Lindsey C. Neef, Class of '99

     "Sir," she said, "you are not gentleman!"
     "An apt observation," he answered airily. "And you, Miss, are no lady." (109)

Upon their very first individual meeting, Rhett Butler and Scarlett O'Hara voice truths that are to be the focus of Margaret Mitchell's novel Gone With the Wind. Rhett lacks the crust of manners, the propriety that makes one a "gentleman", Scarlett lacks the instinctive gentleness and self-effacing qualities of the "lady" (109). Margaret Mitchell's four primary characters can be categorized both by this society's "gentleman"/"lady" disignations as well as their place along more general, traditional gender lines(109). Scarlett and Melanie, Mitchell's two main female characters, are polar opposites: Melanie is a lady, Scarlett is not; Melanie is traditionally feminine, while Scarlett adheres to a traditionally masculine way of thinking and acting. Even with their differences, though, Mitchell admires them both. She sets up a similar dichotomy between her two male characters, Rhett and Ashley: Ashley is a gentleman, Rhett is not; Rhett is traditionally masculine, while Ashley's personality is portrayed as more feminie. Mitchell's concentration on the approval or disapproval of Atlanta society of her characters also betrays her feelings tward the changing ways of the South portrayed in her novel: she clings to a nostalgia for the old way of life, but sees the necessity of moving on to the new, where a bit more strength and spirit is required than before.

Mitchell makes it perfectly clear she approves of the actions of both Scarlett O'Hara, independent and controlling, and Melanie Wilkes, submissive and sweet. Her liking of Scarlett is evident first through her choice of the young belle as her primary protagonist of the novel. Mitchell gives Scarlett all the advantages and the victories, lets her triumph over difficult odds, even while socitey criticizes her for being "fast" (111), "scandalous" (180), "unwomanly" (619), "immodest" (767), "common and vile" (768), and simply "bad" (830). The society in which she is unpopular, although presented as the majority, does not fare as well as Scarlett in the end. At the same time, though, Mitchell presents characters' idolization of Melanie, a very different woman, in a positive light, and seems to agree with them.

Melanie is as Rhett defines her: a "great lady" (616). This "great lady" is identified by Scarlett through most of hte book as her mother, Ellen O'Hara, "kind and gentle... thoughtful of other people and of the proprieties... hav[ing] time to play with her children and listen to their lessons... ladies would call and she would serve tea and... leisurely gossip the hours away... so kind to those who were suffering misfortune... a lady in the true Southern manner" (616). Scarlett dreams of being this woman, only to put her dream off again and again, blaming lack of time and money. Only near the end does she realize Melanie, her best friend, has managed to become a great lady herself. Scarlett's sister-in-law is the alter ego of her mother; thougth circumstances never require her to manage a great plantation, she proves herself an "angel of mercy" in nursing the sick, much as Ellen gave her life nursing the local "white trash", the Slatterys, through typhoid (145). She is always the model of propriety, loved by everyone, keeping the Christian values of piety, generosity and deep familial ties. She has the inner strength Ellen had, using it to disagree with society when she knows what is right according to her values. Scarlett, though cast out by everyone else, is treated by Melanie with "love and outspoken trust" when suspected of having an affair with Ashley; Melanie believes Ashley and Scarlett love each other only as brother and sister, to the contrary of what she has been told (853). Although people may disagree with her, her reputation is such that she is too busy surviving; her instincts will not allow her to sacrifice her own well-being for a good reputation. Melanie, on the other hand, has the truly nurturing, maternal instinct of the great lady. Shedies from a miscarriage, which she would believe as honorable a death as that of a soldier in the war. She is a flawless portrait of the inner grace characteristic of the ideal Southern woman. Although she lacks the idealized feminine exterior of the young belle before her marriage, this is required only to "catch" a husand, something she never needs to do.

