Zelda Fitzgerald
Encyclopedia
Montgomery, Alabama
Montgomery is the capital of the U.S. state of Alabama, and is the county seat of Montgomery County. It is located on the Alabama River southeast of the center of the state, in the Gulf Coastal Plain. As of the 2010 census, Montgomery had a population of 205,764 making it the second-largest city...
, was an American novelist and the wife of writer F. Scott Fitzgerald
F. Scott Fitzgerald
Francis Scott Key Fitzgerald was an American author of novels and short stories, whose works are the paradigm writings of the Jazz Age, a term he coined himself. He is widely regarded as one of the greatest American writers of the 20th century. Fitzgerald is considered a member of the "Lost...
. She was an icon of the 1920s—dubbed by her husband "the first American Flapper
Flapper
Flapper in the 1920s was a term applied to a "new breed" of young Western women who wore short skirts, bobbed their hair, listened to jazz, and flaunted their disdain for what was then considered acceptable behavior...
". After the success of his first novel, This Side of Paradise
This Side of Paradise
This Side of Paradise is the debut novel of F. Scott Fitzgerald. Published in 1920, and taking its title from a line of the Rupert Brooke poem Tiare Tahiti, the book examines the lives and morality of post-World War I youth. Its protagonist, Amory Blaine, is an attractive Princeton University...
(1920), the Fitzgeralds became celebrities. The newspapers of New York saw them as embodiments of the Jazz Age
Jazz Age
The Jazz Age was a movement that took place during the 1920s or the Roaring Twenties from which jazz music and dance emerged. The movement came about with the introduction of mainstream radio and the end of the war. This era ended in the 1930s with the beginning of The Great Depression but has...
and the Roaring Twenties
Roaring Twenties
The Roaring Twenties is a phrase used to describe the 1920s, principally in North America, but also in London, Berlin and Paris for a period of sustained economic prosperity. The phrase was meant to emphasize the period's social, artistic, and cultural dynamism...
: young, seemingly wealthy, beautiful, and energetic.
Even as a child her audacious behavior was the subject of Montgomery gossip. Shortly after finishing high school, she met F. Scott Fitzgerald at a dance. A whirlwind courtship ensued. Though he had professed his infatuation, she continued seeing other men. Despite fights and a prolonged break-up, they married in 1920, and spent the early part of the decade as literary celebrities in New York. Later in the 1920s, they moved to Europe, recast as famous expatriates of the Lost Generation
Lost Generation
The "Lost Generation" is a term used to refer to the generation, actually a cohort, that came of age during World War I. The term was popularized by Ernest Hemingway who used it as one of two contrasting epigraphs for his novel, The Sun Also Rises. In that volume Hemingway credits the phrase to...
. While Scott received acclaim for The Great Gatsby
The Great Gatsby
The Great Gatsby is a novel by the American author F. Scott Fitzgerald. First published in1925, it is set on Long Island's North Shore and in New York City from spring to autumn of 1922....
and his short stories, and the couple socialized with literary luminaries like Ernest Hemingway
Ernest Hemingway
Ernest Miller Hemingway was an American author and journalist. His economic and understated style had a strong influence on 20th-century fiction, while his life of adventure and his public image influenced later generations. Hemingway produced most of his work between the mid-1920s and the...
, 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
Alcoholism
Alcoholism is a broad term for problems with alcohol, and is generally used to mean compulsive and uncontrolled consumption of alcoholic beverages, usually to the detriment of the drinker's health, personal relationships, and social standing...
, and her growing instability presaged Zelda's admittance to the Sheppard Pratt sanatorium
Sanatorium
A sanatorium is a medical facility for long-term illness, most typically associated with treatment of tuberculosis before antibiotics...
in 1930. She was diagnosed with schizophrenia
Schizophrenia
Schizophrenia is a mental disorder characterized by a disintegration of thought processes and of emotional responsiveness. It most commonly manifests itself as auditory hallucinations, paranoid or bizarre delusions, or disorganized speech and thinking, and it is accompanied by significant social...
. While in the Towson
Towson
-Places:In the United States:*Towson, Maryland, an unincorporated community in Maryland**Towson Center, an arena in Towson, Maryland**Towson Town Center, a shopping mall in Towson, Maryland*Fort Towson, Oklahoma, a community in Oklahoma...
, Maryland
Maryland
Maryland is a U.S. state located in the Mid Atlantic region of the United States, bordering Virginia, West Virginia, and the District of Columbia to its south and west; Pennsylvania to its north; and Delaware to its east...
, clinic, she wrote a semi-autobiographical novel, Save Me the Waltz
Save Me the Waltz
Save Me the Waltz is the only novel by Zelda Sayre Fitzgerald. Published in 1932, it is a semi-autobiographical account of her life and marriage to F. Scott Fitzgerald.-Background:...
