Grandma Fontaine is a character who Margaret Mitchell gave a remarkable past. Scarlett, once she shoots the theiving Yankee deserter, obtains his horse. "Now that she had a horse, Scarlett could find out for herself what had happened to their neighbors... She decided to ride to the Fontaines' first, not because they were the nearest neighbors but because old Dr. Fontaine might be there. Melanie needed a doctor. She was not recovering as she should and Scarlett was frightened by her white weakness."

So Scarlett heads towards Mimosa, expecting to find it burned. But as she approached she saw the faded yello stucco house standing amid the minosa trees, and three Fontaine women there to greet her with cries of joy and kisses.

Grandma Fontaine was one of the women left alone in the house. She was in her seventies at the time. Her daughter-in-law, known as Young Miss although she was in her fifties, was there as well, and Sally who was barely twenty. Their family had been broken apart, and they all wore home-dyed mourning clothes. "Sally's husband, Joe, had died at Gettysburg and Young Miss was also a widow, for young Dr. Fontaine had died of dysentery at Vicksburg. The other two boys, Alex and Tony, were somewhere in Virginia and nobody knew wheter they wre alive or dead; and old Dr. Fontaine was off somewhere with Wheeler's cavalry."

At this point, Grandma Fontaine's spirit shines through. '"And the old fool is seventy-three years old though he tries to act younger and he's as full of rheumatism as a hog is of fleas," said Grandma, proud of her husband, the light in her eyes belying her sharp words.'

Scarlett relays the news of Tara to the women. Grandma Fontaine asked what was burned. '"All our cotton--a hundred and fifty thousand dollars worth," said Scarlett bitterly.

"Be thankful it wasn't your house," said Grandma, leaning her chin on her cane. "you can always grow more cotton and you can't grow a ouse. By the bye, had you all started picking your cotton?"

"No," said Scarlett, "and now most of it is ruined. I don't imagine there's more than three bales left standing, in the far field in the creek bottom, and what earthly good will it do? All our field hands are gone and there's nobody to pick it."

"Mercy me, all our field hands are gone and there's nobody to pick it!" mimicked Grandma and bent a satiric glance on Scarlett. "What's wrong with your own pretty paws, Miss, and those of your sisters?"

"Me? Pick cotton?" cried Scarlett aghast, as if Grandma had been suggesting some repulsive crime. "Like a field hand? Like white trash? Like the Slattery women?"

"White trash indeed! Well, isn't this genereation soft and ladylike! Let me tell you, Miss, when I was a girl my father lost all his money and I wasn't above doing honest work with my hands and in the fields too, till Pa got enough money to buy some more darkies. I've hoed my row and I've picked my cotton and I can do it again if I have to. And it looks like I'll have to. White trash, indeed!"'

Grandma Fontaine's daughters-in-law protested, saying that times have changed, and the old women retorts that "Times never change when there's a need for honest work to be done."

But for all her harshness, Grandma Fontaine was exactly what Scarlett needed. She takes Scarlett on a walk without the other two women, and asks Scarlett what really was wrong. Scarlett relates the death of her mother, her father going out of his mind, Melly with her baby and how she came to be there, the hunger, the desolation, and all her troubles. And next comes a rather lengthly speech, in which Grandma tells Scarlett of her own troubled past, in the form of one of my favourite passages.

"Child, it's a very bad thing for a woman to face the worst that can happen to her, becaus after she's faced the worst she can't ever really fear anything again. And it's very bad for a woman not to be afraid of anything. You think I don't understand what you've told me--what you've been through? Well, I understand very well. When I was about your age I was in the Creek uprising, right after the Fort Mims massacre--yes," she said in a far away voice, "just about your age for that was fifty-odd years ago. And I managed to get into the bushes and hide and I lay there and saw our house burn and I saw the Indians scalp my brothers and sisters. And I could only lie there and pray that the light of the flames wouldn't show up my hiding place. And they dragged Mother out and killed her about twenty feet from where I was lying. And scalped her too. And ever so often one Indian would go back to her and sink his tommyhawk into her skull again. I--I was my mother's pet and I lay there and saw it all. And in the morning I set out for the nearest settlement and it was thirty miles away. It took me three days to get there, through the swamps and the Indians, and afterward they thought I'd lose my mind... That's where I met Dr. Fonatine. He looked after me... Ah, well, that's been fifty years ago, as I said, and since that time I've never been afraid of anything or anybody because I'd known the worst that could happen to me. And that lack of fear has gotten me into a lot of trouble and cost me a lot of happiness. God intended women to be timid frightened creatures and there's something unnatural about a woman who isn't afraid... Scarlett, always save something to fear--even as you save something to love..."

