Linda Wagner-Martin’s 2004 Zelda Sayre Fitzgerald: An American Woman’s Life is the most recent biography of author F. Scott Fitzgerald’s wife Zelda. All these years past the couple’s heyday of the 1920’s, stories of Zelda and Scott’s exploits are still well known, yet Wagner-Martin is able shed new light on their relationship, and how it helped destroy Zelda.
Scott & Zelda Were the "It" Couple of the 1920's
During the “Jazz Age” (a term F. Scott Fitzgerald coined) of the 1920’s, few couples were as well-known or as representative of the “roaring” glee that characterized this post-war period as were Scott and Zelda. He was the famous author (This Side of Paradise, The Great Gatsby), she his beautiful flapper-esque wife. Together they tore through New York on bootlegged gin in fancy automobiles.
When the novelty began to wear thin the Fitzgeralds became part of the expatriate-artist movement, settling in France, where they could live more cheaply and drink freely. Here, their behavior quickly began to catch up with them. For Scott, it was trouble writing. For Zelda, it was living in Scott’s shadow.
A public affair with a French aviation officer (along with her husband’s response of locking her in a room), and a late start at an attempted ballet career contributed to her 1930 breakdown, one from which she never fully recovered. But, as the biographer shows, Scott could take more than his share of the blame as well.
Biographer Linda Wagner-Martin Studied Fitzgerald's Princeton Papers
As a professor of literature at the University of North Carolina and the author of more than 40 books on American writers, Linda Wagner-Martin is no stranger to the type of deep research necessary for her studies of writers. In this case, she scoured “previously neglected” material from the Princeton Library archives (where all of the Fitzgerald’s papers are housed) .
Although this biography is a traditional “life story,” the author’s focus is clearly on Zelda’s later, troubled decades, and why they were indeed troubled.In an effort to make sense of this highly talented woman’s “breakdown,” Wagner-Martin read and analyzed personal correspondences (in particular, the letters Zelda wrote Scott during her prolonged stays at various institutions) as well as doctor’s notes and files pertaining to her illness.
Zelda’s sometimes pleading letters to Scott are sad, and quite revealing, as she recounts their past in a struggle to identify what went wrong. His responses often sound like a father reprimanding a child. Even more damning is the 114-page transcript of a 1936 session between doctor, patient and spouse. The author only uses short sections of the text of this conversation, but they are painful to read.
For example (Scott addressing why he, not her, could use their lives as material): “It is a perfectly lonely struggle I am making against other writers who are finely gifted…you are a third rate writer and a third rate ballet dancer.”
In another passage he responds to her: “Jesus, it is like talking to a circus clown.” When Zelda explains that she hoped her writing would help pay bills, Scott interjects: “You are a useless society woman, brought up to be that.”
Talented Zelda Fitzgerald Could Never Come Out From Under Scott's Shadow
Another, less painful, aspect of Zelda’s life that Wagner-Martin delves deeply into is her art. Whether ballet, writing, or painting, the author highlights not only Zelda’s talent (especially in the analysis of several of her short stories), but her lifetime dedication to developing those talents. The other, sharper edge of this sword was that despite the talent and dedication, Zelda could never be seen as anything other than Scott’s wife.
Linda Wagner-Martin’s Zelda Sayre Fitzgerald reveals to us a clearer portrait of a woman who was already nearly iconic as the ultimate flapper, yet whose life was anything but carefree.
Wagner-Martin, Linda. Zelda Sayre Fitzgerald: An American Woman’s Life, 2004, Palgrave-MacMillan, 224 pages (ISBN: 978-1403943031).
Dale Van Every - Dale Van Every is a freelance and fiction writer living in Minneapolis, Minnesota. He earned his Masters Degree in English Literature from ...
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