he probably should have been one of them.

2.) So what are the odds that Frank would be the one to get killed? I realize we're supposed to conclude that Frank and Ashley bore the brunt of this situation because they are Scarlett's closest male relatives, but..come on.  Because if this actually was a trap, then it was likely an ambush. Which means the men were surrounded, which means there would have been bullets fired from at least two ends, which means...you know what? Never mind, ya'll.  Frank Kennedy had to leave the story, and I applaud MM for having the stones to take him out in such a fashion.  The other alternative would have been for Frank to catch a disease and die or something, which probably would have happened in the normal course of things but that wouldn't have been anywhere near as interesting. 

Besides, if MM believes anything, I think it's clear that she believes fictional characters should die the way they lived. They should leave the world because of the same character traits they've demonstrated on many prior occasions.  So Charles Hamilton dies a pitiful death because he was pitiful.  Ellen dies from disease after nursing the diseased. Gerald dies because he's impulsive and courageous. The boys who died in the war died on the battlefield because their defining characteristic was loyalty and bravery.  And Frank dies the way he lives: frustratedly, imperfectly, and more than a little stupidly.  Ashley hasn't lived that way, so he can't die that way, but Frank can. And he does.

Chapter 44: Hard Living in Military District #3/Chickens coming home to roost

Sorry I've been away for so long! But between my day job, my night job, and the World Cup I've been totally swamped.  Hopefully, things will quiet down now that it is officially summer, but there are no guarantees I suppose.  Anyway, if you enjoy my writing and have any interest in Prince Harry you should check out my guest blog about Prince Harry and Booze and Brazil over at Prince Harry Watch.

"Georgia's very existence as a state had been wiped out and it had become, with Florida and Alabama, "Military District Three," under the command of a Federal general," MM tells us at the beginning of this chapter, following this information with the opinion that "if life had been insecure and frightening before this, it was doubly so now." 

Everyone around Scarlett is fearful but extremely proud of the legislature for standing up against Reconstruction, but Scarlett's fright is balanced by determination.  And so, instead of giving into her fear and cowering at home Scarlett is still going about her business, still taking charge of the mills, still doing her rounds traveling through the suburbs of Atlanta even though everybody tells her not to leave the safety of her street. Hmmph. Maybe it's time to take a step back and evaluate Scarlett's actions and MM's position on Scarlett's actions when compared to the wild, wild world of Reconstruction-era District 3.

 Is Scarlett being selfish? No, I don't think so. As of right now in GWTW, Scarlett hasn't actually been a firsthand witness to anything too crazy.  As a matter of fact, although Scarlett certainly doesn't believe she's being protected from the wild, wild world, things haven't been as dangerous as she thinks, have they? Sure she had to shoot that deserter Yankee that one time at Tara, but other than that she hasn't come up against anything particularly violent.  Before The War Scarlett was one of the most coddled members of the most coddled class in America. She wasn't supposed to even think about Negroes or lower-class whites or Yankees, and she certainly wasn't supposed to interact with them. But times have changed, and she now finds herself having to actually deal with these groups of people and I think whatever jaded experience she has along these lines comes more from a comparison to her early life than to anything she has actually experienced.  It's like....

Okay, Six Flags Great America here in Illinois just opened a brand new ride. It's the biggest, fastest, highest, blah blah blah, wooden coaster in the world, and I'm sure that 99% of all people who ride the coaster will declare themselves daredevils because they had the stones to get on the ride.  But if you're a Navy Seal who skydives regularly, this ride is nothing special, right? You're used to G-forces and the falling sensation and whatever else happens when you jump out of an airplane, so riding on a roller coaster isn't even all that scary to the Seal. 

But then you have an entire class of people who think skydiving is child's play.  Maybe they've fallen from a plane or out of a three story window. Or perhaps they've lived through an avalanche or an explosion or something seriously danger. This third group of people is so used to danger they would probably sleep through the entire 2 minute roller coaster experience. 

So what I'm saying is, Scarlett belongs to the first group of people. She doesn't think she does anymore because she's been supporting herself for so long and because she's tough and because she killed a man back at Tara, but she does all the same. I would argue that Ashley and all the men who fought through the Civil War belong to the second group of people: they know what real danger looks like and they've had some close calls out there in the big, bad world, but they survived and can make sense of everything that happened.  And then you've got the third group, the people who've had their lives threatened and destroyed on a regular basis, the people who know what it's like to be a starving, half-dead, half-mad, non-person. People like Archie (ex-con who killed his brother for sleeping with his wife), the former slaves (because...well, let's be real, ya'll), and Rhett(gambler/black sheep) and good old Belle (madam!). Scarlett thinks she's so tough, and she is tough. I have no doubt that she'd probably thrive as part of this third group, but the reality is that she isn't nearly as hard as she thinks she is. Not yet, anyway. 



Does MM think Scarlett is being selfish? No. I don't think so.  Not yet, anyway.  The beautiful thing about GWTW is that MM doesn't hit us over the head with her opinion about Scarlett's actions.  Scarlett is the heroine of GWTW and I think MM has great affection for her creation, but I'm not sure that she supports every one of Our Girl's endeavors.  But I don't think MM is scornful of Scarlett's behavior in this section. Yes, it's a little risky to ride through shantytown, past "the sluts" who "seemed to try themselves whenever she drove by," but money is money and business is business, and I think MM likes Scarlett's hustle.

So...here we go.

