Summary: Chapter XXXI
The people who have brains and courage
come through and the ones who haven’t are winnowed out.
See Important Quotations Explained
Will returns from a trip to Jonesboro with terrible news:
the Scalawags and carpetbaggers have raised the taxes on Tara. Scarlett
does not have enough money to pay the taxes, so she goes to ask
Ashley for advice. He says he cannot help her. With self-loathing,
he tells Scarlett he cannot bear to face reality; he misses the
Old South. Scarlett tells Ashley that she still loves him and suddenly
asks him to escape with her. They kiss passionately, and Ashley
tells Scarlett that he loves her but cannot leave Melanie, for he
loves his honor more than he loves Scarlett. Placing a clump of
Tara’s red clay in Scarlett’s hands, Ashley tells Scarlett that
he knows she loves Tara even more than she loves him. Scarlett remembers
her passion for Tara and walks back to the house, vowing never to
throw herself at Ashley again.
Summary: Chapter XXXII
Jonas Wilkerson, the former overseer of Tara who now works
for the Freedmen’s Bureau, and Emmie Slattery arrive at Tara dressed
in opulent finery. Wilkerson announces his intention to buy the
plantation for Emmie, and Scarlett realizes that he is the man responsible for
raising the taxes on Tara to drive the O’Haras away. She curses the
visitors and orders them to leave. Wilkerson snidely tells Scarlett that
she is no longer high and mighty. Scarlett spits at him as he drives
away in his fancy carriage. Desperate, Scarlett decides to go to
Atlanta to try to marry Rhett Butler. The thought of marriage to Rhett
repulses her, but she has heard of his vast funds, which he reportedly
stole from the Confederate treasury. Scarlett cannot seduce Rhett
looking ragged and poor, but there is no money for a new dress,
so she makes one out of Ellen’s fine green velvet curtains. She
decides that if Rhett does not want to marry her, she will offer
to become his mistress if he will save Tara. Mammy agrees to help make
the dress, on the condition that Scarlett let her act as chaperone.
Summary: Chapter XXXIII
Scarlett and Mammy arrive to find Atlanta burned nearly
beyond recognition. The streets teem with blue-coated Yankee soldiers
and freed slaves. At Aunt Pittypat’s house, Scarlett hears of the
downfall of nearly all the prominent families in Atlanta. Rhett
Butler has been sent to jail for allegedly killing a black man who
insulted a white woman. Scarlett is so surprised that she scarcely
hears Aunt Pittypat ask her whether the newly formed Ku Klux Klan
is active around Tara.
Summary: Chapter XXXIV
The next morning, Scarlett visits Rhett in prison. She
pretends to be well off and tries to seduce him. She nearly succeeds,
but he notices the calluses on her overworked hands and guesses
her true reasons for coming to see him. He refuses her blunt offer
to be his mistress and tells her that he even if he wanted to give
her money, the Yankees would trace any draft he wrote and confiscate
all his wealth. Rhett tells her mockingly that she can attend his
hanging, and she leaves filled with bitterness and shame.
Analysis: Chapters XXXI–XXXIV
After the Civil War ends, the events of the novel take
place during the era of Reconstruction. Reconstruction was the transitional period
during which the Southern states were rebuilt under a new government
and new laws. When the war ended, the Northern-controlled Congress
refused to grant seats to newly elected congressmen from the South
and took full control of the Reconstruction process. The South felt
shamed and helpless, forced to live under what it perceived as foreign
rule by the North. For Scarlett and her friends, Reconstruction
proves more painful than the war itself. During the war, even the
most painful losses in battle are made bearable by the spirit of
rebellion. After the war, however, defeat sours everyone. The South
can no longer take pride or comfort in its spirit of rebellion.
Three types of people dominate the novel’s portrayal
of Reconstruction: Republican officials, Northerners in a South
that was solidly Democratic; Scalawags, Southerners who traitorously supported
the Republican Party after the war; and carpetbaggers, Northerners
who came to the South after the war in search of power and profit.
The old hierarchy turned upside down when Congress denied the right
to vote to many Southerners who participated in the war and quickly
granted suffrage to black men. The Republican governments in the
South, led by Scalawags and carpetbaggers, rode roughshod over the
once-mighty plantation owners and aristocrats of the South. Scarlett’s
friends resent the power of the Freedmen’s Bureau, the federal agency
designed to protect the interests of freed slaves, whom the Southerners
view as ignorant and incompetent. Scarlett herself confronts the
power of the government when her old employee Jonas Wilkerson, employed
at the local Freedman’s Bureau, easily manipulates the tax code
to increase the taxes on Tara illegally in the hope of obtaining
the plantation for himself.
