Gone With the Wind Chapter 32 Summary

How It All Goes Down

  • Emmie Slattery and Jonas Wilkerson drive up, and Scarlett insults Emmie right off.
  • Wilkerson says he was going to make her an offer for Tara, but now since she's so mean he'll just buy it when it's sold off for taxes.
  • Scarlett is filled with terror; she worries that Tara will be sold and that—gasp—black people will be allowed to live and sleep there.
  • Psst… Scarlett… black people already live and sleep in Tara. They're not treated as equals, though, which we suppose is what Scarlett and her racism are getting at here.
  • Anyway, after her racist panic, Scarlett remembers that Rhett has money, so she decides to go to Atlanta to see if she can get him to marry her.
  • She's worried that she's thin and not very pretty, though, plus she has no pretty dresses. So she decides to make one out of the velvet curtains.
  • Mammy is suspicious, and thinks Scarlett is going to try to do something unladylike to get the money in Atlanta. Mammy is right.
  • Mammy decides to go with Scarlett to Atlanta. Because a newly freed slave has nothing better to do with her time than run around trying to make sure an adult white woman doesn't do anything untoward.
  • Ashley, meanwhile, is ineffectually guilty. That's his thing.