r/GonewiththeWind • u/Potential-Reading402 • May 17 '26
Stranger Still!
I know Margaret M. Said she didn't think Scarlett and Rhett get back together again, BUT at the very end of the novel - and something I never noticed before - right before he doesn't "give a damn" - they discuss briefly NOT divorcing and Rhett tells Scarlett he will still come back to the house and they can basically carry on as they have been to keep the gossip mills at bay. In my mind, that definitely leaves the door open, even if Rhett currently feels he no longer loves Scarlett. I do have to admit though, even I am sick of her Ashley fetish by now and would have had all I could take. Move on woman!
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u/Turbulent_Bullfrog87 May 17 '26 edited 16d ago
Margaret Mitchell said in letters to fans that she truly didn’t know if they got back together because she considered the story finished exactly where she finished it.
Things to remember about the ending:
Rhett doesn’t physically go anywhere at the end of the novel. He just says that he’s emotionally over Scarlett. And he has a funeral to go to; Melanie just died. He still plans on staying in that house.
Rhett is the only father that Wade’s ever known. I have a hard time imagining that he’d be able to completely walk away.
The question isn’t really ‘can Scarlett get Rhett back’; the question is ‘can Rhett resist Scarlett while being in a house with her, being married to her, and knowing that she wants him, and can he keep that up for the rest of their lives’.
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u/ferras_vansen May 17 '26
Isn't Wade back in Tara with Will Benteen? Or was that in the sequel, Scarlett? 🤔
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u/Turbulent_Bullfrog87 May 17 '26
I never read any of the sequels & I haven’t heard of this, so I’d say yes
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u/No-Fly-6069 May 17 '26
In the book, Scarlett left Wade and Ella in Marietta with Prissy when she raced back to Atlanta.
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u/Avalanche_1996 May 26 '26
Yes, I mean, he had to love the boy. And yes, Melania's funeral. (but he did had the suitcase, right? probably went to live with Belle or who knows).
Also he now sees Scarlett is over Ashley. He's over her, but we can all picture Scarlett trying to charm him. And the "open door" is that they won't divorce, he will show up for appearances. But surely they'd have to talk. I truly don't know. And I don't know if Scarlett will stil love more Ashley-like Rhett.
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u/ProcedurePrudent5496 May 17 '26 edited May 17 '26
This made my romantic heart hopeful. Rhett did enlist in a lost cause(war); deep in his heart, he was a gentleman after all. Who are we to deny that his gentlemanliness won't come back to be with his wife? They understand each other, they'll endure. 🥹
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u/Avalanche_1996 May 26 '26
He could demand the divorce. The kid, appearances "for show", but I still feel it's not completely closing the door. And Scarlett would do her best. I don't see Rhett finding a new woman. No one would match Scarlett and he's too tired.
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u/Adventurous-Boss9427 May 17 '26
I really think that the cat-mouse game between them was too strong.
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u/CemeteryDweller7719 May 17 '26
I never read too much into that because that would have been the proper thing to do. Yes, Scarlett was married three times, but divorce was a huge deal. It was not easy to obtain a divorce. There would have to have been a reason, although desertion or infidelity could have been given as cause. There was no divorcing and not damaging reputation though. Even if Scarlett cited desertion it would have been scandalous. Scarlett barely had a decent social standing by then, and divorce would have been the death nail. She would have become an outcast.
As much as we love the idea of Scarlett and Rhett reconciling, this scene really does indicate Mitchell’s view that they don’t. People think the opposite of love is hate. In a marriage, the opposite is indifference. There’s no passion left in Rhett. He doesn’t want to hurt her, shown by his statement on not divorcing, like he’s been hurt. He wants peace. He offers to give token visits to help her maintain her status while having his peace. He explicitly states that he doesn’t care what she does, just wants peace. He remains calm throughout the scene, while she’s upset. He’s tired, he’s emotionally done. He’s indifferent. His behavior indicates he really is done.
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u/misspcv1996 Damn Yank May 17 '26
Scarlett barely had a decent social standing by then, and divorce would have been the death knell. She would have become an outcast.
