OOOOH I got all excited when I found this thread! This is my FAVOURITE book/film (the sequel is extremely disappointing- I’ve read more realistic fan fictions)
Scarlett and Rhett are an intensely complex couple.
Rhett wants a little girl to spoil in exchange for loyalty and love and we see him achieve this with Bonnie.
But with Scarlett he fails to achieve this BECAUSE of how he approaches her. He likes her BECAUSE she’s a challenge, defiant and (lets face it) difficult for him to manage. He makes that clear from the off So rather than put on a ‘simpering southern belle performance’ Scarlett gives him her unfiltered, selfish, temper. Because that’s why he’s interested in her, right?
Whilst he wants to see her for what she is ‘unlike all those other boys she strings along’ to establish himself as different and feel like he has the upper hand he actually just creates a situation indulging/ rewarding her worst behaviour. Which spirals during the most challenging parts of the book.
There’s interesting juxtaposition between his approach to Scarlett Vs Bonnie and the results they produce and Bonnies death could signify his own realisation that he’ll never have Scarlett in the way he wants, as essentially Bonnie is the ‘pure and innocent’ little version of Scarlett that he wanted along.
Scarlett loves Rhett as much as she can but she has been so moved/ changed by the series of events which she has endured that no man will ever really possess or own her, which is evidenced by her several marriages. Her realisation that she doesn’t actually love Ashley puts the final nail in the coffin and cements the fact that Scarlett is simply not capable of loving any man over and above herself (sort of expected of women at that time). However she does now love Rhett, as much as she can love any man and values the practical support/ reliability he has provided over the years. The panic she faces at the end is a mixture between her mortification at not getting her own way and childlike frustration at not being listnened to/believed. When she lay distraught on the stairs it reminded me of a child temper tantrum.
But Rhett, after all those years of desperatley wanting her to feel that way- is unwilling to accept her change of heart. It’s too late. Which is fair enough but suggests that the turmoil and heartache was addictive for him.
The headstrong, fierce and selfish little girl he loved is gone and the woman left standing in her place (who he spent years telling her she ought to be) isn’t enough.
Does he come back?
Of course he does. Nothing about Rhett and Scarlett suggests they make the sensible, reasonable or healthy choice. Rhett wouldn’t be able to help himself- after some time away licking his wounds he would come back- even just out of shear curiosity of the way in which Scarlett carried on without him- which she obviously would.