-Chapter 33
"I didn't want you to spend the money I gave you on the Wilkes family mainly because I easily saw through Ashley's pretense of loving you for some mysterious, sublime reason." Rhett shook his head with a smile. "Scarlett, when you think of affairs, you assume them to be wild and emotional. But there are people who are capable of entertaining the most perverse fantasies in their head and looking completely unemotional and collected. Ashley is one of them. What he felt for you was lust - quiet, calm lust. And when you flirted with him, you played right into his hands."
Scarlett blushed furiously at these words. She fluttered her eyelids rapidly. "Pa told me that Ashley and I were too different and there wouldn't be much happiness if we were ever to marry. I thought I could change Ashley. The truth is, Mother would have liked Ashley. She was like him, gentle and kind and so concerned with Tara. But I see now that as much as I love my Mother, she wasn't really much of a Mother. She was living in a dream, just like me. And in her dream, she was being a good Mother, raising her three daughters in the footsteps of Great Ladies without showing any of us how to mingle in parties, romp around in play or learn to show our emotions. I think in a way, Pa and Mother lived in different dream worlds and somehow they got on together. And whenever I got into trouble, Mother was forced to wake up from her dream and realize that she wasn't a good Mother- It was her shame that I wanted to alleviate, you see - I wanted her to be proud of me- And I assumed that Ashley had the noblest intentions-"
Scarlett's voice was shaking again.
"Whenever we went to balls, I would say the most awful lies and flirt and make any beau of mine feel like a king and Mother would see me from afar from the Matron's Circle. But she never saw me really. She thought I was just high-spirited. She didn't see that I didn't know how to just talk or make friends. She didn't see that I was so very vain. She thought she could somehow reproach me into good behaviour. But it doesn't happen like that, Rhett. She.. she had to take interest.. It doesn't matter how perfectly I could walk on my toes or look so demure or something- We both knew- Pa and I, that there was something wrong with Mother. In our own way, we knew. We didn't speak openly about it because we didn't understand it ourselves. In Mother's world, hens wouldn't lay eggs, .. well, she didn't know anything practically." Scarlett twisted her handkerchief in her hands. "Oh Rhett, of late I feel so ashamed for her. The entire memory of my Mother, floating about Tara in her black taffeta, smelling of verbena sachet, looking kind and gentle but dismayed at the slightest form of realism. I tried so hard to make her look as real as I wanted her to be. I tried my best but its impossible. I have to live too-"
Rhett opened his mouth to say something but Scarlett interrupted him. "I..I know this is something I have to work out on my own, Rhett. I feel as if I've lost something during those years which is causing me nightmares. But I'll figure it out. When one doesn't get the same things that everybody else gets, the only way to hide that pain is to exaggerate oneself isn't it? In my eyes and in the eyes of my poor parents, I was a lovely Southern Belle capable of the gentlest feelings, kindest acts and enough beauty to attract any beau in three Counties. What could I do but accept this dream given to me?"