Brigitta Bengyel on Hemingway's "A Moveable Feast," Research Paper/Spring 2017

The Downfall of Zelda Fitzgerald: 
An Analysis of Contrasting Evidence 

in A Moveable Feast  
by Ernest Hemingway

Brigitta Bengyel

April 9^th 2017

Writing & Literature II, School of Visual Arts

History has seen men take life and drive out of powerful women countless times. Textbooks teach generation after generation about the accomplishments of male writers, artists, scientists, and entrepreneurs. If a field of work is worth writing about, it is more than likely that the figures written about will be men. Women’s history gets pushed to the side, or simply not discussed at all. With this trend come the women who refuse to be erased, the firecracker women who burn down anyone who tries to hinder them. Zelda Fitzgerald was one of these women. Known to the general public as the wife of F. Scott Fitzgerald, and the shining golden girl of the 1920’s, Zelda’s pure genius and talent are things rarely ever discussed. Through the eyes of her husband and his friends such as Ernest Hemingway, Zelda was viewed as a nuisance and a jealous woman out to ruin her husband’s career. The facts of their lives point in another direction. While F. Scott Fitzgerald and A Moveable Feast by Ernest Hemingway argue that women are behind the downfall of men, a closer look at Zelda Fitzgerald’s life shows that men are truly the downfall of powerful women.

Zelda Sayre married F. Scott Fitzgerald on April 20^th, 1920 in New York City, and thus began the story of one of the most chaotic couples in American history (Unknown). Even prior to the marriage, Zelda was always ready to do what she was not supposed to. In one of her high school diaries, she wrote “I ride boys’ motorcycles, chew gum, smoke in public, dance cheek to cheek, drink corn liquor and gin. I was the first to bob my hair and I sneak out at midnight to swim in the moonlight with the boys at Catoma Creek and then show up at breakfast as though nothing had happened” (Talley). At first Zelda refused Scott’s marriage proposal, but then changed her mind when his first novel, This Side of Paradise, became successful (Dean). A marriage based on fame from the beginning was not one that was meant to last. Zelda continuously tried to work on her own talents such as writing and painting, but was always overshadowed by her husband and his work. The mere overshadowing was not enough, as eventually Scott began to plagiarize Zelda’s work and use it as his own for his novels. In 1922, Zelda was asked to write a review of Scott’s second novel, The Beautiful and the Damned. She wrote “I recognized a portion of an old diary of mine which mysteriously disappeared shortly after my marriage… In fact, Mr. Fitzgerald – I believe that is how he spells his name – seems to believe that plagiarism begins at home” (Dean). While the tone was somewhat playful, a trend that would continue throughout their whole marriage had started. Afterwards, Scott would steal material from Zelda nonstop. Whether it be obsessively writing down things she had said or taking her words directly from her writing, the F. Scott Fitzgerald that is known as a writer would be nothing without his wife. Lawton Campbell, a friend to the Fitzgeralds, writes:

Zelda was absolutely essential to him in those days. She was both his inspiration and his anathema. She gave him spontaneously much of his material and his dialogue. He would hang on her words and applaud her actions, often repeating them for future reference, often writing them down as they came from the fountainhead. Zelda called the tunes, and Scott joyfully paid the piper. Sometimes he had to force her to leave him alone for a while, so he could concentrate on the material she had given him and catch up before the next onslaught started. (Cambell)

Eventually Zelda tried to follow her own creative pursuit in writing, with her first novel Save Me the Waltz. The book was a fictionalized version of her marriage to Scott, and this did not please Mr. Fitzgerald. “He accused her of plagiarism for drawing on their life story – even though he did the same and had planned to use some of the same source material for his own novel, Tender Is the Night. He demanded that she revise it. She did, and it was published in 1932” (Legacy Staff). Despite Zelda giving Scott almost all of his material, her attempts at being creative were shot down every time, as their marriage along with Zelda’s confidence and sanity deteriorated.

            In 1924, the Fitzgeralds moved to Paris where Scott would eventually befriend Ernest Hemingway and become a large part of Hemingway’s autobiographical “fiction” novel, A Moveable Feast. The novel documents Hemingway’s time in Paris with his first wife, Hadley, and features many stories about Scott and some not so pleasant thoughts and comments about Zelda. Upon first meeting Zelda, Hemingway wrote:

Zelda had hawk’s eyes and a thin mouth and deep-south manners and accent. Watching her face you could see her mind leave the table and go to the night’s party and return with her eyes blank as a cat’s and then pleased, and pleasure would show along the thin line of her lips and then be gone. Scott was being the good cheerful host and Zelda looked at him and she smiled happily with her eyes and her mouth too as he drank the wine. I learned to know that smile well. It meant she knew Scott would not be able to write. (Hemingway 180)

