ZELDA SAYRE AND FRANCIS SCOTT FITZGERALD: THEIR DRAMATIC HISTORY

Zelda Sayre
 Born in Montgomery, Alabama in July 24, 1900.
 The Sayres were a prominent Southern family. Her mother, Minerva Buckner and her father, Anthony Dickinson
Sayre was a justice of the Supreme Court of Alabama and one of Alabama's leading jurists, was a strict and
remote man.
 Zelda was an American novelist, socialite, and painter.
 She was beautiful and bright, but uninterested in her lessons. At high school, she had an active social life. She
drank, smoked and spent her time with boys.
 She remained a leader in the local youth social scene, developing an appetite for attention, whether by dancing
or by wearing tight clothes.
 HER MOTTO: “Why should all life be work, when we all can borrow? Let's think only of today, and not worry
about tomorrow.”
Between 1917 and 1919
 Zelda starts attending The Junior branch of the National League for Woman’s Service, in Montgomery. It was a
Girls’ Patriotic League, a small group of patriotic young ladies whose aim was making comfort kits for soldiers
and sailors; collecting donations for hospitals and libraries; raising funds for patriotic purposes by tag-days,
dances, vaudevilles, or entertaining convalescents at the camp hospitals.
Francis Scott Key Fitzgerald
 Fitzgerald was born in September 24 in1896 into an upper-middle-class family in St. Paul, Minnesota, but was
primarily raised in New York.
 When he was 13, he saw his first piece of writing appear in print: a detective story published in the school
newspaper. In 1911, when Fitzgerald was 15 years old, his parents sent him to the Newman School, a
prestigious Catholic preparatory school in New Jersey.
 He attended Princeton University. He firmly dedicated himself to honing his craft as a writer but in 1917, he
dropped out of school to join the U.S. Army.

Zelda and Scott first meeting

 While Scott was in Alabama, Zelda had volunteered for the army, and was stationed at Camp Sheridan, outside
Montgomery.
 Scott met Zelda and he began to call her daily, and came into Montgomery on his free days.
 [He talked of his plans to be famous, and sent her a chapter of a book he was writing “ This Side of Paradise”.
He was so taken with Zelda that he redrafted the character of Rosalind Connage to resemble her.
 Zelda after this, showed Scott her personal diary, he used verbatim excerpts from it in his novel and was known
to appreciate and take from Zelda's letters, even at one point plagiarising her diary that was writing in this novel.
A disappointed situation
 Scott noted in 1918, on September 7, that he had fallen in love. But he fell in love with rich socialite Zelda
Sayre. Although she initially rejected him due to his financial situation, so Zelda agreed to marry Fitzgerald after
he had published the commercially successful This Side of Paradise (1920).
 On February 14, 1919, he was discharged from the military and went north to establish himself in New York
City. So they wrote frequently, and by March 1920, Scott had sent Zelda his mother's ring, and the two had
become engaged.
 Many of Zelda's friends and members of her family were wary of the relationship, as they did not approve of
Scott's excessive drinking, and Zelda's Episcopalian family did not like the fact that he was a Catholic.

Marriage
 By September, Scott had completed his first novel, This Side of Paradise, and the manuscript was quickly
accepted for publication. When he heard the novel had been accepted, Scott wrote to his editor, urging an
 accelerated release: "I have so many things dependent on its success—including of course a girl." In
November, he returned to Montgomery, triumphant with the news of his novel.
 Zelda agreed to marry him once the book was published; he, in turn, promised to bring her to New York with "all
the iridescence of the beginning of the world."This Side of Paradise was published on March 26, Zelda arrived
in New York on March 30, and on April 3, 1920, before a small wedding party in St. Patrick's Cathedral, they
married. This first novel was as the way to Zelda's heart.
Wild Behavior:
 Scott and Zelda quickly became celebrities of New York, as much for their wild behavior as for the success of
This Side of Paradise.
 Their social life was fueled with alcohol, drama, and excess.
 Publicly, this meant being popular at parties, but privately it increasingly led to bitter fights.
Pregnancy:
 On Valentine's Day in 1921, while Scott was working to finish his second novel, The Beautiful and Damned,
Zelda discovered she was pregnant. They decided to go to Scott's home in Minnesota to have the baby. On
October 26, 1921, she gave birth to Frances “Scottie” Fitzgerald.
 As Zelda emerged from the anesthesia, she started saying curious phrases. Many of her words found their way
into Scott's novels, as in The Great Gatsby.
AFFAIR
 The Fitzgeralds found themselves in debt. Scott and Zelda wrote and sold several short stories and articles
furiously to pay the bills, but Scott became burned out and depressed.
 In April 1924, they left for Paris. After arriving, they soon relocated on the French Riviera.
 While Scott was absorbed writing The Great Gatsby, Zelda got interested in a dashing young French pilot,
Edouard S. Jozan. They had an adventure and fter six weeks, Zelda asked for a divorce.
 Scott dealt with Zelda's demand by locking her in their house, until she abandoned her request for divorce.
Jozan did not know she'd asked for a divorce. He left the Riviera later that year, and the Fitzgeralds never saw
him again.
 He writes of lost illusions in The Great Gatsby as his lost certainty in Zelda's fidelity. After the relationship
conflict, the Fitzgeralds kept up appearances with their friends, seeming happy. But in September, Zelda
overdosed on sleeping pills. The couple never spoke of the incident, and refused to discuss whether it was a
suicide attempt.
 Scott returned to writing, finishing The Great Gatsby in October. They attempted to celebrate with travel to
Rome and Capri, but both were unhappy and unhealthy.
Obsession and illness
Though Scott drew heavily upon his wife's intense personality in his writings, much of the conflict between them stemmed
from the boredom and isolation Zelda experienced when Scott was writing. Scott had become severely alcoholic, Zelda's
behavior became increasingly erratic, and neither made any progress on their creative endeavors.
Zelda had a deep desire to develop a talent that was entirely her own. At age 27, she became obsessed with ballet, which
she had studied as a girl. She rekindled her studies too late in life to become a truly exceptional dancer, but she insisted
on grueling daily practice that contributed to her subsequent physical and mental exhaustion.
Schizophrenia:
In April 1930, Zelda was admitted to a sanatorium in France where, after months of observation and treatment, she was
diagnosed as a schizophrenic. Later, she was moved to a clinic in Montreux, Switzerland.

