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Rhett Butler

Rhett Butler
Gone with the Wind character
Clark Gable as Rhett Butler in Gone With the Wind trailer.jpg
Clark Gable as Rhett Butler in the Gone with the Wind film trailer
Created by Margaret Mitchell
Portrayed by Clark Gable
Timothy Dalton
Information
Occupation Gambler, Blockade runner,
Title Captain
Family Steven Butler (father)
Eleanor Butler (mother)
Rosemary Butler (younger sister)
Ross Butler (younger brother)
Spouse(s) Scarlett O'Hara
Anne Hampton (deceased)
Children Eugenie Victoria "Bonnie Blue" Butler
(daughter)
Kathleen Colum "Cat" Butler
(daughter)

Rhett Butler is a fictional character and one of the main protagonists of Gone with the Wind by Margaret Mitchell.

In the beginning of the novel, we first meet Rhett at the Twelve Oaks Plantation barbecue, the home of John Wilkes and his son Ashley and daughters Honey and India Wilkes. The novel describes Rhett as "a visitor from Charleston"; a black sheep, who was expelled from West Point and is not received by any family with reputation in the whole of Charleston, and perhaps all of South Carolina.

On her way back to Aunt Pittypat's Scarlett meets Frank Kennedy, her sister Suellen's beau. Learning that Frank has done very well for himself, she plies him with affection, falsely tells him that Suellen is tired of waiting and plans to marry someone else, and finally secures a marriage proposal from him, which she accepts. Scarlett is shocked when she sees Rhett while she is running Frank's store, free from the Yankees and amused that she has rushed into yet another marriage with a man she does not love, much less the fact that she stole him right out from under her sister's nose.

Frank Kennedy is killed during a Ku Klux Klan raid on the shanty town after Scarlett is attacked. Rhett saves Ashley Wilkes and several others by alibiing them to the Yankee captain, a man with whom he has played cards on several occasions.

Scarlett accepts only for Rhett's money. In the novel, Rhett's fortune is estimated at $500,000 ($8,178,409 as of 2016) Rhett secretly hopes that Scarlett will eventually return the love he's had since the day he saw her at Twelve Oaks. Her continuing affection for Ashley Wilkes becomes a problem for the couple, however.

He knows that Scarlett could never be happy with Ashley and when she discovers that, he does not want to be around when she throws her obsession onto him.

In the course of the novel, Rhett becomes increasingly enamored of Scarlett's sheer will to survive in the chaos surrounding the war. The novel contains several pieces of information about him that do not appear in the film. After being disowned by his family (mainly by his father), he became a professional gambler, and at one point was involved in the California Gold Rush, where he ended up getting a scar on his stomach in a knife fight. He seems to love his mother and his sister Rosemary, but has an adversarial relationship with his father which is never resolved. He also has a younger brother who is never named, and a sister-in-law (both of whom he has little respect or regard for), who own a rice plantation. Rhett is the guardian of a little boy who attends boarding school in New Orleans; it is speculated among readers that this boy is Belle Watling's son (whom Belle mentions briefly to Melanie), and perhaps Rhett's illegitimate son as well.


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Wikipedia

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