“THE BEAUTIFUL AND THE DAMNED”—THE INFLUENCE OF ZELDA FITZGERALD ON F. SCOTT FITZGERALD’S LIFE AND LITERARY OUTPUT (original) (raw)

**“THE BEAUTIFUL AND THE DAMNED”—THE INFLUENCE OF ZELDA FITZGERALD ON F. SCOTT FITZGERALD’S LIFE AND LITERARY OUTPUT**

**Joanna Stolarek**

**Siedlce University of Natural Sciences and Humanities**

“So we beat on, boasts against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past” (Fitzgerald *The Great Gatsby* 115)

**Astract:** The aim of this essay is to present the role of Zelda Fitzgerald in F. Scott Fitzgerald’s literary output. The author depicts the influence of Fitzgerald’s wife on the writer’s literary creativity as well as on his presentation of the social and cultural ambience of the 1920s and 1930s. She also shows Fitzgerald’s portrayal of Zelda in his most outstanding novels (*Great Gatsby*, *Tender Is the Night*), his devotion to her both in the times of prosperity as well as in the period of crisis, particularly during the time of her confinement in a psychiatric hospital. The essay analyses how and to what extent F. Scott Fitzgerald’s life and career were shaped by Zelda and to what degree she epitomized his own American Dream.

**Key words**: American Dream, Zelda Fitzgerald, F. Scott Fitzgerald, success, insanity

**Introduction**

Well-known couples, from the field of politics, culture and art have always attracted the attention of the media, press and critics. As far as literature and art go, critics and biographers endeavour to explore male-female relations referring to the couples’ life and scrutinizing their mutual artistic interdependence as well as personal tensions**. There is no denying that** literature, art and film generate the readers’ and viewers’ interest in finding parallels between the works of poets, playwrights and novelists and their private lives, particularly when it comes to literary marriages and artistic tandems. The lives of literary couples capture a particular attention of the public when they are linked to gossips and scandals, and when relations between the spouses are complex and tense, which is frequently reflected and presented in their literary output.

**The Fitzgeralds’ Biographers and Critics**

Taking into consideration the twentieth century American literature various critics, biographers and literary scholars express a wide, undiminishing interest in Zelda and F. Scott Fitzgerald. The life of this couple and their artistic legacy were marked, on the one hand, by mutual fascination, frequently mad attraction; on the other hand, by emotional disharmony, infidelity, vying for literary reputation and dominance, **as well as** accusations of plagiarism. Biographers and critics, such as Nancy Milford, Sally Cline, Kyra Stromberg or Kendall Taylor derive inspiration from analysing the dual nature of their marriage, great complexity of their relations, especially the connection between their life and art.

The fairy-tale story that both Zelda and Francis Scott imagined took an ominous gothic form since the most legendary American couple of the 1920s faced the harsh realities of alcoholism, mental illness, infidelity and literary rivalry. The Fitzgeralds’ biographers, critics, reviewers and friends usually depicted one of the partners in a more favourable light than the other. In this regard some critics adopted Hemingway’s view that Zelda was insane and deranged, a madwoman who undermined her husband’s sexual and artistic self-confidence, drained him emotionally and economically. Others, however, perceive Scott as a monster, Zelda’s mental oppressor and torturer, who drove her mad, having destroyed her chances and opportunities as an independent artist. Notwithstanding these different standpoints, currently critics and biographers strive to reach a compromise and take a more balanced approach. They blame neither partner and stress the impact of their complex, tempestuous relations upon their artistic output, particularly upon Scott’s literary legacy.

**The Fitzgeralds: The Roaring Twenties and The American Dream**

It is worth examining Zelda and Scott’s marriage, their mutual fascination, obsession with each other as well as their fierce artistic rivalry and vying for public recognition in the context of the 1920s, a decade of prosperity for Americans and fame for the Fitzgeralds**. The couple’s** eccentricity, their extravagance, nonchalant behaviour, perilous night escapades, costly journeys and exorbitant entertainment reflected cultural and social madness of the Roaring Twenties, the time of the relentless pursuit of wealth, success and pleasure, quest for fulfilling the American Dream. Nevertheless, one is prepared to concede that it was Scott who remained enchanted by the spirit of the period. He was the one who **endeavoured** to achieve the literary fame at all costs and who wished to be recognized among the most renowned artistic figures of the epoch. Scott’s fascination with the luxuriousness, financial prosperity, social extravagance and cultural madness of the twenties parallels with his enchantment with Zelda, the object of the writer’s literary passion, his “beautiful and damned” muse, the omnipresent and everlasting model for all his female protagonists. Zelda Fitzgerald embodied the archetypal ‘flapper’ girl, immortalized in fiction by Owen Johnson’s 1914 novel *The Salamander* as “passionately adventurous, eager and unafraid, neither sure of what she seeks nor conscious of what forces impel and check her” (McDowell 2002).

