Zelda Fitzgerald

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Zelda Fitzgerald

Zelda Sayre at age 17
Born Zelda Sayre
(1900-07-24)July 24, 1900
Montgomery, Alabama, United States
Died March 10, 1948(1948-03-10) (aged 47)
Asheville, North Carolina, United States
Occupation novelist, short story writer, poet, dancer
Period 1920–48
Genres Modernism
Literary movement Feminist

Zelda Sayre Fitzgerald (July 24, 1900 – March 10, 1948), born Zelda Sayre in Montgomery, Alabama, was an American novelist and the wife of writer F. Scott Fitzgerald. She was an icon of the 1920s—dubbed by her husband "the first American Flapper." After the success of his first novel, This Side of Paradise (1920), the Fitzgeralds became celebrities.

From early adolescence Zelda was a formidable presence in Southern society, outshining all other belles as the star in ballet recitals and elite country club events. Shortly after finishing high school, she met F. Scott Fitzgerald at a country club dance, but was unimpressed and agreed with her family on his limited financial prospects to provide for a family. With his professed infatuation, a light flirtation evolved into a lengthy long distance courtship of weekly letters, with Fitzgerald aware of her uncommitted dating of other men. Determined to obtain financial security, and thus Zelda, Fitzgerald increased his writing from articles to his first book. On March 20, 1920, Scribner's Sons agreed to publish his novel This Side of Paradise and Fitzgerald immediately cabled Zelda, who agreed to travel to New York to marry and live with him. The couple wed in New York on April 3, 1920, and later moved to Europe. While Scott received acclaim for The Great Gatsby and his short stories, and the couple socialized with literary luminaries like Ernest Hemingway, their marriage was a tangle of jealousy, resentment and acrimony. Scott used their relationship as material in his novels, even lifting snippets from Zelda's diary and assigning them to his fictional heroines. Seeking an artistic identity of her own, Zelda wrote magazine articles and short stories, and at 27 became obsessed with a career as a ballerina, practicing to exhaustion.

The strain of her tempestuous marriage, Scott's increasing alcoholism, and her growing instability presaged Zelda's admittance in 1930 to the Sheppard Pratt sanatorium in Towson, Maryland, where she was diagnosed with schizophrenia (though, according to scholars, she was more likely to have had bipolar disorder).[1] While there, she wrote a semi-autobiographical novel, Save Me the Waltz, which was published in 1932. Scott was furious that she had used material from their life together, though he would go on to do the same, as in Tender Is the Night, published in 1934; the two novels provide contrasting portrayals of the couple's failing marriage.

Back in America, Scott went to Hollywood where he tried screenwriting and began a relationship with the movie columnist Sheilah Graham. In 1936, Zelda entered the Highland Mental Hospital in Asheville, North Carolina. Scott died in Hollywood in 1940, having last seen Zelda a year and a half earlier. She spent her remaining years working on a second novel, which she never completed, and she painted extensively. In 1948 she died when the hospital in which she was residing caught fire. Interest in the Fitzgeralds resurged shortly after her death: the couple has been the subject of popular books, movies and scholarly attention. After a life as an emblem of the Jazz Age, Roaring Twenties, and Lost Generation, Zelda Fitzgerald posthumously found a new role: after a popular 1970 biography portrayed her as a victim of an overbearing husband, she became a feminist icon. She was inducted into the Alabama Women's Hall of Fame in 1992.[2]

Biography

A black and white photograph of a young woman outdoors in a ballet pose, one arm extended. She looks at the camera.
Zelda Sayre at about 16, in dance costume
Born in Montgomery, Alabama, Zelda Sayre was the youngest of six children. Her mother, Minerva Buckner "Minnie" Machen (November 23, 1860 – January 13, 1958), named her after characters in two little-known stories: Jane Howard's "Zelda: A Tale of the Massachusetts Colony" (1866) and Robert Edward Francillon's "Zelda's Fortune" (1874). In each story, Zelda is a Gypsy.[3] A spoiled child, Zelda was doted upon by her mother, but her father, Anthony Dickinson Sayre (1858–1931)[4])—a justice of the Supreme Court of Alabama and one of Alabama's leading jurists—was a strict and remote man. The family had descended from early settlers of Long Island, who had moved to Alabama before the Civil War. By the time of Zelda's birth, the Sayres were a prominent Southern family. Her great-uncle, John Tyler Morgan, served six terms in the United States Senate; her paternal grandfather edited a newspaper in Montgomery; and her maternal grandfather was Willis Benson Machen, who served a partial term as a U.S. senator from Kentucky.[5][6] Her siblings were Anthony Dickinson Sayre, Jr. (1894–1933), Marjorie Sayre (Mrs. Minor Williamson Brinson) (1886–1960), Rosalind Sayre (Mrs. Newman Smith) (1889–1979) and Clothilde Sayre (Mrs. John Palmer) (1891–1986).