This exterior, this thin crust of femininity, is one of the qualities Scarlett values most in herself. She has mastered the demeanor of the belle, the small part of being a perfect woman devoted to catching a husband and keeping beaux on the string. She knows and loves "all the tricks that never failed to work": "the nuance of the sidelong glance, the half-smile behind the fan, the swaying of the hips so that skirts swung like a bell, the tears, the laughter, the flattery, the sweet sympathy" (161). Her bellehood is not to be mistaken for femininity, as it is a tool she expertly turns on or off to suit her own needs. Scarlett "knew all that a gentlewoman should know, but she learned only the outward signs of gentility. The inner grace from which these signs should spring, she never learned nor did she see any reason for learning it" (54). This "inner grace" is the quality Melanie and her mother possess that she does not. She does not belong to any category of woman accepted into good Southern, white, society: the elderly old maid, Aunt Pittypat; young old maid, India Wilkes; the matrons, Mrs. Meade, Mrs. Merriweather, and Mrs. Elsing; the woman with her "heart in the grave", Careen (158); the horsewoman, Mrs. Tarleton; and definitely not the "great ladies", Ellen and Melanie. In fact, beneath the thin crust that deceives the Tarleton twins, Charles Hamilton, and Frank Kennedy, Scarlett has an independence and personality that belongs to the strongest of Southern men. Her coquettishness is simply a deceptive technique she uses as a man would use his cunning, or his physical strength. As soon as Frank has married her, he discovers she "wasn't the soft, sweet, feminine person he had taken to wife" (583). The business of "trapping" a spouse for their money, using deliberate deception, is a an's business. Scarlett has been skillfully manipulating him, for "in the brief period of the courtship, he thought he had never known a woman more attractively feminine in all her reactions to life, ignorant, timid, and helpless... Now her reactions were all masculine... she talked and acted like a man... She knew what she wanted and she went after it by the shortest route, like a man, not by the hidden and circuitous routes peculiar to women" (583). Masculinity at the time consisted of devotion to land, home, and family; physical and emotional strength; independence, selfishness, self-reliance; abilities for "raising good cotton, riding well, shooting straight, dancing lightly, squiring the ladies with elegance, and carrying one's liquor like a gentleman" (4). Although in Scarlett's case it is the men she collects, dominates, and uses with "elegance", all of these qualities are shown throughout the novel, especially after Scarlett is made to face challenges she can not handle using her bellehood alone. She picks cotton with her own hands, has "never been thrown" from a horse (78), is "glad with a cook tigerish joy" when she shoots a man defending her home and family (401), makes men fight over her as a dance partner, can have any beau she chooses, and has "inherited the steadiest head in Clayton County" for liquor from her father (376). She prides herself on never having faited, gives birth in a disgracefully easy manner, and transports through the fires of Atlanta and the Yankee army Prissy, a young useless slave; Melanie, who had just given birth; Melanie's newborn baby; and Wade, her own young child. For a year at Tara and afterward, she cares and provides for her family, Melanie, Ashley, and their child, and the slaves left after the war. Her father "is not himself", and she is the man as well as the woman of the houselhold (411). Indeed, Scarlett is continually portrayed as resembling her father before his breakdown in looks, personality, strength, and spirit. At one point she wishes she "could roar as loudly as Gerald used to roar when in a temper", and very nearly does (798).

Rhett also has such masculinity. He is self-reliant ans strong, thinking first of the advantages for himself and those he loves. However, where Melanie lacks the beauty and vivacity that Scarlett possesses, Rhett lacks Ashley's gentlemanly manners and deference to the wishes of society. He is also far too intelligent for Ashley's blind idealism. He is just as skilled at deception as Scarlett, and allows her to see his own true self at the bazaar because he knows he is safe with this similarly selfish woman. At times he does not care what society thinks, but when he does, he is excellent at controlling their views of him. Mitchell likes Rhett; where he has all the self-interested skillfulness of Scarlett, he is honest with himself about it where she is not. Scarlett stubbornly clings to the idea that she will be a great lady, but Rhett never has illusions that he is a gentleman or ever will be. His soft spot is, though, his love for Scarlett and, by extension, for their daughter Bonnie, who he says is "you, a little girl again, before the war and poverty had done things to you... I could pet her and spoil her - just as I wanted to pet you" (1018). Looking out for his daughter's interests includes winning back the approval of society when he "could not have chosen a more difficult time" (893). This display of love and devotion does not lessen his masculinity, though; it has always been admissible for the "true man" to devote his soul to protecting and pampering a weak woman. Since Rhett can not do so for Scarlett - he knows the true, strong woman too well - he does so for his daughter. His only weak moments come upon Scarlett's near fatal illness and Bonnie's death.

