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
When Scarlett leaves the firehouse, it’s raining. There are no carriages anywhere, and she’s soaked and muddy. How can she face everyone after she’d been so confident she could save Tara? She hates Rhett, and she feels it serves him right to be hanged. She passes Black men who grin at her. How dare they! When a buggy comes up behind Scarlett, Frank Kennedy’s familiar voice cries out in greeting. He helps Scarlett into the carriage and wraps a blanket around her. She notices that his carriage and clothes are nice, even though he looks older than ever. He asks if everyone at Tara is well, thinking of Suellen.
Scarlett’s trek home from the prison is a walk of shame. She feels that the lowest class of people—Black people and Rhett Butler—are looking down on her when she believes she should be treated like a lady. As always, she doesn’t know how to endure situations in which she is not in a position of power. And as Frank swoops in to rescue her, she mostly pays attention to signs that he’s wealthy. She’s still scheming, even if she’s experiencing a setback.
Themes
Scarlett doesn’t want to talk about Tara. She’s surprised to see Frank in Atlanta, but he explains that he lives in Atlanta and has a new store in Marietta; Suellen should’ve shared the news. To Scarlett’s relief, he starts a long story about his success as a merchant. After visiting Tara, he fought in the cavalry and was wounded. While he was in the hospital, Yankee raiders came. Frank helped load army supplies on trains before the raiders could burn them. When the war ended, those supplies sat around. So Frank, after some struggle with his conscience that Scarlett doesn’t understand, moved the supplies into an old building and started selling them. He’s made a lot of money.
Like Rhett, Frank made a small fortune off the fall of the Confederacy. Although the unused supplies belonged to the Confederacy, the Confederacy no longer exists. The practice of seizing the goods and selling them is dishonest because it exploits the people who originally helped buy the supplies. Frank acts on what Rhett Butler once observed: that one can profit hugely off the fall of a civilization. That Scarlett doesn’t understand the moral struggle Frank went through points to her own immorality.
Themes
Scarlett perks up at the mention of money. She cuddles closer to Mr. Kennedy and asks him questions about his finances. He explains that he made a thousand dollars and he plans to buy a sawmill in Atlanta. The town is rebuilding rapidly and needs lumber. By this time next year, Frank shouldn’t have to worry about money anymore. He implies that he wants to make money so he can marry Suellen soon. Scarlett almost asks him for a loan but decides this would embarrass him. She thinks that Suellen doesn’t deserve Mr. Kennedy’s fortune. She’ll misuse it and never do anything for Tara, and it’s so unfair. Maybe Scarlett can get Frank to propose, even if he is old and shy. He might be Suellen’s fiancé, but Scarlett hasn’t had a conscience since she decided to pursue Rhett.
Scarlett isn’t thinking about Frank or Suellen’s feelings, but only about money and the fact that she needs it. She justifies her malicious action with practical reasoning: if Suellen married Frank, she wouldn’t put any of his money towards Tara, but she, Scarlett, would. Scarlett has stolen girls’ fiancés before, such as when she stole Charles from Honey, but it’s a step further to consider stealing Frank from her own sister. This shows Scarlett resorting to increasingly immoral means to get what she wants.
Themes
Scarlett bats her eyes shyly, remembering what Rhett said about men disliking bold women. She asks to put her hands in Frank’s pocket. Franks asks what Scarlett is doing downtown. Not thinking, she says she was at the Yankee headquarters. He’s shocked, so she lies that she was selling embroidery to the Yankees to earn money for her and Wade. She starts to cry on his shoulder. He comforts her, saying he won’t tell Pitty, but that Scarlett should stop doing business with Yankees. Frank says he’ll find a way to help her. Scarlett calls Frank by his first name, which pleases him. He calls Scarlett brave and says she’ll always be welcome in his home when he marries Suellen. Scarlett lies that Suellen is marrying Tony Fontaine next week.
Scarlett shows Frank how poor she is by telling him she sells goods to Yankees. Like most Southerners, Frank finds this disgraceful. Although he is profiting off the fall of the Confederacy, he sees this as very different from profiting from the Yankees’ triumph. Frank wants to do something to protect Scarlett from unladylike business matters and Yankees. In this way, Scarlett woos Frank by leading him to believe she’s helpless and naïve even though she isn't either. She gains power, in other words, by acting powerless.
Themes
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When Frank and Scarlett get to Miss Pitty’s house, Mammy is standing outside looking angry. But when she sees Frank, she smiles. She goes to make Scarlett a cup of tea. Scarlett begs Frank to escort her to Fanny Elsing’s wedding that evening, and he agrees. She squeezes his hand and goes into the house. Upstairs, Mammy strips off Scarlett’s wet clothes and tucks her into bed. Mammy says she knows Scarlett is planning to marry Frank, and Mammy will help her do it; at least Frank is a gentleman. Scarlett realizes that Mammy is just as practical as she is. Mammy wants to help Scarlett because she’s Ellen’s oldest child. Scarlett feels hopeful again.
