Chapter 23
As Scarlett
waits for Prissy to return with Rhett, she notices a glow in the sky and
realizes that the town is on fire. She assumes that the Yankees have arrived
and are burning the town. She longs for the comfort and reassurance of Ellen.
Prissy bursts in
with the news that it is the Confederates who are burning the foundry, army
supply depots and warehouses as they retreat, to ensure that they do not fall
into enemy hands. She has found Rhett, who he has told her that the
Confederates have confiscated his horse and carriage, but that he will steal a
horse from the army corral and come to fetch the women.
Rhett arrives,
impeccably dressed as always, with a worn-out horse and rickety wagon that he
has stolen. He is surprised that Scarlett intends to go to Tara, since there
has been fighting all day at Jonesboro and the Yankees may be at Tara. She may
run into the Yankees or deserters from both armies. Scarlett, tearful and
hysterical, insists that she will go home and see her mother. He comforts her
and sets about getting the women, Wade, and the new baby into the wagon. He
whips the old horse into action and drives them all out of the burning town.
Scarlett feels grateful to Rhett for his strength and protection. She tells him
how glad she is that he is not in the army. He responds with a look of silent
anger and bewilderment. When they are out of the town, he stops the wagon, and
gets out. He tells her that he is leaving her to make her own way home and is
going to join the Confederate army. Scarlett, horrified, asks him why he is
going. He answers that perhaps it is because of the "betraying sentimentality
that lurks in all of us Southerners" or because he is ashamed. He says, in a
light-hearted tone, that in spite of what he said to her previously, he does
love her, because they are alike. He kisses her passionately, and she is
surprised to feel herself responding. But she is still furious at him for
deserting her, so she slaps him across the mouth and declares that he is not a
gentleman. Rhett laughs and walks away.
Chapter 24
Scarlett awakes
in the wagon after an exhausting night driving the horse into the woods to
avoid soldiers and pushing the wagon out of gullies. Both the sick old horse
and Melanie look close to death. Melanie has no milk for her baby. Scarlett
realizes that they have spent the night on the Mallorys' plantation, but the
lawns have been churned up by the hooves, wheels and feet of the Yankee army
and the house has been burned to the ground. Scarlett finds some fallen apples
and water for them all and they continue along the road. They pass one
burnt-out house after another, and the bodies of dead men and horses, but they
do not see a single living soul. Scarlett dreads finding Tara destroyed.
Along the road,
they encounter a cow. Scarlett decides they must take it with them, to provide
milk for the baby. She makes a lead rope by tearing up her petticoat and
hitches the cow to the wagon.
Finally, they
reach Tara. To Scarlett's immense relief, the house is still standing. She is
greeted by Gerald, who suddenly seems a broken old man. He tells Melanie that
the Twelve Oaks plantation is burned, and that she must live at Tara. He says
that Ellen died yesterday. Pork tells Scarlett that all the slaves have either
run away or gone with the Yankees. Only he, Mammy and Dilcey have stayed with Gerald.
Dilcey has just had a baby and can nurse Melanie's baby.
Gerald reveals
that the Yankees did not burn Tara because they used it as a headquarters.
Gerald had met the Yankees on the front porch. They had told him to leave as
they were going to burn Tara, but he had told them that the girls were so sick
with typhoid that they could not be moved. The Yankee officer was "a gentleman"
and had fetched an army surgeon, who had saved the girls' lives. The Yankees
had moved in, filling all the rooms except the sick room. They had eaten or
taken all the food and livestock, and torn down the outbuildings for firewood.
Scarlett drinks
some whiskey and puts Gerald to bed as if he is a child. Mammy arrives and
tells Scarlett that Ellen had brought typhoid into the house after nursing
Emmie Slattery, who had the illness. Carreen and Suellen had contracted it
first and then Ellen, worn out with nursing the girls, had succumbed and
declined fast. In her delirium, Ellen had thought she was a little girl back in
Savannah. She did not think of any of her present-day family. Dilcey tells
Scarlett that Ellen died calling the name "Philippe" - her cousin and the love
of her life.