As a child Zelda Sayre was extremely active. She danced, took ballet lessons and enjoyed the outdoors. In 1914 Sayre began attending Sidney Lanier High School. She was bright but uninterested in her lessons. Her work in ballet continued into high school, where she had an active social life. Though she drank, smoked and spent much of her time with boys, she remained a leader in the local youth social scene. A newspaper article about one of her dance performances quoted her as saying that she cared only about "boys and swimming."[7] She developed an appetite for attention, actively seeking to flout convention—whether by dancing the Charleston, or by wearing a tight, flesh-colored bathing suit to fuel rumors that she swam nude.[8] Her father's reputation was a safety net, preventing her social ruin.[9] Southern women of the time were expected to be delicate, docile and accommodating. Sayre's antics were shocking to those around her, and she became—along with her childhood friend and future Hollywood starlet Tallulah Bankhead—a mainstay of Montgomery gossip.[10] Her ethos was encapsulated beneath her high-school graduation photo:

Why should all life be work, when we all can borrow.
Let's think only of today, and not worry about tomorrow.[11]

F. Scott Fitzgerald

Main article: F. Scott Fitzgerald
A profile drawing of a man's head and shoulders
F. Scott Fitzgerald in 1921, by Gordon Bryant for Shadowland magazine

Zelda and Scott first met in July 1918. Scott began to call her daily and came into Montgomery on his free days. He talked of his plans to be famous, and sent her a chapter of a book he was writing. He was so taken by Zelda that he redrafted the character of Rosalind Connage in This Side of Paradise to resemble her. He wrote, "all criticism of Rosalind ends in her beauty"[12] and told Zelda that "the heroine does resemble you in more ways than four".[13] Zelda was more than mere muse—after showing Scott her personal diary, he used verbatim excerpts in his novel. At the conclusion of This Side of Paradise, the soliloquy of the protagonist Amory Blaine in the cemetery is taken directly from her journal.[14]

Scott and Zelda's first encounter was in a train station (which Scott later put in The Great Gatsby with Nick). Scott was not the only man courting Zelda, and the competition only drove Scott to want her more. In his ledger that he meticulously maintained throughout his life, he noted on September 7 that he had fallen in love. Ultimately, she would do the same. Her biographer Nancy Milford wrote, "Scott had appealed to something in Zelda which no one before him had perceived: a romantic sense of self-importance which was kindred to his own."[15]

Their courtship was briefly interrupted in October when he was summoned north. He expected to be sent to France, but was instead assigned to Camp Mills, Long Island. While he was there, the Armistice with Germany was signed. He returned to the base near Montgomery and by December they were passionately inseparable; Scott would later describe their behavior as "sexual recklessness."[16] On February 14, 1919, he was discharged from the military and left to establish himself in New York City.[17]

They wrote frequently and by March 1920 Scott sent Zelda his mother's ring and the two became engaged.[18] Many of Zelda's friends and members of her family were wary of the relationship.[19] They did not approve of Scott's excessive drinking, and her Episcopalian family did not like that he was a Catholic.[19]

Marriage

By September, Scott had completed his first novel, This Side of Paradise, and the manuscript was quickly accepted for publication. When he heard the novel had been accepted, Scott wrote to publisher Maxwell Perkins, urging an accelerated release: "I have so many things dependent on its success—including of course a girl."[20] In November, he returned to Montgomery, triumphant with the news of his novel. Zelda agreed to marry him once the book was published;[21] he, in turn, promised to bring her to New York with "all the iridescence of the beginning of the world".[22] This Side of Paradise was published on March 26, Zelda arrived in New York on March 30, and on April 3, 1920, before a small wedding party in St. Patrick's Cathedral, they married.[23]

Scott and Zelda became celebrities of New York, as much for their wild behavior as for the success of This Side of Paradise. They were ordered to leave both the Biltmore Hotel and the Commodore Hotel for their drunkenness.[24] Zelda once jumped into the fountain at Union Square. Another example of their behavior is when Dorothy Parker first met them, Zelda and Scott were sitting atop a taxi. Parker said, "They did both look as though they had just stepped out of the sun; their youth was striking. Everyone wanted to meet him".[25] Their social life was fueled with alcohol. Publicly, this meant little more than napping when they arrived at parties, but privately it increasingly led to bitter fights.[26] To their delight, in the pages of the New York newspapers Zelda and Scott had become icons of youth and success—enfants terribles of the Jazz Age.[27]

On Valentine's Day of 1921, while Scott was working to finish his second novel, The Beautiful and Damned, Zelda discovered she was pregnant. They decided to go to Scott's home in St. Paul, Minnesota to have the baby.[28] On October 26, 1921, she gave birth to Frances "Scottie" Fitzgerald. As she emerged from the anesthesia, Scott recorded Zelda saying, "Oh, God, goofo I'm drunk. Mark Twain. Isn't she smart—she has the hiccups. I hope it's beautiful and a fool—a beautiful little fool". Many of her words found their way into Scott's novels; in The Great Gatsby, the character Daisy Buchanan expresses a similar hope for her daughter.[29]

A profile drawing a woman with short wavy hair
Zelda in 1922

Fitzgerald never became particularly domestic or showed any interest in housekeeping.[30] By 1922, the Fitzgeralds employed a nurse for their daughter, a couple to clean house, and a laundress.[31] When Harper & Brothers asked her to contribute to Favorite Recipes of Famous Women she wrote: "See if there is any bacon, and if there is, ask the cook which pan to fry it in. Then ask if there are any eggs, and if so try and persuade the cook to poach two of them. It is better not to attempt toast, as it burns very easily. Also, in the case of bacon, do not turn the fire too high, or you will have to get out of the house for a week. Serve preferably on china plates, though gold or wood will do if handy."[32]

In early 1922, Fitzgerald again became pregnant. It is presumed she had an abortion.[33] In March Scott recorded in his ledger, "Zelda & her abortionist." Zelda's thoughts on the second pregnancy are unknown, but in the first draft of The Beautiful and Damned, the novel Scott was completing, he wrote a scene in which the main female character Gloria believes she is pregnant and Anthony suggests she "talk to some woman and find out what's best to be done. Most of them fix it some way." Anthony's suggestion was removed from the final version, a change which shifted focus from the abortion choice to Gloria's concern that a baby would ruin her figure.[34]

