Zelda Fitzgerald
Zelda Sayre Fitzgerald (July 24, 1900 – March 10, 1948), born Zelda Sayre in Montgomery, Alabama, was a novelist and the wife of writer F. Scott Fitzgerald, whom she married in 1920. Her husband dubbed her "the first American Flapper"1 She published an autobiographical novel, Save Me the Waltz, in 1932.
In June 1930 she suffered her first mental breakdown; soon afterwards, she was diagnosed with schizophrenia and was required to live from then on in a mental hospital. She died at the age of 47 in a fire at the Highland Mental Hospital in Asheville, North Carolina. Eight other patients were also killed.
Biography
Family and early life
Born in 1900, Zelda was the youngest of six children. Her mother, Minerva Sayre (née Machen), known as Minnie (November 23, 1860 – January 13, 1958[1]) named her after a Gypsy queen in a novel. She was spoiled and doted upon by her mother, but her father, Anthony Dickinson Sayre (April 29, 1858 – November 17, 1931[2]), a justice of the Supreme Court of Alabama and one of Alabama's leading jurists, was a stern and remote man. Her ancestors had been earlier settlers of Long Island, who had moved to Alabama before the Civil War. By the time of Zelda's birth, her family was 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.[3]
As a child she was extremely active; she danced, took ballet lessons and enjoyed the outdoors. In 1914 Zelda began attending Sidney Lanier High School. She was bright but uninterested in her studies. Her ballet lessons continued into high school. During these years, she began an active social life. She earned a reputation as a "speed." She drank, smoked and spent time alone with boys. In a newspaper article about one of her dance performances, she is quoted as saying that she only cared about "boys and swimming."[4] Her father's reputation was the only thing that saved her from social ruin.[5]
As a southern woman growing up around the turn of the century, Zelda's antics were shocking to society. Southern women were expected to be delicate, docile and accommodating. Zelda commented on her struggle to be who she needed to be while living under stifling social pressures.
- "It's very difficult to be two people at once, one who wants to have a law unto itself and the other who want to keep all the nice old things and be loved and safe and protected."[6]
F. Scott Fitzgerald
Zelda met Scott Fitzgerald in July 1918 while he was stationed at an army post near Montgomery, just a month after her graduation. They met at a Montgomery country club where she performed the "Dance of the Hours." They began a courtship that was interrupted in October of 1918 when Scott received orders from the military to go to New York. He expected to be sent to France, but was instead assigned to Camp Mills, Long Island. While there the Armistice with Germany was signed. Fitzgerald returned to Montgomery and was officially discharged on February 14, 1919.[7]
The two wrote to each other frequently and in March of 1919 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 habits, and her Episcopalian family did not like that he was a Catholic.[8]
They married on April 3, 1920.[9]
Marriage
Once they married, Zelda was expected to be the witty and charming wife of an up-and-coming writer.[10] After Scott published This Side of Paradise, the two were the focus of media attention as much for their drunken antics as Scott's talent.
Jealousy plagued their marriage. Zelda was jealous of Scott's literary success. Scott felt alienated by all of the male attention she received. Their excessive drinking often caused fights to get out of hand. There is some evidence that Scott became physically violent toward Zelda during drunken arguments. [10]
But the endless round of parties and the massive quantities of alcohol they consumed began to take a toll on the couple's health and relationship; they squandered virtually all the money Scott made from his writing, spending as much as US$30,000 per year—a colossal figure for the time. By the mid-Twenties Scott had become a notoriously heavy drinker (he even had his own private bootlegger), and when not writing he would typically binge drink until he passed out and was sent home in a taxi.
Zelda never became particularly domestic. 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."[11]
The birth of their only child, Frances "Scottie" Fitzgerald on October 26, 1921 did little to slow the pace of their lives, and although Zelda was fond of the child and wrote to her frequently, Scottie was almost entirely brought up by nannies and was often apart from her parents.
