CHAPTER 3

Summary 

hapter three is the background of Ellen and Gerald O’Hara. Ellen had been a Savannah girl who had not been permitted to marry the boy she loved. He had later been killed in a barroom brawl. Ellen was angry and desperate to get away from the people she blamed for Philippe Robillard’s death. When Gerald appeared in Savannah and asked to marry her, she quietly agreed to go with him.

As for Gerald, he was a hot-tempered Irishman forced to leave his homeland after killing his landlord’s rent agent. He followed the way of his brother James and Andrew and worked in their store in Savannah for a while. One night he wins the Tara homestead in a gambling match. The original house had burned and the fields are untended, but Gerald is happy to get it nonetheless. He clears the fields and plants cotton, and the house is built by slave labor. At the age of 43, after building and developing Tara for ten years, he decides he needs a wife. With his slave Pork, he goes to Savannah, intending to propose to Ellen Robillard. He never finds out that the only reason Ellen’s father gives in to her is because she swears that she will either marry Gerald O’Hara or go into a convent.

The following year, Scarlett is born. A year later, Susan Elinor - called Suellen -comes along, and finally Carreen, whose name is short for "Caroline Irene." Ellen gives birth to three little boys as well, but none of them live. Because of her graciousness, Ellen is soon the best-loved neighbor in the county. She tries to teach her own manners and breeding to Scarlett, but although Scarlett behaves appropriately in sight of her mother, she teaching has little impact.

Scarlett adores her mother and hopes to be like her someday, but believes that she will miss out on too much of life if she tries to practice the same gentility, tenderness and justice while she is young.