A color image of a book cover showing a man and a woman dressed in evening clothes and seated next to, but turned slightly away from each other and in front of a large red circle. The cover reads The Beautiful and Damned by the author of "This Side of Paradise" F. Scott Fitzgerald
The first edition dust cover of The Beautiful and Damned with the main characters of Anthony and Gloria drawn to resemble Scott and Zelda

As The Beautiful and Damned neared publication, Burton Rascoe, the freshly appointed literary editor of the New York Tribune, approached Zelda for an opportunity to entice readers with a cheeky review of Scott's latest work. In her review, she made joking reference to the use of her diaries in Scott's work, but the lifted material became a genuine source of resentment:[35]

To begin with, every one must buy this book for the following aesthetic reasons: First, because I know where there is the cutest cloth of gold dress for only $300 in a store on Forty-second Street, and, also, if enough people buy it where there is a platinum ring with a complete circlet, and, also, if loads of people buy it my husband needs a new winter overcoat, although the one he has has done well enough for the last three years ... It seems to me that on one page I recognized a portion of an old diary of mine which mysteriously disappeared shortly after my marriage, and, also, scraps of letters which, though considerably edited, sound to me vaguely familiar. In fact, Mr. Fitzgerald—I believe that is how he spells his name—seems to believe that plagiarism begins at home.[36]

The piece led to Zelda receiving offers from other magazines. In June, a piece by Zelda Fitzgerald, "Eulogy on the Flapper," was published in Metropolitan Magazine. Though ostensibly a piece about the decline of the Flapper lifestyle, Zelda's biographer Nancy Milford wrote that the essay was "a defense of her own code of existence."[37] Zelda described the Flapper:

The Flapper awoke from her lethargy of sub-deb-ism, bobbed her hair, put on her choicest pair of earrings and a great deal of audacity and rouge and went into the battle. She flirted because it was fun to flirt and wore a one-piece bathing suit because she had a good figure ...she was conscious that the things she did were the things she had always wanted to do. Mothers disapproved of their sons taking the Flapper to dances, to teas, to swim and most of all to heart.[38]

Zelda continued writing, selling several short stories and articles. She helped Scott write the play The Vegetable, but when it flopped the Fitzgeralds found themselves in debt. Scott wrote short stories furiously to pay the bills, but became burned out and depressed.[39] In April 1924, they left for Paris.[40][41]

Expatriation

After arriving in Paris, they soon relocated to Antibes[42] on the French Riviera. While Scott was absorbed writing The Great Gatsby, Zelda became infatuated with a dashing young French pilot, Edouard Jozan.[43] She spent afternoons swimming at the beach and evenings dancing at the casinos with Jozan. After six weeks, Zelda asked for a divorce. Scott at first demanded to confront Jozan, but instead dealt with Zelda's demand by locking her in their house, until she abandoned her request for divorce. Jozan did not know she'd asked for a divorce. He left the Riviera later that year, and the Fitzgeralds never saw him again. Later in life he told Zelda's biographer Milford that any infidelity was imaginary: "They both had a need of drama, they made it up and perhaps they were the victims of their own unsettled and a little unhealthy imagination."[44] From Fitzgerald's: "A Life in Letters," Fitzgerald referred to the Jozan affair in his August letter to Ludlow Fowler, of lost illusions in The Great Gatsby as his lost certainty in Zelda's fidelity, the book reflected the dramatized pivotal aspects of his and Zelda's love, of courtship, break, restoration with financial success, and the Jozan betrayal: "I feel old too, this summer...the whole burden of this novel—the loss of those illusions that give such color to the world that you don't care whether things are true or false as long as they partake of the magical glory." The Great Gatsby was in draft form during the July 1924 Jozan crisis, with the typescript sent to Scribners at the end of October.[45] Fitzgerald wrote in his notebooks, "That September 1924, I knew something had happened that could never be repaired."[46]

A photograph of a man seated and a woman standing next to him.
Lance Adell as F. Scott Fitzgerald and Lauren Bloom as Zelda Fitzgerald in The Last Flapper, a dramatization of Zelda's life

After the fight, the Fitzgeralds kept up appearances with their friends, seemingly happy. But in September, Zelda overdosed on sleeping pills. The couple never spoke of the incident, and refused to discuss whether it was a suicide attempt or not. Scott returned to writing, finishing The Great Gatsby in October. They attempted to celebrate with travel to Rome and Capri, but both were unhappy and unhealthy. When he received the proofs from his novel he fretted over the title: Trimalchio in West Egg, just Trimalchio or Gatsby, Gold-hatted Gatsby, or The High-bouncing Lover. It was Zelda who preferred The Great Gatsby.[47] It was also on this trip, while ill with colitis, that Zelda began painting.[48]

In April 1925, back in Paris, Scott met Ernest Hemingway, whose career he did much to promote. Hemingway and Scott Fitzgerald became firm friends, but Zelda and Hemingway disliked each other from their very first meeting; she openly described him as "bogus,"[49] "that fairy with hair on his chest" and "phoney as a rubber check."[50] She considered Hemingway's domineering macho persona to be merely a posture; Hemingway in turn, told Scott that Zelda was crazy.[49][51] Her dislike was probably not helped by Scott's repeated insistence that she recount the story of her affair with Jozan to Hemingway and his wife Hadley. In an embellishment, the Fitzgeralds told the Hemingways that the affair ended when Jozan committed suicide.[52] It was through Hemingway, however, that the Fitzgeralds were introduced to much of the Lost Generation expatriate community: Gertrude Stein, Alice B. Toklas, Robert McAlmon and others.[43]

