Gone with the Wind : Ellen

I know Scarlett adored her mom and wanted to be just like her. But was she really a good mom?
She was a great lady and an overall good hearted person. But in my opinion, she wasn't that much better of a mom than Scarlett was.
Given, her absence was due to helping others. But nonetheless, she didn't seem to be there for her children all that often. This is similar to Scarlett with her children.
And at least Scarlett was often away to provide for her family.
And of course it is very obvious that Scarlett did not like motherhood. But who is to say Ellen did.

Ellen is a bit of a mystery in some ways but her emotionally distant motherhood was not abnormal for her time.

In today's time when mothers are expected to cater to their children's every emotional whim motherhood of the past looks cold and remote. The fact was that women of her class always had servants (whether slaves in the south or paid white nannies in the north) to attend to the drudgery and more mundane elements of raising their children. In an age without effective contraception or the social permission to use it motherhood was inevitable unless one became a nun or was content to be a spinster, the latter of which was not encouraged and often regarded with shame.

In some other thread I have made the following conclusions about Ellen which might be influential in her character:


1. We weren't told when Solange Robaillard died, but I think she may have died either when she gave birth to Ellen or not long thereafter. This is likely how Pauline and Eulalie ended up having adult influence over Ellen's future.

2. Mammy was her mammy before she became mammy to her children. She is not spoken of as having been the mammy to Ellen's two older sisters, who seemed to have been part of the decision-making process to get Phillippe to leave Savannah. I have therefore concluded that her sisters were significantly older than she was.

3. There definitely was some disapproval of the sisters about Ellen's decision to marry Gerald, which Scarlett figured out when she visited them early during her first widowhood. In Clayton County Ellen could not have been said to have truly come down in the world, as she was socially of the same class as the Wilkes family who accepted Gerald, warts and all. However, Ellen was more refined than most of the others there, except for the Wilkes family. We don't know when Ashley's mother died; she would have been the woman most likely to be Ellen's equal. Note that Kathleen Calvert's father married their Yankee governess at some point and Beatrice Tarleton was a much earthier woman than any of her peers in that area. Ellen definitely felt like a fish out of water in this area, which definitely affected the way she interacted with almost anyone. But (as Thomas Wolfe eventually said) you can't go home again.


The Fabio Principle: Puffy shirts look best on men who look even better without them.

All of the above is true. Ellen didn't have to be a good mother, because she knew her servant Mammy was capable of doing all the mothering her children needed. So she sat back and let Mammy raise the kids, because she could.

No, Ellen had basically given up on life before Scarlett was born, her marriage to Gerald was an act of despair, of taking the path of least resistance. She ran Gerald's house and managed his plantation and bore his children because it was her duty to do so, she didn't like it or anything but that was the life she'd ended up with. So one of the many reasons that Scarlett could never be like her mother is that she'd never ever accept a life of joyless duty.




Seventy-seven courses and a regicide, never a wedding like it!

These posts are definitely inspiring me to read the book!

I've always felt that Ellen was a deeply unhappy woman who regretted her hasty marriage to Gerald O'Hara, but who had burned her bridges behind her and could do nothing.

As a devout Catholic, she knew that divorce was forbidden, and she was brought up to believe that it was "woman's lot" to suffer the hardships of matrimony and motherhood.
Gerald O'Hara, for all his accomplishments regarding Tara, was essentially an overgrown child, who deferred decisions and confrontations to his wife.

I imagine that Ellen was disappointed that her eldest daughter was so much like her father, no matter how hard she and Mammy tried to instill gentility into her.
Of course, in the long run, that was a benefit to both Scarlett and to TaraGerald's headstrong nature enabled both to survive.
And I also think that Ellen was secretly proudest of her youngest, the daughter most like her, and definitely would have approved of Carreen's becoming a nunwhich is what Ellen herself should have done, and she realized that.

Let's not forget that Ellen kept the memory of her beloved cousin Philippe Robillard in her heart for the rest of her life.
In fact, she died calling his name.
I wonder how Gerald would have reacted if he ever knew this last fact.

So on that note, do you all think Gerald ever knew anything about Phillipe?
I mean did he know/realize she was heartbroken when they met. Many people are aware of when someone is sad, especially when they spend s lot of time with them.
He had to have wondered why someone from her family and background would so easily be with him. But maybe he just didn't rock the boat and question his good luck.
At the very least, I would think he would have heard she had a cousin she was very close to, who died unexpectedly.

