Gone with the Wind

by Margaret Mitchell

How wonderful it would be never to marry but to go on being lovely in pale green dresses and forever courted by handsome men.

“Scandalously and truly. Always providing you have enough courage—or money—you can do without a reputation.”

She had learned to say, “I won’t think of this or that bothersome thought now. I’ll think about it tomorrow.”

“They both see the same unpleasant truth, but Rhett likes to look it in the face and enrage people by talking about it—and Ashley can hardly bear to face it.” It was very bewildering.

Scarlett, our Southern way of living is as antiquated as the feudal system of the Middle Ages.

She had started to say: “I’d cut up my heart for you to wear if you wanted it,” but she finished, “I’d do anything for you!”

She wanted to pray but she could not raise her eyes to Heaven. She wanted to cry but the tears would not come. They seemed to flood her chest, and they were hot tears that burned under her bosom, but they would not flow.

“I know no more pleasant way to pass the time than in eating and er—things like that,”

real

“I won’t need you to rescue me. I can take care of myself, thank you.”

But, Scarlett, you need kissing badly. That’s what’s wrong with you. All your beaux have respected you too much, though God knows why, or they have been too afraid of you to really do right by you. The result is that you are unendurably uppity. You should be kissed and by someone who knows how.”

His lumbago—”

Oh lord not Lumbago

“When will you stop looking for compliments in men’s lightest utterances?” “When I’m on my deathbed,” she replied and smiled, thinking that there would always be men to compliment her, even if Rhett never did.

Why, she had never had to do a thing for herself in all her life. There had always been someone to do things for her, to look after her, shelter and protect her and spoil her. It was incredible that she could be in such a fix. Not a friend, not a neighbor to help her. There had always been friends, neighbors, the competent hands of willing slaves. And now in this hour of greatest need, there was no one. It was incredible that she could be so completely alone, and frightened, and far from home.

I believe that this is a true turning part in her character.

The red glow in the sky was fading now and the road became so dark, so frightening, Scarlett would have welcomed words, any words from him, even jeering, insulting words, words that cut. But he did not speak.

Was Tara still standing? Or was Tara also gone with the wind which had swept through Georgia?

If she could only reach the kind arms of Tara and Ellen and lay down her burdens, far too heavy for her young shoulders—the dying woman, the fading baby, her own hungry little boy, the frightened negro, all looking to her for strength, for guidance, all reading in her straight back courage she did not possess and strength which had long since failed.

Was coming home to Tara to mean, not blessed surcease, but only more loads to carry?

She was seeing things with new eyes for, somewhere along the long road to Tara, she had left her girlhood behind her. She was no longer plastic clay, yielding imprint to each new experience. The clay had hardened, some time in this indeterminate day which had lasted a thousand years. Tonight was the last time she would ever be ministered to as a child. She was a woman now and youth was gone.

Her burdens were her own and burdens were for shoulders strong enough to bear them.

Tara was her fate, her fight, and she must conquer it.

“As God is my witness, as God is my witness, the Yankees aren’t going to lick me. I’m going to live through this, and when it’s over, I’m never going to be hungry again. No, nor any of my folks. If I have to steal or kill—as God is my witness, I’m never going to be hungry again.”

God intended women to be timid frightened creatures and there’s something unnatural about a woman who isn’t afraid…. Scarlett, always save something to fear—even as you save something to love.…”

When such thoughts came she did not pray hastily to God, telling Him she did not mean it. God did not frighten her any more.

She felt like snapping out abruptly: “To hell with everybody in the South! What about us?” but she remained silent because the tired feeling was back on her more strongly than ever. Ashley wasn’t being any help at all.

When I was in prison, I thought: When the war is over, I can go back to the old life and the old dreams and watch the shadow show again. But, Scarlett, there’s no going back. And this which is facing all of us now is worse than war and worse than prison—and, to me, worse than death…. So, you see, Scarlett, I’m being punished for being afraid.”

Melly and he were always talking such foolishness, poetry and books and dreams and moonrays and star dust. He was not fearing the things she feared, not the gnawing of an empty stomach, nor the keenness of the winter wind nor eviction from Tara. He was shrinking before some fear she had never known and could not imagine. For, in God’s name, what was there to fear in this wreck of a world but hunger and cold and the loss of home?

“Forgive me, Scarlett, for talking so. I can’t make you understand because you don’t know the meaning of fear. You have the heart of a lion and an utter lack of imagination and I envy you both of those qualities. You’ll never mind facing realities and you’ll never want to escape from them as I do.” “Escape!”

“Something you love better than me, though you may not know it. You’ve still got Tara.”

She had become what Grandma Fontaine had counseled against, a woman who had seen the worst and so had nothing else to fear.

Mammy would take care of Scarlett whether Scarlett wished it or not.

He thought as he stared at Will in the shadowy hall that he had never known such gallantry as the gallantry of Scarlett O’Hara going forth to conquer the world in her mother’s velvet curtains and the tail feathers of a rooster.

Talking to Rhett was comparable only to one thing, the feeling of ease and comfort afforded by a pair of old slippers after dancing in a pair too tight.

Scarlett had little use these days for honesty in herself, but the less she valued it in herself the more she was beginning to value it in others.

“Death and taxes and childbirth! There’s never any convenient time for any of them!”

There ain’t nothin’ from the outside can lick any of us.

And Scarlett had always found strength and comfort in common sense.

Same girl

But that weakness that’s in our hearts can lick us in the time it takes to bat your eye.

“You wouldn’t have let me do anything dishonorable but you would sell yourself to a man you didn’t love—and bear his child, so that my family and I wouldn’t starve. It was kind of you to shelter my helplessness.”