Gone with the Wind – Week 3

Scarlett is still up to her old tricks, and she is determined to do whatever it takes to get what she wants and what she needs. When her first plan of borrowing the money falls through, she has to move on! How was she to know that Rhett Butler would be in prison when she showed up!! She is desperate for anything and anyone who can help her, and who should show up, but her sister’s beau! Scarlett is quick to pounce on anything that she can, and she she finds out that Frank has some money set aside, she makes up a quick story, and before she can blink.. husband #2 has entered the picture. Frank Kennedy can ease the initial money situation she is in, and Scarlett quickly starts to realize that she can capitalize on more. While he is down sick in bed, she goes over the books, and then begins to cook up some business ventures of her own! A genteel woman owning a business, who would have thought!? Only Rhett Butler does not seem to think bad of her for doing what she can to keep food on the table and the household back at Tara running.

But of course, with all good things must come the bad. Scarlett finds herself pregnant again! She is not the nurturing motherly type, and pregnancy is a major inconvenience for her. But she keeps going, in spite of her condition. She almost has a perverse pleasure in turning convention on its head! With the death of her father, it seems more and more changes are on their way.  With the newly free slaves running around and the carpetbaggers coming in, it is a dangerous place for a woman. Melly has managed to help Scarlett find a driver for a while, but then when she follows through on her plan to hire convicts to work her sawmills, he refuses to help her out any longer. She is on her own, and one night she is accosted on her way home. Now the mystery of the meetings is fixing to be revealed as well, and more surprises are on their way for Scarlett.

When her husband is killed, she reels from the realization that she never treated him very nicely and she could have done much more to make his life easier. When Rhett Butler comes calling the night of the funeral, she has no idea what is in store for her…

This week we are reading Chapters 33 – 47

Questions:

1. Has Scarlett learned ANYTHING or accepted the reality from the trials that she has gone through?
2. What designs do you think Rhett Butler has up his sleeve? He always seems to turn up where Scarlett is?
3. The realization that both Ashley and Frank were caught up in the KKK have Scarlett shocked to silence. Do you think most women were oblivious to the fact that their husbands were a part of this circle, or was it something that was known but glazed over and swept under the rug?