Scarlett is now forced to drive through shantytown on her own. Nobody from upper-class society would dare ride with her through that part of the county at this juncture in time. And she's of course alienated herself from Archie, so she's riding along with nothing but her gun when she runs into Big Sam. Good Old Big Sam, who plays an interesting role in GWTW. I could write thousands of words about Big Sam, words that would match or perhaps exceed the amount of things I have to say about Mammy and Prissy and even the Luckless Lu (who doesn't even factor into the story until much later). But for now I'll just point out how interesting it is that MM takes such great pains to differentiate between former slaves from the County and unknown Negroes.  County/Tara slaves like Sam and Mammy are always a welcome surprise for Scarlett and the gang, aren't they? On the other hand, anytime Scarlett encounters unknown Negroes something bad is liable to happen, even if that's just a showdown with some sluts as her horses trot on by.  But here's the thing:

ALL THESE NEGROES ARE FORMER SLAVES.

These folks are belonged to somebody, didn't they? I mean, it's not as if Atlanta was suddenly flooded by a bunch of illegal immigrant black people coming to town looking for a good time.  These are local people who lived in local plantations. If they didn't belong to Tara, then they belonged to the Wilkes or the McIntoshes or the Tarleton's or somebody they know. And if so, then why are they so dangerous all of a sudden when Big Sam and the people Scarlett knows are still the same safe, dependable folks they've always been? But actually, this all feeds into MM's apparent favoritism for small town/country living as opposed to the madness of big cities.  Scarlett has been in Atlanta since 1862, but Scarlett's heart still belongs to the county.  There was a meme going around facebook this week saying "you never forget the neighborhood kids you grew up with," and I guess that's MM's view of the world. Big Sam wasn't one of Scarlett's friends, but he was the foreman on Tara and he therefore firmly belongs to the camp of friendlies.

Anyway, Scarlett's next encounter is a fun, fun, fun little face-off with good old Johnnie Gallagher.  We haven't heard much from Mr. G. since Scarlett hired him. We've heard people talk about him (notably Rhett and Archie), but Scarlett hasn't really talked to him much while we've been looking over her shoulder.  MM uses Scarlett's conversation with Mr. G. to show us a lot of things, but I think mostly she uses this to show us that even Scarlett believes in ethical business practices.  Scarlett is most concerned with business profits of course, but she also can't believe how terrible Mr. G. is treating the convicts (which is pretty funny since everybody told her that Mr. G. was going to be a cruel master). Mr. G. is whipping the convicts, he's starving them (no side meat with the black-eyed-peas, y'all!), and he's hoarding most of the good food for himself and selling the rest of it.  Scarlett is mean, but MM wants us to think that Mr. G. is absolutely terrible. Which he is. 

But Scarlett is thrown into a dilemma almost immediately because Johnnie Gallagher calls her bluff and threatens to quit. And finally Scarlett O'Hara Hamilton Kennedy must choose between profit and Doing The Right Thing.  And she decides...that profit is more important than the well-being of her convict gang.

"As she drove off down the path to the Decatur road her conscience battled with her desire for money.  She knew she had no business exposing human lives to the hard little man's mercies.  If he should cause the death of one of them she would be as guilty as he was, for she had kept him in charge after learning of his brutalities. But, on the other hand--well, on the other hand, men had no business getting to be convicts.  If they broke laws and got caught, then they deserved what they got.  This partly salved her conscience but as she drove down the road the dull thin faces of the convicts would keep coming back into her mind." 

Oh Scarlett.

And I think that here, right here in chapter 44 of GWTW is the beginning of the great transition, the great rift, in Scarlett's life.  Until now Scarlett hasn't been faced with what MM thinks was an actual ethical dilemma. After all, Scarlett's major "sins" until now have only been coveting Ashley and marrying Frank Kennedy, and these are mere affairs of the heart and tiny blips compared to life and death.  But now Mr. G. is going to work these men to death, and Scarlett is the only one who can stop him from bullying them into an early grave and...she...decides...not to do anything. Because convicts deserve what they got, not because they broke the laws, but because they were dumb enough to break laws and get caught.  As I said earlier, we usually have to guess at MM's politics and her opinions about her characters, but not here. Chapter 44 began on an ambiguous note, with MM not taking any particular stance on Scarlett's increasingly risky behavior, but after Scarlett decides to continue employing Johnny G. things immediately begin to fall apart. And all hell breaks loose.  As a matter of fact, Scarlett doesn't even make it home that afternoon before these chickens come home to roost because she's attacked by violent transients on the road back to Atlanta and her entire world is thrown into turmoil.  The dominoes are beginning to fall at this juncture in the story, and they don't stop falling until every character we love is either dead or crazy or just plain gone from the scene. 

Chapter 43: Fireside Chats/Beginning of the End/Dulce et decorum est...

(Once again, my apologies for taking such a long break between posts.  Believe it or not, I was traveling in Europe and the Middle East during most of May, and I'm just now getting over my jet-lag.  I actually had this post ready to roll before I left and I swear--I swear--I pressed the Publish button after I finished my edits, but I guess I was wrong. Mea Culpa.)

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."

And before Scarlett begins to chatter with Rhett, she peers "curiously through the tangle of dead vines on the porch."  Now, MM being MM, she doesn't belabor her point in this section.  But this whole scene is outrageously well-staged, particularly given all the death and destruction that are to follow throughout the final chapters of the novel.  Scarlett and Rhett still have a while to go on their journey, but I think the symbolism is clear here in Chapter 43 if you're looking for it: their story arc isn't finished, but the connection between the two of them is dead (or at least dying), and there's nothing that can be done to bring it back to the land of the living.

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.