One of the most serious rifts occurred when Zelda told Scott that their sex life had declined because he was "a fairy" and likely having a homosexual affair with Hemingway. There is no evidence that either was homosexual, but Scott nonetheless decided to sleep with a prostitute to prove his masculinity. Zelda found condoms that he had purchased before any encounter occurred, and a bitter fight ensued, resulting in lingering jealousy.[53] She later threw herself down a flight of marble stairs at a party because Scott, engrossed in talking to Isadora Duncan, was ignoring her.[54]

Zelda Fitzgerald described by literary critic Edmund Wilson, recalling a party at the Fitzgerald home in Edgemoor, Delaware - February 1928:

I sat next to Zelda, who was at her iridescent best. Some of Scott's friends were irritated; others were enchanted, by her. I was one of the ones who were charmed. She had the waywardness of a Southern belle and the lack of inhibitions of a child. She talked with so spontaneous a color and wit – almost exactly in the way she wrote – that I very soon ceased to be troubled by the fact that the conversation was in the nature of a 'free association' of ideas and one could never follow up anything.

I have rarely known a woman who expressed herself so delightfully and so freshly: she had no readymade phrases on the one hand and made no straining for effect on the other. It evaporated easily, however, and I remember only one thing she said that night: that the writing of Galsworthy was a shade of blue for which she did not care.[55]

Obsession and illness

Though Scott drew heavily upon his wife's intense personality in his writings, much of the conflict between them stemmed from the boredom and isolation Zelda experienced when Scott was writing. She would often interrupt him when he was working, and the two grew increasingly miserable throughout the twenties. Scott had become severely alcoholic, Zelda's behavior became increasingly erratic and neither made any progress on their creative endeavors.[56]

Zelda had a deep desire to develop a talent that was entirely her own, perhaps a reaction to Scott's fame and success as a writer. At age 27, she became obsessed with ballet, which she had studied as a girl. She had been praised for her dancing skills as a child, and although the opinions of their friends vary as to her skill, it appears that she did have a fair degree of talent. But Scott was totally dismissive of his wife's desire to become a professional dancer, considering it a waste of time.[57]

She rekindled her studies too late in life to become a truly exceptional dancer, but she obsessively insisted on grueling daily practice (up to eight hours a day[58]) that contributed to her subsequent physical and mental exhaustion.[59] In September 1929 she was invited to join the ballet school of the San Carlo Opera Ballet Company in Naples, but, as close as this was to the success she desired, she declined.[60] While the public still believed the Fitzgeralds to live a life of glamour, friends noted that the partying of the Fitzgeralds had somewhere gone from fashionable to self-destructive—both had become unpleasant company.[61]

In April 1930, Zelda was admitted to a sanatorium in France where, after months of observation and treatment and a consultation with one of Europe's leading psychiatrists, Doctor Eugen Bleuler,[62] she was diagnosed as a schizophrenic.[63] Initially admitted to a hospital outside Paris, she was later moved to a clinic in Montreux, Switzerland. The clinic primarily treated gastrointestinal ailments, and as a result of her profound psychological problems, she was moved to a psychiatric facility in Prangins on the shores of Lake Geneva. She was released in September 1931, and the Fitzgeralds returned to Montgomery, Alabama, where her father, Judge Sayre, was dying. Amid her family's bereavement, Scott announced that he was leaving for Hollywood.[64] Her father died while Scott was gone, and her health again deteriorated. By February 1932, she had returned to living in a psychiatric clinic.[65]

Save Me the Waltz

Main article: Save Me the Waltz

In 1932, while being treated at the Phipps Clinic at Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore, Zelda had a swell of creativity. Over the course of her first six weeks at the clinic, she wrote an entire novel and sent it to Scott's publisher, Maxwell Perkins.[66][67]

When Scott finally read Zelda's book, a week after she'd sent it to Perkins, he was furious. The book was a semi-autobiographical account of the Fitzgeralds' marriage. In letters Scott berated her and fumed that the novel had drawn upon the autobiographical material that he planned to use in Tender Is the Night, which he'd been working on for years, and which would finally see publication in 1934.[68]

Scott forced Zelda to revise the novel, removing the parts that drew on shared material he wished to use. Though the Great Depression had struck America, Scribner agreed to publish her book, and a printing of 3,010 copies were released on October 7, 1932.[69]

The parallels to the Fitzgeralds were obvious. The protagonist of the novel was Alabama Beggs, like Zelda the daughter of a Southern judge, who marries David Knight, an aspiring painter who abruptly becomes famous for his work. They live the fast life in Connecticut, before departing to live in France. Dissatisfied with her marriage, Alabama throws herself into ballet. Though told she has no chance, she perseveres and after three years becomes the lead dancer in an opera company. Alabama becomes ill from exhaustion, however, and the novel ends when they return to her family in the South, as her father is dying.[70]

Thematically, the novel portrayed Alabama's struggle (and hence Zelda's as well) to rise above being "a back-seat driver about life" and to earn respect for her own accomplishments—to establish herself independently of her husband.[71] Zelda's style was quite different from Scott's. The language used in Save Me the Waltz was filled with verbal flourishes and complex metaphors. The novel was also deeply sensual; as literary scholar Jacqueline Tavernier-Courbin would write in 1979, "The sensuality arises from Alabama's awareness of the life surge within her, the consciousness of the body, the natural imagery through which not only emotions but simple facts are expressed, the overwhelming presence of the senses, in particular touch and smell, in every description."[72]

In its time, however, the book was not well received by critics. To Zelda's dismay it sold only 1,392 copies, for which she earned $120.73.[73] The failure of Save Me the Waltz, and Scott's scathing criticism of her having written it—he called her "plagiaristic"[74] and a "third-rate writer"[74]—crushed her spirits. It was the only novel she ever published.