In the initial phase of their relationship Zelda perfectly suited to what Francis Scott termed “the Jazz Age,” she would keep her desirous, impatient suitor hanging by a thread, dating other men while promising to marry him only when he could prove that he could afford to keep her. Her fate was sealed shortly after the publication of *This Side of Paradise* in 1920, and the two married. Their honeymoon soon set the pattern of their married life together—a variety of writer friends, lots of alcoholic excesses and fights and brawls at hotels. Married to the nonchalant, daredevil, vamp-like Zelda, who matched each of her spouse’s drunken excesses with her own, Francis Scott turned into media fodder (McDowell 2002). Periods of relative peace and stability, during which Scott worked on his ensuing novel, *The Beautiful and the Damned*, vividly contrasted with phases of intense partying, initiated by Zelda, who found marriage to an already famous writer monotonous, wearisome and isolating.

It comes as no surprise then that infidelity shortly became the integral part of their marriage, similarly to alcohol abuse, and this had a lasting, devastating effect on Zelda’s mental health. More importantly, in an attempt to find a life of her own, apart from one as Fitzgerald’s wife and literary assistant, she took up ballet, painting and writing. Undoubtedly, Zelda’s literary ambitions greatly contributed to the termination of the marriage since Scott was unable to accept literary rivalry with his spouse, however gifted she might appear. Incapable of bearing her husband’s discouragement, Zelda’s sanity began to waver, she experienced a series of mental breakdowns and consequent hospitalisations (depicted by Scott in *Tender Is The Night*), which were to last till the tragic end of her life.

Scottie, Zelda and Francis Scott’s daughter, endeavoured to maintain the distance from her parents, determined not to participate in what she called the ‘tragedy’ of their lives (McDowell 2002). However, in her autobiography she admitted that her mother missed literary and artistic opportunities while being married to Scott. In Scottie’s book Zelda Fitzgerald is depicted not barely as a muse, an artistic model of a well-known writer but, first and foremost, as an individual in her own right who, under a different set of circumstances, might have achieved a huge success and fame. One cannot help but to infer from this account that it may have been Fitzgerald’s good fortune to have married Zelda Sayre, and it was perhaps her misfortune to have married him (McDowell 2002).

**Zelda as an Imprisoned Artist**

While scrutinizing the Fitzgeralds’ relations, in particular the impact of Zelda on her spouse’s literary output, critics such as Jonathon Keats **(2001) condemn Scott as Zelda’s husband** and simultaneously **regard him as** one of the most gifted writers. Scott indubitably derived the inspiration from his wife’s letters, stealing her ideas, plagiarizing her diaries and even arranging her love affair with one of his friends. However critical, insulting and controversial this remark may seem there is no denying that Scott used Zelda’s writing, modelled his characters after her in all books he completed during his life.

Undoubtedly, Zelda was always Scott’s muse, artistic model and her sexuality, temperament, wild spirit and eccentricity made his stories more colourful, absorbing and amusing. On the other hand, Scott strived to prevent his spouse from writing and publishing her own novel *Save Me the Waltz* which she hoped to be a bestseller. Keats underlines the fact that Fitzgerald’s claim to his wife’s life as material for his literature had already been challenged several years earlier, when the editor George Jean Nathan offered to publish her diaries, which stimulated Zelda’s interest in making her own literary career. Nevertheless, her husband insisted he needed them as “inspiration” for future novels, in order to finance their extravagant, lavish lifestyle (Keats 2001). This shows Scott’s highly patronizing, all the more condescending attitude towards his wife and mirrors Zelda’s artistic imprisonment and the inability to develop her own literary skills.

Among miscellaneous, frequently contrastive images and portraits of Zelda Fitzgerald examined by contemporary critics and biographers, it is worth exploring those which reflect her artistic potential and the role she exerted upon feminist literary circles. Vanessa Thorpe, in her article “Was ‘Mad’ Zelda Really Just Too Great a Rival for Scott?” challenges the image of Francis Scott’s wife as a wilful, privileged lunatic who hindered her husband’s literary output and hampered his professional career. Referring to the research by the British academic Sally Cline, who has disclosed a story of Zelda’s misdiagnosis, marital oppression and sanctioned medical poisoning, Thorpe argues that though Zelda was depicted as a mad wife, in fact she suffered as much from the ill-treatment as from the illness itself. In addition, she points out that the purpose of her hospitalization was to change her into a compliant wife, mother and submissive role model for her husband’s novelistic female protagonists. Taking into account her artistic potential, the critics maintain that Zelda never suffered from the writer’s block (Thorpe 2002). Here, they mention her unfinished second novel, *Caesar’s Things* and her startling paintings exhibited in America and Europe. Moreover, Thorpe and Cline believe Scott Fitzgerald used his wife’s illness as an excuse for drinking. They maintain that initially Zelda was referred to as “eccentric,” then as “mentally disordered,” and subsequently as “schizophrenic.” Still, they argue that she produced her best work as a writer, dancer and painting artist during her time in and out of hospitals (Thorpe 2002).

