"Well none of us, as far as I can see, are doing what we intended to do right now, but I think we'll make out just the same. It's a poor person and a poor nation that sits down and cries because life isn't precisely what they expected it to be." --Tommy Wellburn
GWTW was written during the depression and the movie hit theaters almost exactly two years before the US entered WW2. MM was a well-connected and relatively wealthy southern woman, but she lived during a time when the economic system had collapsed and the whole world she'd known had been turned asunder. Uncertainty and fear were the twin engines of 1930's society (along with gin and whiskey now that Prohibition was over!), and you couldn't go two feet without seeing breadlines or hobos or starving children or any of those other things I only know about from old movies. It's difficult for me to envision a world without the familiar social safety nets of welfare and food stamps and social security, but this was the American pre-war reality. So while GWTW takes place during and after the Civil War, MM's opinions on survival and the importance of hard work and ruthlessness say as much--or more--about the 1930's as they do about the 1860's and 1870's.
So Scarlett starts running her saw mills in earnest in this chapter. She's pregnant again, so she has to race against the 9-month gestational clock to ensure she makes as much money as possible before she starts to show and is forced to stay in the house. And once again, MM portrays pregnancy as something to avoid, something to fear. Scarlett is an ambitious woman and pregnancy could be problematic and dangerous during this era, but every pregnancy in GWTW leads to inconvenience at the least (Wade/Ella/Bonnie) and sometimes spirals into something outright nefarious that threatens to kill or destroy everyone around (Beau, Melly's 2nd baby, Scarlett's miscarriage). Food for thoughts, although I won't be digesting it just yet.
Anyway, as I mentioned during my last entry, there's very little fat in GWTW. It's a lengthy novel with many twists and turns, but each line, each scene, each chapter, plays a part in the development of Scarlett's story. So smack in the middle of this chapter, we have an interesting scene in which Uncle Peter is driving Scarlett around Atlanta on her errands and he is insulted by some Yankee women ("I never saw a N***er till I came South last month and I don't care if I never see another. They give me the creeps."). Uncle Peter bristles at being insulted and is angry with Scarlett because she doesn't defend him from these brutal attacks. MM uses Uncle Peter largely as comic relief, but here his pride has been wounded, which means he refuses to drive Scarlett on her rounds ever again.
Which means Scarlett has no choice but to drive around Atlanta by herself.
Which means Rhett Butler hears about this and comes to Scarlett's rescue (again!), by escorting her on her rounds. Or anyway, he escorts her around whenever he's in town, which is not that often come to think about it.
"Frequently he was out of town on those mysterious trips to New Orleans which he never explained, but which she felt sure, in a faintly jealous way, were connected with a woman--or women."
He's such a man of mystery, for all his honesty. Rhett will answer any question Scarlett asks him, but he's such a confusing person Scarlett never seems to know what question she wants to ask. He spends "most of his time gambling in the rooms above the Girl of the Period Saloon" or hanging out with Yankees in Belle's, but they met by accident almost every day. Scarlett can't quite figure out why he's hanging around like that, but she doesn't complain either, and the two of them seem to have settled into something of a truce. And now that they're friends, he's back to dropping little nuggets of advice and conversation for the reader to enjoy:
"If you haven't done anything wrong, it's because you haven't had the opportunity, and perhaps they dimly realize it."
"Be different and be damned!" (Although I would argue that Rhett isn't any different from the men of his Charleston background. Maybe his only crime is that he actually excels at his activities. He's an excellent shot, he's good with money, he's good at gambling, he's good at almost everything. Maybe that's his sin.)
"It's so pleasant to feel sorry for people."
"I had a grandfather on the Butler side who was a pirate." (Really?)
"Hardships make or break people."
And then we get this one from Scarlett, on the subject of the word pregnant.
"Gerald had been wont to say delicately "in the family way," when he had to mention such matters, and ladies genteelly referred to pregnancy as being 'in a fix.'"
And speaking of pregnancy, isn't Rhett lovely in this section? I read this part in disbelief and awe the first time I picked up GWTW. Rhett has been nothing but a bastion of brute strength throughout the novel, but he's so gentle and patient and kind when he holds Scarlett's head over the side of the buggy that I couldn't help but be moved. Even Scarlett is touched by his sympathy. As a matter of fact she likes him so much she says he's as stimulating as a glass of brandy.
And this--Scarlett and Rhett are both alcoholics, ya'll. It pains me to say so, of course. But Scarlett and Rhett and Rick Blaine and almost every conflicted anti-hero from the 30's and 40's smokes like a chimney and drinks like a fish. They make hard liquor look glamorous and fascinating, but it eventually destroys their lives, doesn't it? Not so much Rick Blaine (although God only knows what happened to him after the end of Casabanca), but Scarlett's drinking gives poor Ella fetal alcohol syndrome, and it eventually bloats Rhett to the point where he's fat and unrecognizable. Oh well.
Events are moving fast now, though; and MM ends this chapter by telling us that Gerald O'Hara is dead.
Friday, February 7, 2014
Tuesday, February 4, 2014
Chapter 37: Pedigree Collapse! (Tony Fontaine, the small world of southern society, and a few words about rape).
Are you familiar with the term pedigree collapse?
There are pretty good explanations for the concept here, and here (by the amazing Mr. Tim Urban), and essentially it's a term for a genealogy paradox. I'm sure you've heard it said that everybody in the world shares a common ancestor (i.e. that we're all 19th or 20th cousins or something like that), and the reason why it shakes out this way is because of math. Basically, every single person alive (1) has two parents (2), four grandparents (4), and eight great-grandparents (8) and the number of ancestors naturally doubles as you go back through history. Except if we follow this multiplication table to a logical conclusion, this means that there were something like a trillion people alive at the time of, say, the Roman Empire. Except we all know this isn't true, since the total world population at the time of Julius and Cleopatra was something like 300,000,000. Those numbers don't add up, so what gives?
The answer is that each person from that era who produced children essentially plays more than one role in your family tree. Cousins married cousins, brothers married sisters, nieces married uncles, and so on, which mean that the same man living in 1600 AD might be your great^8 grandfather, your great^10 uncle, and your 12th cousin 23 times removed or whatever. Thanks history gal, I can hear you say, but what in the hell does this stupid genealogy theory have to do with Chapter 37 of GWTW?
Well, it has everything to do with it, as a matter of fact.
GWTW was on TCM last night, and I caught a few minutes of the burning of Atlanta before I went to bed. Now, GWTW the book and GWTW the movie both have a cast of thousands, right? GWTW is all party scenes and soldiers marching off to battle and gossip about people with funny names, but in truth MM's book only contains a few essential characters and each of them plays several roles over the course of the novel. Let's take Tony Fontaine for an example:
Role 1: In the beginning of the book he is a foil for the Tarleton twins (he got into a brawl with one of the twins and shot Brent).
Role 2: In chapter 15 he returns to Atlanta on Christmas Eve with Ashley, "splendidly drunk, boisterous and quarrelsome."
Role 3: Scarlett lies destroys Frank and Suellen's relationship by lying to Frank and telling him that Suellen is going to marry Tony Fontaine in a few weeks.
Role 4: Tony shows up in the middle of the night, waking Scarlett and Frank to tell them all hell has broken lose and that he's killed Jonas Wilkerson and Eustis (a former slave), and is lighting out for Texas in order to escape being hanged.
So that's four separate roles for the same minor character. In lesser hands these would be four different men with four different names, four different backgrounds and four different physical appearances, but MM streamlined GWTW so much that she feels comfortable and confident using the same character over and over again. Everybody in GWTW has multiple functions and a reason for being in the story that goes far beyond what you expect the first or second time you meet them in the pages of the novel, and that gives us the impression that everyone has a story arc and that they grow and change just like the people in our own lives. A wise man once said that "all the world's a stage...and one man in his time plays many parts," and I think that GWTW demonstrates this truism more than most novels of this size and scope.
And now that I've got that off my chest, I suppose it's time to address MM and Frank Kennedy and the KKK. Except you know what? So much has been written about GWTW and racism and MM and the KKK and the depictions of African-Americans in the novel and in the movie, I don't know if I'd be comfortable unpacking my feelings on the topic in this setting. But for all that GWTW is a novel of its time and place, and therefore limited in how truly progressive it can possibly be in its finished form, I will say that there are still little nuggets of surprise politics hidden throughout the novel. For instance, let's spend a little time thinking about rape and sex as a threat to southern womanhood.
MM doesn't talk much about sex as an act, of course. There's nothing even remotely explicit in the pages of GWTW, and yet sex and lust are implicit in many conversations, particularly those Scarlett has with Ashley and Rhett. But rape is a different story entirely. Lots of people talk about rape. During the war the women are afraid the Yankees are going to sweep through Georgia and go on a rape spree that will make the Japanese behavior in Nanking look like a teaparty. And then rape comes up again in this part of the novel, since MM wants us to believe the men join the KKK primarily to protect southern women from Yankee soldiers and drunken black men. And then finally, of course, we have the scene where Scarlett is ambushed and almost raped (I guess?) by a few baddies near the outskirts of Atlanta. However, for all of this talk, Scarlett is never raped or witnesses a rape or knows anybody who was actually raped by anybody, black or white, Yankee or Confederate. It's all put down to conjecture and rumor and gossip, and Scarlett doesn't take anything she's heard very seriously during this part of the novel.
Which makes it incredibly ironic that the only confirmed sexual assault in GWTW happens in Scarlett's own mansion and is perpetuated by none other than Rhett K. Butler himself. So now, for all of the chatter about freed slaves and Yankees and lower class men overstepping boundaries during this section of the novel, the only man who actually has the opportunity and interest and strength to force himself on a woman and have carnal knowledge without her consent is the wealthiest, most-refined, and most-trustworthy man in the entire story. I'll come back to this idea when I get to that all-important part of the novel in a few weeks, but I think this eventual outcome refutes the notion that MM's approach to racial politics is as simple and reactionary as some people believe.
There are pretty good explanations for the concept here, and here (by the amazing Mr. Tim Urban), and essentially it's a term for a genealogy paradox. I'm sure you've heard it said that everybody in the world shares a common ancestor (i.e. that we're all 19th or 20th cousins or something like that), and the reason why it shakes out this way is because of math. Basically, every single person alive (1) has two parents (2), four grandparents (4), and eight great-grandparents (8) and the number of ancestors naturally doubles as you go back through history. Except if we follow this multiplication table to a logical conclusion, this means that there were something like a trillion people alive at the time of, say, the Roman Empire. Except we all know this isn't true, since the total world population at the time of Julius and Cleopatra was something like 300,000,000. Those numbers don't add up, so what gives?