, 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
Tender is the Night
Tender Is the Night is a novel by American writer F. Scott Fitzgerald. It was his fourth and final completed novel, and was first published in Scribner's Magazine between January-April, 1934 in four issues...
, 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
Screenwriting
Screenwriting is the art and craft of writing scripts for mass media such as feature films, television productions or video games. It is a freelance profession....
and began a relationship with the movie columnist Sheilah Graham. In 1936, Zelda entered the Highland Mental Hospital in Asheville, North Carolina
Asheville, North Carolina
Asheville is a city in and the county seat of Buncombe County, North Carolina, United States. It is the largest city in Western North Carolina, and the 11th largest city in North Carolina. The City is home to the United States National Climatic Data Center , which is the world's largest active...
. 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, the hospital at which she was a patient caught fire, causing her death. 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.
Family and early life
Montgomery, Alabama
Montgomery is the capital of the U.S. state of Alabama, and is the county seat of Montgomery County. It is located on the Alabama River southeast of the center of the state, in the Gulf Coastal Plain. As of the 2010 census, Montgomery had a population of 205,764 making it the second-largest city...
, 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. A spoiled child, Zelda was doted upon by her mother, but her father, Anthony Dickinson Sayre (1858–1930))—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
Long Island
Long Island is an island located in the southeast part of the U.S. state of New York, just east of Manhattan. Stretching northeast into the Atlantic Ocean, Long Island contains four counties, two of which are boroughs of New York City , and two of which are mainly suburban...
, who had moved to Alabama before the Civil War
American Civil War
The American Civil War was a civil war fought in the United States of America. In response to the election of Abraham Lincoln as President of the United States, 11 southern slave states declared their secession from the United States and formed the Confederate States of America ; the other 25...
. By the time of Zelda's birth, the Sayres were a prominent southern family. Her great-uncle, John Tyler Morgan
John Tyler Morgan
John Tyler Morgan was a general in the Confederate States Army during the American Civil War, and a six-term U.S. senator from the state of Alabama after the war. He was a strong supporter of states rights and racial segregation through the Reconstruction era. He was an expansionist, arguing for...
, served six terms in the United States Senate
United States Senate
The United States Senate is the upper house of the bicameral legislature of the United States, and together with the United States House of Representatives comprises the United States Congress. The composition and powers of the Senate are established in Article One of the U.S. Constitution. Each...
; her paternal grandfather edited a newspaper in Montgomery; and her maternal grandfather was Willis Benson Machen
Willis Benson Machen
Willis Benson Machen was a Democratic U.S. Senator from Kentucky.-Early life:Willis B. Machen was born the son of Henry and Nancy Machen on April 10, 1810 in Caldwell County, Kentucky . He attended the common schools of the area and became a farmer...
, who served a partial term as a U.S. senator from Kentucky
Kentucky
The Commonwealth of Kentucky is a state located in the East Central United States of America. As classified by the United States Census Bureau, Kentucky is a Southern state, more specifically in the East South Central region. Kentucky is one of four U.S. states constituted as a commonwealth...
. Her siblings were Anthony Dickinson Sayre, Jr. (1894–1933), Marjorie Sayre (Mrs. Minor Williamson Brinson) (1886–1960), Rosalind Sayre (Mrs. Newman Smith) (1889-?) 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
Lanier High School (Montgomery, Alabama)
Sidney Lanier High School is a public high school located in Montgomery, Alabama, United States.-History:Established originally in 1910 on the southern outskirts of downtown Montgomery, Alabama, this school was named for a well-known Southern poet, Sidney Lanier, who resided in Montgomery during...
. She was bright but uninterested in her lessons. Her work in ballet continued into high school, where she had an active social life. She drank, smoked and spent time alone with boys. A newspaper article about one of her dance performances quoted her as saying that she cared only about "boys and swimming". She developed an appetite for attention, actively seeking to flout convention—whether by learning the African-American dance known as the Charleston
Charleston (dance)
The Charleston is a dance named for the harbor city of Charleston, South Carolina. The rhythm was popularized in mainstream dance music in the United States by a 1923 tune called "The Charleston" by composer/pianist James P. Johnson which originated in the Broadway show Runnin' Wild and became one...
, or by wearing a tight, flesh-colored bathing suit to fuel rumors that she swam nude. Her father's reputation was a safety net, preventing her social ruin. 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
Tallulah Bankhead
Tallulah Brockman Bankhead was an award-winning American actress of the stage and screen, talk-show host, and bonne vivante...
—a mainstay of Montgomery gossip. 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.
F. Scott Fitzgerald
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
Nancy Milford
Nancy Milford is an American biographer.Milford is best known for her book Zelda about F. Scott Fitzgerald's wife Zelda Fitzgerald. The book started out as her master's thesis and was published to broad acclaim in 1970...
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".
