How we cite our quotes: (Chapter.Paragraph)
Quote #7
"I've never had anything to sustain me—except Mother."
"But when you lost her, you found you could stand alone, didn't you? Well, some folks can't. Your pa was one." (40.53-54)
Grandma Fontaine is one of the other gumptionful characters; she's explaining to Scarlett here that she has more gumption than her dad. This is at Gerald's funeral, so it seems like maybe not the best of all possible venues to do so, but we guess that when you're full of gumption you'll dare anything, even poor taste.
Quote #8
"The rest have gone under because they don't have any sap in them, because they didn't have the gumption to rise up again. There never was anything to those folks but money and darkies, and now that the money and darkies are gone, those folks will be Cracker in another generation." (40.98)
More from Grandma Fontaine on gumption. She's saying that the slave owners aren't anything without their slaves, for the most part. That's harsh… and even harsher if you see slavery as an actual evil, which Grandma Fontaine doesn't exactly. But if you do, she's saying that the only thing the pre-Confederate South had going for it was a willingness to brutalize and enslave people.
Quote #9
"Miss Melly, you know Miss Scarlett well's Ah does. Whut dat chile got ter stan', de good Lawd give her strent ter stan'. Disyere done broke her heart but she kin stan' it. It's Mist' Rhett Ah come 'bout." (59.49)
Mammy tells Melly that Scarlett can stand anything, but that Rhett Butler has collapsed following the death of Bonnie.
But… what about Mammy? What has she had to withstand, or not withstand? She's been enslaved—how has she withstood that? The novel can't really answer that question because it doesn't consider slavery a problem. Nor is Mammy allowed to have her own specific trials to overcome; her whole life revolves around Scarlett, so she's always dealing with Scarlett's problems. It's like she's a pet; she's not allowed to have her own trials, whether to overcome them or be broken by them.