Ashley, in contrast, shows many weak moments throughout the novel. While possessing a thin veneer of the perfectly mannered gentleman, he is in reality very feminine, needing to be protected "from a too harsh world" (923). The feminine ideal of the time was submissive; no matter what she believes to be true, the lady will almost always align her actions with those of society. Though Melanie goes against society, her reputation as a great lady is enough to protect her. Ashley's blind idealism makes him a coward: he agrees with Rhett that the South will lose the war, but never dreams of acting for his own benefit, or even his own preservation. He will give his life to a lost cause if he believes in it, risking his life in the war and for the Ku Klux Klan, even though he was "against violence of any sort", because of what it represents (898). He has such an interest in books, music, and other typically gentle things that another of Mitchell's consummate males, Gerald O'Hara, agrees with Mrs. Tarleton that his "family needs new blood, fine vigourous blood" (82). Margaret Mitchell accepts, and likes, Rhett's honest masculinity and Melanie's gentle femininity. She even approves of Scarlett's behavior and personality, which, in their independence and forthrightness, are that of a man. She knows, however, that Ashley, who possesses little strength, self-reliance, or any other positive quality than his gentlemanly manners, is a character of the old South, the South that is "gone with the wind which had swept though Georgia", destroying and changing everything in its path (362). This manner, this grasping of traditions, is still excusable in Melanie, as she is, after all, a woman, and made strong through the "inner grace" she possesses as a woman. However, Ashley's effeminacy and shortsighted idealism bother the Southern-raised Mitchell, and he does not have the "inner grace" of the great lady to redeem him. She makes it obvious that he is liked, but also that men like Ashley, who have little more than their manners and the approval of society, are a thing of the past. Ashley does not prosper in this novel; his good manners and gentlemanly pride become cowardice and lead him into imprisonment, poverty, and dependence upon women: his wife for strength and Scarlett for subsistence. Although he tries time and time again to terminate his financial dependence on Scarlett, she prolongs it by playing upon his attraction to her; the only way he can explain leaving for the North after Scarlett has told Melanie she needs him is by admitting his desire to end this attraction he is too weak to overcome. Though weak, Ashley remains a gentleman to a fault; almost the last words Melanie speaks to Scarlett before her death admonish her to watch over him: "Ashley isn't - practical" (923). In letting the gentle Melanie Wilkes speak ill of her husband, Mitchell shows her disapproval of his behavior. Only the strong, like Rhett and Scarlett, will survive and prosper as the South changes. Additionally, the character allowed to be dependent because of sex, Melanie, will live only as long as she is cared for by Rhett or Scarlett. When she puts her life in the hands of her idealistic, weak, and pridefull husband, she dies. Although her death is not a direct product of the Wilkes' new self-sufficiency when Ashley buys out the mill, the timing of her final pregnancy and miscarriage is more than a coincidence. This is Mitchell's homage to a dying society; though beautiful, like Melanie's life and ways, it is suffocated by resistance to change.