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
Camp Mills
Camp Mills was a military installation on Long Island, New York. It was located about ten miles from the eastern boundary of New York City on the Hempstead Plains near Garden City....
, Long Island. While he was there, the Armistice with Germany
Armistice with Germany (Compiègne)
The armistice between the Allies and Germany was an agreement that ended the fighting in the First World War. It was signed in a railway carriage in Compiègne Forest on 11 November 1918 and marked a victory for the Allies and a complete defeat for Germany, although not technically a surrender...
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". On February 14, 1919, he was discharged from the military and left to establish himself in New York City
New York City
New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...
.
They wrote frequently and by March 1920 Scott sent Zelda his mother's ring and the two became engaged. Many of Zelda's friends and members of her family were wary of the relationship. They did not approve of Scott's excessive drinking, and her Episcopalian family did not like that he was a Catholic
Catholic
The word catholic comes from the Greek phrase , meaning "on the whole," "according to the whole" or "in general", and is a combination of the Greek words meaning "about" and meaning "whole"...
.
Marriage
By September, Scott had completed his first novel, This Side of ParadiseThis Side of Paradise
This Side of Paradise is the debut novel of F. Scott Fitzgerald. Published in 1920, and taking its title from a line of the Rupert Brooke poem Tiare Tahiti, the book examines the lives and morality of post-World War I youth. Its protagonist, Amory Blaine, is an attractive Princeton University...
, and the manuscript was quickly accepted for publication. When he heard the novel had been accepted, Scott wrote to publisher Maxwell Perkins
Maxwell Perkins
William Maxwell Evarts Perkins , was the editor for Ernest Hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald and Thomas Wolfe. He has been described as the most famous literary editor.-Career:...
, urging an accelerated release: "I have so many things dependent on its success—including of course a girl". In November, he returned to Montgomery, triumphant with the news of his novel. Zelda agreed to marry him once the book was published; he, in turn, promised to bring her to New York with "all the iridescence of the beginning of the world". 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
St. Patrick's Cathedral, New York
The Cathedral of St. Patrick is a decorated Neo-Gothic-style Roman Catholic cathedral church in the United States...
, they married.
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
New York Biltmore Hotel
The New York Biltmore Hotel was a luxury hotel in New York City. It was one of three palatial hotels built as part of the Terminal City development...
and the Commodore Hotel for their drunkenness. Zelda once jumped into the fountain at Union Square
Union Square (New York City)
Union Square is a public square in the Manhattan borough of New York City, New York.It is an important and historic intersection, located where Broadway and the former Bowery Road – now Fourth Avenue – came together in the early 19th century; its name celebrates neither the...
. Another example of their behavior is when Dorothy Parker
Dorothy Parker
Dorothy Parker was an American poet, short story writer, critic and satirist, best known for her wit, wisecracks, and eye for 20th century urban foibles....
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". 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. To their delight, in the pages of the New York newspapers Zelda and Scott had become icons of youth and success—enfants terribles
L'enfant terrible
L'enfant terrible is a French term for a child who is terrifyingly candid by saying embarrassing things to adults, especially parents....
of the Jazz Age.
On Valentine's Day of 1921, while Scott was working to finish his second novel, The Beautiful and Damned
The Beautiful and Damned
The Beautiful and Damned, first published by Scribner's in 1922, is F. Scott Fitzgerald's second novel. The novel provides a portrait of the Eastern elite during the Jazz Age, exploring New York Café Society. As with his other novels, Fitzgerald's characters are complex, especially in their...
, Zelda discovered she was pregnant. They decided to go to Scott's home in St. Paul, Minnesota to have the baby. On October 26, 1921, she gave birth to Frances "Scottie" Fitzgerald
Frances Scott Fitzgerald
Frances Scott "Scottie" Fitzgerald was the only child of novelist F. Scott Fitzgerald and Zelda Sayre Fitzgerald. She was a writer, a journalist , and a prominent member of the United States Democratic Party."Scottie" was born in Saint Paul, Minnesota...
. 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 Great Gatsby
The Great Gatsby is a novel by the American author F. Scott Fitzgerald. First published in1925, it is set on Long Island's North Shore and in New York City from spring to autumn of 1922....
, the character Daisy Buchanan expresses the same hope for her daughter.
Harper & Brothers
Harper is an American publishing house, the flagship imprint of global publisher HarperCollins.-History:James Harper and his brother John, printers by training, started their book publishing business J. & J. Harper in 1817. Their two brothers, Joseph Wesley Harper and Fletcher Harper, joined them...
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".
In early 1922, Fitzgerald again became pregnant. It is presumed she had an abortion. 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 Beautiful and Damned
The Beautiful and Damned, first published by Scribner's in 1922, is F. Scott Fitzgerald's second novel. The novel provides a portrait of the Eastern elite during the Jazz Age, exploring New York Café Society. As with his other novels, Fitzgerald's characters are complex, especially in their...
, 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.
