Zelda Fitzgerald: jazz age icon or failure

Abstract

This paper aims at presenting an overall picture of a quasi-unknown woman in all her personal and professional facets, not just as the wife of someone: Zelda Fitzgerald. But do we really know and appreciate who Zelda was? And more importantly, do we really know what she was and what she became in? The answer to these, and alike, questions is no. Zelda is probably one of the most mysterious and misunderstood female characters along the 20th century. But what the majority of us do know about her, for sure, is that she became the wife, and hence the supporter, of the world-famous writer F. Scott Fitzgerald. And precisely it is that marriage which will lead to Zelda first, and then to Scott, to the destruction and fall-out of both their professional and intimate lives. Being born a woman in a traditional Southern background at the beginning of the 20th century in America must have been an awkward task for Zelda. Such an assignment becomes hazard when it comes to the fact of her living a wild and outrageous life in such a male-dominant background. Had both factors been enough to let her down, it must also be added the evidence of having a misogynist and jealous husband, besides being rather popular and successful, who hated women for what they were and above all were trying to become in. Thus considering all these joint features, Zelda’s duty could not be considered as anything else as Herculean. I therefore intend to explain that taking all these circumstances into consideration, we partly have the explanation, but not the justification, of knowing Zelda both as a symbol of the splendorous epoch of the Roaring Twenties in the USA known as “The Jazz Age”, and as the wife of the eminent writer Scott Fitzgerald, rather than letting us acknowledge all her talents and artistic production as a total artist.