SERPONG, ULTIMAGZ.com – Zelda Fitzgerald has become a symbol of the glittering excess we associate with the 1920s, an era pulsing with jazz and the rebellious flapper’s hair. Alongside her was her husband, F. Scott Fitzgerald, the novelist who popularized the term “The Jazz Age,” capturing the generation that came of age after World War I. But for years, Zelda was remembered mainly as Scott’s wife, rather than as an artist in her own right.
She was often seen as the inspiration behind some of her husband most memorable book characters. But beyond that, who was Zelda Fitzgerald?
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Before his name, Zelda Fitzgerald was Zelda Sayre, a bold and ambitious young woman born in 1900 in Montgomery, Alabama. Unlike many typical young women of her time, she had a strong interest in ballet, writing, art, and had a sharp sense of humor that made a name for herself in a lively social life. When she met Scott in 1918, he was merely a young army officer. Their romance would eventually bring them both fame, but Zelda had built her own name long before she even took his, based on britannica.com.
After their 1920 wedding, Scott and Zelda became one of America’s most famous couples. They lived out the wild image of the jazz age and traveled between the US and Europe, drawing constant attention with their parties, public drama, and unstable fights caused by alcohol. A big source of it was Scott’s habit of using their private life and Zelda’s own words as materials for his books. He lifted lines straight from Zelda’s diary for his first novel This Side of Paradise, and leaned heavily on their marriage for The Beautiful and Damned.
Zelda even called him out on it in a review for the New York Tribune, joking that her husband seemed to believe that “plagiarism begins at home”. It’s a messy question of ownership, when a husband turns his wife’s thoughts and struggles into famous fictions, where does inspiration end and her own voice get erased? Based on theguardian.com.
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Beyond just supplying material, Zelda published her own novel, Save Me the Waltz, based on her life, passion for ballet, and the complications of her marriage. Scott was furious because she’d used the same personal material he was planning to use for his own book, Tender Is The Night. This wasn’t just a couple arguing over a book, it was a deeper fight over who had the right to be seen as the “real” writer.
Scott dismissed Zelda’s work, treating it as amateur and as stepping on his territory and the people around Zelda kept boxing her in as a wife, a flapper, anything, but a serious writer. In the end, her struggles weren’t just about borrowed lines or shared stories, it pointed to something bigger. A world that rarely lets women fully own their experiences, brushing off their work as a side to someone else’s story, based on daily.jstor.org.
Author: Jemima Anasya R.
Editor: Kezia Laurencia
Photo: biblio.com
Source: britannica.com, theguardian.com, daily.jstor.org.