Burton Rascoe
Arthur Burton Rascoe , was an American journalist, editor and literary critic of the New York Herald Tribune....
, the freshly appointed literary editor of the New York Tribune
New York Tribune
The New York Tribune was an American newspaper, first established by Horace Greeley in 1841, which was long considered one of the leading newspapers in the United States...
, 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:
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.
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
Flapper
Flapper in the 1920s was a term applied to a "new breed" of young Western women who wore short skirts, bobbed their hair, listened to jazz, and flaunted their disdain for what was then considered acceptable behavior...
lifestyle, Zelda's biographer Nancy Milford
Nancy Milford
Nancy Milford is an American biographer.Milford is best known for her book Zelda about F. Scott Fitzgerald's wife Zelda Fitzgerald. The book started out as her master's thesis and was published to broad acclaim in 1970...
wrote that the essay was "a defense of her own code of existence". 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.
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. In April 1924, they left for Paris.
Expatriation
After arriving in Paris, they soon relocated to AntibesAntibes
Antibes is a resort town in the Alpes-Maritimes department in southeastern France.It lies on the Mediterranean in the Côte d'Azur, located between Cannes and Nice. The town of Juan-les-Pins is within the commune of Antibes...
on the French Riviera
French Riviera
The Côte d'Azur, pronounced , often known in English as the French Riviera , is the Mediterranean coastline of the southeast corner of France, also including the sovereign state of Monaco...
. While Scott was absorbed writing The Great Gatsby
The Great Gatsby
The Great Gatsby is a novel by the American author F. Scott Fitzgerald. First published in1925, it is set on Long Island's North Shore and in New York City from spring to autumn of 1922....
, Zelda became infatuated with a dashing young French pilot, Edouard Jozan. 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".
Rome
Rome is the capital of Italy and the country's largest and most populated city and comune, with over 2.7 million residents in . The city is located in the central-western portion of the Italian Peninsula, on the Tiber River within the Lazio region of Italy.Rome's history spans two and a half...
and Capri
Capri
Capri is an Italian island in the Tyrrhenian Sea off the Sorrentine Peninsula, on the south side of the Gulf of Naples, in the Campania region of Southern Italy...
, 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. It was also on this trip, while ill with colitis
Colitis
In medicine, colitis refers to an inflammation of the colon and is often used to describe an inflammation of the large intestine .Colitides may be acute and self-limited or chronic, i.e...
, that Zelda began painting.
In April 1925, back in Paris, Scott met Ernest Hemingway
Ernest Hemingway
Ernest Miller Hemingway was an American author and journalist. His economic and understated style had a strong influence on 20th-century fiction, while his life of adventure and his public image influenced later generations. Hemingway produced most of his work between the mid-1920s and the...
, 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", "that fairy with hair on his chest" and "phoney as a rubber check". She considered Hemingway's domineering macho
Machismo
Machismo, or machoism, is a word of Spanish and Portuguese origin that describes prominently exhibited or excessive masculinity. As an attitude, machismo ranges from a personal sense of virility to a more extreme male chauvinism...
persona to be merely a posture; Hemingway in turn, told Scott that Zelda was crazy. 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. It was through Hemingway, however, that the Fitzgeralds were introduced to much of the Lost Generation
Lost Generation
The "Lost Generation" is a term used to refer to the generation, actually a cohort, that came of age during World War I. The term was popularized by Ernest Hemingway who used it as one of two contrasting epigraphs for his novel, The Sun Also Rises. In that volume Hemingway credits the phrase to...
expatriate community: Gertrude Stein
Gertrude Stein
Gertrude Stein was an American writer, poet and art collector who spent most of her life in France.-Early life:...
, Alice B. Toklas
Alice B. Toklas
Alice B. Toklas was an American-born member of the Parisian avant-garde of the early 20th century.-Early life, relationship with Gertrude Stein:...
, Robert McAlmon
Robert McAlmon
Robert Menzies McAlmon was an American author, poet and publisher.-Life:McAlmon was born in Clifton, Kansas, the youngest of ten children of an itinerant Presbyterian minister....
and others.
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. She later threw herself down a flight of marble stairs at a party because Scott, engrossed in talking to Isadora Duncan
Isadora Duncan
Isadora Duncan was a dancer, considered by many to be the creator of modern dance. Born in the United States, she lived in Western Europe and the Soviet Union from the age of 22 until her death at age 50. In the United States she was popular only in New York, and only later in her life...
, was ignoring her.
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.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
Ballet
Ballet is a type of performance dance, that originated in the Italian Renaissance courts of the 15th century, and which was further developed in France and Russia as a concert dance form. The early portions preceded the invention of the proscenium stage and were presented in large chambers with...
, 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.
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) that contributed to her subsequent physical and mental exhaustion. 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. 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.
