I'll think about it tomorrow

I have been reading Scarlett, the rather audacious sequel to Gone with the Wind written by an ambitious Alexandra Ripley. The book came out in 1991, so no doubt all of you who are readers read it long ago. Someone donated a copy to the library and since we already had a copy I decided to bring this one home and give it a try. So far I'm finding it entertaining, and similar enough in style to Margaret Mitchell's original not to be jarring.

The book has sent me back to my copy of that original, as all sort of things have cropped up that I didn't remember, e.g., the fact that Scarlett had a child by each of her first two husbands. The only child that appeared in the movie was her child by Rhett Butler, who died. I certainly remembered Bonnie, so obviously the movie had more sticking power than the book, which I've actually read twice.

The first time I read it was in the 9th grade, when I devoured it over one weekend, for a book report due on Monday. At the time we were living with my grandmother who essentially kept her living room "shut up," except on those rare occasions when company came. It was the perfect place to escape the noise and activity of my mother, my four siblings, and the small children who attended my grandmother's "nursery" at the back of the house. I plopped myself down in an armchair in the dim, chilly living room, door closed, and had to be all but dragged off for meals and bedtime. I was enthralled by this book.

Maybe twenty years ago I took the book up again, and, at 43 rather than 14, found myself a little less impressed. Mainly what weakened the book for me was that Scarlett never grew. She never changed, never seemed to learn from anything she experienced or observed. She remained always selfish, completely lacking in empathy, in any ability to see things from another's perspective. The sufferings she endured only made her hard and more calculating, not wise. I suppose it could be argued that people don't change, but perhaps one of the things we depend on fiction for is the suggestion, if not the illusion, that change is possible. Because if nothing and no one can change, on what can we place our hope when things are grim?

And eventually I had to wonder, why would Rhett Butler love this woman? Although she has a calculating shrewdness she is not intelligent, she has no sense of humor, she is not kind, she's a hypocrite, dishonest as the day is long, along with all the other negative qualities I listed earlier. Is the fact that she has "spirit," as he says during the famous scene with her after he's accidentally overheard her declare her love to a dismayed Ashley Wilkes, enough to make up for everything else? Rhett Butler is a pretty cool guy -- who adores and can't do enough for his mother, according to Scarlett, though I don't remember these qualities being mentioned in GWTH -- so why he would be so crazy about this conniving little bitch? Of course, I do know that the heart (or maybe the hormones) makes its choice, not the mind.

At any rate, it is my understanding that in this sequel Scarlett does enough changing to make it possible for her to win Rhett back. So I'm looking forward to those developments. So far -- at page 121 -- she hasn't changed one iota. But given its length of 823 pages, the book is young.