Zelda Fitzgerald

 

He plagiarized her diaries for The Great Gatsby. He published her stories under his name. When she wrote her own novel, he tried to stop her. She died locked in a room during a hospital fire.

Montgomery, Alabama, July 24, 1900. Zelda Sayre was born into Southern aristocracy.

Her father, Anthony Dickinson Sayre, was a lawyer who served in the Alabama state legislature, as state senator, city judge, and ultimately as Justice of the Alabama Supreme Court.

Her great-uncle and grandfather had both served in the U.S. Senate.

Zelda grew up privileged, beautiful, rebellious, and bored.

In high school, she smoked, drank, snuck out to meet boys, and cultivated a reputation for being wild, fearless, and attention-seeking.

She was intelligent, creative, and desperate to escape the confines of respectable Southern womanhood.

In 1918, at age 18, Zelda met F. Scott Fitzgerald at a country club dance in Montgomery. He was 22, a young army officer stationed nearby.

Scott was immediately obsessed. Zelda was beautiful—blonde bob, sharp wit, fearless personality. She represented everything glamorous and modern.

They began a courtship. Scott proposed. Zelda accepted—but on the condition that he become successful first. She wasn't going to marry a poor nobody.

Scott moved to New York to make his fortune. In 1920, his first novel This Side of Paradise was published. It was a massive success.

Zelda agreed to marry him. They wed on April 3, 1920, in New York.

She was 19 years old. He was 23.

They became the most famous couple of the Jazz Age—beautiful, talented, wild, drunk, constantly in the newspapers.

Zelda jumped into fountains in her evening gown. She rode on top of taxi cabs. She danced on tables. She embodied the flapper—the modern, liberated, rebellious 1920s woman.

F. Scott called her "the first American flapper." The media agreed.

But behind the glamorous public image, the marriage was toxic from the start.

Both drank heavily. Both were unfaithful. Scott was jealous and controlling. Zelda was erratic and increasingly unhappy.

And Scott was stealing her words.

THE PLAGIARISM

F. Scott Fitzgerald's writing was brilliant. But much of it came directly from Zelda.

He copied passages from her letters and diaries—word for word—and used them in his novels.

In This Side of Paradise (1920), he lifted entire sections from Zelda's letters to him.

In The Beautiful and Damned (1922), the character Gloria Gilbert is based on Zelda, with dialogue taken directly from Zelda's own words.

Most famously, The Great Gatsby (1925) draws heavily on Zelda's observations, personality, and specific phrases.

Zelda's line: "I hope she'll be a fool—that's the best thing a girl can be in this world, a beautiful little fool."

That appears in The Great Gatsby as Daisy Buchanan's famous line. It was Zelda's.

Scott didn't just draw "inspiration" from Zelda. He took her words, her insights, her observations about their life, and published them as his own.

Zelda wrote in her diary. Scott read it, copied passages, and used them in his novels.

When confronted, Scott's response was essentially: we're married, what's yours is mine.

HER OWN WRITING—PUBLISHED UNDER HIS NAME

Zelda wrote short stories. She was a talented writer with her own voice.

But magazines paid more for stories "by F. Scott Fitzgerald" than for stories by unknown authors.

So Scott published Zelda's stories under his own name, or as co-authored, to get higher fees.

Stories Zelda wrote appeared in The Saturday Evening Post, McCall's, and other magazines—credited to F. Scott Fitzgerald.

The money went to their household, but the credit—the literary reputation—went to Scott.

Zelda received neither recognition nor control over her own creative output.

HER NOVEL—AND SCOTT'S ATTEMPT TO SUPPRESS IT

In 1932, while institutionalized in a psychiatric hospital, Zelda wrote a novel: Save Me the Waltz.

It was semi-autobiographical, drawing on her life with Scott—their marriage, his drinking, her ballet training, their time in Paris.

When Scott found out, he was furious.

He wrote to Zelda's doctors, demanding they stop her from writing about "his" material. He argued that their marriage, their shared experiences, belonged to him as source material for his novels.

He was working on Tender is the Night (1934), which also drew on their marriage and Zelda's mental illness.

Scott insisted Zelda revise Save Me the Waltz to remove content he claimed as "his." He controlled the editing process while she was institutionalized and unable to fight back effectively.

Save Me the Waltz was published in 1932 to mixed reviews and poor sales.

It was Zelda's only published novel.

THE MENTAL ILLNESS

Throughout the 1920s, Zelda's behavior became increasingly erratic.

She drank heavily. She had affairs (including, reportedly, with French aviator Edouard Jozan in 1924, which nearly ended the marriage). She attempted suicide.

In 1930, Zelda suffered her first major breakdown. She was hospitalized in Switzerland.