The interaction between these four characters are a final way to verify what they represent to Mitchell. As Gerald and others say, "only when like marries like can there be any happiness" (31). Personality can cause this compatibility, but so can blood. This is shown again and again throughout the novel. Ellen's true love was Philippe Robilliard, a cousin who died; only a "gentle shell" lives on in her marriage to Gerald O'Hara (38). Charles Hamilton marries Scarlett, only to die shortly afterward. A marriage to Honey Wilkes, a cousin long expected to be his wife, would have been more appropriate and probably much happier. They were not only cousins, but were both considered not too intelligent, both were unpopular with the opposite sex: Charles was "pleading... shy", Honey empty-headed (97). Ashley and Melanie, related by blood and alike in temperament, are meant for one another, alike because of their socially-accepted good manners. While they may not approve of the war, for good reason, they are devoted enough to their homeland to die for it. Rhett and Scarlett, on the other hand, maintain only a thin veneer of good manners and customs, easily broken when it suits them. Both are intelligent opportunists, smart, independent, and belligerent. Their arguments and disagreements arise from the fact that different things are important to them at different times: in the beginning, when she had not yet shaken off her mother's influence and desires to be just like her, Scarlett cares what hte community things and says, when Rhett does not; near the end, concentrating on Bonnie, it matters to Rhett. Rhett is victorious over Scarlett in their struggles, finally, not because he is a man, for Scarlett is in spirit as strong and masculine as he, but because he uses his one primary advantage: he is physically stronger, and as she has never encountered a truly physical attack, she is unable to resist. He breaks her fight against him, her last attachment to Ashley Wilkes, by conquering her physically, with "arms that were too strong, lips too bruising... she could neither bully not break [him]" (859). Additionally, in her struggle to maintain the standards of hospitality and charity she was raised to, Scarlett has subjected herself to the constant physical and financial "weary load[s]" of others, never having a place to "lay down" her own (931). This leads to her recurring nightmare, the only fear that lasts throughout the novel: she is running, "seeking in the gray mist for the safety that lay somewhere" (932). Rhett is able to provide that safety, as he has never carried her burdens.

The equal pairings of Rhett and Scarlett and Ashley and Melanie have odd counterparts referred to again and again throughout the novel. Most obviously, there is the mutual attraction between Scarlett and Ashley. Though near the end, Scarlett realizes that she has "loved something I made up... I made a pretty suit of clothes and fell in love with it. And when Ashley came riding along... I put that suit on him and made him wear it whether it fitted him or not" (1004). Ashley's long attraction to Scarlett is just as simple: he loves her as a sister for their long friendship, and Scarlett notes that he "only wanted me like - like Rhett wants that Watling woman!" (1002). He lusts after her health and vivacity, the things she possesses that Melanie does not. Interestingly, Rhett has a somewhat more spiritual, much more subtle attraction to Melanie. He expresses onstant admiration for her even whilel making fun of her husband, and it is her lap he cries into when Scarlett is ill. Throughout the entire novel, Melanie is the only character to catch him in a truly weak moment. She thinks of him as "a child in a suddenly hostile world... had never seen a man cry but she had comforted the tears of many children... patted his head as she did little Beau's" (952-3). To Rhett, Melanie is a curious mixture of a saint, and his own mother, from whom he has been separated by his father.

Mitchell has organized her book along gender lines of the entebellum South: Scarlett and Rhett are "masculine" to the point that their "selfishness" and independent actions cause their ostracism from society, while Melanie, a "lady", and Ashley, a "gentleman", are feminine enough, submissive enough to their society, to maintain good reputations, but will be left behind with the changing of the times. Gone With the Wind is written, in part, to glorify not only the spirit of the Old South, Melanie Wilkes, but the bright and strong woman who would survive to see the future, Scarlett O'Hara. The book, in fact, ends with a weary but optimistic plan for the future: Scarlett has lost Rhett, who she now knows is her only love, but she has the strength and faith in the future to enable her to say:

     "I'll think of it all tomorrow, at Tara. I can stand it then. Tomorrow, I'll think of some way to get him back. After all, tomorrow is another day" (947).

Work Cited

Mitchell, Margaret Gone With the Wind. Warner Books, 1936.