Gone with the Wind Part VI

Rhett tells Scarlett that he has pursued her for years, and she has never given way to his seduction, so he is going to have to marry her. She is tempted as she does like him even though she continues to love Ashley. They get married and he encourages her to run her businesses. She has another baby, a daughter, called Victoria Eugenie, but the family call her Bonnie. Rhett adores his daughter and spoils her. But Scarlett tells him she does not want any more children. He is angry but he laughs it off and tells her that if she wont sleep with him, there are other women who will. He returns to Belle Watling and renews their affair. Rhett however begins to change after Bonnie's birth. He realises that because he and Scarlett are so unpopular among the Southern elite of Atlanta, it will affect her and also his step children. The upper class rarely invite the children to their parties and Rhett decides that he has to at least show willing to be a good Southerner and Democrat. He starts to ignore Scarlett's Yankee friends, and to court the friendship of the old Confederate families. He tells the ladies of the elite that he did fight for the South, in the latter years of the war, and that he is proud of his military service. The society ladies begin to warm to him, as he obviously loves Bonnie a lot and it seems he is not such a renegade as they believed. Scarlett is irritated by Rhett's sudden conversion to the Confederate cause, he tells her that her Yankee friends will end up kicked out of the South some day and that most of them are dishonest. She and Rhett are not so close by now. She lives in the moment and does not worry about whether Bonnie will be able to find a Southern gentleman husband when she is older. Rhett gets annoyed by her continuing infatuation for Ashley.