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Summary: Chapter 1

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 2

Land is the only thing in the world that amounts to anything. . .

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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 enslaved woman 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 3

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 enslaved man, 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 4

That day, Gerald has purchased a woman named Dilcey from Twelve Oaks so that Dilcey can be with her husband, Pork. 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 1–4

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 devotion to the South and to its culture—along with a good marriage—can secure respect for a self-made man. The enslaved people 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 enslaved people 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 they 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 men. Women are not even allowed to take credit for their own intelligence, bravery, and strength.

Society punishes those women who put a toe over the gender lines. Scarlett, willful like her father, who sometimes treats her like the son he never had, constantly butts against these rigid gender roles. As a child, she prefers playing in the trees with boys to sitting calmly inside with girls. As she grows older, she resents putting on a façade of helplessness and silliness to attract men. Like the men of the Old South, Scarlett acts selfishly and vainly and requires constant pampering. Although in character Scarlett resembles the men around her more than she resembles the women, her world does not allow her to budge from the restrictive role prescribed for women. Scarlett adapts to this social restraint, using her cunning and will to present a ladylike face to the world while maintaining her masculine interior.

Foreshadowing abounds in the early chapters. When we see Ellen O’Hara rush off to help Emmie Slattery and Emmie’s dying newborn, we glimpse a character trait in Ellen—her selflessness—that becomes significant during the war. Similarly, Gerald’s reckless fence-jumping establishes a pattern of dangerous behavior that recurs in a later scene. The brief mention of an implied relationship between the stereotyped characters Jonas Wilkerson, the Yankee overseer, and Emmie Slattery, a poor “white trash” girl, foreshadows these characters’ eventual return to the lives of the O’Hara family. These scenes and interactions seem unimportant, but they lend crucial credibility to later plot developments.

Next section Part One: Chapters 5–7

Popular pages: Gone with the Wind

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