Summary: Chapter I
Sixteen-year-old Scarlett O’Hara lounges on the front
porch of Tara, her father’s plantation in northern Georgia, in the
spring of 1861. She
flirts with the nineteen-year-old twin brothers Brent and Stuart
Tarleton. The boys excitedly discuss the rumors that a war will
soon break out between the North and the South. Scarlett changes
the subject to the next day’s barbecue and ball at the Twelve Oaks
plantation. Brent and Stuart tell her that Ashley Wilkes, the son
of the proprietor of Twelve Oaks, will announce his engagement to
Melanie Hamilton, his cousin, at the ball. Scarlett, who wants Ashley
for herself, tries to act normally but cannot maintain her vivaciousness.
The twins leave, baffled by Scarlett’s sudden silence.
Summary: Chapter II
Land is the only thing in the world that
amounts to anything. . .
See Important Quotations Explained
Distressed by the news of Ashley’s engagement, Scarlett
hurries to the road to wait for her father, who has gone visiting
at Twelve Oaks. Gerald O’Hara rides into view at breakneck speed
and jumps a fence. Scarlett teasingly reminds him that he promised
her mother, Ellen, not to jump fences, but she vows to keep his
reckless behavior a secret. At Scarlett’s probing, Gerald confirms
that Ashley plans to marry Melanie. He sharply warns Scarlett that
she and Ashley would make a terrible match. Gerald says the Wilkeses
are too interested in music and poetry, and though Ashley excels
at masculine pursuits like riding and shooting, his heart is not
in them. On the porch, Scarlett and her father encounter Ellen,
who is rushing out to help baptize Emmie Slattery’s dying newborn.
Mammy, an old slave who has been with Ellen since childhood, does
not think Ellen should help the unwed Emmie, whose “white trash”
family lives adjacent to the O’Hara plantation.
Summary: Chapter III
Scarlett thinks about her mother’s gentle grace and good
breeding, so different from her own willful and passionate ways.
Scarlett inherited her temperament from Gerald, who fled his unremarkable life
in Ireland after killing another man in a feud. Gerald won his first
slave, Pork, and his plantation in a poker game. Though lacking good
breeding, Gerald won over the neighbors’ hearts with his kindness.
Ellen, a placid, serious woman from the aristocratic Robillard family
of Savannah, agreed to marry Gerald after the death of her first
love, her cousin Philippe. She blamed her family for driving Philippe
away from Savannah and from her, and out of frustration and revenge
she married the low-class Gerald. Scarlett, the oldest and most
strong-willed O’Hara daughter, lacks beauty. Still, she has learned
ladylike behavior from Ellen and Mammy and has used her charms to
become the most-pursued belle in the neighborhood.
Summary: Chapter IV
That day, Gerald has purchased a slave named Dilcey from
Twelve Oaks so that Dilcey can be with Pork, who is her husband.
At dinner that night, Dilcey thanks Gerald and offers Prissy, her
daughter, to be Scarlett’s personal maid. Ellen returns late from
the Slattery’s house. As Ellen leads the nightly prayer, Scarlett
concocts a plan to win Ashley from Melanie. She resolves to tell
Ashley she loves him at the barbecue. She feels sure that when Ashley
knows her true feelings he will elope with her. Scarlett overhears
Ellen telling Gerald that Jonas Wilkerson, Tara’s Yankee overseer,
must be dismissed. Scarlett realizes that Wilkerson was the father
of Emmie Slattery’s dead child.
Analysis: Chapters I–IV
The first chapters of Gone with the Wind present
the pre-Civil War South. The O’Haras and the Wilkeses are upper-class,
wealthy, white plantation owners who mix traditional values like
chivalry, honor, and propriety with a pioneer-style enthusiasm for
drinking, horseback riding, and shooting. Family and money rule
the social hierarchy, as we see by the neighbors’ initial hesitancy
to accept Gerald O’Hara. Even so, Gerald’s ultimate acceptance by
the neighbors shows that a devotion to the South and to its culture—along
with a good marriage—can secure respect for a self-made man such
as he. The slaves also live in a set social order. House workers
outrank field hands and take pride in their higher status. For poor
whites like the Slatterys, called “white trash” by wealthy whites
and poor slaves alike, survival depends on the charity of rich neighbors.
Pride permeates even the lowest rungs of society, however, and the
Slatterys refuse to be bought out of their land. The characters
also take great pride in the South, and in the weeks before the
war this pride swells among the young men who have signed up to
fight against the North.
The Southern society of the novel expects men and women
to conform to specific gender roles. The narrator notes that the
man owns the property but the woman manages it; the man takes credit for
managing the property, and the woman then “praise[s] his cleverness.”
Owning property gives men rights and power, but they share little
of the reward that results from the women’s hard work. Women have
all the work and responsibility of running the property, but enjoy
only those rights that men deign to grant them. The narrator stresses
the absurdity of these gender roles, sarcastically saying, “[t]he
man roared like a bull when a splinter was in his finger, and the
woman muffled the moans of childbirth, lest she disturb him.” In
this society, men expect women to suppress their needs and desires
and focus attention on the men. Women are not even allowed to take
credit for their own intelligence, bravery, and strength.
