Gone With the Wind 701-800

Ashley performs Gerald's funeral service, and after the service, Will Benteen announces his engagement to Scarlett's sister, Suellen. Scarlett gave Gerald's gold watch to one of the former slaves, Pork, as thanks for all his hard work. Scarlett learns that Ashley is going to move to New York with Melanie because he can't handle being around Scarlett all the time because he is so in love with her. Scarlett is really upset over this, so Melanie, not knowing about Ashley's real reason to want to move, convinces Ashley that they should stay at Tara. After Suellen and Will's wedding, Carreen enters a nunnery. Ashley, Melanie, and their son move to a house next to Aunt Pitty's in Atlanta, and Melanie is very popular amongst the Southern women. Scarlett gives birth to a girl, and names her Ella. Scarlett wants to immediately go back to work after the child, but her husband won't let her because he's concerned about her in the dangerous city of Atlanta. Scarlett begins talking to a man named Archie who was in jail for forty years for murdering his wife. She tells him that she wants to lease convicts to work at the sawmill, but he tells her it's a terrible idea. When Georgia won't pass a law that makes African Americans citizens, the south is very happy, but they know that the Yankees will be even harder on them after that. Against Archie's advice, Scarlett hired convicts to work at the sawmill. Rhett comes to visit Scarlett to remind her that he loaned the money for her to buy the sawmill, as long as she didn't use it to help Ashley. However, Scarlett has been paying Ashley for helping at the mill. Frank also kind of insinuates that Frank may be having an affair with her, but he doesn't say much. Tension between the Blacks and the Whites is growing in the South. Scarlett is attacked by a poor white man, but Big Sam, a former slave at Tara, saves her. She also learns that the convicts at her sawmill have been starved, whipped, and overworked by their overseer. She's mad, but she knows that she wouldn't get as much work done without them.