The answer is that each person from that era who produced children essentially plays more than one role in your family tree. Cousins married cousins, brothers married sisters, nieces married uncles, and so on, which mean that the same man living in 1600 AD might be your great^8 grandfather, your great^10 uncle, and your 12th cousin 23 times removed or whatever. Thanks history gal, I can hear you say, but what in the hell does this stupid genealogy theory have to do with Chapter 37 of GWTW?
Well, it has everything to do with it, as a matter of fact.
GWTW was on TCM last night, and I caught a few minutes of the burning of Atlanta before I went to bed. Now, GWTW the book and GWTW the movie both have a cast of thousands, right? GWTW is all party scenes and soldiers marching off to battle and gossip about people with funny names, but in truth MM's book only contains a few essential characters and each of them plays several roles over the course of the novel. Let's take Tony Fontaine for an example:
Role 1: In the beginning of the book he is a foil for the Tarleton twins (he got into a brawl with one of the twins and shot Brent).
Role 2: In chapter 15 he returns to Atlanta on Christmas Eve with Ashley, "splendidly drunk, boisterous and quarrelsome."
Role 3: Scarlett lies destroys Frank and Suellen's relationship by lying to Frank and telling him that Suellen is going to marry Tony Fontaine in a few weeks.
Role 4: Tony shows up in the middle of the night, waking Scarlett and Frank to tell them all hell has broken lose and that he's killed Jonas Wilkerson and Eustis (a former slave), and is lighting out for Texas in order to escape being hanged.
So that's four separate roles for the same minor character. In lesser hands these would be four different men with four different names, four different backgrounds and four different physical appearances, but MM streamlined GWTW so much that she feels comfortable and confident using the same character over and over again. Everybody in GWTW has multiple functions and a reason for being in the story that goes far beyond what you expect the first or second time you meet them in the pages of the novel, and that gives us the impression that everyone has a story arc and that they grow and change just like the people in our own lives. A wise man once said that "all the world's a stage...and one man in his time plays many parts," and I think that GWTW demonstrates this truism more than most novels of this size and scope.
And now that I've got that off my chest, I suppose it's time to address MM and Frank Kennedy and the KKK. Except you know what? So much has been written about GWTW and racism and MM and the KKK and the depictions of African-Americans in the novel and in the movie, I don't know if I'd be comfortable unpacking my feelings on the topic in this setting. But for all that GWTW is a novel of its time and place, and therefore limited in how truly progressive it can possibly be in its finished form, I will say that there are still little nuggets of surprise politics hidden throughout the novel. For instance, let's spend a little time thinking about rape and sex as a threat to southern womanhood.
MM doesn't talk much about sex as an act, of course. There's nothing even remotely explicit in the pages of GWTW, and yet sex and lust are implicit in many conversations, particularly those Scarlett has with Ashley and Rhett. But rape is a different story entirely. Lots of people talk about rape. During the war the women are afraid the Yankees are going to sweep through Georgia and go on a rape spree that will make the Japanese behavior in Nanking look like a teaparty. And then rape comes up again in this part of the novel, since MM wants us to believe the men join the KKK primarily to protect southern women from Yankee soldiers and drunken black men. And then finally, of course, we have the scene where Scarlett is ambushed and almost raped (I guess?) by a few baddies near the outskirts of Atlanta. However, for all of this talk, Scarlett is never raped or witnesses a rape or knows anybody who was actually raped by anybody, black or white, Yankee or Confederate. It's all put down to conjecture and rumor and gossip, and Scarlett doesn't take anything she's heard very seriously during this part of the novel.
Which makes it incredibly ironic that the only confirmed sexual assault in GWTW happens in Scarlett's own mansion and is perpetuated by none other than Rhett K. Butler himself. So now, for all of the chatter about freed slaves and Yankees and lower class men overstepping boundaries during this section of the novel, the only man who actually has the opportunity and interest and strength to force himself on a woman and have carnal knowledge without her consent is the wealthiest, most-refined, and most-trustworthy man in the entire story. I'll come back to this idea when I get to that all-important part of the novel in a few weeks, but I think this eventual outcome refutes the notion that MM's approach to racial politics is as simple and reactionary as some people believe.
Saturday, February 1, 2014
Chapter 36: "And before he knew it, he was married."
Are we supposed to feel sorry for Frank Kennedy?
No, right?
Scarlett's behavior is becoming increasingly ruthless in this part of GWTW. But her behavior isn't selfish since she's only tricking Frank Kennedy into marrying her because she wants to use his money to save Tara. Besides, we're 60% of the way through GWTW (according to my kindle), and MM has done such a great job of making Suellen out to be a spiteful brat it's impossible to feel anything but amusement for Scarlett's swindle. If Scarlett had stolen a man from Colleen--sweet, pious, quiet Colleen--I'm pretty sure we'd feel differently about Scarlett's marriage to Frank Kennedy. But Suellen is mean and lazy and a cry-baby, so we giggle and laugh when we read this chapter. Even MM is laughing at poor Suellen, particularly when Scarlett receives
"....a letter from Suellen, poorly spelled, violent, abusive, tear splotched, a letter so full of venom and truthful observations about her character that she was never to forget it nor forgive the letter writer."
Stay classy Suellen!
Anyway, I think that any sympathy we might have for Frank Kennedy is lessened because he is vain and lacks courage. Scarlett concocts a huge lie about Suellen running off with Tony Fontaine, and Frank could have easily uncovered her deception if he'd been willing to break the bonds of their polite society by simply contacting Suellen to hear the facts straight from her. But "she never wrote him and naturally he could not write her and explain." Scarlett and Rhett both have courage, but they're successful (or anyway, successful at making money in a time when everybody else is broke) because they know the rules of polite society so well they are able to game the system. Everybody else sticks to the same pre-war, southern chivalry playbook, but Rhett and Scarlett get ahead by essentially playing chicken because they know the people around them lack the personal courage to test the boundaries of polite society. Scarlett knew she could finagle Frank away from Suellen because she knew neither her sister nor Frank would ever have the gall to communicate directly with each other, even at this critical juncture in their lives.
So anyway, Frank Kennedy gets a head cold and Scarlett heads into town and immediately starts investigating the accounting books at his store, and here we finally arrive at what I think is one of the most important parts of the novel. GWTW is 75% apolitical and irreligious, but there are moments when MM deviates slightly from post-war historical events and Scarlett's own mind and delivers what I consider to be surprisingly progressive ideas, and this is one of those moments:
Why, why, her mind stuttered. I believe women could manage everything in the world without men's help--except having babies, and God knows, no woman in her right mind would have babies if she could help it.
With the idea that she was as capable as a man came a sudden rush of pride and a violent longing to prove it, to make money for herself as men made money. Money which would be her own, which she would never have to ask for nor account for to any man.
Some people argue that GWTW is not a feminist novel, but I certainly think it is. Of course the Rhett--Scarlett--Ashley--Melly love triangle drives most of the plot, but I've never understood why that means GWTW gets dismissed as a silly romance novel. Interpersonal relationships drive almost every part of everyone's life, and it's not fair to label GWTW a soap opera just because Scarlett loves Ashley.
Anyway, Rhett's back ya'll!
He's out of prison, and he's wearing a "spotless pleated shirt" and a cape (!), and he shows up at Frank's store just to jeer at Scarlett for marrying Frank so quickly. He's out of jail and he's full of laughter and good advice, including one little nugget that makes me laugh out loud every time I read it:
Influence is everything, Scarlett. Remember that when you get arrested. Influence is everything and guilt or innocence merely an academic question.
If I were half as good at insulting people as Rhett Butler--well, I'd probably be dead since I would have been shot in a duel years ago. He's a good shot and rich and clever and practically a superhero, so he gets to live forever without even working up a sweat. He's out of jail and worth half a million dollars now (some of it Confederate gold), and Scarlett tries to call him out for stealing, but he stops her cold and smokes his cigar and is oh-so-cool while Scarlett seethes about how he's rooked the entire world while she's got nothing but Frank and a dirty store. And then Rhett changes the subject and starts asking Scarlett about Ashley. He's happy to give her a loan, he says, but not if it's to give Ashley money. Interestingly enough, Rhett doesn't seem the least bit threatened or preoccupied by the fact that Scarlett is currently married to Frank Kennedy, but he's still focused on Scarlett's relationship with Ashley.
"Among men, there's a very unpleasant name for men who permit women to support them," He tells Scarlett after they argue about Ashley for a little while. Scarlett tries to switch subjects, but Rhett is having none of that, which makes me wonder if he spent his entire time in prison doing a graduate level thesis on Ashley Wilkes and his kind. He's been honest with Scarlett about all of his sins, so he expects her to be honest with him about the current status of her relationship with Ashley, to the point where he just straight up asks her if Ashley is still in love with her. Which...
Hold on.
Is Ashley in love with Scarlett? I do realize Rhett Butler represents clear-eyed, rational thought in GWTW, but I think he's dead wrong here. Ashley is probably in lust with Scarlett, but I don't know if I'd call it love. But then again, I have the benefit of having finished the novel so I can look at the characters with full-knowledge of how it all ends. And perhaps, well.... perhaps Ashley really does love Scarlett but maybe his love transitions into something else the same way every things else in GWTW eventually transforms. Certainly the movie makes it seem like Ashley never really loved Scarlett, but that's Hollywood for you. Food for thought.
Anyway, Scarlett settles into domestic life with Frank Kennedy and it seems like she's headed for a dreary existence since she'll have to live out the rest of her days as Mrs. Frank Kennedy. She's got enough money to save Tara and buy food and shelter, and the war is over and certainty has once again returned to her world. It's a bit boring, but it's a good life considering that most of her friends and neighbors are still starving. But still--I'm sure Scarlett misses the excitement of the old days, and I can imagine her at the end of Chapter 36, casting an eye toward the future and wondering when or whether she'd ever be delivered from her dull life in Atlanta.
No, right?
Scarlett's behavior is becoming increasingly ruthless in this part of GWTW. But her behavior isn't selfish since she's only tricking Frank Kennedy into marrying her because she wants to use his money to save Tara. Besides, we're 60% of the way through GWTW (according to my kindle), and MM has done such a great job of making Suellen out to be a spiteful brat it's impossible to feel anything but amusement for Scarlett's swindle. If Scarlett had stolen a man from Colleen--sweet, pious, quiet Colleen--I'm pretty sure we'd feel differently about Scarlett's marriage to Frank Kennedy. But Suellen is mean and lazy and a cry-baby, so we giggle and laugh when we read this chapter. Even MM is laughing at poor Suellen, particularly when Scarlett receives
"....a letter from Suellen, poorly spelled, violent, abusive, tear splotched, a letter so full of venom and truthful observations about her character that she was never to forget it nor forgive the letter writer."