Remaining years

A watercolor image of a woman.
Self-portrait, watercolor, probably painted in the early 1940s

From the mid-1930s, Zelda spent the rest of her life in various stages of mental distress. Some of the paintings that she had drawn over the previous years, in and out of sanatoriums, were exhibited in 1934. As with the tepid reception of her book, Zelda was disappointed by the response to her art. The New Yorker described them merely as "Paintings by the almost mythical Zelda Fitzgerald; with whatever emotional overtones or associations may remain from the so-called Jazz Age." No actual description of the paintings was provided.[75] She became in turns violent and reclusive. In 1936, Scott placed her in the Highland Hospital in Asheville, North Carolina, writing ruefully to friends:[76]

Zelda now claims to be in direct contact with Christ, William the Conqueror, Mary Stuart, Apollo and all the stock paraphernalia of insane-asylum jokes...For what she has really suffered, there is never a sober night that I do not pay a stark tribute of an hour to in the darkness. In an odd way, perhaps incredible to you, she was always my child (it was not reciprocal as it often is in marriages) ... I was her great reality, often the only liaison agent who could make the world tangible to her.[76]

Zelda remained in the hospital while Scott returned again to Hollywood for a $1,000 a week job with MGM in June 1937.[77] Without Zelda's knowledge, he began a serious affair with the movie columnist Sheilah Graham.[78] Despite the excitement of the affair, Scott was bitter and burned out. When their daughter Scottie was thrown out of her boarding school in 1938, he blamed Zelda. Though Scottie was subsequently accepted to Vassar College, his resentment of Zelda was stronger than ever before. Of Scott's mindset, Milford wrote, "The vehemence of his rancor toward Zelda was clear. It was she who had ruined him; she who had made him exhaust his talents...He had been cheated of his dream by Zelda."[79]

After a drunken and violent fight with Graham in 1938, Scott returned to Asheville. A group from Zelda's hospital had planned to go to Cuba, but Zelda had missed the trip. The Fitzgeralds decided to go on their own. The trip was a disaster even by their standards: Scott was beaten up when he tried to stop a cockfight and returned to the United States so intoxicated and exhausted that he was hospitalized.[80] The Fitzgeralds never saw each other again.[81]

Scott returned to Hollywood and Graham; Zelda returned to the hospital. She nonetheless made progress in Asheville, and in March 1940, four years after admittance, she was released.[82] She was nearing forty now, her friends were long gone, and the Fitzgeralds no longer had much money. Scott was increasingly bitter at his own failures and his old friend Hemingway's continued success. They wrote each other frequently until in December 1940, he collapsed. On December 21, 1940, he died. Zelda was unable to attend his funeral in Rockville, Maryland.[83]

Zelda read the unfinished manuscript of the novel Scott was writing upon his death, The Love of the Last Tycoon. She wrote to the literary critic Edmund Wilson, who had agreed to edit the book, musing on his legacy. Zelda believed, her biographer Milford said, that Scott's work contained "an American temperament grounded in belief in oneself and 'will-to-survive' that Scott's contemporaries had relinquished. Scott, she insisted, had not. His work possessed a vitality and stamina because of his indefatigable faith in himself."[84]

After reading The Last Tycoon, Zelda began working on a new novel of her own, Caesar's Things. As she missed Scott's funeral, so she missed Scottie's wedding. By August 1943 she returned to the Highland Hospital. She worked on her novel while checking in and out of the hospital. She never really got better and never finished the novel. On the night of March 10, 1948, a fire broke out in the hospital kitchen. Zelda was locked into a room, awaiting electroshock therapy. The fire moved through the dumbwaiter shaft, spreading onto every floor. The fire escapes were wooden, and caught fire as well. Nine women, including Zelda, died.[85]

A color photograph of a grave. The headstone reads Francis Scott Key Fitzgerald September 24, 1896 December 21, 1940 His Wife Zelda Sayre July 24, 1900 March 10, 1948. "So we beat on boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past" -- The Great Gatsby
Zelda and Scott's grave in Rockville, Maryland
Their daughter, Scottie, wrote after their deaths:
I think (short of documentary evidence to the contrary) that if people are not crazy, they get themselves out of crazy situations, so I have never been able to buy the notion that it was my father's drinking which led her to the sanitarium. Nor do I think she led him to the drinking.[86]

Scott and Zelda were buried in Rockville, Maryland—originally in the Rockville Union Cemetery, away from his family plot. In 1975, however, Scottie successfully campaigned for them to be buried with the other Fitzgeralds at Saint Mary's Catholic Cemetery. Inscribed on their tombstone is the final sentence of The Great Gatsby: "So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past."

Legacy

Scott believed himself a failure when he died and Zelda's death, too, was little noted. But shortly after, interest in the Fitzgeralds resurged. In 1950, screenwriter Budd Schulberg, who knew Scott from his Hollywood years, wrote The Disenchanted, which presented an F. Scott Fitzgerald-inspired character who was an alcoholic failure. It was followed in 1951 when Cornell University professor Arthur Mizener wrote The Far Side of Paradise, a biography of F. Scott Fitzgerald, which rekindled interest in the couple among scholars. Mizener's biography was serialized in The Atlantic Monthly, and a story about the work written in Life magazine, then one of America's most read and discussed periodicals. Scott was viewed as a fascinating failure; Zelda's mental health was largely blamed for his lost potential.[87]