**Zelda and Scott Fitzgerald: Artistic Rivalry and Madness as Sources of Inspiration**

In the **article** “Vampire to Victim” and **a book** “Zelda Fitzgerald: her Voice in Paradise,” the critics such as Nina Auerbach, Saly Cline and John Murray reveal a rather unfavourable portrait of Scott Fitzgerald. In their analysis of Scott as Zelda’s husband, they refer to Milford’s biography of the American writer which challenged an apparently gentle, subtle, charming author of *Great Gatsby* and most women’s preferred Modernist. The authors of **the article** and **the book** examine Scott Fitzgerald’s attitude to his wife’s writing, especially his violent reaction towards Zelda’s drafts of her autobiographical novel *Save Me the Waltz* written in hospital. According to the Fitzgeralds’ biographers, Scott accused her of stealing his material and claimed that she depicted him as a powerless silly man. **In the first draft of Zelda’s novel, for example, the useless, unsuccessful husband is named Amory Blaine, which is an explicit reference to the charming protagonist of the same name from Scott’s bestseller *The Side of Paradise*. Moreover, Scott’s Blaine is believed to be clearly based on the author himself. (Auerbach 2003).** The critics emphasize, on the one hand the parallels between *Save Me the Waltz* and Scott’s *Tender Is the Night*, especially in Zelda’s and Scott’s depicting their marriage problems, their disdainful, uncompromising portrayal of each other. On the other hand, one may notice that in *Save Me the Waltz* Zelda’s marriage is rather in the background, whereas the novel centres on the protagonist’s life in ballet school, a female world of dance, rivalry and community (Auerbach 2003).

Contrary to Scott’s stimulation by blurry, obscure images, Zelda focused on corporality, physicality and sensuality, therefore her work is saturated with bodies, smells and tastes. One cannot provide a clear answer to Scott’s hysteria and rage towards his spouse’s book. It is claimed that Fitzgerald went to great lengths to enlist Zelda’s psychiatrists in censoring her novel as well as suppressing her artistic ambitions. It is his connivance with her doctors, his attempting to ‘re-educate’ his spouse and change her from a rising artist into a submissive wife which contributed to the Fitzgeralds’ transformations—insane Zelda went from a vamp to victim, whilst the adorable Scott, who was previously regarded as Zelda’s victim, became her oppressor.

Ernest Hemingway and John dos Passos defended their friend Scott, against accusations of forcing Zelda to undergo treatment in psychiatric hospitals. They pointed out that Scott strived to do his best in order to help his wife, to handle his drinking and sell his stories into the magazines to cover the exorbitant costs of her treatment. The American authors referred to the opinion of doctor Eugen Bleuler, a Swiss psychiatrist who diagnosed anxiety attacks, eczema and lesbian infatuations as evidence of Zelda’s schizophrenia. Nonetheless, doctor Irving Pine, the last psychiatrist to treat her, stated that Zelda was consistently misdiagnosed. He suggested that psychiatrists had failed to take her talents seriously and claimed that doctor Bleuler perceived her as a woman competing publicly with her more renowned husband in an appropriate manner (Thorpe 2002).

Regardless of miscellaneous critics’ opinions about the Fitzgeralds’ tempestuous relations, there is no denying that Zelda was always Scott’s muse. It comes as no surprise that her frank sexuality, the wild abandon, impulsiveness with which she flaunted her body at parties, gave colour to his stories (Keats 2001). The Fitzgeralds’ critics and biographers remark that Zelda’s character and conduct remain as mythical as Scott’s fiction. Her fountain dives and dancing on table-tops, and her outré way of making Scott’s friends help her undress and bathe her were so mesmerizing and astounding that reporters and journalists strived to cover the couple full-time.