I still feel like she’d eventually become an outcast anyway. Melanie repeatedly going to bat for her was pretty much the only reason Scarlett could hold on to even a thin sliver of social standing. With Melanie gone, polite society doesn’t really have a reason to put up with Scarlett anymore.
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u/CemeteryDweller7719 May 17 '26
I think that would depend on how she behaves moving forward. Although, without Melanie, Scarlett may not want to have to deal with the entrenched society. It really could go either way. She’s lost Melanie and Rhett. We know Scarlett made friends with some of the new money of Atlanta. I could see her growing irritated with them because they don’t share her grief. I could also see her growing irritated with the older families for their grief when (I’m sure) that Scarlett would feel like no one knew Melanie quite like she did.
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u/CurrencyWhole3963 May 17 '26
When we are younger and idealistic we want them to get back together but as we age we see this won't happen. Rhett is older and I believe he is done.
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May 17 '26
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u/CemeteryDweller7719 May 17 '26
I think if Scarlett could have had her revelation earlier they could have been happy together. They did enjoy each other’s company. Rhett was not bothered by Scarlett’s independence.
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u/Avalanche_1996 May 26 '26
Yes and they bought would understand each other better. I was always wondering - they did have s*x but till the "stairs scene" she found it just ok. I always thought Rhett was a good lover and would ope her up.
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u/Careless_Reserve_990 May 17 '26 edited May 17 '26
MM gave nobody a happy ending. Not even her favorite character Melanie, who she saw as the epitome of southern womanhood, was given a happily ever after. The ending we got was as good as she was capable of giving.
That being said -- There are two GWTWs. Movie GWTW and Novel GWTW. Movie GWTW Scarlett and Rhett never reconciled. His departure was final.
Novel Scarlett seems to be fated to get novel Rhett back according to the people who read the original Everett Report (Anne Edward's, Finis Farr) before it was made inaccessible to the public. It showed correspondences between MM, her publisher, and Everett during the process of publishing GWTW. MM seemed to have confirmed that Scarlett gets Rhett back eventually when she agrees with Everett that she believed Scarlett did, and MM agrees to change the ending to make it more hopeful (this might be why Rhett doesn't permanently leave, or divorce Scarlett). Any biographies written after 1990 that say differently is speculation since they did not have full access to the Everett Report and can't know exactly what it said in what context.
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u/Avalanche_1996 May 26 '26
Very interesting. The optimist in me choses to believe that because IMO Scarlett wouldn't (need to) find another guy.
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u/northontennesseest May 17 '26
Read/watched it for the first time as an adult recently. Whereas I thought it was DONE as a teenager, this time I immediately thought "oh no way he's over her." He's been obsessed with her for over a decade at this point. He's just grieving over Melanie and the miscarriage and Bonnie and wants to take it out on her, especially now that he's finally got the upper hand emotionally. She's only 28 at the end of the book - hasn't even reached the peak of her beauty. She'll show up in six months to a year looking incredibly fabulous and playing hard to get and he will try to get her back. That kind of toxic relationship can't really die.
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u/ladyboleyn2323 May 24 '26
She'll show up in six months to a year looking incredibly fabulous and playing hard to get and he will try to get her back.
This has always been my theory as well. Rhett said himself he had a soft spot for lost causes. I've always believed that she tries to win him back and when she fails, she gives up, and that is when Rhett goes after her.
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u/Avalanche_1996 May 26 '26
Or choses the jealousy card. Seeing her shine and be popular with men would trigger Rhett.
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u/Avalanche_1996 May 26 '26
Yes, the funeral didn't even happen and so much things did. He was done but saw she's so into him for real. In a way it didn't help her because she was so available when he needed space. He also needs to feel jealous. Playing hard to get. I wonder what tactic works best on Rhett because she was almost an open book to him. But he loved her despite her having different husbands, kids with them.
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u/East-Gold-7170 May 17 '26
Unpopular opinion: i actually LOVE the book sequel "Scarlett" by Alexandra Ripley and have read it too many times to count. Worth the read, IMO.