A play of The Disenchanted opened on Broadway in 1958. Also that year, Scott's Hollywood mistress Sheilah Graham published a memoir, Beloved Infidel, about his last years. Beloved Infidel became a bestseller and later a film starring Gregory Peck as Scott and Deborah Kerr as Graham. The book and movie painted him in a more sympathetic light than the earlier works. In 1970, however, Scott and Zelda's marriage saw its most profound revision, when Nancy Milford, a graduate student at Columbia University, published Zelda: A Biography, the first book-length treatment of Zelda's life. It was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award, and figured for weeks on The New York Times best-seller list. The book recast Zelda as an artist in her own right, whose talents were belittled by a controlling husband. Thus Zelda became an icon of the feminist movement in the 1970s—a woman whose unappreciated potential had been suppressed by patriarchal society.[88]

Zelda was the inspiration for "Witchy Woman"[89] ,[90] the song of seductive enchantresses written by Don Henley and Bernie Leadon for the Eagles, after Henley read Zelda's biography, of the muse, the partial genius behind her husband F. Scott Fitzgerald, the wild, bewitching, mesmerizing, quintessential "Flapper" of the Jazz Age and the Roaring Twenties embodied in The Great Gatsby as the uninhibited and reckless personality of Daisy Buchanan.[91] Zelda's behavior in the lyrics of "Witchy Woman" refer to her partying excesses that were detrimental to her psyche: "She drove herself to madness with the silver spoon," is a reference to Zelda's time in a mental institution and the Absinthiana, slotted silver spoon used to dissolve sugar cubes with Absinthe,[92] the popular 1920s alcoholic beverage distilled from the wormwood herb and called "the green fairy" for sometimes inducing hallucinations.

When Tennessee Williams dramatized their lives in the 1980s Clothes for a Summer Hotel, he drew heavily on Milford's account. A caricature of Scott and Zelda emerged: as epitomizing the Jazz Age's glorification of youth, as representatives of the Lost Generation, and as parable about the pitfalls of too much success.[88] Zelda and Scott's legend had penetrated widely into popular culture: in the 1979 Woody Allen film Manhattan, when Allen's friend confides that he plans to leave his wife for his mistress (who happens to be Allen's ex-girlfriend), Allen asks in disbelief if he plans to "run away with the winner of the Zelda Fitzgerald emotional maturity award."

Of Zelda's legacy in popular culture, biographer Cline wrote, "Recently myth has likened Zelda to those other twentieth-century icons, Marilyn Monroe and Princess Diana. With each she shares a defiance of convention, intense vulnerability, doomed beauty, unceasing struggle for a serious identity, short tragic life and quite impossible nature."[93] In 1989, the F. Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald museum opened in Montgomery, Alabama. The museum is in a house they briefly rented in 1931 and 1932. The museum is one of the few places where some of Zelda's paintings are kept on display.[94]

A British musical, Beautiful and Damned, with a book by Kit Hesketh Harvey and music and lyrics by Les Reed and Roger Cook opened in London's West End in 2004 with Helen Anker as Zelda.

In 2005, composer Frank Wildhorn and lyricist Jack Murphy premiered their musical, Waiting For The Moon, in Marlton, New Jersey. The musical starred Lauren Kennedy as Zelda. The show mostly centered upon Zelda's point of view and featured a lot of dancing. The show, which ran only from July 20 to July 31, 2005, is still being workshopped toward a potential Broadway mounting.

Zelda's glamorous image also inspired the name of video game creator Shigeru Miyamoto's character Princess Zelda in his The Legend of Zelda video game series. Miyamoto explained, "Zelda was the name of the wife of the famous novelist F. Scott Fitzgerald. She was a famous and beautiful woman from all accounts, and I liked the sound of her name. So I took the liberty of using her name for the very first Zelda title."[95]

French author Gilles Leroy wrote a fictional autobiography called Alabama Song (2007); it won the Prix Goncourt, France's highest literary honor. Although Leroy always insisted the book was not a biography but a novel, it relied on a large body of factual research.

Tom Hiddleston and Alison Pill portray Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald in Woody Allen's 2011 feature film Midnight In Paris.

New York City's borough of Mannttan's Battery Park's resident wild Turkey Zelda is named after her, for the reason that (according to legend) during one of Zelda Fitzgerald's nervous breakdowns, she went missing and was found in Battery Park, apparently having walked several miles downtown.[96]

R. Clifton Spargo's debut novel Beautiful Fools: The Last Affair of Zelda and Scott Fitzgerald (Overlook Press, 2013), fictionalizes Zelda and Scott's final trip together, to Cuba, in 1939.

Critical reappraisal

Following Milford's biography, scholars and critics began to look at Zelda's work in a new light. In a 1968 edition of Save Me the Waltz, F. Scott Fitzgerald scholar Matthew Bruccoli wrote, "Save Me the Waltz is worth reading partly because anything that illuminates the career of F. Scott Fitzgerald is worth reading—and because it is the only published novel of a brave and talented woman who is remembered for her defeats."[97] But as Save Me the Waltz was increasingly read alongside Milford's biography, a new perspective emerged.[98] In 1979, scholar Jacqueline Tavernier-Courbin wrote rebutting Bruccoli's position: "Save Me the Waltz is a moving and fascinating novel which should be read on its own terms equally as much as Tender Is the Night. It needs no other justification than its comparative excellence."[99]

Save Me the Waltz became the focus of many literary studies that explored different aspects of her work: how the novel contrasted with Scott's take on the marriage in Tender Is the Night;[100] how the commodity culture that emerged in the 1920s placed stress on modern women;[98] and how these attitudes led to a misrepresentation of "mental illness" in women.[101]