Stay classy Suellen!
Anyway, I think that any sympathy we might have for Frank Kennedy is lessened because he is vain and lacks courage. Scarlett concocts a huge lie about Suellen running off with Tony Fontaine, and Frank could have easily uncovered her deception if he'd been willing to break the bonds of their polite society by simply contacting Suellen to hear the facts straight from her. But "she never wrote him and naturally he could not write her and explain." Scarlett and Rhett both have courage, but they're successful (or anyway, successful at making money in a time when everybody else is broke) because they know the rules of polite society so well they are able to game the system. Everybody else sticks to the same pre-war, southern chivalry playbook, but Rhett and Scarlett get ahead by essentially playing chicken because they know the people around them lack the personal courage to test the boundaries of polite society. Scarlett knew she could finagle Frank away from Suellen because she knew neither her sister nor Frank would ever have the gall to communicate directly with each other, even at this critical juncture in their lives.
So anyway, Frank Kennedy gets a head cold and Scarlett heads into town and immediately starts investigating the accounting books at his store, and here we finally arrive at what I think is one of the most important parts of the novel. GWTW is 75% apolitical and irreligious, but there are moments when MM deviates slightly from post-war historical events and Scarlett's own mind and delivers what I consider to be surprisingly progressive ideas, and this is one of those moments:
Why, why, her mind stuttered. I believe women could manage everything in the world without men's help--except having babies, and God knows, no woman in her right mind would have babies if she could help it.
With the idea that she was as capable as a man came a sudden rush of pride and a violent longing to prove it, to make money for herself as men made money. Money which would be her own, which she would never have to ask for nor account for to any man.
Some people argue that GWTW is not a feminist novel, but I certainly think it is. Of course the Rhett--Scarlett--Ashley--Melly love triangle drives most of the plot, but I've never understood why that means GWTW gets dismissed as a silly romance novel. Interpersonal relationships drive almost every part of everyone's life, and it's not fair to label GWTW a soap opera just because Scarlett loves Ashley.
Anyway, Rhett's back ya'll!
He's out of prison, and he's wearing a "spotless pleated shirt" and a cape (!), and he shows up at Frank's store just to jeer at Scarlett for marrying Frank so quickly. He's out of jail and he's full of laughter and good advice, including one little nugget that makes me laugh out loud every time I read it:
Influence is everything, Scarlett. Remember that when you get arrested. Influence is everything and guilt or innocence merely an academic question.
If I were half as good at insulting people as Rhett Butler--well, I'd probably be dead since I would have been shot in a duel years ago. He's a good shot and rich and clever and practically a superhero, so he gets to live forever without even working up a sweat. He's out of jail and worth half a million dollars now (some of it Confederate gold), and Scarlett tries to call him out for stealing, but he stops her cold and smokes his cigar and is oh-so-cool while Scarlett seethes about how he's rooked the entire world while she's got nothing but Frank and a dirty store. And then Rhett changes the subject and starts asking Scarlett about Ashley. He's happy to give her a loan, he says, but not if it's to give Ashley money. Interestingly enough, Rhett doesn't seem the least bit threatened or preoccupied by the fact that Scarlett is currently married to Frank Kennedy, but he's still focused on Scarlett's relationship with Ashley.
"Among men, there's a very unpleasant name for men who permit women to support them," He tells Scarlett after they argue about Ashley for a little while. Scarlett tries to switch subjects, but Rhett is having none of that, which makes me wonder if he spent his entire time in prison doing a graduate level thesis on Ashley Wilkes and his kind. He's been honest with Scarlett about all of his sins, so he expects her to be honest with him about the current status of her relationship with Ashley, to the point where he just straight up asks her if Ashley is still in love with her. Which...
Hold on.
Is Ashley in love with Scarlett? I do realize Rhett Butler represents clear-eyed, rational thought in GWTW, but I think he's dead wrong here. Ashley is probably in lust with Scarlett, but I don't know if I'd call it love. But then again, I have the benefit of having finished the novel so I can look at the characters with full-knowledge of how it all ends. And perhaps, well.... perhaps Ashley really does love Scarlett but maybe his love transitions into something else the same way every things else in GWTW eventually transforms. Certainly the movie makes it seem like Ashley never really loved Scarlett, but that's Hollywood for you. Food for thought.
Anyway, Scarlett settles into domestic life with Frank Kennedy and it seems like she's headed for a dreary existence since she'll have to live out the rest of her days as Mrs. Frank Kennedy. She's got enough money to save Tara and buy food and shelter, and the war is over and certainty has once again returned to her world. It's a bit boring, but it's a good life considering that most of her friends and neighbors are still starving. But still--I'm sure Scarlett misses the excitement of the old days, and I can imagine her at the end of Chapter 36, casting an eye toward the future and wondering when or whether she'd ever be delivered from her dull life in Atlanta.
Tuesday, January 14, 2014
Chapter 35: "Vote for Kennedy!"
So here we are at Chapter 35 of GWTW. Any other author would have probably used this chapter as one of those soft, landing pad sections. Scarlett and Rhett have just completed an explosive, very confusing conversation (in a jail, no less!), and it seems logical to cordon off a few pages for Scarlett (and the reader) to think and reflect on everything the two of them said. But not MM.
Nope.
This is the Great American novel, after all. So instead of having our girl pause, go home, regroup, and lick her wounds in private in a slow, expository chapter, the pace of the novel actually begins to speed up in this section as Scarlett runs into Frank Kennedy and the whirlwind of Georgia courtship begins once again. But before I dive into Scarlett's relationship with her second husband, I think this is a good place to stop and consider Scarlett's character arc at this point in the story. Specifically, I think it's important to survey the heroine's morality at this juncture, because while I believe that we can all agree that Scarlett's marriage to Frank Kennedy is a low point for her, stealing a husband from her spinster sister may not be her major crime in this section.
Rather (and stick with me, here), I think Scarlett's true moral downfall is evident in her reaction--or rather, non-reaction--to Rhett Butler's apparent fate. Now it's true that Scarlett hates Rhett at this point in the story. After all, they pretty much had it out the last time they saw each other, and he's given her absolutely no reason to believe that he's madly in love with her. And yet--
And yet--
Doesn't it seem strange that Scarlett can be so blase about Rhett being hanged?
Yes, he's a rogue. And yes, she hates him for good reason. But they spent a lot of time together during the War. And, lest we forget, he probably saved Scarlett and Melly's lives the night Atlanta fell. Scarlett has felt sympathy for those who've died fighting for the Confederacy, but she doesn't even blink at the notion of Rhett being hanged by the Yankees. That's cold.
The first time I read GWTW I thought Frank Kennedy was just going to be another plot point, another person who could deliver information about what was happening there in Atlanta and why. Besides, he's basically married to Suellen so it's not like he's an obvious potential beau. Plus, he's so annoying, isn't he?
Everything about Frank Kennedy irritates Scarlett. She hates his laugh, his old-maidish ways, the long stories he tells, his timidity. He's awful and he has stupid whiskers and bad breath, and Scarlett only sees him as a way to make Suellen disappear.
But he's got money!
Frank has a little store and he's making a little dough, apparently, and Scarlett begins to hatch her plot. Now Scarlett obviously marries Frank because she plans on using his money to help pay the taxes on Tara, but in my opinion it's more than that, and I don't mean that she marries him just to make her sister feel bad. No, I think Scarlett is chiefly attracted to Frank Kennedy because he's a businessman. He's a terrible businessman, obviously. But he is in business, which means he is making money, and that's exactly where she wants to be. She considers asking him to loan her the money, but MM has her reject this simpler choice straight out:
"He would be embarrassed; he would stammer; he would offer excuses, but he wouldn't lend it to her."
And here's another gem on the subject of Suellen:
"What was there in that whining complaining girl to make this old fool so anxious to give her a soft nest? Suellen didn't deserve a loving husband and the profits of a store and a sawmill."
MM is at her best when she's being mean, right? Scarlett has hatred in her heart for almost everyone around her, but her chippiness could be downright scathing in the hands of the wrong author. But MM is so skilled that Scarlett's nasty opinions on Frank and Suellen come across as hilarious honesty instead of selfish cruelty. If I'd written these scenes Scarlett would have been a terrible shrew/mean bitch, but MM's words are so funny you can't help but smile.
"Certainly, he's no beauty...and he's got very bad teeth and his breath smells bad and he's old enough to be my father. Moreover, he's nervous and timid and well meaning, and I don't know of any more damning qualities a man can have."
(Does Scarlett realize that Ashley is also nervous, timid, and well meaning?)
Later on Scarlett goes to a wedding in town and is reunited with all her old friends from the war days. They're poorer, of course. But they're also capable of having fun and celebrating, but Scarlett can barely pretend to be gay because "she was hunted as a fox, running with a bursting heart, trying to reach a burrow before the hounds caught up." Consequently, Scarlett decides right then and there that "she hated them all," because they seem so content with their sad lots in life. After all, Scarlett realizes "the silly fools don't seem to realize that you can't be a lady without money."
Scarlett is wrong, of course.
But she's also right.
We know that being a lady has absolutely nothing to do with how many dresses or slaves or beaus you have, but up to this point Scarlett has absolutely no reason to unpack her understanding of the world. She's barely been able to keep body and soul together, and I think it would be unreasonable for her to philosophize about her socio-economic surroundings at a time when Tara is going for taxes and she doesn't any idea where her next dollar is going to come from. Melly was born knowing that being a southern belle has nothing to do with money, but Scarlett won't have the time and head space to become acquainted with this reality for another few years.
Nope.
This is the Great American novel, after all. So instead of having our girl pause, go home, regroup, and lick her wounds in private in a slow, expository chapter, the pace of the novel actually begins to speed up in this section as Scarlett runs into Frank Kennedy and the whirlwind of Georgia courtship begins once again. But before I dive into Scarlett's relationship with her second husband, I think this is a good place to stop and consider Scarlett's character arc at this point in the story. Specifically, I think it's important to survey the heroine's morality at this juncture, because while I believe that we can all agree that Scarlett's marriage to Frank Kennedy is a low point for her, stealing a husband from her spinster sister may not be her major crime in this section.
Rather (and stick with me, here), I think Scarlett's true moral downfall is evident in her reaction--or rather, non-reaction--to Rhett Butler's apparent fate. Now it's true that Scarlett hates Rhett at this point in the story. After all, they pretty much had it out the last time they saw each other, and he's given her absolutely no reason to believe that he's madly in love with her. And yet--
And yet--
Doesn't it seem strange that Scarlett can be so blase about Rhett being hanged?