Gerald did know about Philippe:

---

Sometimes when Scarlett tiptoed at night to kiss her tall mother's
cheek, she looked up at the mouth with its too short, too tender
upper lip, a mouth too easily hurt by the world, and wondered if
it had ever curved in silly girlish giggling or whispered secrets
through long nights to intimate girl friends. But no, that wasn't
possible. Mother had always been just as she was, a pillar of
strength, a fount of wisdom, the one person who knew the answers
to everything.

But Scarlett was wrong, for, years before, Ellen Robillard of
Savannah had giggled as inexplicably as any fifteen-year-old in
that charming coastal city and whispered the long nights through
with friends, exchanging confidences, telling all secrets but one.
That was the year when Gerald O'Hara, twenty-eight years older
than she, came into her lifethe year, too, when youth and her
black-eyed cousin, Philippe Robillard, went out of it. For when
Philippe, with his snapping eyes and his wild ways, left Savannah
forever, he took with him the glow that was in Ellen's heart and
left for the bandy-legged little Irishman who married her only a
gentle shell.

But that was enough for Gerald, overwhelmed at his unbelievable
luck in actually marrying her. And if anything was gone from her,
he never missed it. Shrewd man that he was, he knew that it was
no less than a miracle that he, an Irishman with nothing of family
and wealth to recommend him, should win the daughter of one of the
wealthiest and proudest families on the Coast. For Gerald was a
self-made man.

---

and later in the same chapter, following the beginning of Gerald's backstory:

---

James and Andrew might have some advice to offer on this subject
of marriage, and there might be daughters among their old friends
who would both meet his requirements and find him acceptable as a
husband. James and Andrew listened to his story patiently but
they gave him little encouragement. They had no Savannah
relatives to whom they might look for assistance, for they had
been married when they came to America. And the daughters of
their old friends had long since married and were raising small
children of their own.

"You're not a rich man and you haven't a great family," said
James.

"I've made me money and I can make a great family. And I won't be
marrying just anyone."

"You fly high," observed Andrew, dryly.

But they did their best for Gerald. James and Andrew were old men
and they stood well in Savannah. They had many friends, and for a
month they carried Gerald from home to home, to suppers, dances
and picnics.

"There's only one who takes me eye," Gerald said finally. "And
she not even born when I landed here."

"And who is it takes your eye?"

"Miss Ellen Robillard," said Gerald, trying to speak casually, for
the slightly tilting dark eyes of Ellen Robillard had taken more
than his eye. Despite a mystifying listlessness of manner, so
strange in a girl of fifteen, she charmed him. Moreover, there
was a haunting look of despair about her that went to his heart
and made him more gentle with her than he had ever been with any
person in all the world.

"And you old enough to be her father!"

"And me in me prime!" cried Gerald stung.

James spoke gently.

"Jerry, there's no girl in Savannah you'd have less chance of
marrying. Her father is a Robillard, and those French are proud
as Lucifer. And her motherGod rest her soulwas a very great
lady."

"I care not," said Gerald heatedly. "Besides, her mother is dead,
and old man Robillard likes me."

"As a man, yes, but as a son-in-law, no."

"The girl wouldn't have you anyway," interposed Andrew. "She's
been in love with that wild buck of a cousin of hers, Philippe
Robillard, for a year now, despite her family being at her morning
and night to give him up."

"He's been gone to Louisiana this month now," said Gerald.

"And how do you know?"

"I know," answered Gerald, who did not care to disclose that Pork
had supplied this valuable bit of information, or that Philippe
had departed for the West at the express desire of his family.
"And I do not think she's been so much in love with him that she
won't forget him. Fifteen is too young to know much about love."

"They'd rather have that breakneck cousin for her than you."

So, James and Andrew were as startled as anyone when the news came
out that the daughter of Pierre Robillard was to marry the little
Irishman from up the country. Savannah buzzed behind its doors
and speculated about Philippe Robillard, who had gone West, but
the gossiping brought no answer. Why the loveliest of the
Robillard daughters should marry a loud-voiced, red-faced little
man who came hardly up to her ears remained a mystery to all.

Gerald himself never quite knew how it all came about. He only
knew that a miracle had happened. And, for once in his life, he
was utterly humble when Ellen, very white but very calm, put a
light hand on his arm and said: "I will marry you, Mr. O'Hara."

The thunderstruck Robillards knew the answer in part, but only
Ellen and her mammy ever knew the whole story of the night when
the girl sobbed till the dawn like a broken-hearted child and rose
up in the morning a woman with her mind made up.

