Zelda Fitzgerald, more than someone's wife!

 

Zelda Fitzgerald, more than someone’s wife!

 

I’m sure we’re all familiar with the world-famous writer F. Scott Fitzgerald, the father of hundreds of stories, the one who could resurrect history, lost in ignored corners of the past with pen and paper, but what exactly did he hide behind lies and masks?

The answer, however takes us back to the winter of 1919, not long before he got married to his wife, Zelda Fitzgerald, he set off on ‘his’ writing journey, releasing his debut novel ‘This side of paradise’ on March 26th of 1920. Or at least, this is what we were all taught to believe, but the truth he managed to conceal finally comes out.

As it turns out, Zelda who was always known to have many attributes, such as being an artist, dancer and a woman with high expectations in general, was a writer too, even if unrecognized her mind was broader and not only surpassed, but also completely destroyed the expectations of her time. There was always something that stood between her and the completion of her dreams, besides the standards of her time and that is her husband!

Her writing however, isn’t lost to time, quite the contrary, it’s on the shelves of every bookstore, but will never belong to her, even in their grave we choose to disrespect the dead, because on the covers of her books, right below the illustrations and the title, the name ‘’F. Scott Fitzgerald’’ stands proudly, instead of her own.

Fitzgerald succeeded in his writing career only due to the fact that he endlessly plagiarized and lied whilst the true writer and poet had to live vicariously through him. Besides stealing Zelda’s ideas, he would furthermore steal whole entries and pages from her journals and diaries, perhaps we all have heard that Zelda didn’t want to marry him, due to his failing writing career and how come that the books that he released after his marriage were immediate hits?

The answer stands in front of us and we can finally open our eyes to the truth, or at least the percentage of it that has been discovered, not until recently we only knew that Fitzgerald’s wife was just an inspiration due to rumors, but now, holding concrete proof in our hands we discover not only this but Zelda’s allegations about him.

Which were the reason for the major downfalls in her life, Fitzgerald sentenced her to a life caged completely from the outside world, she was sent to a mental hospital in 1936, after a ‘’breakdown’, that was actually her accusing Fitzgerald of plagiarism, after his initial resentment of her for using the material he planned to write about, when she used it for her own book ‘’Save me the waltz’’, that received sharp and critical reviews after its release.

So, she was incorrectly diagnosed with schizophrenia and with only short stays away from the mental institution and with her family being her sole contact with reality, were the actual cause of her breakdown. Her passion for creating tore her apart more than anything else and gave her an early death in 1948, but she refused to comply with only being a housewife.

Zelda played a huge part in making classical literature what it is today and even though her name might be replaced with someone else’s in her books, whenever we pick up ‘’The Great Gatsby’’ we can think of her.

How many more aspiring writers did we lose to gender inequality? How many women’s dreams did we put to a stop?

Perhaps, in the future we might be faced with another shocking reveal of a famous author’s plagiarism, but for now we can only thank Zelda Fitzgerald for her stories and honor her like we should always have.

Sources;

Zelda Fitzgerald

·          Domestika.org               

·          Wikipedia

·          Blueridgecountry.com