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Chapter 56
Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in Gone with the Wind, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
The Civil War and Reconstruction
Looking Forward vs. Looking Back
Classism and Racism
Practicality, Tenacity, and Selfishness
Women and Power
Summary
Analysis
Scarlett is pale and thin when Rhett puts her on the train to Tara a month after her fall. She feels she’ll suffocate if she stays in Atlanta any longer. She feels like a sick, lost child. Rhett watches the train leave bitterly and then goes to Melanie’s house. Melanie sits on her porch sewing and is embarrassed to see Rhett coming. The last time they talked, when Scarlett was sick, he’d said so many humiliating things. She hopes he’s forgotten. Melanie invites Rhett to sit, nervous because of how large and manly he is. When she blushes, Rhett asks if his presence annoys her. His voice is so understanding that Melanie relaxes. She insists she’s fine and thinks he's just worried about Scarlett. Rhett asks Melanie to help him: when Scarlett returns from Tara, he doesn’t want her to kill herself working at the mills.
When Scarlett was just widowed, she was dying to get out of Tara and go to Atlanta. She felt that, as much as she loved Tara, Atlanta was the place where she truly belonged. While Tara was beautiful and serene, Atlanta was crude and exciting. Throughout the story, these two places have grounded Scarlett at different times. Atlanta allowed Scarlett to break out of the confines of mourning and female standards. It allowed her to make her own money running her businesses. Tara, on the other hand, always reminds Scarlett of what’s most important to her, and what all her work in Atlanta is for.
Themes
Rhett explains that Scarlett won’t sell the mills voluntarily, but he wants to suggest that Ashley buy Scarlett out of her share. Melanie says that would be nice, but she and Ashley don’t have the money. Ashley was so generous that he gave all their money away and they never saved. Rhett offers to lend them the money so Ashley can buy the mill and they can save to send Beau to college. Rhett says they must hide the loan from Scarlett and Ashley; Scarlett will be angry, and Ashley won’t want to take money from Rhett. Rhett will send the money anonymously through the mail.
Rhett was originally the person who loaned Scarlett money so she could get the mill started. He admired her knack for business and her love of money. Now, however, he knows that working at the mill allows her to see Ashley on a regular basis. His jealousy leads him to lend Melanie and Ashley money for the mill under pretense that he’s caring for Scarlett’s health and Beau’s future.
Themes
Melanie is reluctant to deceive Ashley, but she finally agrees. She wonders why everyone says bad things about Rhett; he’s always been so kind to her and is so devoted to Scarlett. Melanie says Scarlett is lucky to have Rhett. As Rhett picks up his hat to go, he says he’s trying to give Melanie more than just advantages for Beau; he’s trying to make sure she can keep the thing most dear to her: Ashley. On this ominous note, he leaves.
Rhett’s design in selling the mill to Ashley and Melanie is partly to keep Scarlett away from Ashley, but he also wants to protect Melanie from her husband’s infidelity. This mirrors how when Rhett saved Ashley and Hugh from the Yankees, some questioned whether Rhett did it for Scarlett or Melanie.
Themes
When Scarlett returns from Tara, she looks healthy. Rhett and Bonnie meet her at the train, Indian feathers stuck in their hair from a game they’d been playing. Scarlett kisses Bonnie and allows Rhett to kiss her since everyone at the depot is watching. On the ride home, she relays positive news from the County.
When Scarlett comes back from Tara, she and Rhett are at an impasse. Scarlett is also still very concerned with how she looks to others, which is why she allows Rhett to kiss her. Tara seems to have reinvigorated Scarlett’s health.
Themes
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Scarlett doesn’t relay the sad things about the County, such as how many plantations were being overgrown by forest. Even Tara is no longer a plantation but is just a small farm. Once she and Rhett are home, she asks what’s been happening in Atlanta. She hasn’t talked to Rhett alone since the day she fell. He’d been kind but impersonal during her recovery, and she can’t tell what he feels. He acts mostly as though nothing, good or bad, happened between them. Rhett says everything has been fine but dull in Atlanta.
These days, the stereotypical Southern plantation doesn’t exist anymore. Without enforced labor, no one in the country is wealthy anymore. Anyone who lives there has to work their own land and regrow from scratch. Things have changed in the County differently from how things have changed in the City.
Themes
Then Rhett says that Ashley had asked if he could buy Scarlett’s share of the mill. Scarlett asks where Ashley got the money. Rhett shrugs and says he told Ashley that she’d never sell because she’s too controlling. Insulted, Scarlett says she will sell. She thinks how she’d only held onto the mills so she could see Ashley. Now, she wants to get back on good terms with him by generously selling him the mill at a low price. Rhett looks slightly triumphant and look at her with his old searching look. Suddenly suspicious, Scarlett asks if Rhett had anything to do with this, but Rhett denies it.
Even after her miscarriage and her illness, Scarlett holds onto her obsession with Ashley. In the same way that she wanted to sacrifice sex with Rhett so Ashley would admire her, she wants to sell him the mill at a low price. For the longest time, she felt that money and her mills were the most important thing. Now, she is willing to sell them because she’s still unsatisfied and wants something else.
Themes
Scarlett sells the mills to Ashley that night. She tries to give him a low price, but he matches the highest bid she’d ever gotten for them. She feels afterwards as if she sold one of her children; she’d run those mills with her own two hands, and she’s certain that Ashley will ruin them since he’s still a terrible businessman. Melanie passes out wine to Rhett, Scarlett, and Ashley to celebrate the sale. Ashley says he plans to send the convicts back and employ free Blacks. Scarlett says he’ll lose all his money; free Blacks demand to be overpaid whereas the convicts are cheap.
Scarlett feels that the mills are her children because they are the only thing she’s ever been truly invested in. As soon as she sells the mills to Ashley, she realizes that no one has the kind of tenacity she has—or the willingness to exploit others for a profit. Ashley’s plan to hire free Blacks is, perhaps, the more progressive choice—it acknowledges that Black people can demand payment for their labor. Scarlett, though, knows will be the death of the mill.
Themes
Ashley says he refuses to make money from the enforced labor and misery of others. Scarlett points out that Ashley had no problem enslaving Blacks. Ashley says his enslaved persons weren’t miserable. Besides, he knows Johnnie Gallegher has killed some of the convicts. Scarlett accuses him of calling her a bad person. He says he’s not criticizing her, but that they are different. Scarlett wishes she were alone with him so she could say they weren’t different, and that she wants to think just like him.
Scarlett’s lack of morals made her excellent at business. She knows that, now that Ashley will be running the mills with a good conscience, they won’t do well. Scarlett wants to prove to Ashley that they are similar because she still loves him, but she really has no evidence that they’re similar. He looks back while she looks forward, and she sacrifices her morals while he sticks firmly to his.
Themes
Ashley says money that comes from unethical practices only brings unhappiness. Scarlett disagrees, reminding him of their days of poverty at Tara when they made slippers out of carpet. She says she’s happy now because no one has nicer clothes or furniture than she does, and it is all thanks to enforced convict labor. Rhett notes that Scarlett is also happy because she killed the Yankee. Then he says, “poisonously sweet,” that the money has made Scarlett very happy. She tries to agree, but for some reason she can’t speak.
Scarlett thinks that the biggest hardship the war caused her was poverty. She is alone in this opinion; everyone around her believes that her unethical wealth is the worst outcome of the Civil War. Rhett insinuates that Scarlett has become heartless and mercurial. She is speechless because she feels that money has actually left a void in her.
Themes