With foreboding, Mammy had brought her young mistress a small
package, addressed in a strange hand from New Orleans, a package
containing a miniature of Ellen, which she flung to the floor with
a cry, four letters in her own handwriting to Philippe Robillard,
and a brief letter from a New Orleans priest, announcing the death
of her cousin in a barroom brawl.

"They drove him away, Father and Pauline and Eulalie. They drove
him away. I hate them. I hate them all. I never want to see
them again. I want to get away. I will go away where I'll never
see them again, or this town, or anyone who reminds me ofof
him."

And when the night was nearly spent, Mammy, who had cried herself
out over her mistress' dark head, protested, "But, honey, you kain
do dat!"

"I will do it. He is a kind man. I will do it or go into the
convent at Charleston."

It was the threat of the convent that finally won the assent of
bewildered and heartstricken Pierre Robillard. He was staunchly
Presbyterian, even though his family were Catholic, and the
thought of his daughter becoming a nun was even worse than that of
her marrying Gerald O'Hara. After all, the man had nothing
against him but a lack of family.

So, Ellen, no longer Robillard, turned her back on Savannah, never
to see it again, and with a middle-aged husband, Mammy, and twenty
"house *beep* journeyed toward Tara.

---

That she cried out Philippe's name on her deathbed I suspect he didn't know, but she could have cried it out in her sleep many times before that.

Ellen ran the household and undoubtedly had something to say in other matters. Gerald may have been in absolute denial about what her feelings for him were, but then again as an Irish Catholic the whole Madonna/Whore thing was in place. She was just a step away from being the Virgin Mary in his eyes. He adored her and was truly lost without her. His mental state after her death was his reaction to that in combination with all the stress of the war and what it did to the wealth he had worked so hard for.

The Fabio Principle: Puffy shirts look best on men who look even better without them.

Gerald knew that Ellen was in love with Philippe when he met her, but he just shrugged it off as a phase: "Fifteen is too young to know much about love."
He never realized that the only reason she married him was to escape the family she had blamed for Philippe's exile and death.
He never knew that her feelings toward him was mere gratitude; that's how emotionally immature he was.
And Scarlett was just like him!

So Scarlett and Ellen both jumped into loveless marriages because they couldn't have the man they loved. Both realized their mistakes after it was too late. Scarlett, unlike her mother, outlived her husband. Then she proceeded to get herself stuck in another loveless marriage. Maybe Scarlett was more like Ellen after all.

That is about the only thing she really had in common with her mother.


The Fabio Principle: Puffy shirts look best on men who look even better without them.

Perhaps Gerald heard Ellen calling out for Philippe before she died and that contributed in pushing him over the edge of reality. They faced so much at that timethe ravages of war, the illnesses of their daughters, worrying about their daughter in Atlanta, the decline of their home and way of life, the loss of friends and loved ones. To add to these, his beloved wife called out for the man she had loved twenty years prior; then her passing.

For the first time I have noticed the similarity between Philippe and Rhett. Wonder if Ellen would have found Rhett to be an intriguing man, similar to get Philippe?

Will miss such conversations with you all.

I don't think he overheard her calling out for her lost love, Murphy.

Gerald, for all his progress regarding the founding of Tara, was basically immature and self-centered, totally dependent on his wife for the actual management of the plantation.
This was shown when he ducked out after firing Jonas Wilkerson, leaving Ellen to take care of the details.
In fact, he seemed to spend most of his time riding, hunting, drinking, and playing cards with his cronies, while the actual hard work of running Tara fell onto Ellen.

IMO, the cause of his mental breakdown was a combination of loss of his cushy lifestyle, and an overwhelming sense of guilt that he had almost literally worked his wife to death.

I, too, will greatly miss these message boards.
If there was only a way to make IMDb to change its pig-headed mind!

I think Ellen is one of the most fascinating characters in GWTW. To me, she represents a more "real" woman than either Scarlett or Melanie. Ellen is someone who WANTS to do the right thing, and ultimately CHOOSES to do the right thing, but also someone for whom (like most of us) the right thing does not come easily. Unlike Scarlett she doesn't simply act on her more selfish desires; unlike Melanie she doesn't easily do the right thing every time.

I find the backstory about Ellen very interesting; she's like someone who is the epitome of calm and smooth on the surface but complex and even passionate underneath. I just wish the movie would have included even a tiny bit of Ellen's complexity instead, the movie made her out to be basically an older Melanie, when in fact she was very different.

I don't understand "she doesn't easily do the right thing every time."

IMO, the only "wrong" thing she ever did was marrying Gerald O'Hara.
Is that what you meant?

I think that Ellen and Melanie were very much alike.
The tragedy is that Scarlett was unable to see that until it was too late.