In April 1930, Zelda was admitted to a sanatorium
Sanatorium
A sanatorium is a medical facility for long-term illness, most typically associated with treatment of tuberculosis before antibiotics...
in France where, after months of observation and treatment and a consultation with one of Europe's leading psychiatrists, she was diagnosed as a schizophrenic
Schizophrenia
Schizophrenia is a mental disorder characterized by a disintegration of thought processes and of emotional responsiveness. It most commonly manifests itself as auditory hallucinations, paranoid or bizarre delusions, or disorganized speech and thinking, and it is accompanied by significant social...
. Initially admitted to a hospital outside Paris, she was later moved to a clinic in Montreux
Montreux
Montreux is a municipality in the district of Riviera-Pays-d'Enhaut in the canton of Vaud in Switzerland.It is located on Lake Geneva at the foot of the Alps and has a population, , of and nearly 90,000 in the agglomeration.- History :...
, Switzerland
Switzerland
Switzerland name of one of the Swiss cantons. ; ; ; or ), in its full name the Swiss Confederation , is a federal republic consisting of 26 cantons, with Bern as the seat of the federal authorities. The country is situated in Western Europe,Or Central Europe depending on the definition....
. The clinic primarily treated gastrointestinal ailments, and as a result of her profound psychological problems, she was moved to a psychiatric facility in Prangins
Prangins
Prangins is a municipality in the district of Nyon in the canton of Vaud in Switzerland. It is located on Lake Geneva.-Geography:Prangins has an area, , of . Of this area, or 54.7% is used for agricultural purposes, while or 13.1% is forested...
on the shores of Lake Geneva
Lake Geneva
Lake Geneva or Lake Léman is a lake in Switzerland and France. It is one of the largest lakes in Western Europe. 59.53 % of it comes under the jurisdiction of Switzerland , and 40.47 % under France...
. 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. Her father died while Scott was gone, and her health again deteriorated. By February 1932, she had returned to living in a psychiatric clinic.
Save Me the Waltz
In 1932, while being treated at the Phipps Clinic at Johns Hopkins HospitalJohns Hopkins Hospital
The Johns Hopkins Hospital is the teaching hospital and biomedical research facility of Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, located in Baltimore, Maryland . It was founded using money from a bequest by philanthropist Johns Hopkins...
in Baltimore
Baltimore
Baltimore is the largest independent city in the United States and the largest city and cultural center of the US state of Maryland. The city is located in central Maryland along the tidal portion of the Patapsco River, an arm of the Chesapeake Bay. Baltimore is sometimes referred to as 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
Maxwell Perkins
William Maxwell Evarts Perkins , was the editor for Ernest Hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald and Thomas Wolfe. He has been described as the most famous literary editor.-Career:...
.
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
Tender is the Night
Tender Is the Night is a novel by American writer F. Scott Fitzgerald. It was his fourth and final completed novel, and was first published in Scribner's Magazine between January-April, 1934 in four issues...
, which he'd been working on for years, and which would finally see publication in 1934.
Scott forced Zelda to revise the novel, removing the parts that drew on shared material he wished to use. Though the Great Depression
Great Depression
The Great Depression was a severe worldwide economic depression in the decade preceding World War II. The timing of the Great Depression varied across nations, but in most countries it started in about 1929 and lasted until the late 1930s or early 1940s...
had struck America, Scribner
Charles Scribner's Sons
Charles Scribner's Sons, or simply Scribner, is an American publisher based in New York City, known for publishing a number of American authors including Ernest Hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Kurt Vonnegut, Stephen King, Robert A. Heinlein, Thomas Wolfe, George Santayana, John Clellon...
agreed to publish her book, and a printing of 3,010 copies was released on October 7, 1932.
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.
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. 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".
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. The failure of Save Me the Waltz, and Scott's scathing criticism of her having written it—he called her "plagiaristic" and a "third-rate writer"—crushed her spirits. It was the only novel she ever published.
Remaining years
The New Yorker
The New Yorker is an American magazine of reportage, commentary, criticism, essays, fiction, satire, cartoons and poetry published by Condé Nast...
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. She became in turns violent and reclusive. In 1936, Scott placed her in the Highland Hospital in Asheville, North Carolina
Asheville, North Carolina
Asheville is a city in and the county seat of Buncombe County, North Carolina, United States. It is the largest city in Western North Carolina, and the 11th largest city in North Carolina. The City is home to the United States National Climatic Data Center , which is the world's largest active...
, writing ruefully to friends:
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.
Zelda remained in the hospital while Scott returned again to Hollywood for a $1,000 a week job with MGM in June 1937. Without Zelda's knowledge, he began a serious affair with the movie columnist Sheilah Graham
Sheilah Graham Westbrook
Sheilah Graham Westbrook was an English-born American nationally syndicated gossip columnist during Hollywood's "Golden Age," who with Louella Parsons and Hedda Hopper wielded power to make or break careers prompting her to describe herself as "the Last of the unholy trio."Graham was also known...