Yes, he's a rogue. And yes, she hates him for good reason. But they spent a lot of time together during the War. And, lest we forget, he probably saved Scarlett and Melly's lives the night Atlanta fell. Scarlett has felt sympathy for those who've died fighting for the Confederacy, but she doesn't even blink at the notion of Rhett being hanged by the Yankees. That's cold.
The first time I read GWTW I thought Frank Kennedy was just going to be another plot point, another person who could deliver information about what was happening there in Atlanta and why. Besides, he's basically married to Suellen so it's not like he's an obvious potential beau. Plus, he's so annoying, isn't he?
Everything about Frank Kennedy irritates Scarlett. She hates his laugh, his old-maidish ways, the long stories he tells, his timidity. He's awful and he has stupid whiskers and bad breath, and Scarlett only sees him as a way to make Suellen disappear.
But he's got money!
Frank has a little store and he's making a little dough, apparently, and Scarlett begins to hatch her plot. Now Scarlett obviously marries Frank because she plans on using his money to help pay the taxes on Tara, but in my opinion it's more than that, and I don't mean that she marries him just to make her sister feel bad. No, I think Scarlett is chiefly attracted to Frank Kennedy because he's a businessman. He's a terrible businessman, obviously. But he is in business, which means he is making money, and that's exactly where she wants to be. She considers asking him to loan her the money, but MM has her reject this simpler choice straight out:
"He would be embarrassed; he would stammer; he would offer excuses, but he wouldn't lend it to her."
And here's another gem on the subject of Suellen:
"What was there in that whining complaining girl to make this old fool so anxious to give her a soft nest? Suellen didn't deserve a loving husband and the profits of a store and a sawmill."
MM is at her best when she's being mean, right? Scarlett has hatred in her heart for almost everyone around her, but her chippiness could be downright scathing in the hands of the wrong author. But MM is so skilled that Scarlett's nasty opinions on Frank and Suellen come across as hilarious honesty instead of selfish cruelty. If I'd written these scenes Scarlett would have been a terrible shrew/mean bitch, but MM's words are so funny you can't help but smile.
"Certainly, he's no beauty...and he's got very bad teeth and his breath smells bad and he's old enough to be my father. Moreover, he's nervous and timid and well meaning, and I don't know of any more damning qualities a man can have."
(Does Scarlett realize that Ashley is also nervous, timid, and well meaning?)
Later on Scarlett goes to a wedding in town and is reunited with all her old friends from the war days. They're poorer, of course. But they're also capable of having fun and celebrating, but Scarlett can barely pretend to be gay because "she was hunted as a fox, running with a bursting heart, trying to reach a burrow before the hounds caught up." Consequently, Scarlett decides right then and there that "she hated them all," because they seem so content with their sad lots in life. After all, Scarlett realizes "the silly fools don't seem to realize that you can't be a lady without money."
Scarlett is wrong, of course.
But she's also right.
We know that being a lady has absolutely nothing to do with how many dresses or slaves or beaus you have, but up to this point Scarlett has absolutely no reason to unpack her understanding of the world. She's barely been able to keep body and soul together, and I think it would be unreasonable for her to philosophize about her socio-economic surroundings at a time when Tara is going for taxes and she doesn't any idea where her next dollar is going to come from. Melly was born knowing that being a southern belle has nothing to do with money, but Scarlett won't have the time and head space to become acquainted with this reality for another few years.
Sunday, January 5, 2014
Chapter 34: "Jail had not changed him one bit."
Awwwwwww yeah!
Rhett's back, y'all. But because MM was an amazing novelist with a flair for building anticipation, Chapter 34 doesn't begin with Scarlett walking into Rhett's jail cell. Instead it opens with Scarlett getting dressed at Aunt Pitty's house in the morning (getting strength and courage from the "cold hard core at the bottom of her heart"), and then heading out all alone onto the mean streets of post-war Atlanta. She's dressed up in so much finery that she even earns some snarling disapproval from a passing, plainly dressed country woman who apparently thinks of Scarlett as a hussy, but even this shade cannot put a damper in her spirits. The tough physical labor back at Tara has done nothing but destroy Scarlett's soul, but the prospect of matching wits with Rhett and using her beauty to trick him into giving her the money for Tara has given her a reason to laugh and enjoy life for the first time in a long time. I would love to sit in judgment on Scarlett in this scene since you all know very well that my heart belongs to RKB, but I can't be mad. A bad economy can make a heartless criminal out of anybody, and the post-war Southern economy was one of the most trying in the history of the world.
Scarlett hesitates briefly when she approaches the jail and realizes she's going to have to go straight through a crowd of occupying, victorious Yankees if she wants to speak to Rhett, but she quickly shakes off her fear by reminding herself that "if she hadn't been afraid to kill one Yankee, she shouldn't fear merely talking to another." Scarlett did kill that Yankee in self-defense, but most characters in most novels would probably try to forget all about such a bloody crime. But not Scarlett. Instead, Scarlett draws strength time and again from that incident, and as time goes by it almost seems as though she's proud of what she did. Offhand I can only think of three major characters in GWTW who are known murderers--Scarlett, Rhett, and Archie--but each of them pays for their crime in very different ways. Isn't it amazing how even minor plot points from GWTW are potential thesis topics?
Anyhow, Scarlett walks up to the HQ and starts chatting with the Yankee soldiers and MM has a field day mocking western accents ("Have you come a fer piece?"), with western at this juncture in history meaning mid-western. Scarlett introduces herself as Rhett's sister, and the soldiers think that's hilarious since lots of Rhett's "sisters" have been visiting him there in jail. Scarlett gets huffy at their assumption, not so much because they think she's a hussy, but because the Yankee soldiers have lumped her in with the rest of "those creatures Rhett consorted with." Scarlett has accepted that she's going to be selling herself to Rhett for money, but the notion that she's no different from a common prostitute is still repulsive to her. We've all gotta draw lines somewhere, right?
Rhett eventually comes in, and the fireworks start. A lot has happened since he abandoned Scarlett on the road to Tara all those months ago, but the recent events of the novel have been rather dreary. Scarlett has worked hard on the farm and she's killed Yankees and she's welcomed Ashley back to his proper place on her imaginary love triangle, but Scarlett' life has lacked spark and mystery and the good old fashioned fun of quasi-romantic banter, so MM brings Rhett back into the story at the perfect time.
This scene goes by in a blur in the movie, but Scarlett and Rhett's conversation has so many different twists and turns that it's necessary to break it down. I think this is one of the central conversations of GWTW because it explains both the Rhett/Scarlett relationship and Rhett's mentality and philosophy on life. Melly is the moral compass of GWTW, but Rhett speaks the truth about the real world and I think that examining his words helps us to understand precisely what MM was trying to say in her novel.
Part I: Puppy Love and Lies
In the first part of Rhett and Scarlett's conversation, Rhett is totally knocked for a loop because Scarlett is actually visiting him in jail. Scarlett is totally surprised to look into his face and see "none of the skepticism, the jeering humor she knew so well." In this phase of the conversation Rhett is so delighted to see Scarlett that he "smiled down at her with the first expression of honest pleasure she had ever seen on his face." And this--this is the real Rhett, isn't it? Hes polite, he's glad to see Scarlett, and he's expressing genuine (or anyway, semi-genuine) remorse for having left her that night on the road to Tara. And how about this after she tells him she hasn't forgiven him for leaving her that night:
"Another hope crushed. And after I offered up myself for my country and fought barefoot in the snow at Franklin and got the finest case of dysentery you ever heard of for my pains!"
Awwwwwww. Poor guy. He's been through a lot, hasn't he? Of course he's got plenty of money and few responsibilities (that we know about, anyway), but it's still rather eye-opening to consider that even the mighty Rhett Butler has had a tough few years. He says he's "overcome with shame" when he considers having joined "the army in varnished boots and a white linen suit and armed with only a pair of dueling pistols," but you can tell he's kind of proud about being a veteran. Anyway, Rhett uncharacteristically wants to rehash what he was thinking on that infamous night, but Scarlett doesn't want to keep discussing it because thinking about it still makes her mad. Scarlett tries to pretend she hasn't a care in the world and that everything is going great back at Tara, but Rhett is so busy being honest and thrilled with her visit he doesn't even stop to evaluate her lies. In fact, he begins rambling in a manner that is weirdly honest and complimentary, confessing to Scarlett that even when he's away from Atlanta he "always remembered [Scarlett] and wondered what [she] was doing."
He's being as honest as he can be, but Scarlett isn't particularly interested in exploring his mind. There's a wonderful tension in GWTW because Scarlett almost always wants Rhett to stop talking while the reader (or at least this reader!) wants him to go on and on talking, forever.
Part 2: The Truth Won't Set You Free
The next section of their jail-house conversation begins when Scarlett begins asking Rhett whether or not he got away with the Confederate gold. Of course Rhett doesn't immediately realize what she's up to, but you can kind of tell that he's getting a little bit suspicious of her motives because she flat out asks him if he has the money, and he comes back with:
"What a leading question! You know as well as I do that the Confederacy ran a printing press instead of a mint."
That's a wonderfully snarky thing to say, and--is there anything Rhett Butler doesn't know? He's got everything covered from women's fashion to poker to macro-economics to philosophy to religion, and in my mind his genius separates him from almost every hero I've come across in fiction. I think I've said this before, but it bears repeating: Rhett Butler is a gleaming Swiss Army Knife in a world of rusty spoons, and that is why I luuuurve him.
And, come to think of it, that's probably why Scarlett hates him.
Interestingly enough, Scarlett once again one-ups Rhett by pretending that she's rushed to see him in jail because she's so concerned that he's going to be killed. Rhett takes her bait one final time, and Scarlett closes her eyes waiting for him to try to kiss her. But although she's "expecting violence" (say whaaaaa?), he surprises her by skipping the kiss and going straight for--
Actually, I have no idea what he's doing here. Scarlett opens her eyes and:
"His black head was bent over her hands and, as she watched, he lifted one and kissed it and, taking the other, laid it against his cheek for a moment....this gentle and lover-like gesture startled her. She wondered what expression was on his face but could not tell for his head was bowed."
What the hell?
It would have been quite different entirely if Scarlett had touched his face, but it seems sort of strange that he would grab her hand and pull her fingers against his face at a time like this. I suppose MM was demonstrating the true nature of Rhett's feelings for Scarlett here, since if he'd only been interested in sex he would have definitely gone straight in for a kiss. And this is...definitely not a kiss, is it? Poor Rhett has been without human connection for so long that all he wants here is to feel Scarlett's hand on his face? Poor thing.