Scarlett feels
overwhelmed with her burden and longs to lay it on someone else's shoulders,
but there is no one. Gerald is old and stunned, her sisters are ill, Melanie is
frail, and the children helpless, and the remaining slaves have lost their
confidence along with Ellen. She drinks more whiskey and realizes that she will
never be looked after again. She thinks of her ancestors, who rose above
crushing misfortunes. She belongs to Tara and is determined to keep it - her
father and sisters, Melanie, Ashley's child and the slaves. Tomorrow, she would
look for food and stray livestock.
Chapter 25
Next day,
Scarlett has a hangover from the whiskey. As she sits down to breakfast, Gerald
says they must wait for Ellen. Scarlett notes that Gerald has dementia from his
grief; he does not realize that Ellen is dead. Scarlett takes control of Tara,
giving orders brusquely in a way of which Ellen would never approve.
Pork brings news
that the horse is dead and the cow has had a calf. The only livestock left
after the Yankees' visit is a sow and her litter, which Pork drove into the
swamp to prevent the Yankees laying hold of her. Scarlett tells him and Prissy
to go and catch the pig, which Pork is unwilling to do since he is not a "fe'el
han'" but a higher status "house nigger." Scarlett tells him, "Anyone at Tara
who won't work can go hunt up the Yankees." Pork reports that the Yankees have
taken all the corn and trampled the growing cotton, with the exception of about
three bales, which they did not notice. Scarlett wonders how she will pay the
taxes on Tara, since the Confederate government had taken cotton in lieu of
money for taxes.
Scarlett goes to
Twelve Oaks to look for food in the gardens. She is stunned by the sight of the
Wilkes' home, burnt to the ground. She finds some turnips and cabbages growing
in the deserted slaves' gardens, and gathers them in her basket. She eats a
radish, but her empty stomach revolts and she vomits. Lying in the furrows, too
weak to move, she reflects on those who are lost forever, and quickly decides
that she has finished with looking back. She makes a solemn vow that she will
not be defeated and that "I'm never going to be hungry again."
Scarlett is
unable to think about the war or the outside world: all she thinks about now is
feeding the household. Everyone complains of being hungry except Melanie, who
selflessly gives up her own rations to others even though she is growing even
thinner. Gerald, Wade and the slaves cling to Melanie because she is kind and
sympathetic, whereas Scarlett is growing ever more sharp-tongued and intolerant
of weakness. Wade seems frightened of his mother's reprimands. He has been
traumatized by the Yankee shelling of Atlanta and has not recovered. Scarlett
is impatient with the convalescing Carreen and Suellen. She hangs over the foot
of their bed and outlines the work she expects them to do as soon as they are
better.
Scarlett bullies
the others partly "because it helped her to forget her own bitterness that
everything her mother had told her about life was wrong." Ellen's teachings to
be gentle, gracious, honorable and kind have no place now, when all that
matters is survival. It would be more useful to know how to plough or gather
cotton. Scarlett does not take account of the fact that Ellen's ordered world
has gone and values have changed; she can only think that Ellen was wrong. What
has not changed is Scarlett's love for the land at Tara. Land and property, she
now believes, as Gerald believed, is the only thing that is worth fighting wars
for. She is determined that "She would hold Tara, if she had to break the back
of every person on it."
Analysis of
Chapters 23-25
As never before,
Scarlett is thrown back on her own resources. Gone are the days when she was a
pampered belle whose every need and desire were catered for by others;
increasingly, she can rely on no one but herself. In a dramatic subversion of
the love story tradition in which the hero rescues the lady in distress,
Scarlett calls on Rhett to help her and her household escape from the burning
town. Rhett comes to her call, but he is no knight in shining armor. First, he
turns up with a broken-down old nag that he has stolen from the army. Then,
once he has driven Scarlett, Melanie, Prissy and the children out of town, he
unchivalrously deserts them in order to go off and join the Confederate army.