. 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
Vassar College
Vassar College is a private, coeducational liberal arts college in the town of Poughkeepsie, New York, in the United States. The Vassar campus comprises over and more than 100 buildings, including four National Historic Landmarks, ranging in style from Collegiate Gothic to International,...
, 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".
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. The Fitzgeralds never saw each other again.
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. 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
Rockville, Maryland
Rockville is the county seat of Montgomery County, Maryland, United States. It is a major incorporated city in the central part of Montgomery County and forms part of the Baltimore-Washington Metropolitan Area. The 2010 U.S...
, Maryland
Maryland
Maryland is a U.S. state located in the Mid Atlantic region of the United States, bordering Virginia, West Virginia, and the District of Columbia to its south and west; Pennsylvania to its north; and Delaware to its east...
.
Zelda read the unfinished manuscript of the novel Scott was writing upon his death, The Love of the Last Tycoon
The Love of the Last Tycoon
The Love of The Last Tycoon: A Western is an unfinished novel by F. Scott Fitzgerald, compiled and published posthumously.-Publication history:The novel was unfinished and in rough form at the time of Fitzgerald's death at age 44...
. She wrote to the literary critic Edmund Wilson
Edmund Wilson
Edmund Wilson was an American writer and literary and social critic and noted man of letters.-Early life:Wilson was born in Red Bank, New Jersey. His father, Edmund Wilson, Sr., was a lawyer and served as New Jersey Attorney General. Wilson attended The Hill School, a college preparatory...
, 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".
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
Dumbwaiter
Dumbwaiter may refer to:* Dumbwaiter , a freight elevator or lift between building floors* Lazy Susan, a small rotating table or set of cabinets used for serving food* An auxiliary serving table or cart....
shaft, spreading onto every floor. The fire escapes were wooden, and caught fire as well. Nine women, including Zelda, died.
Scott and Zelda were buried in Rockville, Maryland
Rockville, Maryland
Rockville is the county seat of Montgomery County, Maryland, United States. It is a major incorporated city in the central part of Montgomery County and forms part of the Baltimore-Washington Metropolitan Area. The 2010 U.S...
—originally in the Rockville Union Cemetery
Rockville Union Cemetery
Rockville Cemetery was established in 1738 by the Anglican Prince George's Parish. It is the oldest burying ground in Rockville, Maryland and is located at 1350 Baltimore Road, adjacent to the Rockville Civic Center. Ownership changed in 1880 to the Rockville Cemetery Association...
, 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 SchulbergBudd Schulberg
Budd Schulberg was an American screenwriter, television producer, novelist and sports writer. He was known for his 1941 novel, What Makes Sammy Run?, his 1947 novel The Harder They Fall, his 1954 Academy-award-winning screenplay for On the Waterfront, and his 1957 screenplay for A Face in the...
, 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
Cornell University
Cornell University is an Ivy League university located in Ithaca, New York, United States. It is a private land-grant university, receiving annual funding from the State of New York for certain educational missions...
professor Arthur Mizener wrote The Far Side of Paradise
The Far Side of Paradise
The Far Side of Paradise is a biography of F. Scott Fitzgerald by Arthur Mizener. It was the first biography about Fitzgerald to be published and is credited with renewing public interest in the subject...
, a biography of F. Scott Fitzgerald which rekindled interest in the couple among scholars. Mizener's biography was serialized in The Atlantic Monthly
The Atlantic Monthly
The Atlantic is an American magazine founded in Boston, Massachusetts, in 1857. It was created as a literary and cultural commentary magazine. It quickly achieved a national reputation, which it held for more than a century. It was important for recognizing and publishing new writers and poets,...
, and a story about the work written in Life
Life (magazine)
Life generally refers to three American magazines:*A humor and general interest magazine published from 1883 to 1936. Time founder Henry Luce bought the magazine in 1936 solely so that he could acquire the rights to its name....
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.
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
Beloved Infidel (film)
Beloved Infidel is a 1959 biographical drama film made by 20th Century Fox and based on the life of F. Scott Fitzgerald. The film was directed by Henry King and produced by Jerry Wald from a screenplay by Sy Bartlett, based on the memoir by Sheilah Graham and Gerold Frank. The music score was by...
starring Gregory Peck
Gregory Peck
Eldred Gregory Peck was an American actor.One of 20th Century Fox's most popular film stars from the 1940s to the 1960s, Peck continued to play important roles well into the 1980s. His notable performances include that of Atticus Finch in the 1962 film To Kill a Mockingbird, for which he won an...
as Scott and Deborah Kerr
Deborah Kerr
Deborah Kerr, CBE was a Scottish film and television actress from Glasgow. She won the Sarah Siddons Award for her Chicago performance as Laura Reynolds in Tea and Sympathy, a role which she originated on Broadway, a Golden Globe Award for the motion picture The King and I, and was a three-time...
