Gone with the Wind: Chapter 36 Summary & Analysis

Two weeks later, Scarlett marries Frank. During these two weeks, she worries over his slowness, afraid a letter will come from Suellen and ruin things. Thankfully, Suellen is a poor correspondent. Scarlett hides her motive well, treating Frank with helpless admiration. It soothes his hurt feelings over Suellen to have a woman appreciate him. He calls on Scarlett every night, enjoying how she listens to him and asks foolish questions about his business. They get married without any family, “like an elopement.” Frank feels he’s done the first romantic thing in his life and doesn’t really know how it all happened.

Frank gives Scarlett $300, so Scarlett sends Mammy to Tara to deliver the money and bring Wade back. Scarlett wonders what Ashley thinks of her. She’s homesick when she realizes she estranged herself from Tara in order to save it. There is suspicious gossip over why Frank married Scarlett when he was engaged to Suellen and Suellen sends an angry letter to Scarlett, but Scarlett doesn’t care. All she cared about is that Tara is safe.

Scarlett realizes Frank needs to make more money so she can pay next year’s taxes. When she starts making business suggestions, Frank is upset: he’d been charmed by her naïve curiosity in business before they married, but he resents that she’s genuinely interested in business. He feels it’s unladylike for a woman to have a brain. Soon, he realizes that Scarlett deceived him when Tony Fontaine visits Atlanta and isn’t married to Suellen. Frank is too ashamed to write to Suellen and explain things. He pridefully believes Scarlett fell in love with him, and she’s sweet and loving if she gets her way.

Two weeks after marrying Scarlett, Frank gets sick and has to stay in bed. Pretending to want to ease his worries about the store, Scarlett goes to check on it. She wants to see how Frank’s finances really stand. The store is dark and dingy with a dirt floor. The front is organized, but in the back, goods are piled chaotically and covered in grime. If Frank’s goods are this disorganized, what will his finances be like? The counter boy doesn’t think women should be involved in business, so he doesn’t want to show Scarlett the account book. But Scarlett dismisses him and studies the book.

Scarlett discovers that many people owe Frank money, and if he hadn’t let people buy on credit, he’d have enough money for taxes and the sawmill. It’s startling to realize that Scarlett might be a better businessperson than Frank, especially since she was raised to think women are useless without men. But Scarlett ran Tara all by herself—clearly, she realizes, women can do anything. Scarlett copies down the names of the people who owe Frank and vows to make him collect the money.

As Scarlett pores over the numbers, Rhett Butler walks in the store, extravagantly dressed in new clothes. He laughs merrily, calling Scarlett “Dear Mrs. Kennedy.” He says he stopped at Pittypat’s and heard of her marriage. She asks how he can face her after their last meeting, and he asks how she can face him. Scarlett says she’s sad he wasn’t hanged. Rhett says he knows Scarlett has forgiven him, and that she’s faking dignity. He asks if Frank is more alluring than him, and remarks that she’s now married two men for convenience. Scarlett wants to yell at him, but he is right. Rhett then explains that he got out of jail that morning with the help of blackmail and a friend in the federal government. He admits he’s guilty, and his nonchalance scares Scarlett. Rhett also says he now has access to his half a million dollars.

Scarlett thinks it is unfair that an awful man like Rhett Butler is so rich while everyone else is poor. She says it’s dishonest of him to hold the Confederate gold, but privately, she knows he did the same thing as Frank. Rhett briefly explains how he ended up getting to keep money that initially belonged to the Confederacy—since the Confederacy doesn’t exist now, it’s his. Scarlett points out that there might not be a Confederacy, but there are starving Confederates. Rhett mocks Scarlett and says she must want his money. He asks what Suellen said when Scarlett married Frank. Scarlett lies that Suellen said nothing.

Rhett asks bluntly if Frank has as much money as Scarlett hoped. Scarlett considers asking Rhett to leave, but he’s the only person she can tell the truth to because he knows what she did and doesn’t judge her for it. Rhett asks if she paid the taxes and if Tara is safe. The look in his eyes makes her wonder if he really cares about her. She smiles and says Tara is safe. Scarlett says a lot of people owe Frank money and he is too shy to ask them to pay up. She paid Tara’s taxes, but she wants more money. Rhett says he’ll give her a loan without the “collateral” she offered last time.

Rhett says that Scarlett must promise not to buy anything for Ashley Wilkes with his loan. Furious, Scarlett says Ashley never took any money from her. Rhett says he knows Ashley’s been at Tara, abusing Scarlett’s generosity. Mockingly, he says he knows Ashley is “sublime,” but it’s unmanly of him to live on Scarlett’s charity and not make his own living.

