Zelda Fitzgerald - More Than a Muse
At the start of 2021, the copyright of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s masterpiece The Great Gatsby expired. The work has now entered the public domain, meaning that the right to use the story and adapt it to your liking is now open to the public. Michael Farris Smith wrote his prequel to The Great Gatsby, Nick, six years before the expiration of the copyright[1], but not able to publish it until early this year. Smith would have risked legal consequences if he were to release the book without the permission of the Fitzgerald estate, but the novel, and Fitzgerald himself, are not unfamiliar with rumours of theft and plagiarism.
The Great Gatsby has consistently remained one of my favourite novels since first reading it when I was 15. The richness of the story and the lifestyle the characters live still continues to captivate me, but I was heartbroken when I recently learnt that Fitzgerald himself had plagiarised parts of the novel, and parts of his other novels, from his wife’s diary. Zelda seems to be most remembered for being ‘Fitzgerald’s crazy, untamable wife’, rather than the impressive writer and painter she was in her own right, who was diagnosed with schizophrenia in her later life (although take this with a pinch of salt, it is the 1920s - they still believed women suffered with hysteria, although it is now believed the Zelda might have had bipolar disorder).
Born Zelda Sayre in 1900, the couple met when F. Scott Fitzgerald was stationed in an army camp near her hometown. Although their relationship was briefly interrupted when Scott was called up North, expecting to go and fight in France, the two soon reunited and Zelda agreed to marry Scott once he had found a publisher for his first novel This Side of Paradise. Zelda’s influence as Scott’s muse seems to have gripped him straight away. It has been noted that Scott rewrote the character of Rosalind to further resemble Zelda[2], ‘quoting her verbatim to create dialogue’[3] and has been said to have stolen the soliloquy that Amory Blaine makes at the end of the novel directly from her diary.
The two were married in 1920 and in 1922, Scott published his second novel, The Beautiful and Damned. The characters are said to be inspired by the marriage of Scott and Zelda, and again, steals lines from Zelda’s diary. Zelda wrote a cheeky rebuttal in her review of his novel for the New York Tribune:
‘It seems to me that on one page I recognised 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.’[4]
Scott further showed Zelda’s diary to his editor, George Jean Nathan, who showed an interest in publishing it, but Scott out of jealousy, refused to let that happen.
The couple had a tumultuous marriage, filled with alcoholism and infidelity. In the early years of their marriage they were kicked out of the Biltmore and Commodore Hotel for their drunkenness, and they got into a large amount of debt which Scott tried to pay off by writing short stories. However, their vibrant social life inspired Scott’s writing. Friend of the Fitzgerald’s and writer Lawton Campbell said of Scott:
‘He would hang on her words and applaud her actions, often repeating them for future reference, often writing them down as they came from the fountainhead. Zelda called the tunes, and Scott joyfully paid the piper. Sometimes he had to force her to leave him alone for a while, so he could concentrate on the material she had given him and catch up before the next onslaught started’[5].
In 1924, the Fitzgerald family moved to Paris where Scott worked on The Great Gatsby. Originally intended to be titled Trimalchio, but was renamed with a bit of persuasion on Zelda’s part. Daisy’s famous line in the novel “I hope she’ll be a fool—that’s the best thing a girl can be in this world, a beautiful little fool,” is said to be Zelda’s words after the birth of her daughter, and the character of Daisy and Gatsby are again, largely based on their own relationship.
During their time in Paris, Zelda started a relationship with a French man named Edouard S. Jozan. After six weeks of their affair, Zelda asked Scott for a divorce, who then locked her in the house until she took back her request. Without any money of her own, she was unable to leave him. Jozan heartbreakingly never knew that she had asked for a divorce, and soon left town, never seeing her again.
As the 20s progressed, Scott fell deeper into alcoholism and Zelda fell into an obsession with ballet, to the point of developing ‘anorexia and obsessive behaviour’[6] and was committed to an asylum. During these years, Zelda was diagnosed with schizophrenia, and spent many years going back and forth from the asylum to her parents’ home. In 1932, whilst in an asylum, Zelda wrote her novel Save Me the Waltz. Scott was furious when he read her book, as she had written about aspects of their life and marriage that he wanted to use for his own novel, Tender is the Night, and forced her to remove the material that he wanted to use. The novel was unfortunately, not well received. Scott called her ‘a third-rate writer’ and ironically accused her of being plagiaristic [7].
Zelda unfortunately spent the rest of her short life in and out of asylums. She took up painting while Scott went on to have a number of affairs. The reckless couple were destined for a tragic ending. Scott succumbed to his struggle with alcoholism and died of a heart attack at age 44, but Zelda was to have a much more gruesome fate when in 1948 a fire broke out in the hospital she was staying in. Zelda had been in a locked room where she was awaiting electroshock therapy, and was cruelly killed by the flames at age 47.
As Heather Laine Talley put it in her Huffington Post article ‘Zelda Wasn’t Crazy’:
‘There is no F. Scott without Zelda. The historical record is clear. Scott’s stories relied on Zelda’s own writing, but Scott’s role in Zelda’s “crazy” is conspicuously absent from public memory. The “crazy” Zelda that has emerged in our popular imagination is as much Scott’s making as The Great Gatsby itself. This is, in and of itself, part of the F. Scott legacy. His work depended on Zelda’s silence.’
None of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s novels would exist, at least in the way they currently do, without Zelda. There is no F. Scott without Zelda. So why isn’t her name on the cover of his books too? We know her contribution to these works, and it’s about time we recognised her for it. Let's stop calling women crazy when we are intimidated by their talent, when they lash out at the heavy weight of the abuse they have been put through. Let’s remember Zelda Fitzgerald, as so much more than a muse.
References
[1] https://time.com/5923279/great-gatsby-copyright-expires/
[2] https://lithub.com/notorious-literary-muses-from-best-to-worst/
[3] https://www.huffpost.com/entry/zelda-wasnt-crazy_b_3268211
[4] Pg xxviii, Dear Scott, Dearest Zelda: The Love Letters of F. Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald
[5] http://fitzgerald.narod.ru/bio/campbell-myfriends.html
[6] https://www.theguardian.com/books/2002/oct/05/biography.fscottfitzgerald
[7] Zelda Fitzgerald: Her Voice in Paradise, Sally Cline, Pg 325
Written by Sasha Smith
Sasha is a 22 year old writer from South Wales who likes buying books that she'll never get around to reading and is known for wearing the orange velvet scarf she stole from her mum. You can catch up with her poetry at @sashayawaypoetry on instagram.