Left without a protector, Scarlett has to overcome dangers and obstacles to get
herself and the others (who are no help and rely on her completely) back to
Tara. That she does so, saving the lives of her charges and even making a small
'profit' in the shape of the cow she acquires along the route, is testament to
her growing self-sufficiency.
Rhett's decision
to join the army comes after Scarlett's remark that she is grateful that he is
not in the army. It appears to be prompted by shame and a patriotism that has
hitherto lain hidden under a cynical veneer. His action is given a quixotic
flavor by the fact that the South has virtually lost the war. Rhett's momentary
discarding of his customary cynicism spills over into his relationship with
Scarlett. He admits that, contrary to his previous claim, he does love her, and
gives his reason: she is like him. In matters of love, Rhett is more of a
realist than Scarlett, recognizing that two people who are alike are better
suited than two people who are different, like the pragmatic, Irish peasant-bred
Scarlett and the Old Southern aristocrat, Ashley. Scarlett's body shows more
wisdom in this than her mind and heart: she responds in spite of herself to
Rhett's passionate kiss, but when she realizes that Rhett is really going to
leave her to fend for herself, she slaps him and dismisses him on the grounds
that he is not a "gentleman."
Scarlett faces
even greater challenges when she arrives at Tara. She longs to lay her burdens
on someone else's shoulders, only to find Ellen dead, Gerald in a state of
dementia, her sisters sick, and the remaining slaves expecting Scarlett to
replace Ellen as the figure of strength. Instead of laying down her burdens
(Melanie, the new baby, Wade, and Prissy), she finds that they are simply added
to. As she takes control of Tara, she grows sharp-tongued and hard. This is
partly due to her realization that everything Ellen taught her - such as being
gracious and honorable - is useless to her in this ruined world, where only
survival matters. The turning point for Scarlett is the scene in the slaves'
garden at Twelve Oaks, where, after scratching about for vegetables, Scarlett
consciously turns away from those people and things she has lost in the past
and decides to look only to the future. The famous and often-quoted speech in
which she makes the solemn vow, "I'm never going to be hungry again," marks her
refusal to be defeated by the depredations of the war and her determination not
only to survive, but also to prosper. Her resolve parallels the new pragmatic,
opportunistic and entrepreneurial values that the South will have to adopt
after the war in order to survive. Scarlett's mantra, which she frequently
repeats in times of hardship, is, "I won't think of it now. I can't stand it
now. I'll think of it later." She relies upon it to dull the effects of grief,
worry or the pangs of conscience and to keep her attention firmly on her goal.
This example is from Chapter 25, when Scarlett is stunned by the sight of the
Wilkes' home, Twelve Oaks, which has been burnt to the ground by the Yankees.
If Scarlett's
hardships are making her ever more sharp-tongued and hard-hearted, one
balancing and softening trait is her Old Southern love for the land of Tara,
which she has inherited from Gerald. This land is as essential to her as her
life-blood ("She could not desert Tara; she belonged to the red acres far more
than they could ever belong to her. Her roots went deep into the blood-colored
soil and sucked up life, as did the cotton." - Chapter 24). It is this deep
love for her land that rescues Scarlett from seeming utterly cold and attached
to superficial values - even if, with characteristic ruthlessness, she does
grow determined to "hold Tara, if she had to break the back of every person on
it."
Rhett and
Scarlett show great reserves of strength in these chapters. Melanie too shows
strength of another sort. She gives birth without expert help and without
complaint, in spite of her difficult labor. In stark contrast with Scarlett, at
Tara, she maintains her gentle and kind nature, and becomes a refuge for the
frightened and bewildered inhabitants, who are quivering nervously under
Scarlett's ruthless rule. Melanie embodies the values of the Old South -
courtesy, kindness and graciousness, which Ellen had exemplified and tried to teach
to Scarlett. Ellen had managed to combine these qualities with a strength that
made her word law at Tara, but her saintliness is impossible to live up to and
the two sides of her character are now shared between two less-than-complete
women, Melanie and Scarlett. Melanie's main limitation is that she lacks
physical robustness, and her growing weakness parallels the weakening of the
South by the war. |