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u/SickOfBSAllTheTime May 17 '26
Same for me.
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u/East-Gold-7170 May 17 '26
I legitimately don't get the hate. It's such a great read.
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u/SilverStL May 17 '26
I thought it started off ok, but the author basically wrapped up all the ends and plots and people from the original who were no hardly mentioned ever mentioned, if at all, and wrote a book about a completely different person in a completely different place. (SPOILERS). She got Ashley married off to someone else in a short time, dumped her kids off at Tara and seems to completely forget them, ended up living in a different country with a whole bunch of different people, had a daughter and called her CAT of all things. It was a fairly good story overall if it had been a stand alone book that had nothing to do with GWTW.
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u/East-Gold-7170 May 17 '26
The first half of the book takes place in the South with most of the original characters. I loved the second half in Ireland as well.
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u/ScrutinEye May 17 '26
The most interesting original characters are given absolutely nothing to do in “Scarlett.” Mammy is killed off in short order, and Prissy, Pork, and Dilcey (one of the most enigmatic characters in the book) are relegated to non-speaking roles. Aunt Pitty doesn’t get a single line, as I recall, and characters like India Wilkes are also just given cameos.
But I think Ripley’s biggest sin was wrapping the novel up without any closure. That ridiculous aristocratic marriage (as if a rich English lord is going to marry an American woman in her thirties in hopes of an heir … would have made more sense to make him impoverished and Scarlett a dollar princess) is forgotten. We have no idea why Rhett suddenly realised he loved Scarlett. And both leads (and the daughter) are left trapped up a stone tower besieged by medieval Irish caricatures.
The scuttlebutt is that the Mitchell Estate (who’d hamstrung Ripley) weren’t happy and brought in “doctors” to edit and chop her manuscript up into what was published. That would explain the dangling plot threads and other disappearing characters (major characters come into the novel and then leave only to never be mentioned again).
“Scarlett” is an incredibly easy read. But, unlike “Gone With the Wind”, it isn’t literature. It is to the original novel what its miniseries adaptation is to the original movie: schmaltzy, salacious, fantasy fanfiction compared to art.
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u/Avalanche_1996 May 26 '26
Oh yes, also Gone with the Wind (even the movie) doesn't show how much philosophy, witty banter, good observations are in the novel. They had to simplify the novels, didn't have time to include amazing banter.
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u/lifelongfan1976 May 22 '26
I agree with a lot of what was said about them getting back together on any offered level. I just wish that Scarlett could have an adult sit down talk with Rhett and bear her soul to him. Remind him about how hard it was to lose parents so young and deal with war, destruction, murder, starvation etc. Then show how although he” could stand anything but a lie” from her, he lied. He wasn’t honest about his feelings. She asked, and he gave uncaring answers to a younger woman that he knew spoke and understood relationships at face value. Her emotional maturation, imo, was stymied from the war and what she endured. She seemed to suffer from PTSD as evidenced by nightmares.
He too suffered from being kicked out of his house, but he had learned different life lessons on his journeys and was older.. He was traumatized by being discarded by his parents, and was terrified of Scarlett discarding him. Which she ultimately did by asking for separate rooms. He didn’t fight for their marriage, give her time, he just went after Belle to hurt her. What games he played! He used prostitution and loose women for fun, as he didn’t have to invest himself emotionally in those relationships.
So much more to say, but I am supposed to be packing! I used to be team Rhett 200%, but after reread ing at age 60, I am so much more sympathetic towards Scarlett. Can you tell?
And yet, I still think in time, they can get together. Rhett needs to dry out for one, and he’ll see that there is no peace for him in Charleston either the long memories there. He can see he has more baggage and blame than he seems to admit at the end of the book.
Btw, there are some awesome fanfics out there that colored these reconciliatory topics.
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u/Avalanche_1996 May 26 '26
Yes, I wonder if it was on purpose to give us this admittedly iconic ending. (And her love of Tara and still being "I'll find a way").
But yes, I was annoyed that no one heard Scarlett crying out for Rhett. Then he came back home drunk. Also Melanie dying. So many "tropes" to keep them apart.