Zelda Fitzgerald's collected writings (including Save Me the Waltz), edited by Matthew J. Bruccoli, were published in 1991. New York Times literary critic Michiko Kakutani wrote, "That the novel was written in two months is amazing. That for all its flaws it still manages to charm, amuse and move the reader is even more remarkable. Zelda Fitzgerald succeeded, in this novel, in conveying her own heroic desperation to succeed at something of her own, and she also managed to distinguish herself as a writer with, as Edmund Wilson once said of her husband, a 'gift for turning language into something iridescent and surprising.'"[102]

Scholars continue to examine and debate the role that Scott and Zelda may have had in stifling each other's creativity.[103] Zelda's biographer Cline wrote that the two camps are "as diametrically opposed as the Plath and Hughes literary camps"—a reference to the heated controversy about the relationship of husband–wife poets Ted Hughes and Sylvia Plath.[104]

Zelda's artwork also has been reappraised as interesting in its own right. After spending much of the 1950s and '60s in family attics—Zelda's mother even had much of the art burned because she disliked it[105]—scholars began to examine the art. Exhibitions of her work have toured the United States and Europe. A review of the exhibition by curator Everl Adair noted the influence of Vincent van Gogh and Georgia O'Keeffe on her paintings and concluded that her surviving corpus of art "represents the work of a talented, visionary woman who rose above tremendous odds to create a fascinating body of work—one that inspires us to celebrate the life that might have been."[105]

Notes

  1. ↑ Boston Globe May 5, 2013 "‘Z: A Novel of Zelda Fitzgerald’ and ‘Beautiful Fools’" book review by Julia M. Klein
  2. ↑ "Inductees". Alabama Women's Hall of Fame. State of Alabama. Retrieved February 20, 2012. 
  3. ↑ Cline 2003, p. 13
  4. ↑ Anthony Dickinson Sayre (April 29, 1858 – November 17, 1931), Cline 2003, p. 27
  5. ↑ Milford 1970, pp. 1–7
  6. ↑ Bruccoli 2002, p. 89
  7. ↑ Milford 1970, p. 16
  8. ↑ Cline 2003, pp. 37–38
  9. ↑ Milford 1970, pp. 9–13
  10. ↑ Cline 2003, pp. 23–24
  11. ↑ Cline 2003, p. 38
  12. ↑ Cline 2003, p. 45
  13. ↑ Milford 1970, p. 32
  14. ↑ Cline 2003, p. 65
  15. ↑ Milford 1970, p. 33
  16. ↑ Milford 1970, p. 35; Bruccoli 2002, p. 89
  17. ↑ Milford 1970, pp. 35–36
  18. ↑ Milford 1970, p. 42
  19. ↑ 19.0 19.1 Milford 1970, p. 43
  20. ↑ Milford 1970, p. 54
  21. ↑ Bruccoli 2002, p. 109
  22. ↑ Milford 1970, p. 57
  23. ↑ Milford 1970, p. 62; Cline 2003, p. 75; Bruccoli 2002, p. 128
  24. ↑ Cline 2003, p. 87
  25. ↑ Milford 1970, p. 67
  26. ↑ Bruccoli 2002, pp. 131–32
  27. ↑ Milford 1970, p. 69; Cline 2003, p. 81; Bruccoli 2002, p. 131; Bryer, Jackson R. "A Brief Biography". In Curnutt 2004, p. 31.
  28. ↑ Cline 2003, p. 109; Bryer in Curnutt 2004, p. 32.
  29. ↑ Milford 1970, p. 84; Cline 2003, p. 116
  30. ↑ Bruccoli 2002, p. 139
  31. ↑ Milford 1970, p. 95
  32. ↑ Lanahan, Dorothy. "Introduction". In Bryer 2002, p. xxvii
  33. ↑ Bryer in Curnutt 2004, p. 31
  34. ↑ Milford 1970, p. 88; Cline 2003, pp. 125–26
  35. ↑ Milford 1970, p. 89
  36. ↑ Lanahan. In Bryer 2002, pp. xxvii–viii
  37. ↑ Milford 1970, p. 92
  38. ↑ Milford 1970, p. 91
  39. ↑ Bruccoli 2002, p. 185
  40. ↑ Milford 1970, p. 103
  41. ↑ Cline 2003, p. 130
  42. ↑ The Crack-Up
  43. ↑ 43.0 43.1 Bruccoli 2002, p. 195
  44. ↑ Milford 1970, pp. 108–112
  45. ↑ "F. Scott Fitzgerald". scribd.com. Retrieved June 5, 2013. 
  46. ↑ Life. Jan 15, 1951. p. 93. 
  47. ↑ Milford 1970, pp. 112–13; Bruccoli 2002, pp. 206–07
  48. ↑ Milford 1970, p. 113
  49. ↑ 49.0 49.1 Milford 1970, p. 116
  50. ↑ Milford 1970, p. 122
  51. ↑ Bruccoli 2002, p. 226
  52. ↑ Milford 1970, p. 114
  53. ↑ Bruccoli 2002, p. 275
  54. ↑ Milford 1970, p. 117
  55. ↑ Wilson, 1952, p. 311
  56. ↑ Milford 1970, p. 135
  57. ↑ Milford 1970, pp. 147–50
  58. ↑ Milford 1970, p. 141
  59. ↑ Milford 1970, p. 157
  60. ↑ Milford 1970, p. 156
  61. ↑ Milford 1970, p. 152
  62. ↑ Ludwig 1995, p. 181
  63. ↑ Milford 1970, p. 161
  64. ↑ Milford 1970, p. 193
  65. ↑ Milford 1970, p. 209
  66. ↑ Cline 2003, p. 304
  67. ↑ Milford 1970, pp. 209–12
  68. ↑ Milford 1970, pp. 220–25; Bryer in Curnutt 2004, p. 39.
  69. ↑ Cline 2003, p. 320
  70. ↑ Tavernier-Courbin 1979, pp. 31–33
  71. ↑ Tavernier-Courbin 1979, p. 36
  72. ↑ Tavernier-Courbin 1979, p. 40
  73. ↑ Milford 1970, p. 264
  74. ↑ 74.0 74.1 Cline 2003, p. 325
  75. ↑ Milford 1970, p. 290
  76. ↑ 76.0 76.1 Milford 1970, p. 308
  77. ↑ Milford 1970, p. 313
  78. ↑ Milford 1970, pp. 311–313
  79. ↑ Milford 1970, p. 323
  80. ↑ Milford 1970, p. 327
  81. ↑ Milford 1970, p. 329; Bryer in Curnutt 2004, p. 43.
  82. ↑ Milford 1970, p. 337
  83. ↑ Milford 1970, p. 350
  84. ↑ Milford 1970, p. 353
  85. ↑ Milford 1970, pp. 382–383
  86. ↑ Lanahan. In Bryer 2002, p. xxix
  87. ↑ Prigozy, Ruth. "Introduction: Scott, Zelda, and the culture of Celebrity." In Prigozy 2002, pp. 15–18
  88. ↑ 88.0 88.1 Prigozy, in Prigozy 2002, pp. 18–21
  89. ↑ Crowe, Cameron (August 2003). "Conversations with Don Henley and Glenn frey". eaglesonlinecentral. Retrieved June 5, 2013. 
  90. ↑ "The Eagles". classicrockreview. November 29, 2012. Retrieved June 5, 2013. 
  91. ↑ Critical Companion to F. Scott Fitzgerald: A Literary Reference to His Life and Work. Infobase Publishing. 2007. p. 6. 
  92. ↑ Bruccoli, Matthew J. (October 9, 1964). "Some sort of epic grandeur: The life of F. Scott Fitzgerald". Retrieved June 5, 2013. 
  93. ↑ Cline 2003, p. 2
  94. ↑ Newton, Wesley Phillips. "F. Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald Museum." Alabama Heritage (Spring 2005). Retrieved on April 19, 2008.
  95. ↑ Mowatt, Todd. "In the Game: Nintendo's Shigeru Miyamoto". Amazon.com interview. Retrieved on April 18, 2008.
  96. ↑ "Zelda, The Wild Turkey Of Battery Park, Survived The Storm". gothamist.com. Retrieved June 5, 2013. 
  97. ↑ Quoted in Tavernier-Courbin 1979, p. 23
  98. ↑ 98.0 98.1 Davis 1995, p. 327
  99. ↑ Tavernier-Courbin 1979, p. 23
  100. ↑ Tavernier-Courbin 1979, p. 22
  101. ↑ Wood 1992, p. 247
  102. ↑ Kakutani 1991
  103. ↑ Bryer, Jackson R. "The critical reputation of F. Scott Fitzgerald." In Prigozy 2002, pp. 227–233.
  104. ↑ Cline 2003, p. 6
  105. ↑ 105.0 105.1 Adair 2005