But uh-oh. Scarlett realizes too late that he can see the blisters on her hands, and Rhett notices and all is immediately lost. "His black brows were up and his eyes gleamed..." and he "lounged back in his chair indolently, his face a smooth blank." He's wearing his poker face again, and now it's time for him to interrogate her:
"What's the answer?"
"Why did you lie to me about everything being nice at Tara?"
And finally--
"What is the real purpose of your visit?"
Oh gawd. I think Rhett is actually really made here, you guys. He's a true cynic, but Scarlett has tricked him into getting his hopes up by visiting him in jail, and he doesn't. Like. Being. Disappointed.
"But no," he snarks at her. "you had to come jingling your earbobs and pouting and frisking like a prostitute with a prospective client." Ouch! And that's a particularly jarring insult since we all know that Rhett runs a brothel and is best friends (or whatever...) with Belle Watling, and therefore should be able to tell the difference between a true prostitute and a woman willing to get down with him for a little dough, but even he pretends like there's no difference here. He almost whispers these last words, and Scarlett doesn't know what to do because "the deadly quietness of his voice frightened her," and she's actually terrified as she recognizes that "Rhett Butler was a dangerous man to run afoul of."
Now isn't that an interesting little bit of foreshadowing? We are still a long way from that famous, wild night after Ashley's party, but MM again and again plants little clues to let us know that Rhett Butler is dangerous, unpredictable, and uncontrollable. He's an Alpha male who is even more dangerous than he appears at first glance, especially when Scarlett makes him mad.
And boy oh boy has she made him mad here!
MM usually goes long on exposition and she normally surrounds all of her dialogue with explanations and descriptions, but not here. In this chapter MM's narrator almost disappears entirely and the style of the novel changes into something quick and very modern, almost like those long chains of snappy dialogue you find in 60's stage plays or 70's short stories. He's berating her and cross-examining her and knocking her off balance with nasty questions. But then, unexpectedly, Scarlett begins explaining the truth and his manner reverses again and Rhett jams his hands into his pockets and tries to remain nonchalant, but you can tell he'd like to help her. She's broken his heart, but he'd probably still give her the money--except he's in jail and his money is far away and if he tried to right her a check the Yankees would find out.
Part 3: That's that
The third and final part of their conversation takes place after Scarlett tries to attack Rhett in a murderous rage of her own, and then faints. The chat she has with Rhett after she regains consciousness is as harsh and brutal as a slap in the face, and Rhett gives her advice on how to talk to men and it's all so messy and tragic, isn't it? Rhett tells Scarlett she can come to his hanging because it will cheer her up, and then Scarlett sasses him right back by telling him that she won't even bother coming to his hanging since it probably won't happen until "it's too late to pay the taxes." Things are back to normal between the two of them (they're enemies again), and Scarlett didn't get the money, and I remember finishing this chapter and having absolutely no idea what was going to happen next. They do a marvelous job in GWTW the movie of introducing all of Scarlett's future husbands in the party scene at 12 Oaks (if you watch you'll see that they even introduce them in order), but if you'd asked me how Scarlett was going to get the money to pay the taxes on Tara another marriage would have been the absolute furthest thing from my mind. And I certainly didn't think that she would marry Frank Kennedy, but MM is such an excellent writer that she's laid all the clues right out there for you even at this part of the novel, a notion I'll explore further in my next post.
Rhett's back, y'all. But because MM was an amazing novelist with a flair for building anticipation, Chapter 34 doesn't begin with Scarlett walking into Rhett's jail cell. Instead it opens with Scarlett getting dressed at Aunt Pitty's house in the morning (getting strength and courage from the "cold hard core at the bottom of her heart"), and then heading out all alone onto the mean streets of post-war Atlanta. She's dressed up in so much finery that she even earns some snarling disapproval from a passing, plainly dressed country woman who apparently thinks of Scarlett as a hussy, but even this shade cannot put a damper in her spirits. The tough physical labor back at Tara has done nothing but destroy Scarlett's soul, but the prospect of matching wits with Rhett and using her beauty to trick him into giving her the money for Tara has given her a reason to laugh and enjoy life for the first time in a long time. I would love to sit in judgment on Scarlett in this scene since you all know very well that my heart belongs to RKB, but I can't be mad. A bad economy can make a heartless criminal out of anybody, and the post-war Southern economy was one of the most trying in the history of the world.
Scarlett hesitates briefly when she approaches the jail and realizes she's going to have to go straight through a crowd of occupying, victorious Yankees if she wants to speak to Rhett, but she quickly shakes off her fear by reminding herself that "if she hadn't been afraid to kill one Yankee, she shouldn't fear merely talking to another." Scarlett did kill that Yankee in self-defense, but most characters in most novels would probably try to forget all about such a bloody crime. But not Scarlett. Instead, Scarlett draws strength time and again from that incident, and as time goes by it almost seems as though she's proud of what she did. Offhand I can only think of three major characters in GWTW who are known murderers--Scarlett, Rhett, and Archie--but each of them pays for their crime in very different ways. Isn't it amazing how even minor plot points from GWTW are potential thesis topics?
Anyhow, Scarlett walks up to the HQ and starts chatting with the Yankee soldiers and MM has a field day mocking western accents ("Have you come a fer piece?"), with western at this juncture in history meaning mid-western. Scarlett introduces herself as Rhett's sister, and the soldiers think that's hilarious since lots of Rhett's "sisters" have been visiting him there in jail. Scarlett gets huffy at their assumption, not so much because they think she's a hussy, but because the Yankee soldiers have lumped her in with the rest of "those creatures Rhett consorted with." Scarlett has accepted that she's going to be selling herself to Rhett for money, but the notion that she's no different from a common prostitute is still repulsive to her. We've all gotta draw lines somewhere, right?
Rhett eventually comes in, and the fireworks start. A lot has happened since he abandoned Scarlett on the road to Tara all those months ago, but the recent events of the novel have been rather dreary. Scarlett has worked hard on the farm and she's killed Yankees and she's welcomed Ashley back to his proper place on her imaginary love triangle, but Scarlett' life has lacked spark and mystery and the good old fashioned fun of quasi-romantic banter, so MM brings Rhett back into the story at the perfect time.
This scene goes by in a blur in the movie, but Scarlett and Rhett's conversation has so many different twists and turns that it's necessary to break it down. I think this is one of the central conversations of GWTW because it explains both the Rhett/Scarlett relationship and Rhett's mentality and philosophy on life. Melly is the moral compass of GWTW, but Rhett speaks the truth about the real world and I think that examining his words helps us to understand precisely what MM was trying to say in her novel.
Part I: Puppy Love and Lies
In the first part of Rhett and Scarlett's conversation, Rhett is totally knocked for a loop because Scarlett is actually visiting him in jail. Scarlett is totally surprised to look into his face and see "none of the skepticism, the jeering humor she knew so well." In this phase of the conversation Rhett is so delighted to see Scarlett that he "smiled down at her with the first expression of honest pleasure she had ever seen on his face." And this--this is the real Rhett, isn't it? Hes polite, he's glad to see Scarlett, and he's expressing genuine (or anyway, semi-genuine) remorse for having left her that night on the road to Tara. And how about this after she tells him she hasn't forgiven him for leaving her that night:
"Another hope crushed. And after I offered up myself for my country and fought barefoot in the snow at Franklin and got the finest case of dysentery you ever heard of for my pains!"
Awwwwwww. Poor guy. He's been through a lot, hasn't he? Of course he's got plenty of money and few responsibilities (that we know about, anyway), but it's still rather eye-opening to consider that even the mighty Rhett Butler has had a tough few years. He says he's "overcome with shame" when he considers having joined "the army in varnished boots and a white linen suit and armed with only a pair of dueling pistols," but you can tell he's kind of proud about being a veteran. Anyway, Rhett uncharacteristically wants to rehash what he was thinking on that infamous night, but Scarlett doesn't want to keep discussing it because thinking about it still makes her mad. Scarlett tries to pretend she hasn't a care in the world and that everything is going great back at Tara, but Rhett is so busy being honest and thrilled with her visit he doesn't even stop to evaluate her lies. In fact, he begins rambling in a manner that is weirdly honest and complimentary, confessing to Scarlett that even when he's away from Atlanta he "always remembered [Scarlett] and wondered what [she] was doing."
He's being as honest as he can be, but Scarlett isn't particularly interested in exploring his mind. There's a wonderful tension in GWTW because Scarlett almost always wants Rhett to stop talking while the reader (or at least this reader!) wants him to go on and on talking, forever.
Part 2: The Truth Won't Set You Free
The next section of their jail-house conversation begins when Scarlett begins asking Rhett whether or not he got away with the Confederate gold. Of course Rhett doesn't immediately realize what she's up to, but you can kind of tell that he's getting a little bit suspicious of her motives because she flat out asks him if he has the money, and he comes back with:
"What a leading question! You know as well as I do that the Confederacy ran a printing press instead of a mint."
That's a wonderfully snarky thing to say, and--is there anything Rhett Butler doesn't know? He's got everything covered from women's fashion to poker to macro-economics to philosophy to religion, and in my mind his genius separates him from almost every hero I've come across in fiction. I think I've said this before, but it bears repeating: Rhett Butler is a gleaming Swiss Army Knife in a world of rusty spoons, and that is why I luuuurve him.
And, come to think of it, that's probably why Scarlett hates him.
Interestingly enough, Scarlett once again one-ups Rhett by pretending that she's rushed to see him in jail because she's so concerned that he's going to be killed. Rhett takes her bait one final time, and Scarlett closes her eyes waiting for him to try to kiss her. But although she's "expecting violence" (say whaaaaa?), he surprises her by skipping the kiss and going straight for--
Actually, I have no idea what he's doing here. Scarlett opens her eyes and:
"His black head was bent over her hands and, as she watched, he lifted one and kissed it and, taking the other, laid it against his cheek for a moment....this gentle and lover-like gesture startled her. She wondered what expression was on his face but could not tell for his head was bowed."
What the hell?
It would have been quite different entirely if Scarlett had touched his face, but it seems sort of strange that he would grab her hand and pull her fingers against his face at a time like this. I suppose MM was demonstrating the true nature of Rhett's feelings for Scarlett here, since if he'd only been interested in sex he would have definitely gone straight in for a kiss. And this is...definitely not a kiss, is it? Poor Rhett has been without human connection for so long that all he wants here is to feel Scarlett's hand on his face? Poor thing.
But uh-oh. Scarlett realizes too late that he can see the blisters on her hands, and Rhett notices and all is immediately lost. "His black brows were up and his eyes gleamed..." and he "lounged back in his chair indolently, his face a smooth blank." He's wearing his poker face again, and now it's time for him to interrogate her:
"What's the answer?"
"Why did you lie to me about everything being nice at Tara?"
And finally--
"What is the real purpose of your visit?"