Scarlett says Ashley’s been working as a field hand. Rhett says the Wilkeses aren’t cut out to be field hands, so Ashley must not be much help. He asks what she needs the money for. Rhett laughs as he watches her struggle with her anger and her desire for the money. Scarlett says she wants to buy a sawmill and explains how lucrative the lumber business will be. She says she’ll tell Frank she sold Rhett her diamond earrings to buy the sawmill.

Scarlett says money is the most important thing in the world. She plans to earn lots of money, so she’ll always have food, pretty clothes, and Tara. She says Rhett doesn’t understand because he’s never been hungry. Rhett reminds her of his stint in the army, but Scarlett says he’s never had to pick cotton. Rhett laughs that Scarlett’s mind used to be consumed with Ashley, but Scarlett cuts him off and tells him to stop talking about Ashley. He says that if she wants his loan, she’ll let him talk about Ashley.

Rhett insists it’s obvious Scarlett still loves Ashley. Does Ashley still love her, or has he learned to love Melanie? Scarlett doesn’t want to talk about it; Rhett doesn’t understand how pure Ashley’s love for her is because Rhett only understands love like the kind he has for Belle Watling. Scarlett insists that Ashley would never do anything inappropriate with her. Rhett asks if Ashley loves her mind. He asks if she’s saying that her physical beauty doesn’t move Ashley, and that, if she were ugly, Ashley would still love her.

Scarlett remembers how Ashley kissed her in the orchard and blushes. Her love for Ashley doesn’t seem so beautiful anymore. Rhett says if Ashley loved her for her mind then he wouldn’t have to resist her so much. He insists that Ashley’s desire for Scarlett must put him in hell, and now he has neither honor nor love. Scarlett cries that Ashley loves her, but Rhett asks why Ashley let her come to Atlanta. She says Ashley didn’t know what she was planning. Rhett says that if Ashley didn’t know, then he doesn’t love Scarlett.

Scarlett thinks it is unfair of Rhett to expect Ashley to be a mind reader. But then she wonders if Rhett is right. If Ashley had said one tender word in the orchard, she never would’ve come to Atlanta. Scarlett decides Rhett is just trying to ruin her love with Ashley. Rhett says Scarlett has enough on her plate without Ashley and asks how much money she wants. Part of Scarlett wants to refuse Rhett’s money, but she needs it. She decides that when she’s rich, she’ll have nothing to do with Rhett. Rhett says she’s pretty, and he’ll buy her anything she wants. She tells Rhett to drive her to the sawmill. She wants to buy it, and she doesn’t care what people think if they see her driving around with Rhett Butler.

Frank wishes he never told Scarlett about the sawmill. It was embarrassing that she bought the sawmill, that Rhett Butler helped her do it, and that she plans to operate it herself. He feels that a wife should submit to her husband. He can’t believe she wants to “go into the lumber business” because he’s never heard of any woman in business. To his horror, Scarlett drives to the mill daily and sells lumber in town. Once, she intercepts Tommy Wellburn, who is buying lumber elsewhere, and convinces him to buy from her instead.  How could a woman do business with men and publicly display her aptitude for math!

Frank hates that Scarlett sends all her money to Tara instead of giving it to him. Then, she has more crazy ideas that scandalize him. She wants to open a saloon at the mill because it would bring in good money, and then she could buy more mills. Her opinions also shock Frank: she hates how lazy free Black workers are and wishes the Freedman’s Bureau would let her whip them. Before marrying her, she’d been sweet and feminine. Now she talks and makes decisions like a man. Mrs. Elsing and Mrs. Merriwether are commanding women, but they at least pretend to submit to men’s opinions. Everyone talks about Scarlett. Also, Rhett Butler always visits Scarlett, and Frank can’t stand it. He worries that his neighbors think he’s allowing his wife to “unsex” herself.

Whenever Frank tries to stop Scarlett from doing anything, she flies into a rage. She is fond of Frank and appreciates that he saved Tara, but his shyness annoys her and he isn’t a good businessman. She forces him to collect what was owed to him, realizing he’d never make money without her help. He would’ve been a good businessman in the old days, but he lacks the aggressiveness required in these hard times.

What with managing the mill, Scarlett is grumpy when she comes home. Frank wants peace and quiet in his old age. Sometimes, Scarlett makes him happy, but she doesn’t behave how he believes women should behave.  He decides that if she had a baby, she’d be happy to stay home. He knows she’s unhappy (she cries in the middle of the night), because all women are unhappy unless they have a baby.