References

  • Adair, Everl (Spring 2005), "The Art of Zelda Fitzgerald", Alabama Heritage (University of Alabama), retrieved 2008-05-26 
  • Bruccoli, Matthew Joseph (2002), Some Sort of Epic Grandeur: The Life of F. Scott Fitzgerald (2nd rev. ed.), Columbia, SC: University of South Carolina Press, ISBN 1-57003-455-9 
  • Bryer, Jackson R.; Barks, Cathy W. (eds.) (2002), Dear Scott, Dearest Zelda: The Love Letters of F. Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald, New York: St. Martin's Press, ISBN 0-312-26875-0 
  • Cline, Sally (2003), Zelda Fitzgerald: Her Voice in Paradise, New York: Arcade Publishing, ISBN 1-55970-688-0 
  • Curnutt, Kirk (ed.) (2004), A Historical Guide to F. Scott Fitzgerald, Oxford: Oxford University Press, ISBN 0-19-515302-2 
  • Davis, Simone Weil (1995), "The Burden of Reflecting': Effort and desire in Zelda Fitzgerald's Save Me the Waltz", Modern Language Quarterly 56 (3): 327–362, doi:10.1215/00267929-56-3-327 
  • Kakutani, Michiko (August 20, 1991), "Books of The Times; That Other Fitzgerald Could Turn a Word, Too", The New York Times, retrieved 2008-05-26 
  • Ludwig, Arnold M. (1995), The Price of Greatness: Resolving the Creativity and Madness Controversy, Guilford Press, ISBN 9780898628395 
  • Milford, Nancy (1970), Zelda: A Biography, New York: Harper & Row 
  • Michaux, Agnes (2006), Zelda, Paris: Flammarion, ISBN 2-08-068777-8 
  • Prigozy, Ruth (ed.) (2002), The Cambridge Companion to F. Scott Fitzgerald, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, ISBN 0-521-62447-9 
  • Tavernier-Courbin, Jacqueline (1979), "Art as Woman's Response and Search: Zelda Fitzgerald's Save Me the Waltz", Southern Literary Journal 11 (2): 22–42 
  • Wood, Mary E. (1992), "A Wizard Cultivator: Zelda Fitzgerald's Save Me the Waltz as Asylum Autobiography", Tulsa Studies in Women's Literature (University of Tulsa) 11 (2): 247–264, doi:10.2307/464300, JSTOR 464300 
  • Wilson, Edmund. 1952. Literary Essays and Reviews of the 1920s & 30s: The Shores of Light / Axel's Castle / Uncollected Reviews. Lewis M. Dabney, ed. (New York: Library of America, 2007) ISBN 978-1-59853-013-1

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