Zelda Sayre Fitzgerald

Brief Biography of F. Scott Fitzgerald's Muse

Apr 25, 2007 Meg Nola

The life of the acclaimed writer's troubled partner, and a look at Zelda's own writing attempts, ballet career, and ongoing depression following the American Jazz Age.

Zelda and Scott

The perennially famous pair F. Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald personified the American Jazz Age, a time of frivolity, wild music, bootleg liquor and emphasis on youth and vitality. Initiating the decade with the 1920 publication of his novel This Side of Paradise, twenty-three year old Scott Fitzgerald also resumed his love affair with Zelda Sayre, a free-spirited young woman from Montgomery, Alabama. Born on July 24, 1900, Zelda was a heedless and modern Southern belle with many suitors and little concern for convention. Fitzgerald had met Zelda during World War I, when he was training at Montgomery’s Camp Sheridan. He was immediately and provocatively captivated by the red-haired beauty, and while Zelda found Scott intriguing as well, she did not wish to lead the life of a poor writer’s wife and refused his initial marriage proposal.

Devastated by her rejection, Scott went on a booze binge for several days yet rallied upon return to his family home in St. Paul, Minnesota, where he reworked his first novel The Romantic Egoist, later known as This Side of Paradise. Zelda, whose personality traits can be found in both Rosalind and Eleanor in This Side of Paradise, had officially become Fitzgerald’s muse, a role she would continue to play both willingly and unwillingly throughout his career. This Side of Paradise was an instant sensation and with his newfound fame, Fitzgerald won Zelda over and the couple married soon after.

Success and Wild Times

Such began the celebrated whirlwind of continental travel, cocktails, spending sprees and the eventual disillusion and madness that marked the Fitzgerald union. Initially living in New York then moving to Paris, Italy, and along the Riviera, Scott and Zelda were fêted everywhere they went. Unfortunately, while Scott Fitzgerald’s success continued through subsequent novels such as The Beautiful and the Damned and The Great Gatsby, along with numerous short stories published in the top magazines of the day, almost all the money he earned went to fueling a lavish lifestyle. The Fitzgeralds’ daughter Frances was born in 1921, but the hectic pace continued, as did Scott’s increasing alcoholism. Zelda also drank a great deal and kept up her flapper-ish ways, but the issue which seemed to cause Zelda’s greatest inner torment was perhaps that which had caused the wildness of her youth: unexpressed and unchanneled creativity.

Breakdown and Beyond

After trying her hand at writing yet finding herself overshadowed by her well-known husband, Zelda turned toward ballet, which she had shown marked talent for as a child. While in Paris, Zelda resumed her study of dance. She worked tirelessly to join a European ballet company, but soon realized that she was not young enough to begin a professional career. Frustrated and depressed, Zelda’s schizophrenic tendencies deepened and in 1930 she suffered her first mental breakdown.

In the following years of her life, spent primarily in various mental institutions, Zelda wrote an autobiographical novel entitled Save Me The Waltz, a play called Scandalabra, and also took up painting and drawing. First exhibited in 1934, Zelda’s artwork showed the sense of intense vitality and sometimes chaotic energy that had inspired her husband’s writings. Sadly, eight years after the death of Scott Fitzgerald in 1940, Zelda was killed in a fire at Highland Hospital in Asheville, North Carolina, almost as if the element of burning passion that had dominated her being once again grew too strong to control.

Sources

The copyright of the article Zelda Sayre Fitzgerald in American Fiction is owned by Meg Nola. Permission to republish Zelda Sayre Fitzgerald in print or online must be granted by the author in writing.
Zelda Sayre Fitzgerald, Alabama Women's Hall of Fame Zelda Sayre Fitzgerald