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
Nancy Milford
Nancy Milford is an American biographer.Milford is best known for her book Zelda about F. Scott Fitzgerald's wife Zelda Fitzgerald. The book started out as her master's thesis and was published to broad acclaim in 1970...
, a graduate student at Columbia University
Columbia University
Columbia University in the City of New York is a private, Ivy League university in Manhattan, New York City. Columbia is the oldest institution of higher learning in the state of New York, the fifth oldest in the United States, and one of the country's nine Colonial Colleges founded before the...
, published Zelda: A Biography, the first book-length treatment of Zelda's life. It was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize
Pulitzer Prize
The Pulitzer Prize is a U.S. award for achievements in newspaper and online journalism, literature and musical composition. It was established by American publisher Joseph Pulitzer and is administered by Columbia University in New York City...
and the National Book Award
National Book Award
The National Book Awards are a set of American literary awards. Started in 1950, the Awards are presented annually to American authors for literature published in the current year. In 1989 the National Book Foundation, a nonprofit organization which now oversees and manages the National Book...
, and figured for weeks on The New York Times
The New York Times
The New York Times is an American daily newspaper founded and continuously published in New York City since 1851. The New York Times has won 106 Pulitzer Prizes, the most of any news organization...
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.
When Tennessee Williams
Tennessee Williams
Thomas Lanier "Tennessee" Williams III was an American writer who worked principally as a playwright in the American theater. He also wrote short stories, novels, poetry, essays, screenplays and a volume of memoirs...
dramatized their lives in 1980's Clothes for a Summer Hotel
Clothes for a Summer Hotel
Clothes for a Summer Hotel is a 1980 play by Tennessee Williams about the relationship between novelist F. Scott Fitzgerald and his wife Zelda. A critical and commercial failure, it was Williams' last play to debut on Broadway during his lifetime...
, 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. Zelda and Scott's legend had penetrated widely into popular culture: in the 1979 Woody Allen
Woody Allen
Woody Allen is an American screenwriter, director, actor, comedian, jazz musician, author, and playwright. Allen's films draw heavily on literature, sexuality, philosophy, psychology, Jewish identity, and the history of cinema...
film Manhattan
Manhattan
Manhattan is the oldest and the most densely populated of the five boroughs of New York City. Located primarily on the island of Manhattan at the mouth of the Hudson River, the boundaries of the borough are identical to those of New York County, an original county of the state of New York...
, 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
Marilyn Monroe
Marilyn Monroe was an American actress, singer, model and showgirl who became a major sex symbol, starring in a number of commercially successful motion pictures during the 1950s....
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". In 1989, the F. Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald museum opened in Montgomery, Alabama. The museum is in a house they briefly rented in 1931–32. The museum is one of the few places where some of Zelda's paintings are kept on display.
A British
United Kingdom
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...
musical
Musical theatre
Musical theatre is a form of theatre combining songs, spoken dialogue, acting, and dance. The emotional content of the piece – humor, pathos, love, anger – as well as the story itself, is communicated through the words, music, movement and technical aspects of the entertainment as an...
, Beautiful and Damned
Beautiful and Damned
Beautiful and Damned is a musical with a book by Kit Hesketh Harvey and music and lyrics by Les Reed and Roger Cook.Drawing its title from F. Scott Fitzgerald's second novel, it focuses on the turbulent relationship he shared with his wife Zelda during the Jazz Age...
, with a book by Kit Hesketh Harvey and music and lyrics by Les Reed
Les Reed
Les Reed O.B.E. is an English songwriter, musician and light orchestra leader.-Career:...
and Roger Cook
Roger Cook (songwriter)
Roger Cook is an English songwriter who has written many hits for other recording artists. He has also had a successful recording career in his own right.-Early life:Cook was born in Fishponds, Bristol, England...
opened in London's West End
West End of London
The West End of London is an area of central London, containing many of the city's major tourist attractions, shops, businesses, government buildings, and entertainment . Use of the term began in the early 19th century to describe fashionable areas to the west of Charing Cross...
in 2004 with Helen Anker
Helen Anker
Helen Anker, born in 1972 in Banbury, Oxfordshire, is an actress and singer who trained at the Royal Ballet School and Bird College. She is best known for playing Zelda Fitzgerald in the West End musical Beautiful and Damned, a role she first played at the Yvonne Arnaud Theatre in Guildford before...
as Zelda.
In 2005, composer Frank Wildhorn
Frank Wildhorn
Frank Wildhorn is an American composer known for both his musicals and popular songs. He is most known for his musical Jekyll & Hyde, which ran four years on Broadway, and for writing the #1 International Hit song "Where Do Broken Hearts Go?" for Whitney Houston.-Early years:Wildhorn was born in...
and lyricist Jack Murphy premiered their musical, Waiting For The Moon
Waiting For The Moon (musical)
Waiting for the Moon: An American Love Story, formerly Zelda or Scott & Zelda: The Other Side Of Paradise, is a musical with music by Frank Wildhorn and lyrics by Jack Murphy. It is the second finished production the two have presented, having previously collaborated on The Civil War...
