Beyond the Myth: Re-evaluating Zelda Fitzgerald's Life and Work

This study investigates the life and artistic works of Zelda Sayre Fitzgerald with the purpose of re-evaluating the myth surrounding her persona. Zelda Fitzgerald is one of the most iconic figure of the Jazz Age but then she starts to fall from grace due to her eccentric personality and her mental problems. During the 1950s, the figures of the Fitzgeralds begin to experience a sort of revival. While Scott gets finally recognised as an incredible novelist, Zelda is depicted as an unscrupulous, schizophrenic woman, who does nothing but wasting time at parties, as well as her husband’s money to maintain a luxury lifestyle. The study incorporates evidences from articles, biographies, personal correspondence and scholars’ studies in the attempt to revisit this myth, only based on a small part of Zelda’s life. In doing so, I want to focus on her incredible talent as a writer, painter and ballerina. In addition to highlighting her artistic work, I also aim to reveal her own self and her voice, which has been suppressed for far too long by voices considered more significant than hers. Since Zelda and Scott are regarded as the Golden Couple of the Jazz Age, her marriage to F.S. Fitzgerald plays a significant part in the myth. I attempt to look into their relationship through the letters they wrote to one another, while they were apart, in order to better comprehend their love story. What I am particularly interested in studying, is how Zelda first shares her account of her life with the public through her first novel. It is crucial that Zelda gets finally recognised for her multiple talents and for the paintings and writings she produced, rather than just as the wife of a well-known American author.