Throughout A Moveable Feast, the reader gets the impression that Zelda absolutely wants to destroy Scott’s career because of her jealousy. Without knowing any other information about Zelda, this becomes easy to believe. Hemingway’s writing is clear and convincing, clearly stating, “Zelda was jealous of Scott’s work… He would start to work and as soon as he was working well Zelda would begin complaining about how bored she was and get him off on another drunken party” (Hemingway 180). From a man’s perspective this seems valid, but from a general perspective, both Zelda and Scott were well-known alcoholics (Unknown). Hemingway’s bias shows through as he clearly favors Scott and wants to show him in a positive light while speaking lowly of Zelda. In a way, it can be argued that Hemingway was threatened by Zelda’s caustic personality. Throughout Hemingway’s adult life, he was always married and went through 4 marriages until his suicide in 1961. All of his wives were docile, which is how he expected all women to be (Hines).  Zelda being the complete opposite was bound to get some unfavorable reactions from the misogynistic writer. Later in his novel, Hemingway states, “Zelda did not encourage the people who were chasing her and she had nothing to do with them, she said. But it amused her and it made Scott jealous and he had to go with her to the places. It destroyed his work, and she was more jealous of his work than anything” (Hemingway 183). The snide comments towards Zelda continue through the novel until Hemingway breaks and blatantly lets Scott know his feelings towards Zelda in the passage:

”Forget what Zelda said,” I told him. “Zelda is crazy. There’s nothing wrong with you. Just have confidence and do what the girl wants. Zelda just wants to destroy you.” “You don’t know anything about Zelda.” (Hemingway 191)

Although the men both want to put an end to Zelda’s “madness” when it comes to her hindering Scott’s writing, Scott still manages to stand up for her when another man decides to call her crazy. This reinforces the idea that Scott needed Zelda more than anything. Under the disguise of calling her a muse, Scott yearned for Zelda’s writing and material to continue his own writing and drive his career.

            Even past A Moveable Feast, Hemingway would not let go of the idea that Zelda was the one ruining Scott. In a letter to Arthur Mizener, Fitzgerald’s biographer, Hemingway states:

I believe that basically you write for two people; yourself to try to make it absolutely perfect; or if not that then wonderful; Then you write for who you love whether she can read or write or not and whether she is alive or dead. I think Scott in his strange mixed-up Irish catholic monogamy wrote for Zelda and when he lost all hope in her and she destroyed his confidence in himself he was through. (Gent)

While the men continued to go on about how Zelda was the one at fault, Zelda’s mental health was going downhill fast. Scott’s constant gaslighting and erasure of her creative endeavors led to multiple mental breakdowns that sent Zelda to various mental hospitals. In a journal entry, Scott explained a strategy he would use to stop Zelda from writing more fiction, after their argument over the content of her first novel. “"Attack on all grounds. Play (suppress), novel (delay), pictures (suppress), character (showers), child (detach), schedule (disorient to cause trouble), no typing. Probable result - new breakdown."  (Showalter). The breakdowns simply got worse through more manipulation, and by the 1930’s, Scott and Zelda parted ways although they were never officially divorced. Zelda checked into a mental hospital, while Scott continued to be an alcoholic writer (Curnutt).  With enough material to establish himself as a great American writer, Scott was well-off but was seemingly unable to work without the presence of his wife. Zelda continued to try to become successful through writing and painting until her untimely death in a fire at Highland Hospital in 1948 (Curnutt).

            When thinking of powerful women in American history, and women who refused to be silenced despite all odds, Zelda Fitzgerald will never be forgotten. Although she was shot down for the entirety of her marriage with Scott, she never stopped trying to establish her own career. Through the eyes of others such as Ernest Hemingway, Zelda was merely another woman in the way of a man’s career. In reality, Zelda was the force behind Scott’s career. As seen in the quote, “She was a woman who adored and hated her husband, who adored and oppressed and victimized her” (Beaumont), both parties can be blamed for who destroyed whom, but evidence goes to show that their tumultuous marriage brought Scott to fame while bringing Zelda into madness. Scott’s heartless need for material took a powerful woman with endless potential and drove it into the ground, leaving the world with a haunting hidden story of a man taking advantage of woman’s spirit and creativity, along with falsely accepted ideas of who Zelda Fitzgerald truly was.

Works Cited

Beaumont, Peter. "'Call Me Zelda': Writers Take on Troubled Life of F Scott Fitzgerald's Muse." The Observer. Guardian News and Media, 20 Apr. 2013. Web. 09 Apr. 2017.

Campbell, C. Lawton. "The Fitzgeralds Were My Friends." The Fitzgeralds Were My Friends. N.p., n.d. Web. 09 Apr. 2017.

Curnutt, Kirk. "Zelda Sayre Fitzgerald." Encyclopedia of Alabama. Troy University Montgomery, 15 Mar. 2007. Web. 09 Apr. 2017.

Dean, Michelle. "The Myth of Zelda Fitzgerald – The Ringer." The Ringer. The Ringer, 27 Jan. 2017. Web. 09 Apr. 2017.

Gent, George. "Hemingway's Letters Tell of Fitzgerald." The New York Times. The New York Times, 5 Oct. 1972. Web. 09 Apr. 2017.

Hines, Nico. "The Perils of Being a Hemingway Wife." The Daily Beast. The Daily Beast Company, 23 Feb. 2014. Web. 09 Apr. 2017.

Showalter, Elaine. "ZELDA FITZGERALD." ZELDA FITZGERALD. The Guardian, 12 Dec. 2002. Web. 09 Apr. 2017.

Talley, Heather Laine. "Zelda Wasn't 'Crazy': How What You Don't Know About Fitzgerald Tells Us Something About 'Crazy' Women, Then and Now." The Huffington Post. TheHuffingtonPost.com, 20 May 2013. Web. 09 Apr. 2017.

Unknown "Zelda Fitzgerald: Beneath the Glittering Surface." Legacy.com. Legacy.com, 14 Oct. 2016. Web. 09 Apr. 2017.