Oh gawd. I think Rhett is actually really made here, you guys. He's a true cynic, but Scarlett has tricked him into getting his hopes up by visiting him in jail, and he doesn't. Like. Being. Disappointed.
"But no," he snarks at her. "you had to come jingling your earbobs and pouting and frisking like a prostitute with a prospective client." Ouch! And that's a particularly jarring insult since we all know that Rhett runs a brothel and is best friends (or whatever...) with Belle Watling, and therefore should be able to tell the difference between a true prostitute and a woman willing to get down with him for a little dough, but even he pretends like there's no difference here. He almost whispers these last words, and Scarlett doesn't know what to do because "the deadly quietness of his voice frightened her," and she's actually terrified as she recognizes that "Rhett Butler was a dangerous man to run afoul of."
Now isn't that an interesting little bit of foreshadowing? We are still a long way from that famous, wild night after Ashley's party, but MM again and again plants little clues to let us know that Rhett Butler is dangerous, unpredictable, and uncontrollable. He's an Alpha male who is even more dangerous than he appears at first glance, especially when Scarlett makes him mad.
And boy oh boy has she made him mad here!
MM usually goes long on exposition and she normally surrounds all of her dialogue with explanations and descriptions, but not here. In this chapter MM's narrator almost disappears entirely and the style of the novel changes into something quick and very modern, almost like those long chains of snappy dialogue you find in 60's stage plays or 70's short stories. He's berating her and cross-examining her and knocking her off balance with nasty questions. But then, unexpectedly, Scarlett begins explaining the truth and his manner reverses again and Rhett jams his hands into his pockets and tries to remain nonchalant, but you can tell he'd like to help her. She's broken his heart, but he'd probably still give her the money--except he's in jail and his money is far away and if he tried to right her a check the Yankees would find out.
Part 3: That's that
The third and final part of their conversation takes place after Scarlett tries to attack Rhett in a murderous rage of her own, and then faints. The chat she has with Rhett after she regains consciousness is as harsh and brutal as a slap in the face, and Rhett gives her advice on how to talk to men and it's all so messy and tragic, isn't it? Rhett tells Scarlett she can come to his hanging because it will cheer her up, and then Scarlett sasses him right back by telling him that she won't even bother coming to his hanging since it probably won't happen until "it's too late to pay the taxes." Things are back to normal between the two of them (they're enemies again), and Scarlett didn't get the money, and I remember finishing this chapter and having absolutely no idea what was going to happen next. They do a marvelous job in GWTW the movie of introducing all of Scarlett's future husbands in the party scene at 12 Oaks (if you watch you'll see that they even introduce them in order), but if you'd asked me how Scarlett was going to get the money to pay the taxes on Tara another marriage would have been the absolute furthest thing from my mind. And I certainly didn't think that she would marry Frank Kennedy, but MM is such an excellent writer that she's laid all the clues right out there for you even at this part of the novel, a notion I'll explore further in my next post.
Wednesday, January 1, 2014
Happy 2014!/Chapter 33: "They think God is going to work a miracle especially for their benefit..."
Happy New Year everybody!
Unfortunately for me, most of December 2013 was spent nursing an unfortunate bout of what I assumed was something like carpel-tunnel syndrome in the middle fingers of my left hand. My fingers were swollen and weirdly numb for a few weeks, but everything seems to be back to normal now. I'm hungover (too much Prosecco and celebrating!) and battling a nasty sinus infection, but writers write, so I thought it would be a good idea to start the new year off with a new GWTW post about chapter 33.
However, before I begin Chapter 33 I think it's essential that I say a few words about Ashley Wilkes.
I don't really talk about Ashley all that much, do I? He's been away from home with General Lee and the Army of Northern Virginia for most of the book, and the few references I've made to Melly's husband have been pretty mean. He pales in comparison to Rhett, of course, but he's not actually a villain, is he?
Probably not. Ashley is an honorable gentleman living during a dis-honorable era, he's nice and as helpful as he can be (which isn't saying much, but not all of us are cut out for physical labor), and he does and says precisely what's expected of him at all times. And yet--
And yet--
When I initially read GWTW I had no reason to be critical of Ashley. MM presents him as a gleaming, oh-so-polite, oh-so-untouchable Beta male. He's super serious and seems to have a tough time giving Scarlet a straight answer on her he-loves-me-he-loves-me-not fantasies, but that's Scarlett's problem, not his.
And yet--
When I was a teenager, I thought every guy you encountered was a potential mate. And because I'd filled my head with the characters of GWTW and Pride and Prejudice and every single one of the Harlequin check-out-counter romance novels I could get my hands on, I thought men and women approached love and romance in precisely the same manner. Every girl I'd known in high school and junior high school and all the way back to kindergarten had nursed a secret (or sometimes not so secret, if she were very lucky) crush on a boy in our social circle. And after we'd finally gotten over our 9-year-old devotion to Joey McIntyre or Bobby Brown or Donny Osmond or Justin Beiber, we spent much of our free time daydreaming about that cute guy in history class or the boy with the cheekbones who's locker was on the other side of the hallway or whatever. And everything I'd read on the subject indicated that boys were just as obsessed with relationships as we were.
Well, I was wrong. Duh.
Because boys don't obsess about relationships in that way. They may or may not be sex obsessed or have the hots for a particular girl, but boys don't regularly spend time dreaming of weddings and everlasting devotion, etc. Of course this is an over-generalization, but in my experience guys are simply not wired that way. The male of our species is straightforward and goal-oriented, and if a man likes you he'll let you know immediately.
If I'd known that earlier in my life, I could have saved myself a great deal of trouble. Men generally don't play the kinds of games we think/hope/wish/pray that they're playing. If they like you, they'll let you know. They might be suave about letting you know, they might be brutal, they might buy you a gift for your birthday or send you flowers, or they might simply let you know by grabbing you and kissing you, but that's the bottom line: if a man likes you he'll let you know immediately.
Even if he's married.
So now....even though Ashley is married he knows Scarlett is obsessed with him. Therefore, I think it's his duty to tell her frankly that her devotion is misplaced. But instead he plays the coward and refuses to tell her straight to her face. That doesn't make him a terrible person, but he's not helping. At all.
Anyway, enough about the Woolen-Headed Mr. Wilkes (for now). I can't pick on him too much anyway, given that his reticence sets the next section of the plot in motion.
Alright, so on to chapter 33.
Scarlett returns to Atlanta by train at the beginning of chapter 33, but this visit to the capitol city is the opposite of everything MM gave us the first time our heroine visited the town. In her first foray to Aunt Pitty's house as Charles' widow she was greeted by Uncle Peter and she rode through the best neighborhood of Atlanta waving to her buddies. But now all the people she knew in the beginning of the story are either dead, gone, or too busy and poor to shout hello to her. As a matter of fact MM drives this point home by directly comparing "how crowded this space [the area around the depot] had been with wagons and carriages and ambulances and how noisy with drivers swearing and yelling ad people calling greetings to friends." GWTW is the story of the sweeping change that occurred during and after the civil war, and I think MM does her best work when she uses silences and emptiness to convey the feeling of change and the notion that something is missing. Scarlett wasn't particularly happy back in the 1862 and during the early days of the war (she hated being a wife and a widow and she missed Ashley too much), but the old world was filled with a polite bustle and a hum of energy that has completely disappeared now. And of course, the silence of the New World Order becomes even more dominant in the last third of the novel, after Scarlett and Rhett marry and move into the big mansion she designs. There's a lot wrong in their oh-so-fashionable house, but my overall impression of the place is that it was big, empty, boring, quiet, and sad.
So Scarlett and Mammy walk to Aunt Pitty's house, and MM has them pass landmarks we remember from the earlier part of the novel, including the Atlanta Hotel ("where Rhett and Uncle Henry had lived..."), Five Points/Peachtree Street ("denuded of landmarks"), and a bunch of "vacant lots". There are three story buildings in town now (wow!), and the sidewalks are crazy crowded (especially because of all the trashy people and Yankee uniforms), but Scarlett till feels all alone, and I think MM does a nice job of making sure the reader shares her alienation.
And hey--Belle Watling is in this chapter, too!
Hail hail, the gang's all here!
Belle's got a carriage and bright red hair and a "fine fur hat," two description of which put me in mind of Lucy Ricardo after a shopping binge. The two women don't speak, of course, but Mammy doesn't like the looks of Belle because she can quickly see that she is a "professional bad woman," and isn't it hilarious how MM plays up prostitution for laughs throughout GWTW? GWTW is conservative in many places (*ahem*), but wonderfully progressive on a variety of issues. MM could have easily gotten up on her moral high horse about Belle, but she does the opposite right here in chapter 33:
"[Scarlett] wanted to feel superior and virtuous about Belle but she could not. If her plans went well, she might be on the same footing with Belle and supported by the same man."
Ooooooh boy! I've read a half-dozen contemporary novels over the past few months, and none of them has said a word about prostitution. But if they had addressed the topic, I'm almost certain the authors would have lapsed into finger-wagging, etc. But MM is too much of a realist and too well-versed in the nature of the world to waste our time with morality, so she actually decides to align the destiny of her heroine with the life of the town fancy woman. Interesting stuff.
Anyway, Scarlett eventually makes it to Aunt Pitty's house, and--it's nice to see her, isn't it? A lot of strong characters died during and immediately after The War, but Aunt Pitty is apparently more of a survivor than we are led to assume during the first third of the novel. Hmmph. Pitty gives Scarlett a gossipy rundown of the neighbors (the Merriweather's are selling pies to Yankees, the Meades and Elsings and Whitings are living together to save money), and by-the-way, "did I tell you that Captain Butler was in jail?"
If you've only seen GWTW the movie, you get the impression that Rhett is in jail because of something to do with taxes or maybe the war or a trumped up charge having to do with blockading. But in reality Rhett was formally arrested for killing a negro. Which--did Rhett really kill a black guy? At this point in the novel we've yet to see our boy in anything close to a murderous rage (that...comes...later), and I obviously don't relish the notion of my Rhett killing a black man for having the unmitigated temerity to "insult a white woman." But politics aside, everything about this is tantalizing, isn't it? Rhett has been nothing but suave in Scarlett's presence (even when he tried to kiss her on the road to Tara), so it's almost jarring to think that that same playful/funny/silly guy we think we know so well is also a cold-blooded killer. We've heard about his past gun-play of course, but it's easy to chalk all of that up to youth and self-defense. But he's no longer young and scared and it seems unlikely that the big, strapping, armed-to-the-teeth blockader we know and love was bested in a fight, so--what really happened? The way I see it, there are three main possibilities:
1.) None of this is true. The Yankees have suspended habeas corpus and they arrested Rhett because he's got the money, because he's an Old Unreconstructed Rebel, and because he's a snarky bastard who probably told off one-too-many Yankee officers.