However, Francis Scott proved more industrious and assiduous, writing down on pieces of paper for future adaptation any intriguing and entertaining stories his spouse said. One of the vivid illustrations of this process is his recording of Zelda’s words at the birth of their child: “I’m drunk…Isn’t she smart—she has the hiccups, I hope it’s beautiful and a fool—beautiful little fool” (Keats 2001). That language came into view a few years later in *The Great Gatsby* with Daisy describing her new-born child, “I’m glad it’s a girl. And I hope she’ll be a fool – that’s the best thing a girl can be in this world, a beautiful little fool” (Fitzgerald 1993: 13). One can find many other examples of Scott’s using or citing his wife’s words, accounts, diaries and letters in almost all his well-known works. Lots of critics jump to the conclusion that the American writer relied on Zelda so entirely for inspiration that his characters are not in fact his creation (Keats 2001).

**Zelda Fitzgerald as a Contemporary Post-feminist?**

Some feminist critics, among others the afore-mentioned Nina Auerbach and Sally Cline, scrutinize the complexity and ambiguity of Zelda as a model of femininity for contemporary and future generations. In her article “**Vampire to Victim:** Zelda Fitzgerald: Her Voice in Paradise,” Auerbach indicates that Fitzgerald’s wife could now call herself a post-feminist, but in the epoch she lived she made herself a flapper (Auerbach 2003). **The critic asserts that a flapper of the 1920’s, similarly to a contemporary post-feminist, oscillates between defiance and compliance. Yet she refers to the subordination the previous generation escaped as gay, brave, and beautiful rather than self-sacrificial and dull.** One cannot fail to notice that Zelda considered work depressing as well as desirable, yet she never defined herself, she merely “flailed about under the aegis of her brilliant husband” (Auerbach 2003).

Nevertheless, feeling envy for her husband’s fame and celebrity, Zelda considered launching her own career, yet not in the way that calls for hard word, diligence, intellectual pessimism and loneliness, as she described it. Instead, she flung herself into three arts simultaneously—ballet, painting and writing—with such fervour and vivacity that she sunk into the madness and emotional imbalance that consumed the last eighteen years of her life. The majority of that time was spent in mental hospitals and, finally, under the suffocating surveillance of the Alabama family. As Auerbach underlines, smart, stylish, wild, unmoored Zelda had always embodied the figurehead of the lost generation, but after World War II, particularly in late 1960s and early 1970s she represented the symbol of lost women.

**Conclusion**

**All things considered,** Zelda Fitzgerald was undoubtedly the novelty of the decade, or even the century, and one ought to appreciate her originality **and artistic creativity**. According to her biographer**s** and reviewers, had she written *Save Me the Waltz,* she would have earned as much credit as her husband for shaping the roaring twenties. As for Scott, he wrote novels which are saturated with Zelda’s presence, filled with her voice, character and appearance and which reflect the essence of the epoch. **In this respect he played a crucial role in promoting and cultivating the image of his wife, his “beautiful and damned” muse (McDowell 2002). Bearing this fact in mind, we as readers, despite condemning the novelist for being a patronizing and manipulative husband, ought to admire him as a writer who was able to transform the real Zelda’s life, into something that transcends time and art. (Keats 2001). Thus, Scott Fitzgerald’s books, each of which paying homage to his wife, are to be read, interpreted and enjoyed by the future generations.**

**References**

**Auerbach, Nina. 2003. “Vampire to Victim. *Zelda Fitzgerald: Her Voice in Paradise* by Sally Cline.”** *London review of Books* Vol. 25 No. 12, June 19, 2003. Accessed September 7, 2013. ://arlino-correia.com/121202.html.

Fitzgerald, F. Scott. 1993. *The Great Gatsby.* Hertfordshire: Wordsworth Classics.

Keats, Jonathon. 2001. “For the Love of Literature.” *Salon* August 25, 2001. Accessed September 4, 2013. ww.salon.com/2001/08/25/fitzgerald_9/

McDowell, Lesley. 2002. “Beautiful but Damned. Sometimes Madness Is Wisdom: Zelda and Scott Fitzgerald, a Marriage by Kendell Taylor.” *Sunday Herald* August 25, 2002. Accessed September 7, 2013. http://www.arlindo-correia.com/121202.html.

Showalter, Elaine. 2002. “Zelda Fitzgerald (1900-1948).” *The Guardian* October 5, 2002. Accessed September 5, 2013.http://www.arlindo-correia.com/121202.html.

Stromberg, Kyra. Kalinowska-Styczeń Elżbieta (translated). 1998. *Zelda i Francis Scott Fitzgerald*. Kraków: Wydawnictwo Literackie.

Thorpe, Vanessa. 2002. “Was ‘Mad’ Zelda Really Just Too Great a Rival for Scott?” *The Observer* September 22, 2002. Accessed September 7, 2013. http://www.arlindo-correia.com/121202.html.