“Save Me the Waltz”

 In 1932, while being treated at the Phipps Clinic, Zelda had a burst of creativity. Over the course of her first six
weeks at the clinic, she wrote an entire novel called “Save Me the Waltz”, but Scott's scathing criticism of her for
having written it, and crushed her spirits.
  From the mid-1930s, Zelda spent the rest of her life in various stages of mental distress and in and out of
sanatoriums also creating some of the paintings over the previous years. In 1936, Scott placed her in the
Highland Hospital in Asheville, North Carolina.
Scott’s Affair:
 Zelda remained in the hospital while Scott returned to Hollywood for a job with MGM in 1937. Without Zelda's
knowledge, he began a serious affair with a movie columnist. Despite the excitement of the affair, Scott was
bitter and burned out.

They never saw each other again.

 Scott returned to Asheville, to stay with Zelma. However, after a failed trip to Cuba, they returned to the United
States intoxicated and exhausted. Even Scott had to be hospitalized.
 After that, the Fitzgeralds decided to never saw each other again.
 Scott returned to Hollywood and his lover; while Zelda returned to the hospital. Finally, Zelda made progress in
Asheville, and in March 1940, four years after admittance, she was released. Nevertheless, the Fitzgeralds
continued wrote each other frequently in those times.
Scott's death:
 He died of a heart attack on December 21, 1940, at the age of 44, in Hollywood, California. Fitzgerald died
believing himself a failure, since none of his works received more than modest commercial or critical success
during his lifetime.
 He was trying to finished his last unfinished novel “The Last Tycoon” and Zelda began working on a new novel
of her own, Caesar's Things.
Zelma tragic's death:
 By August 1943 she had returned to the Highland Hospital. On the night of March 10, 1948, a fire broke out in
the hospital kitchen.
 Zelda was locked into a room, awaiting electroshock therapy. The fire spread onto every floor. Nine women,
including Zelda, died. She was identified by her dental records and, according to other reports, one of her
slippers.
Their daughter, Scottie, wrote after their deaths:
“I think (short of documentary evidence to the contrary) that if people are not crazy, they get themselves out of crazy
situations, so I have never been able to buy the notion that it was my father's drinking which led her to the sanitarium. Nor
do I think she led him to the drinking”.

Scott and Zelda were buried in Rockville, Maryland, away from his family plot. (ESTO SIGNIFICA QUE FUERON
ENTERRADOS LEJOS DE LA PARCELA FAMILIAR DEL SR. FITZGERALD)
In 1975, however, Scottie successfully campaigned for them to be buried with the other Fitzgeralds at Saint Mary's
Catholic Cemetery.
On their tombstone you can read: "So we beat on boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past"

For my teacher and classmates:

“For what it’s worth: it’s never too late or, in my case, too early to be whoever you want to be. There’s no time limit, stop
whenever you want. You can change or stay the same, there are no rules to this thing. We can make the best or the worst
of it. I hope you make the best of it. And I hope you see things that startle you. I hope you feel things you never felt
before. I hope you meet people with a different point of view. I hope you live a life you’re proud of. If you find that you’re
not, I hope you have the courage to start all over again.”
 Francis Scott Fitzgerald