Mammy disapproved of Scarlett’s trip to Atlanta not because of her practical plan to seduce a husband, but because of her plan to seduce Rhett specifically. Mammy thinks Frank is a gentleman and Rhett Butler is not, even though Rhett and Frank have both made their fortunes through very similar means. Mammy still cares about traditional Southern ideals that Scarlett thinks don’t matter anymore, such as breeding and reputation. Mammy’s willingness to help also highlights her loyalty to the O’Haras and her commitment the family’s success.
Themes
Scarlett looks at her messy hair and pale face in a mirror. She tells Mammy to get the five-dollar gold piece from her purse and buy her some rouge and cologne. Mammy is scandalized that Scarlett wants to use makeup. Scarlett reminds her that Grandma Robillard used makeup. Mammy says times were different back then, and Scarlett can’t make her go because Mammy is free. When Scarlett says she’ll go herself, Mammy insists on going so Scarlett won’t be seen buying makeup in public.
Scarlett plans to seduce Frank with her appearance and charms rather than her character and virtue. Scarlett’s scandalous use of makeup draws a connection between her and Belle Watling, who is described as wearing cologne and makeup. Although Scarlett thinks she’s better than Belle, her tactics are similar, suggesting that there’s not actually much difference between the two women.
Themes
That night, Scarlett enters the Elsings’ on Frank’s arm, and everyone rushes to greet her. It is fun to be at a real party again. After the ceremony, a band plays and the guests dance. Scarlett feels uneasy about her dress because it’s still dirty. However, it looks better than most of the frocks there. Knowing the Elsings are in financial trouble, Scarlett wonders where the money for the wedding came from. Like the Tarletons’ tombstones, she thinks a wedding is a foolish extravagance.
In Scarlett’s opinion, a wedding is something that only makes sense when one has money and can pull it off extravagantly. Otherwise, she sees no point. She doesn’t understand the sentimental value of the Tarletons’ tombstones or the Elsings’ wedding celebration, believing that these people shouldn’t try to show off wealth they don’t have. But Scarlett, of course, is doing the exact same thing with her curtain dress: she’s trying to look wealthier than she is.
Themes
Scarlett had tended the groom—Tommy Wellburn—in the hospital. He limps due to a wound on his hip, and she can’t imagine how he’s able to work on a labor crew. She converses with other guests about their new jobs, and Scarlett lies that her “darkies” perform manual labor at Tara. The group also discusses baby names. When Tommy asks Scarlett to dance, she declines and asks Frank to meet her in the alcove with refreshments.
Scarlett is very embarrassed of her poverty and won’t admit to anyone that she works like a field hand at Tara. In this way, although she accuses everyone around her of pretending nothing has changed, she does the same, pretending she still owns enslaved people (or now employs free Black people) and lives like a lady.
Themes
Scarlett goes to the alcove and waits for Frank. She pushes her embarrassing meeting with Rhett from her mind and focuses on the party. The room was beautiful before the war. It was full of soft sofas and laden buffet tables, and a chandelier threw prisms of light. Now, the chandelier is dark; the Yankees smashed it. The walls are cracked and the tables are scratched. Instead of a sofa, she sits on a hard bench.
All Scarlett can notice at the party is how different everything is after the war, especially how less opulent everything looks. She notices the decrepitude of the Elsings’ house. Her focus is on her friends’ poverty, not on the fact that she’s at a joyous wedding celebration.
Themes
Scarlett likes hearing music again after so long. But, looking around at the dancers, they seem like ghosts. She feels like she’s seeing something she doesn’t understand. The people are bitter now that the Cause is lost. The conventions of the old world—manners, courtesy, leisure—are all that remain. Scarlett notices how these people still pretend to be ladies and gentlemen as though nothing has changed. Her hardness is different from theirs. Unlike them, she’ll do anything to survive. Scarlett finds that she hates these people for pretending to be proud ladies. She knows she won’t feel like a lady again until Tara is rich and Black hands are picking cotton. These people think gentility is about breeding, but Scarlett knows that it’s about wealth. Poverty never would’ve humiliated Ellen, but it humiliates Scarlett.
Scarlett believes that when the war took away the South’s wealth, everything else went with it. She connects gentility with wealth, believing that no one should pretend to have manners, dignity, or pride unless they have money too. Other Southerners believe the South has lost its wealth but not its character or dignity. Consequently, as she faces poverty, Scarlett veers toward moral collapse, as she’s willing to do anything for money. Scarlett still wants to be a “great lady” like Ellen, but thinks she, and not Ellen, knows the right way to get there.
Themes
Maybe everyone else is right and Scarlett is wrong. But Scarlett looks to the future, whereas they look to the past. They look down on trying to make money, but Scarlett will do anything not to be poor and to keep Tara. Right now, Frank is her future because he has money and she needs it. She recalls that Rhett once said a person could make money from the wreck of a civilization. She will make her money out of the South’s wreck. Just then, Frank approaches. Scarlett hasn’t considered whether it’s worth marrying Frank to keep Tara, and she wishes he was gallant and confident. But he’s gullible, which will get Scarlett his money—but he won’t earn her respect.
The narration implies that Southerners associate making money with modernity. Making money means the formerly wealthy Southerners must forget the past and what they’ve lost and then start fresh. Many are unwilling to do this because they don’t want their society to change; they are loyal to the way things were. It is left ambiguous as to who makes the right sacrifice—Scarlett, or everyone else.
Themes
