Gender Roles

It's interesting to examine the gender roles in Scarlett and Frank Kennedy's marriage. Of course, they were raised with the knowledge that men were infinitely smarter than women, but as Frank says, "[Frank] was thunderstruck to discover that [Scarlett] could swiftly add a column a long column of figures in her head when [Frank] needed a pencil and paper for more than three figures."Scarlett is the one with a "good head for figures and business" in this marriage, and she has plenty of ideas of how to get the store to earn more money so they can buy the sawmill and consequently earn even more, while Frank just knows in the back of his head, "You know? I kind of want to buy a sawmill sometime." In Scarlett's and Frank's marriage, the common gender roles of the Old South have been reversed, which is extremely unusual. However, the South is moving right along into the New South way of thinking, so perhaps soon this will not be so strange anymore.