, in Marlton, New Jersey
Marlton, New Jersey
Marlton is a census-designated place and unincorporated area located within Evesham Township in Burlington County, New Jersey. As of the United States 2000 Census, the population of Marlton was 10,260.-History:...
. The musical starred Lauren Kennedy
Lauren Kennedy
Lauren Kennedy is an actress and a singer who has performed numerous times on Broadway. She most recently starred in the Off-Broadway show Good Ol' Girls at the Black Box Theatre during the 2009-2010 season...
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 towards a potential Broadway mounting.
Zelda's glamorous image also inspired the name of video game creator Shigeru Miyamoto
Shigeru Miyamoto
is a Japanese video game designer and producer. Miyamoto was born and raised in Kyoto Prefecture; the natural surroundings of Kyoto inspired much of Miyamoto's later work....
's character Princess Zelda
Princess Zelda
is the name of a fictional character in The Legend of Zelda series of video games. The name has applied to every female member of Hyrule's royal family, which includes several distinct characters in Hyrule legend. Though she is the eponymous character, the player controls the main protagonist, Link...
in his The Legend of Zelda
The Legend of Zelda
The Legend of Zelda, originally released as in Japan, is a video game developed and published by Nintendo, and designed by Shigeru Miyamoto and Takashi Tezuka. Set in the fantasy land of Hyrule, the plot centers on a boy named Link, the playable protagonist, who aims to collect the eight fragments...
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."
Tom Hiddleston
Tom Hiddleston
Thomas William "Tom" Hiddleston is an English actor. He is perhaps best known for playing Loki in the 2011 Marvel Studios film Thor.-Early life and education:...
and Alison Pill
Alison Pill
Alison Courtney Pill is a Canadian actress best known from her roles in Milk, Scott Pilgrim vs. the World and Midnight in Paris.-Life and career:...
portray Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald in Woody Allen's
Woody Allen
Woody Allen is an American screenwriter, director, actor, comedian, jazz musician, author, and playwright. Allen's films draw heavily on literature, sexuality, philosophy, psychology, Jewish identity, and the history of cinema...
2011 feature film Midnight In Paris
Midnight in Paris
Midnight in Paris is a 2011 romantic comedy-fantasy film written and directed by Woody Allen. The plot centers on a small group of Americans visiting the French capital for business and pleasure...
.
Zelda Road, in Montgomery, Alabama
Montgomery, Alabama
Montgomery is the capital of the U.S. state of Alabama, and is the county seat of Montgomery County. It is located on the Alabama River southeast of the center of the state, in the Gulf Coastal Plain. As of the 2010 census, Montgomery had a population of 205,764 making it the second-largest city...
, is named after Zelda Fitzgerald.
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 BruccoliMatthew Bruccoli
Matthew Joseph Bruccoli was an American professor of English at the University of South Carolina. He was the preeminent expert on F. Scott Fitzgerald...
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." But as Save Me the Waltz was increasingly read alongside Milford's biography, a new perspective emerged. 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."
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 of the marriage in Tender Is the Night; how the commodity culture that emerged in the 1920s placed stress on modern women; and how these attitudes led to a misrepresentation of "mental illness" in women.
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
Michiko Kakutani
is an American Pulitzer Prize-winning critic for The New York Times and is considered by many to be a leading literary critic in the United States.-Life and career:...
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.'"
Scholars continue to examine and debate the role that Scott and Zelda may have had in stifling each other's creativity. 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
Ted Hughes
Edward James Hughes OM , more commonly known as Ted Hughes, was an English poet and children's writer. Critics routinely rank him as one of the best poets of his generation. Hughes was British Poet Laureate from 1984 until his death.Hughes was married to American poet Sylvia Plath, from 1956 until...
and Sylvia Plath
Sylvia Plath
Sylvia Plath was an American poet, novelist and short story writer. Born in Massachusetts, she studied at Smith College and Newnham College, Cambridge before receiving acclaim as a professional poet and writer...
.
Zelda's art work 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—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
Vincent van Gogh
Vincent Willem van Gogh , and used Brabant dialect in his writing; it is therefore likely that he himself pronounced his name with a Brabant accent: , with a voiced V and palatalized G and gh. In France, where much of his work was produced, it is...
and Georgia O'Keeffe
Georgia O'Keeffe
Georgia Totto O'Keeffe was an American artist.Born near Sun Prairie, Wisconsin, O'Keeffe first came to the attention of the New York art community in 1916, several decades before women had gained access to art training in America’s colleges and universities, and before any of its women artists...
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."