For the rest of her life—18 years—Zelda was in and out of psychiatric institutions.

Her diagnoses varied: schizophrenia (most common), bipolar disorder, "hysteria."

Modern scholars debate whether Zelda was genuinely mentally ill or whether her institutionalizations were partly Scott using psychiatry to control an inconvenient, creative, rebellious wife.

Some of her "symptoms":

Wanting to pursue her own career as a dancer and writer

Resenting Scott's use of her words and experiences in his books

Drinking, affairs (which Scott also did, but wasn't institutionalized for)

Erratic behavior (which could be mental illness, or alcoholism, or abuse, or all three)

Treatments she endured:

Long-term institutionalization

Sedation

Electroshock therapy

Isolation

Whether Zelda had schizophrenia or whether she was a creative, alcoholic woman trapped in a destructive marriage and controlled through psychiatry—or both—remains debated.

What's clear: institutionalization destroyed her ability to have an independent life or career.

SCOTT'S DEATH AND ZELDA'S FINAL YEARS

F. Scott Fitzgerald died on December 21, 1940, at age 44, from a heart attack (likely related to alcoholism).

By then, he and Zelda had been estranged for years. She was institutionalized; he was in Hollywood trying to revive his career.

They never divorced. But they were no longer a couple.

After Scott's death, Zelda continued living intermittently at Highland Hospital in Asheville, North Carolina.

She worked on a second novel (never completed). She painted. She wrote letters.

She was in and out of the hospital—sometimes as an outpatient living nearby, sometimes institutionalized.

On the night of March 10, 1948, a fire started in Highland Hospital's kitchen.

The fire spread rapidly through the building via the dumbwaiter shaft.

Nine women died, including Zelda.

She was 47 years old.

Accounts of her death vary:

Some say she was locked in a room awaiting electroshock therapy

Others say she was sedated and unable to escape

Some say she was in a locked ward on an upper floor

What's certain: she couldn't escape. The building burned. She died.

Zelda's body was identified by her dental records. She was buried next to Scott in Rockville, Maryland.

THE LEGEND OF ZELDA

In 1986, Japanese video game designer Shigeru Miyamoto needed a name for the princess in his new Nintendo fantasy game.

He'd heard of Zelda Fitzgerald: "She was a famous and beautiful woman from all accounts, and I liked the sound of her name."

So he named the character Princess Zelda.

The Legend of Zelda became one of the most successful video game franchises in history.

Millions of people worldwide know the name "Zelda"—but most have no idea who Zelda Fitzgerald was.

THE LEGACY

Zelda Fitzgerald is remembered today as:

F. Scott Fitzgerald's wife

The original flapper

A tragic figure who went mad

A Jazz Age icon

But she should be remembered as:

A writer whose work was plagiarized by her husband

A talented author whose stories were published under her husband's name

An artist who tried to have her own career but was controlled and institutionalized

A woman whose novel was suppressed by her husband claiming ownership of their shared life

The Great Gatsby is considered one of the greatest American novels.

Many of its most famous lines came from Zelda's letters and diaries.

F. Scott Fitzgerald is celebrated as a literary genius.

Much of his genius came from stealing his wife's words.

Zelda wrote her own stories. Scott published them under his name for more money.

Zelda wrote a novel. Scott tried to stop her, claiming their marriage was "his" material.

Zelda wanted to be a dancer and writer. Scott had her institutionalized.

She died at 47, locked in a burning psychiatric hospital.

THE COMPLICATED TRUTH

Was Zelda mentally ill? Possibly. Her behavior was erratic, her breakdowns were real, and some form of mental illness seems likely.

Was she also a victim of her husband's control, plagiarism, and use of psychiatry as a tool of suppression? Also yes.

Both things can be true.

Zelda was:

Talented (writer, dancer, artist)

Troubled (alcoholism, erratic behavior, mental health struggles)

Trapped (in a toxic marriage, in institutions, in an era with few options for women)

Plagiarized (her words stolen and published as Scott's)

Controlled (institutionalized, prevented from publishing freely)

She exercised agency when she could—writing, painting, dancing, having affairs, living wildly.

But she was also systematically denied credit for her own creative work and ultimately lost her freedom entirely.

F. Scott Fitzgerald died in 1940, remembered as a literary genius.

Zelda Fitzgerald died in 1948, in a locked room in a burning psychiatric hospital.

The world remembers him.

She's remembered as "his wife" or "the crazy flapper."

Remember: Zelda Fitzgerald.

She wrote stories published under her husband's name.

She wrote a novel her husband tried to suppress.

Her words appear in The Great Gatsby—without credit.

She wanted her own career. She was institutionalized instead.

She died at 47, locked in a burning hospital.

And millions know her name only because of a video game.

She deserved better.

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