In 1922, Scott published his second novel, The Beautiful and Damned. Zelda wrote of the publication in the New York Tribune, though she makes joking reference to the use of her diaries in Scott's work, the lifted material was a genuine source of resentment for Zelda:
"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 shorly 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." [12]
Expatriation
In 1924, during one of the first of their several trips to France, Zelda had a brief affair (or at least became infatuated) with a dashing young French pilot, Edouard Jozan. This prompted her husband to lock her in their house to keep her from seeing him again; later, they would embellish the story by claiming that Jozan had committed suicide. It is possible that Zelda's long descent into schizophrenia began during this period. She wrote a number of short stories beginning in 1925, but many of these were published under Scott's name, another possible factor of her growing discontent; three other stories, written just before her first breakdown, were later lost.
While living in Paris, Scott Fitzgerald—by then an international literary star—met rising American author Ernest Hemingway, whose career he did much to promote. Hemingway and Fitzgerald became firm friends (although they later became estranged), but as biographer Nancy Milford reports, Zelda disliked Hemingway from the start, openly describing him as "bogus" and "as phoney as a rubber check", and considered Hemingway's domineering macho persona to be merely a posture. One of the most serious rifts between Zelda and Scott took place because Zelda became convinced (albeit with no credible evidence) that Hemingway was "a fairy" and that he and Scott were having a homosexual affair. For the most part, Zelda's dislike for Hemingway was perhaps due to jealousy -- she once threw herself down a flight of marble stairs at a party because Scott, engrossed in talking to Isadora Duncan, 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. Scott conversely became increasingly determined to keep Zelda at home, presumably because he feared that she might begin another affair. Zelda evidently 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.
While in Paris, at age 27, Zelda 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.
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. Her eventual breakdown included elements of obsessive-compulsive disorder. In 1930, she was admitted to a sanatorium in France where, after months of observation and treatment and a consultation with one of Europe's leading psychiatrists, she was officially diagnosed as having schizophrenia. Her last psychiatrist, Dr. Irving Pine, believed (too late) that she may have actually had severe untreated bipolar disorder. He speculated after her death that the cause of her breakdowns may have been as much from her husband's mental bullying and her treatment for her disorder as the disorder itself.
Remaining years
Zelda Fitzgerald spent the remaining 18 years of her life in various stages of mental distress. However, in her few periods of lucidity, she composed some of her best work, including her only novel, Save Me the Waltz, and numerous abstract paintings. She died in 1948, with her few remaining unpublished bits of work, her last letters to Scott before he died, the last remnants of her life. At the time of her death, she was writing a second novel, Caesar's Things, when a fire consumed the sanitarium where she lived in Asheville, North Carolina.[13]
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."[14]
Scott had been originally buried in the Rockville Union Cemetery, away from his family plot and Zelda with him. In 1975, 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".
Footnotes
- ^ Cline 2003, p. 23
- ^ Cline 2003, p. 23
- ^ Milford 1970, p. 1–7
- ^ Milford 1970, p. 16
- ^ Milford 1970, p. 9–13
- ^ Milford 1970.
- ^ Milford 1970, p. 35–36
- ^ Milford 1970, p. 35–36
- ^ Milford 1970, p. 62
- ^ a b Cline, Sally. Zelda Fitzgerald: Her Voice on Paradise. London. John Murray, 2002
- ^ Lanahan, Dorothy. "Introduction". In Bryer 2002, p. xxvii
- ^ Lanahan. In Bryer 2002, p. xxvii-viii
- ^ "Highland Hospital". nps.gov. National Register of Historic Places. Retrieved 2008-02-14.
- ^ Lanahan. In Bryer 2002, p. xxix
References
- Bryer, Jackson R. (2002), Dear Scott, Dearest Zelda: The Love Letters of F. Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald, New York: St. Martin's Press, ISBN 0312268750
{{citation}}: Unknown parameter|coauthor=ignored (|author=suggested) (help) - Cline, Sally. (2003), Zelda Fitzgerald: Her Voice in Paradise, New York: Arcade Publishing, ISBN 1559706880
- Meyers, Jeffrey. (1994), Scott Fitzgerald: A Biography, New York: HarperCollins, ISBN 0060190361
- Milford, Nancy. (1970), Zelda: A Biography, New York: Harper & Row