The Mimosa women share their food and supplies with the O'Haras. Grandma Fontaine again sinks into the background, but I feel Scarlett did learn something from her, for she came out of her state of self-pity and started doing something to better her position. Even though the Yankees came back and burned the cotton that she and her family had laboured over for so long, she didn't give up. If she hadn't her fierce determination before, I think she gains it around this point in the novel. She becomes the head of Tara, until the arrival of a sick boy named Will Benteen, and then she goes out in the world and does the best she knows how.

We next meet Grandma Fontaine at the sad occasion of Gerald's funeral. "Grandma Fontaine, withered, wrinkled and yellow as an old molted bird, was leaning on her cane, and behind her were Sally Munroe Fontaine and Young Miss Fontaine. They were trying vainly by whispered pleas and jerks at her skirt to make the old lady sit down on the brick wall. Grandma's husband, the Old Doctor, was not there. He had died two months before and much of the bright malicious joy of life had gone from her eyes."

Before the clods of earth were dropped on Gerald's coffin, Will, who had been making a speech, sends the very pregnant Scarlett and old Grandma Fontaine into the house.

'"Will wasn't bothered about her miscarrying," said Grandma, a little breathless as she labored across the front yard toward the steps. There was a grim, knowing smile on her face. "Will's smart. He didn't want either of you or me, Beetrice [Mrs Tarleton], at the graveside. He was scared of what we'd say and he know this was the only way to get rid of us....And it was more than that. He didn't want Scarlett to hear the clods dropping on the coffin. And he's right. Just remember, Scarlett, as long as you don't hear that sound, folks aren't actually dead to you. But once you hear it... Well, it's the most dreadfully final sound in the world.... Help me up the steps, child, and give me and hand, Beetrice. Scarlett doesn't need your arm any more than she needs crutches and I'm not so peart, as Will observed... Will knew you were your father's pet and he didn't want to make it worse for you than it already was. He figured it wouldn't be so bad for your sisters. Suellen has her shame to sustain her and Carreen her God. But you've got nothing to sustain you, have you child?"'

Grandma goes on to give her blunt opinon on everything, including, to Scarlett's dismay, Ashley. '"...Ashley was bred to read books and nothing else. That doesn't help a man pull himself out of a tough fix, like we're all in now. From what I hear, he's the worst plow hand in the County! Now you just compare him with my Alex! Before the war, Alex was the most worthless dandy in the world and he never had a thought beyond a new cravet and getting drunk and shooting somebody and chasing girls who were no better than they should be. But look at him now! He's learned farming because he had to learn. He'd have starved, and so would all of us. Now he raises the best cotton in the County--yes, Miss! It's a heap better than Tara cotton!--and he knows what to do with hogs and chickens. Ha! He's a fine boy for all his bad temper. He knows how to bide his time and chage with changing ways and when all this reconstruction misery is over, you're going to see my Alex as rich a man as his father and his grandfather were. But Ashley--"'

And so there I will stop. As you can see, Grandma is so incredably and endearingly blunt with her opinions. I think that is part, or maybe most, of her charm. Margaret Mitchell proved herself a slice above everyone else by making all her characters, no matter how insignificant they may appear, have lives and seem to live and breathe. And thusly I will conclude my write-up of Grandma Fontaine. (I set out this morning to do a write-up of Will Benteen, and Grandma Fontaine captured my fancy, and so she ended up pushing herself up the list of people I am researching from number six to number one. Pushy old Grandma Fontaine!)