For almost 90 years, readers have closed Gone With the Wind with the same question. Rhett Butler walks out the door. Scarlett O’Hara vows to win him back. Then the story simply stops, and nobody has ever agreed on what happens next to Scarlett and Rhett.
The short answer is that Margaret Mitchell never said. In letters to fans, she wrote again and again that she did not know whether Rhett came back. The only “official” reunions came decades after her death, in sequels written by other authors and approved by her estate.
Where Did the Debate Start?
It started almost as soon as the book reached stores. Mitchell had a habit that made the ending feel deliberate. According to NPR, she wrote the last chapter first and filled in the rest as it came to her. The New Georgia Encyclopedia says the same thing: “She wrote the last chapter first and the other chapters in no particular order.” The open door was planned from the start.
By early 1938, Mitchell was joking about it in a letter to her friend, the critic Herschel Brickell. As quoted in a Christie’s auction catalog, she complained about people “talking to friends and strangers about whether or not Scarlett got Rhett back.” The 1939 film would soon put her final pages in front of millions of moviegoers.
What Do the Book and the Film Actually Say?
In the novel, Rhett tells Scarlett he wishes he could care what she does or where she goes, but he cannot. His parting line is “My dear, I don’t give a damn.” There is no “frankly” in the book. That word was added for Gable in the film.
Scarlett’s response closes the story. She decides to go home to Tara, where she can stand to think about it. “Tomorrow, I’ll think of some way to get him back,” she tells herself. The book’s final words are “After all, tomorrow is another day.” The film ends on the same hope, with Leigh vowing to go home to Tara and speaking nearly the same line.
Rhett’s famous exit almost sounded different on screen. Hollywood’s Production Code banned the word “damn.” According to the Harry Ransom Center at the University of Texas, which holds Selznick’s papers, Selznick and his partner Jock Whitney lobbied the industry’s board before an October 27, 1939, meeting. The Code was amended to allow the word in a historically accurate context. Director Victor Fleming also filmed a backup line, “Frankly, my dear, I don’t care.” The popular story that Selznick paid a $5,000 fine for the curse still appears on History.com. Because the Code had already been changed, other accounts doubt any fine was paid, so treat it as unproven.
Neither version shows Rhett turning back. That left the question to the author.
What Did Margaret Mitchell Say About Scarlett and Rhett?
A line often credited to Mitchell says “I think she gets him in the end.” We could not find that quote in her letters, in a reputable outlet or in any archive. Until a source turns up, it should be treated as unverified.
What can be verified points the other way. In a letter dated November 4, 1936, she answered a Philadelphia fan who asked if Rhett came back. “About the ending of the book and whether or not Rhett came back to his wife, well, you have me out on a limb. You see, I do not know myself,” she wrote, as reported by Fine Books Magazine when RR Auction sold the letters in 2014. She added, “I honestly never thought about what happened to the characters after the book ended.”
Less than two weeks later, on November 17, 1936, she gave nearly the same answer to a reader named Frances Hjort. That letter, sold by Bonhams, says she wished she could settle whether Rhett “risked his heart a third time.” She went on: “I do not know any more about what happened to him after the last page than any reader does.”
She also refused to write the answer herself. In an April 1937 letter from the same collection, she wrote, “I do not plan to write a sequel.” Mitchell was struck by a car on Peachtree Street in Atlanta and died on August 16, 1949, at age 48. She never published another novel.
Did the Official Sequels Settle It?
Her heirs eventually decided someone would write a sequel anyway. The book’s copyright was due to run out, and the estate chose to control the follow-up, according to a 1991 report in The Christian Science Monitor.
The result was Alexandra Ripley’s Scarlett, published by Warner Books in September 1991. Mental Floss reports that Warner paid a $4.94 million advance and that the book was the top seller for 16 weeks. Its answer is a clear yes. Scarlett travels to Ireland and gives birth to Rhett’s daughter, Katie Colum O’Hara, whom she calls Cat. By the final pages, Rhett has found her and the two are planning a new life together. Critics were harsh. Janet Maslin of The New York Times called it a “stunningly uneventful 823-page holding action.”
CBS turned the book into a four-night miniseries in November 1994. Joanne Whalley played Scarlett and Timothy Dalton played Rhett. Mental Floss reports it averaged 26 million viewers.
In November 2007, St. Martin’s Press published Donald McCaig’s Rhett Butler’s People, also authorized by the Mitchell estate. It retells the story from Rhett’s side and carries it a short way past the original ending. McCaig told Style Weekly he had asked himself, “If these were real people just like my friends, what would happen next?” His reply: “I answered that question.” An AudioFile review of the audiobook refers to Rhett’s “newfound happiness with Scarlett.”
Both estate sequels reunite the couple. Neither came from Mitchell.
What Do Fans Believe?
Readers still split into two camps, and both lean on the text. These are theories, not canon.
The “she gets him” camp points to Scarlett’s record. She saved Tara after the war and went on to run her own lumber business. When she decides she wants something, she usually gets it. That final line is a promise, they argue.
The “he’s gone for good” camp points to Rhett. In the book, he says plainly that he cannot care anymore. Their daughter Bonnie has died, and he has watched Scarlett pine for Ashley Wilkes for years. To these readers, “tomorrow is another day” shows Scarlett’s denial, not a happy ending on the way.
Why Does It Still Matter?
Mitchell’s letters show the open ending was not a tease. She honestly did not know, and that is why the question has outlived her by more than 75 years.
The film keeps finding new audiences too. It went back to theaters for its 80th anniversary in 2019, and the battle over who would play Scarlett is a story of its own. Bette Davis, for one, blamed others for losing the part to Leigh.
Mitchell’s answer to the fan in Philadelphia still stands as the only one from the woman who wrote the book. In 1936, she wrote, “I do not know myself.” Nearly a century later, nobody else knows either.