2.) Some of this is true. Maybe this whole thing is another one of those wild rumors that seem to surround Rhett like smoke from his beloved cigars, but in GWTW there's usually a kernel of truth in every rumor Scarlett hears. After all, Melly and Ashley's marriage was initially nothing more than a gossipy rumor from the Tarleton twins and that turned out to be God's honest truth, so maybe there's a morsel of fact inside this wild story. Maybe Rhett did kill the black guy, but maybe the circumstances weren't the way Pitty says they were. I didn't love everything about David McCaig's book, but I did enjoy the spin he put on this particular issue. You should check it out if you haven't read it, if only for this little tidbit.
3.) It's totally true. You guys, what if this is all totally true?
Well, let's avoid those unpleasant thoughts for a moment. In any case, MM keeps ramping up the incredible amount of information pouring out of Pitty's mouth about Rhett's situation. Rhett isn't just in Atlanta--he's in jail in Atlanta. And he's not just a wealthy former blockader--he's made off with millions of Confederate gold. And he's not just a rogue--he's a murderer. Scarlett's conversation with Aunt Pitty has more twists and turns than last night's Johnny Football Bowl Game (S-E-C!), and instead of simply being a rehash of information we already know, MM changes the game by giving us a bunch of data we simply didn't expect. I've read this book a thousand times, and even know this Chapter makes me tingle with suspense. If Rhett's fortunes (and personality?) have changed so much since we saw him last, what's it going to be like when Scarlett visits him in jail?
Oh drama!
Unfortunately for me, most of December 2013 was spent nursing an unfortunate bout of what I assumed was something like carpel-tunnel syndrome in the middle fingers of my left hand. My fingers were swollen and weirdly numb for a few weeks, but everything seems to be back to normal now. I'm hungover (too much Prosecco and celebrating!) and battling a nasty sinus infection, but writers write, so I thought it would be a good idea to start the new year off with a new GWTW post about chapter 33.
However, before I begin Chapter 33 I think it's essential that I say a few words about Ashley Wilkes.
I don't really talk about Ashley all that much, do I? He's been away from home with General Lee and the Army of Northern Virginia for most of the book, and the few references I've made to Melly's husband have been pretty mean. He pales in comparison to Rhett, of course, but he's not actually a villain, is he?
Probably not. Ashley is an honorable gentleman living during a dis-honorable era, he's nice and as helpful as he can be (which isn't saying much, but not all of us are cut out for physical labor), and he does and says precisely what's expected of him at all times. And yet--
And yet--
When I initially read GWTW I had no reason to be critical of Ashley. MM presents him as a gleaming, oh-so-polite, oh-so-untouchable Beta male. He's super serious and seems to have a tough time giving Scarlet a straight answer on her he-loves-me-he-loves-me-not fantasies, but that's Scarlett's problem, not his.
And yet--
When I was a teenager, I thought every guy you encountered was a potential mate. And because I'd filled my head with the characters of GWTW and Pride and Prejudice and every single one of the Harlequin check-out-counter romance novels I could get my hands on, I thought men and women approached love and romance in precisely the same manner. Every girl I'd known in high school and junior high school and all the way back to kindergarten had nursed a secret (or sometimes not so secret, if she were very lucky) crush on a boy in our social circle. And after we'd finally gotten over our 9-year-old devotion to Joey McIntyre or Bobby Brown or Donny Osmond or Justin Beiber, we spent much of our free time daydreaming about that cute guy in history class or the boy with the cheekbones who's locker was on the other side of the hallway or whatever. And everything I'd read on the subject indicated that boys were just as obsessed with relationships as we were.
Well, I was wrong. Duh.
Because boys don't obsess about relationships in that way. They may or may not be sex obsessed or have the hots for a particular girl, but boys don't regularly spend time dreaming of weddings and everlasting devotion, etc. Of course this is an over-generalization, but in my experience guys are simply not wired that way. The male of our species is straightforward and goal-oriented, and if a man likes you he'll let you know immediately.
If I'd known that earlier in my life, I could have saved myself a great deal of trouble. Men generally don't play the kinds of games we think/hope/wish/pray that they're playing. If they like you, they'll let you know. They might be suave about letting you know, they might be brutal, they might buy you a gift for your birthday or send you flowers, or they might simply let you know by grabbing you and kissing you, but that's the bottom line: if a man likes you he'll let you know immediately.
Even if he's married.
So now....even though Ashley is married he knows Scarlett is obsessed with him. Therefore, I think it's his duty to tell her frankly that her devotion is misplaced. But instead he plays the coward and refuses to tell her straight to her face. That doesn't make him a terrible person, but he's not helping. At all.
Anyway, enough about the Woolen-Headed Mr. Wilkes (for now). I can't pick on him too much anyway, given that his reticence sets the next section of the plot in motion.
Alright, so on to chapter 33.
Scarlett returns to Atlanta by train at the beginning of chapter 33, but this visit to the capitol city is the opposite of everything MM gave us the first time our heroine visited the town. In her first foray to Aunt Pitty's house as Charles' widow she was greeted by Uncle Peter and she rode through the best neighborhood of Atlanta waving to her buddies. But now all the people she knew in the beginning of the story are either dead, gone, or too busy and poor to shout hello to her. As a matter of fact MM drives this point home by directly comparing "how crowded this space [the area around the depot] had been with wagons and carriages and ambulances and how noisy with drivers swearing and yelling ad people calling greetings to friends." GWTW is the story of the sweeping change that occurred during and after the civil war, and I think MM does her best work when she uses silences and emptiness to convey the feeling of change and the notion that something is missing. Scarlett wasn't particularly happy back in the 1862 and during the early days of the war (she hated being a wife and a widow and she missed Ashley too much), but the old world was filled with a polite bustle and a hum of energy that has completely disappeared now. And of course, the silence of the New World Order becomes even more dominant in the last third of the novel, after Scarlett and Rhett marry and move into the big mansion she designs. There's a lot wrong in their oh-so-fashionable house, but my overall impression of the place is that it was big, empty, boring, quiet, and sad.
So Scarlett and Mammy walk to Aunt Pitty's house, and MM has them pass landmarks we remember from the earlier part of the novel, including the Atlanta Hotel ("where Rhett and Uncle Henry had lived..."), Five Points/Peachtree Street ("denuded of landmarks"), and a bunch of "vacant lots". There are three story buildings in town now (wow!), and the sidewalks are crazy crowded (especially because of all the trashy people and Yankee uniforms), but Scarlett till feels all alone, and I think MM does a nice job of making sure the reader shares her alienation.
And hey--Belle Watling is in this chapter, too!
Hail hail, the gang's all here!
Belle's got a carriage and bright red hair and a "fine fur hat," two description of which put me in mind of Lucy Ricardo after a shopping binge. The two women don't speak, of course, but Mammy doesn't like the looks of Belle because she can quickly see that she is a "professional bad woman," and isn't it hilarious how MM plays up prostitution for laughs throughout GWTW? GWTW is conservative in many places (*ahem*), but wonderfully progressive on a variety of issues. MM could have easily gotten up on her moral high horse about Belle, but she does the opposite right here in chapter 33:
"[Scarlett] wanted to feel superior and virtuous about Belle but she could not. If her plans went well, she might be on the same footing with Belle and supported by the same man."
Ooooooh boy! I've read a half-dozen contemporary novels over the past few months, and none of them has said a word about prostitution. But if they had addressed the topic, I'm almost certain the authors would have lapsed into finger-wagging, etc. But MM is too much of a realist and too well-versed in the nature of the world to waste our time with morality, so she actually decides to align the destiny of her heroine with the life of the town fancy woman. Interesting stuff.
Anyway, Scarlett eventually makes it to Aunt Pitty's house, and--it's nice to see her, isn't it? A lot of strong characters died during and immediately after The War, but Aunt Pitty is apparently more of a survivor than we are led to assume during the first third of the novel. Hmmph. Pitty gives Scarlett a gossipy rundown of the neighbors (the Merriweather's are selling pies to Yankees, the Meades and Elsings and Whitings are living together to save money), and by-the-way, "did I tell you that Captain Butler was in jail?"
If you've only seen GWTW the movie, you get the impression that Rhett is in jail because of something to do with taxes or maybe the war or a trumped up charge having to do with blockading. But in reality Rhett was formally arrested for killing a negro. Which--did Rhett really kill a black guy? At this point in the novel we've yet to see our boy in anything close to a murderous rage (that...comes...later), and I obviously don't relish the notion of my Rhett killing a black man for having the unmitigated temerity to "insult a white woman." But politics aside, everything about this is tantalizing, isn't it? Rhett has been nothing but suave in Scarlett's presence (even when he tried to kiss her on the road to Tara), so it's almost jarring to think that that same playful/funny/silly guy we think we know so well is also a cold-blooded killer. We've heard about his past gun-play of course, but it's easy to chalk all of that up to youth and self-defense. But he's no longer young and scared and it seems unlikely that the big, strapping, armed-to-the-teeth blockader we know and love was bested in a fight, so--what really happened? The way I see it, there are three main possibilities:
1.) None of this is true. The Yankees have suspended habeas corpus and they arrested Rhett because he's got the money, because he's an Old Unreconstructed Rebel, and because he's a snarky bastard who probably told off one-too-many Yankee officers.
2.) Some of this is true. Maybe this whole thing is another one of those wild rumors that seem to surround Rhett like smoke from his beloved cigars, but in GWTW there's usually a kernel of truth in every rumor Scarlett hears. After all, Melly and Ashley's marriage was initially nothing more than a gossipy rumor from the Tarleton twins and that turned out to be God's honest truth, so maybe there's a morsel of fact inside this wild story. Maybe Rhett did kill the black guy, but maybe the circumstances weren't the way Pitty says they were. I didn't love everything about David McCaig's book, but I did enjoy the spin he put on this particular issue. You should check it out if you haven't read it, if only for this little tidbit.
3.) It's totally true. You guys, what if this is all totally true?
Well, let's avoid those unpleasant thoughts for a moment. In any case, MM keeps ramping up the incredible amount of information pouring out of Pitty's mouth about Rhett's situation. Rhett isn't just in Atlanta--he's in jail in Atlanta. And he's not just a wealthy former blockader--he's made off with millions of Confederate gold. And he's not just a rogue--he's a murderer. Scarlett's conversation with Aunt Pitty has more twists and turns than last night's Johnny Football Bowl Game (S-E-C!), and instead of simply being a rehash of information we already know, MM changes the game by giving us a bunch of data we simply didn't expect. I've read this book a thousand times, and even know this Chapter makes me tingle with suspense. If Rhett's fortunes (and personality?) have changed so much since we saw him last, what's it going to be like when Scarlett visits him in jail?
