by Ms P. K. Styles

Created on: March 02, 2007   Last Updated: May 08, 2007

MY, WHAT PRETTY CLAWS!

I first read this novel the summer I was seventeen. It is a novel that has been handed down in my family for three generations - and now I know why.

Scarlett O'Hara is a spoilt flirtacious southern belle on her father's rich plantation. All the other girls in the county hate and depise her because she has a way of getting her charming claws into their men - ALL of the men, that is, except "the long suffering Mr. Wilkes."

Ashley Wilkes is young, blonde, handsome - and taken. He is destined to marry Melony Hamilton - the only woman in the county besides Scarlett's mother who doesn't depise her (ironically enough).

Scarlett convinces herself she is in love with Ashley Wilkes, but the truth is she only wants him for the simple reason that she can not have him. Her want becomes an obsession that spans over the next four years of the Civil War and even after. Ashley turns her down in more than one entertaining love scene, one of which is over heard by none other than the the famous Rhett Butler.

Rhett Butler is smitten by Scarlett the moment he first sees her because he recognizes in her the same qualities he values in himself: he is a social outcast without clean spot on his reputation. According to the South's unwritten social laws, he is not a gentleman but a scallywag and a cad because he refused to marry a girl he'd taken out without a chaperon. But Rhett is fearless and defiant when it comes to social rules and lives a comfortable life safely outside of "good" Southern society which means he openly associates with prostitues and therefore, knows about women's undergarments (something a man is supposed to pretend not to know about).

But Rhett's sudden and adrent spark of love for Scarlett is doused somewhat when he learns of Scarlett's apparent love for Ashley Wilkes. He then spends the greater part of the novel fruitlessly pursuing Scarlett and trying to make her forget about Ashley. He married her, saying with a laugh that he "can't wait all his life to catch her between husbands." But Rhett soon finds after the birth of their first child that married life with Scarlett is hell. He can't make love to Scarlett knowing that she's sighing for Ashley Wilkes, and he can't bear to sit across from her at supper anymore knowing that she wants Ashley there. And when Scarlett turns Rhett from her bed it hurts him so that he's driven to mad drinking.

And though Scarlett moons after Ashley and fantasizes about him, she slowly but surely falls in love with Rhett. But here's the twist: once Scarlett realizes her love for Rhett and runs to him to proclaim it, she finds that Rhett's deathless love has, well, died, and that he just doesn't "give a damn" anymore.

This is probably my favorite part of the movie version. I love when Scarlett runs through the mist to find Rhett at home, sitting listlessly before the window with an open suit case on the bed. I must've watched the ending more times than the rest of the movie put together. But nothing moves me more than Scarlett and Rhett's last parting words:

"Rhett! If you go, where shall I go, what shall I do?"

"Frankly, my dear, I don't give a damn."

Learn more about this author, Ms P. K. Styles.
Click here to send this author comments or questions.