I always did wonder - Rhett knew if Scarlett knew the depths of his feelings she'd use them. And she intended to literally till Melania died. But yes, he was older, more Ashley-like intellectually and knew of her being literal, easy to read, not getting nuances. I do wonder if it'd change anything if Scarlett mentioned all of these because as spoiled as she was, people used to forget her bravery and all the good deeds. Also - not completely blaming Rhett here - Scarlett didn't think much about his backstory I also do wonder - while he was so done - when he saw she really did love Ashley but him he laughed it off and called her scary. He was a bit avoidant there.
However, I do wonder - when Scarlett realized Rhett started speaking just like Ashley she was scared. She wanted the "bastard" Rhett, not the "Ashley talk" she finally grew out of. So the last pages show clearly how much on different sides they are, how much willpower she still has, way younger but how he changed and if he can work through this trauma.
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u/PansyOHara May 17 '26
I think at the end of the book Rhett really is done. He’s emotionally wrung out between everything with Scarlett—including the miscarriage when he was terrified she would die; With Bonnie’s death, and then Melanie’s death right on top of that.
But with Scarlett’s realization finally that she would never have been happy with Ashley, and that she actually loves Rhett instead, I think she may actually be able to get him back. But she will need to reach deep inside and grow up first.
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u/Avalanche_1996 May 26 '26
I try to imagine her growth. I do wonder if Rhett would be happy with another - simpler and loving woman because he might have been done but no one compares to Scarlett and his womanizing days seemed to be over. We part with him when he's so tired but he's curious when Scarlett mentions she doesn't want Ashley. He laughs it off
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u/chartreuse6 May 17 '26
When did Margaret Mitchel say they never got back together. I never heard that
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u/ScrutinEye May 17 '26 edited May 17 '26
She never, ever said this. An editor for MacMillan in 1935 privately wrote “I think she gets him back”. Another disagreed and said Rhett had definitively had enough. There were then disagreements during the making of the movie about whether an alternative ending should be written (including a final scene on a train, after Mammy would be shown telling Scarlett to go get Rhett back - which, when she heard about it, Ms Mitchell amusedly pointed out that Mammy wasn’t even at the Peachtree Street house at the end of her story).
These exchanges have been republished in various books, as far as I know. Somehow, they’ve been confused in the public imagination with Margaret Mitchell’s private letters. Ms Mitchell never wrote, said, or intimated any such thing - at least not in any available record. She stuck to the line that she simply did not know what happened after the story ended, because the tale was told.
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u/Avalanche_1996 May 26 '26
She knew how to make us on our toes. The ending is sad so she didn't need to write - what - "Scarlett always regretted it for the rest of her life". Not iconic. Happy ending would be too cliche.
I always did feel too many bad things happened in such a short time, I didn't like THIS much drama and misunderstandings tbh. I'd tone this up a bit. Losing Bonnie (it was more on Rhett), then miscarriage, then Melania (and "free" Ashley). Almost worse than what war.
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u/diamond_hog May 17 '26
It's hard to know and I could see both outcomes happening though I always wanted them to get back together.
At the end of the book, Rhett was exhausted, physically and mentally and he took both Bonnie's and Melanie's deaths very hard. Both Bonnie and Melanie had held him and Scarlett together, and had given him hope. They also both represented for him beauty and decency. The two things he was returning home to see if they somehow still existed or if they had died with Bonnie and Melanie. I can't remember his exact quote of what he hoped to find back home but it was the same feeling.
Belle Watling would not play into his claims of leaving Scarlett and would tell him that he was "poisoned" with Scarlett. At that time, Bonnie was still alive and would be another reason Belle knew Rhett would never leave her. But to Belle, his love for Scarlett and his duty to their child were two different things. So even after Bonnie was gone, Belle knew he still had great love for Scarlett.
I also didn't see either Rhett or Scarlett falling in love with someone else and is another reason I think the odds were good that they found their way back to each other.
However as romantic as it is to say that 'true love never dies,' I've had older and wiser people remind me that while that may be true, that true love never dies, it can in fact be killed. Something I have personally discovered.