Oh drama!
Thursday, December 12, 2013
Chapter 32: "Nothing but this red land."
I'm sort of a PBS nerd, so I've spent the last few weeks slowly making my way through the Hollow Crown BBC Shakespeare series. I've never been much on Shakespeare, but I think my general lack of enthusiasm for The Bard has more to do with the plays they forced us to read in junior high and high school than on Shakespeare's own scribbles. My English teachers forced us to read Romeo and Juliet, A Midsummer Night's Dream, and Macbeth, and in my opinion the jokes and romance in those stories are so antiquated they read more like "jokes" and "romance," and are so forgettable and old-fashioned that you almost regret having read them at all.
But the Hollow Crown features four of Shakespeare's best history plays: Richard II, 1 Henry IV, 2 Henry IV, and Henry V. The producers and directors of these new versions of the plays had sizable budgets, which meant they had enough money to use beautiful sets and hot and/or famous actors to play the most important parts. The biggest surprise for me was Patrick Stewart as John of Gaunt; he was only on the screen for about ten minutes, but he was there long enough to deliver one of Shakespeare's most famous speeches--the one where John of Gaunt goes on and on about England being so wonderful and amazing and ends with a description of "this blessed plot, this earth, this realm, this England".
Anyway, while I was watching Stewart deliver these lines, I started using my long dormant English major critical thinking skills to compare John of Gaunt's love of the England to Scarlett O'Hara's love of Tara. Chapter 32 begins with Scarlett coming to terms with Ashley's rejection from the prior chapter. Unfortunately for Scarlett (and fortunately for those of us who enjoy her interpersonal drama!), our heroine does not use this juncture as an opportunity to finally move past her obsession with Mr. Wilkes. A more mature woman would have tried to see their relationship plainly, but Scarlett is still a child in many ways, so she clings to her love for Ashley without stopping to consider the fact that their world has changed so drastically that affairs of the heart don't matter in the same way anymore.
But for all of Scarlett's stubborn idiocy when it comes to the "woolen-headed Mr. Wilkes," MM keeps Scarlett likeable and amusing in this section by reinforcing Scarlett's devotion to Tara. Scarlett would have gladly run away with Ashley only moments before, but the thought of leaving Tara behind forever "would have torn her heart," and this sentiment endears the protagonist to the reader in the same way that a shared love of England tied Shakespeare's audience to John of Gaunt in the Elizabethan age. Not many of us have had the fortune/misfortune of experiencing the "deathless love" Scarlett has for Ashley, but every reader has a hometown and something we think of as a homestead and I think MM was brilliant for teasing out this connection and making it easy for us to relate to Scarlett at a section of the novel when she seems to have lost touch with reality just a little bit.
I guess everybody eventually wants to go home again. Even Scarlett and Rhett.
Anyway, Scarlett doesn't have much time to spend feeling sorry for herself. Because Jonas Wilkerson and Emmie Slattery show up in finery at the door to Tara and all hell breaks loose! Before this moment MM's references to women outside Scarlett's social circle have been hilariously circumspect, but now she unloads on Emmie Slattery with both barrels blazing, throwing out so many cruel words ("dirty tow-headed slut whose illegitimate baby Ellen had baptized...overdressed, common, nasty piece of poor white trash...") that the tirade always catches me by surprise. Neither MM nor Scarlett are anything close to angels when it comes to internal dialogue, but all the terribly mean things that have been in the story thus far have usually been tempered by humor. But there's nothing funny in any of this, particularly since Scarlett then goes all biblical on Emmie and Jonas after they express their desire to buy Tara:
"I'll tear this house down, stone by stone, and burn it and sow every acre with salt before I see either of you put foot over this threshold."
That sounds like something out of one of the latter books of the Old Testament, doesn't it?
And that's good. Scarlett's rage is justified, particularly since she holds a grudge against Jonas and Emmie, and it's also good because it provides an excellent, rock-steady, totally believable motivation for the oh-so-important next few chapters of GWTW. So over the course of a half hour in Scarlett's life, MM has:
1.) Alerted us to the fact that the taxes need to be paid on Tara--and they've been raised "sky high."
2.) Told us that Ashley is still somewhat attracted to Scarlett but doesn't have any money to help pay the taxes (keep up the good work Ashley!) And:
3.) If Scarlett doesn't figure out a way to pay the taxes, Emmie and Jonas will be living in Tara.
All of these events are emergencies, and they happen in quick succession, and we know Scarlett is broke, and...how in the WORLD is she going to get out of this one?
And then we get our answer:
"Rhett Butler."
Awwwwwww Yeah!
Scarlett arrives at her indecent proposal to be Rhett's mistress rather quickly, but it's not as though she initiates this thought out of midair. After all, she hates Rhett at this point in the novel and doesn't seem to have sexual desires for any man besides Ashley (although even those are pretty chaste), so instead of immediately deciding to become his mistress she goes through a few logical steps before she jumps off the cliff into moral depravity. Initially she's going to sell her diamond earrings to Rhett for that year's tax money, but--you know what? The taxes are going to be due every year, aren't they? So she's going to need some way to get money out of Rhett in perpetuity, which is why she comes to the conclusion that she'll marry Rhett Butler in order to secure the money she needs to save Tara. She's planning on tricking Rhett into marriage and she's repulsed by the idea of becoming Mrs. Rhett Butler, but--well, matrimony on these terms isn't really much of a crime, is it? And anyway, not one couple in GWTW has married out of "true love," so perhaps Scarlett's activities here aren't as treacherous as they seem at first glance?
I don't know.
But I do know that Rhett Butler is on his way back into the novel, and that's a reason to give thanks!
But the Hollow Crown features four of Shakespeare's best history plays: Richard II, 1 Henry IV, 2 Henry IV, and Henry V. The producers and directors of these new versions of the plays had sizable budgets, which meant they had enough money to use beautiful sets and hot and/or famous actors to play the most important parts. The biggest surprise for me was Patrick Stewart as John of Gaunt; he was only on the screen for about ten minutes, but he was there long enough to deliver one of Shakespeare's most famous speeches--the one where John of Gaunt goes on and on about England being so wonderful and amazing and ends with a description of "this blessed plot, this earth, this realm, this England".
Anyway, while I was watching Stewart deliver these lines, I started using my long dormant English major critical thinking skills to compare John of Gaunt's love of the England to Scarlett O'Hara's love of Tara. Chapter 32 begins with Scarlett coming to terms with Ashley's rejection from the prior chapter. Unfortunately for Scarlett (and fortunately for those of us who enjoy her interpersonal drama!), our heroine does not use this juncture as an opportunity to finally move past her obsession with Mr. Wilkes. A more mature woman would have tried to see their relationship plainly, but Scarlett is still a child in many ways, so she clings to her love for Ashley without stopping to consider the fact that their world has changed so drastically that affairs of the heart don't matter in the same way anymore.
But for all of Scarlett's stubborn idiocy when it comes to the "woolen-headed Mr. Wilkes," MM keeps Scarlett likeable and amusing in this section by reinforcing Scarlett's devotion to Tara. Scarlett would have gladly run away with Ashley only moments before, but the thought of leaving Tara behind forever "would have torn her heart," and this sentiment endears the protagonist to the reader in the same way that a shared love of England tied Shakespeare's audience to John of Gaunt in the Elizabethan age. Not many of us have had the fortune/misfortune of experiencing the "deathless love" Scarlett has for Ashley, but every reader has a hometown and something we think of as a homestead and I think MM was brilliant for teasing out this connection and making it easy for us to relate to Scarlett at a section of the novel when she seems to have lost touch with reality just a little bit.
I guess everybody eventually wants to go home again. Even Scarlett and Rhett.
Anyway, Scarlett doesn't have much time to spend feeling sorry for herself. Because Jonas Wilkerson and Emmie Slattery show up in finery at the door to Tara and all hell breaks loose! Before this moment MM's references to women outside Scarlett's social circle have been hilariously circumspect, but now she unloads on Emmie Slattery with both barrels blazing, throwing out so many cruel words ("dirty tow-headed slut whose illegitimate baby Ellen had baptized...overdressed, common, nasty piece of poor white trash...") that the tirade always catches me by surprise. Neither MM nor Scarlett are anything close to angels when it comes to internal dialogue, but all the terribly mean things that have been in the story thus far have usually been tempered by humor. But there's nothing funny in any of this, particularly since Scarlett then goes all biblical on Emmie and Jonas after they express their desire to buy Tara:
"I'll tear this house down, stone by stone, and burn it and sow every acre with salt before I see either of you put foot over this threshold."
That sounds like something out of one of the latter books of the Old Testament, doesn't it?
And that's good. Scarlett's rage is justified, particularly since she holds a grudge against Jonas and Emmie, and it's also good because it provides an excellent, rock-steady, totally believable motivation for the oh-so-important next few chapters of GWTW. So over the course of a half hour in Scarlett's life, MM has:
1.) Alerted us to the fact that the taxes need to be paid on Tara--and they've been raised "sky high."
2.) Told us that Ashley is still somewhat attracted to Scarlett but doesn't have any money to help pay the taxes (keep up the good work Ashley!) And:
3.) If Scarlett doesn't figure out a way to pay the taxes, Emmie and Jonas will be living in Tara.
All of these events are emergencies, and they happen in quick succession, and we know Scarlett is broke, and...how in the WORLD is she going to get out of this one?
And then we get our answer:
"Rhett Butler."
Awwwwwww Yeah!
Scarlett arrives at her indecent proposal to be Rhett's mistress rather quickly, but it's not as though she initiates this thought out of midair. After all, she hates Rhett at this point in the novel and doesn't seem to have sexual desires for any man besides Ashley (although even those are pretty chaste), so instead of immediately deciding to become his mistress she goes through a few logical steps before she jumps off the cliff into moral depravity. Initially she's going to sell her diamond earrings to Rhett for that year's tax money, but--you know what? The taxes are going to be due every year, aren't they? So she's going to need some way to get money out of Rhett in perpetuity, which is why she comes to the conclusion that she'll marry Rhett Butler in order to secure the money she needs to save Tara. She's planning on tricking Rhett into marriage and she's repulsed by the idea of becoming Mrs. Rhett Butler, but--well, matrimony on these terms isn't really much of a crime, is it? And anyway, not one couple in GWTW has married out of "true love," so perhaps Scarlett's activities here aren't as treacherous as they seem at first glance?
I don't know.
But I do know that Rhett Butler is on his way back into the novel, and that's a reason to give thanks!
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