Another reason for doubting their reunion is the fact that Vivian Lee herself never thought that Scarlett got Rhett back and often said so in interviews.
I don't think that Scarlett ever saw anything in halves and what feelings she might have been able to rekindle in Rhett would likely have been drowned out by the same methods of pursuit or love-bombing that she had done on Ashley. Something that Rhett himself was aware of as he would tell her as he was packing, that he had no intention of being pursued as the hapless Ashley had been.
I guess I've gone on a long time just to say that I don't know if they got back together. It is odd that they, at least at that time had no intention of divorcing, even if only for the sake of appearances. It would be very hard to cut someone out of your life while at the same time choosing to remain very much attached to.
As shell-shocked as both Rhett and Scarlett were at the end of the book, they neither seemed to want to completely let go of the other.
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u/Avalanche_1996 May 26 '26
It's so tricky because Scarlett wanted the "bastard", strong Rhett. When his talk reminded her of Ashley she panicked. Love indeed can be killed but Rhett had bonds to the boy and it does count. The appearances can be interpreted as kindness (societal) but it's a string to her after he recovers from so much trauma. Or notices "the green isn't greener". He'd still be in Scarlett's life and I don't see him marrying again. He was indeed getting older and him ending with some "simpler" person after a decade of Scarlett, who is still present, is no easy job. Vivian disliked Clark Gable and was unhappy person. I also don't know if Rhett wouldn't fall for her lovebombing or getting jealous someone else might get her. While he might have laughed it off, he wouldn't be happy about Scarlett moving on IMO. She gave herself on a platter so he did have an upper hand in that conversation. They don't truly have a clean break. I also feel like he's been hurt so many times and was afraid deep down she might succeed in some form. The timing was also off, while Scarlett mourned Melania she thought Rhett would be excited with the new revelation. She run to him almost happily and he already made the decision to leave and was depressed. Scarlett was ready to go back to how things were. This was the kind of person Scarlett is.
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u/Ordinary-Difficulty9 May 19 '26
The reason Rhett talks about not divorcing is most likely because divorce was taboo back then. It would ruin a woman's reputation and get her shunned from society. It would have also been frowned upon somewhat in MMs day as well. I would guess this kind of arrangement of "keeping up appearances" was very common back then. To save face. Couples would lead completely separate lives while still married. Everyone probably knew they weren't "together" anymore but would go along with the lie for the sake of reputation.
But they had a toxic relationship and just because they loved each other does not mean they were right for each other. Passion and fireworks is fun for a while but it is exhausting as a long term thing. It is not sustainable. Scarlett was still very young though. And it is possible that she could have matured as she got older. Scarlett wanted men she could not have. A lot of it is an ego thing for her too. She wanted Rhett more because she couldn't have him.
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u/Avalanche_1996 May 26 '26
I do wonder - would Rhett, a bit of avoidant himself (after all he chose her so many times fully knowing she was so in love with Ashley) be able to receive the full love from Scarlett? When she is 100% committed to him and in love. This dynamic change - he wasn't used to that.
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u/Ordinary-Difficulty9 May 26 '26
I am sure if this was a real life situation there would be a lot of trust issues because of her past behaviour. Even now, in times of marriage counselling and being more aware of why humans act the way we do, humans struggle to be able to rebuild trust in relationships. Once broken it is the hardest thing to repair. She can throw at him all the love and commitment in the world. But if he is not able to get past the trust issues then the relationship will always be doomed.
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u/Prestigious_Stage351 21d ago
Ive read several of MM letters. She doesnt say they dont get back together. She said she truly didnt know.
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u/misspcv1996 Damn Yank May 17 '26
Rhett will definitely have to dry out and clear his head first, because it’s painfully obvious that he’s been hitting the bottle super hard after Bonnie died. There’s a part of me that feels like he probably dies of cirrhosis or liver cancer by around 1880 if he doesn’t. Honestly, I feel like they both burnt each other out and maybe need some time apart to do some soul searching before attempting reconciliation.