Evolution of Love 2

Writers Dilemma

F. Scott Fitzgerald stole his wife's diary, published her words as his own, then blocked her book.
She died locked in a burning hospital.
Her name was Zelda Sayre Fitzgerald. And history remembers her as "Scott Fitzgerald's crazy wife."
Montgomery, Alabama, 1918. Zelda Sayre was 18 years old and the most desired woman in the South.
She was wild. Scandalous. She smoked in public, wore flesh-colored swimsuits that made her look naked from a distance, drank gin, drove cars fast, and kissed boys without apology.
"The most sought-after girl in Alabama," newspapers called her. The belle of Montgomery society who broke every rule and didn't care.
Then Lieutenant F. Scott Fitzgerald, stationed at a nearby army base, saw her at a country club dance. He fell instantly, desperately in love.
He was 22, unpublished, broke, unknown. She was a Southern beauty who could have any man she wanted.
Scott proposed. Zelda said no. Not because she didn't love him—but because she refused to marry a man with no prospects.
"I can't marry you unless you can support me," she told him. In 1918, that wasn't shallow. That was survival.
So Scott Fitzgerald made a choice: he would become successful enough to deserve her.
He moved to New York, worked in advertising (which he hated), and spent every night writing a novel. When This Side of Paradise sold in 1919, he immediately telegraphed Zelda:
"BOOK SOLD. MARRY ME NOW."
She did. They married in 1920. She was 19. He was 23.
And for a few years, they were the golden couple of the Jazz Age.
Scott's novels made them rich and famous. They lived in New York, partied with celebrities, spent money recklessly. They jumped into fountains, rode on the tops of taxis, drank champagne for breakfast.
Zelda was electric. Glamorous. Fearless. She cut her hair into a bob—shocking in 1920. She wore short skirts. She said outrageous things at parties.
The press loved her. She gave the best quotes:
"I don't want to live—I want to love first, and live incidentally."
Scott loved her too. Obsessively. She was his muse, he said. The inspiration for all his great female characters—Daisy Buchanan, Nicole Diver, Gloria Gilbert.
But there was a darker truth: he wasn't just inspired by Zelda. He was stealing from her.
Zelda kept personal diaries—intimate, beautifully written accounts of her thoughts, feelings, experiences. Scott would read them, then copy passages directly into his novels.
Without her permission. Without credit.
In This Side of Paradise, he lifted entire sections from Zelda's letters and diaries. When reviewers praised the "authentic female voice" in his work, Scott accepted the compliments.
When Zelda protested, he dismissed her: "I'm the professional writer. You're just my wife."
In 1922, Zelda became pregnant with their daughter, Scottie.
While she was pregnant and exhausted, Scott published The Beautiful and Damned—a novel featuring a character, Gloria, who was obviously based on Zelda.
Worse: he had taken large sections directly from Zelda's personal diary and put them in Gloria's mouth. Her private thoughts, published under his name, for his profit and fame.
When a reviewer praised one passage as "brilliant," Zelda's friend told her: "You know you wrote that, right? That's from your diary."
Zelda confronted Scott. He shrugged: "Nobody would read it if you wrote it."
Zelda decided to become a writer anyway.
Through the 1920s, she published articles and short stories in magazines—Harper's Bazaar, College Humor, The Saturday Evening Post. Her pieces were funny, sharp, insightful.
But editors insisted they be published under "F. Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald"—even when Scott hadn't written a word. His name sold magazines. Hers didn't.
The money went to "their" joint account, which Scott controlled.
She was writing. Getting published. And still being erased.
By 1930, Zelda's frustration had reached a breaking point.
She was 30 years old. Scott was an alcoholic, drinking to blackout levels daily. Their marriage was toxic—constant fights, infidelity (on both sides), emotional abuse.
Zelda threw herself into other creative outlets: painting (she was genuinely talented) and ballet (she trained obsessively, hours per day, despite starting at age 27—far too late for professional ballet).
Scott mocked both pursuits. Called her paintings "derivative" and her ballet dreams "delusional."
In April 1930, after months of barely eating and dancing 8+ hours a day, Zelda suffered a nervous breakdown. She was hospitalized at a Swiss psychiatric clinic.
The diagnosis: schizophrenia.
Modern mental health experts now question that diagnosis.
Zelda's symptoms—mood swings, creative obsession, periods of mania followed by depression—look much more like bipolar disorder than schizophrenia.
But in 1930, "difficult" women were often diagnosed with schizophrenia. It justified institutionalization, sedation, control.
Zelda would spend much of the next 18 years in and out of psychiatric hospitals.
While Zelda was institutionalized in 1932, she wrote a novel: Save Me the Waltz.
It was semi-autobiographical—the story of a young Southern woman who marries a famous artist, watches him take credit for her creativity, and struggles to maintain her identity.
It was Zelda's story. Barely disguised.
She sent the manuscript to her publisher without showing Scott first.
Scott was furious.
He wrote to her doctor: "She has no right to publish our private life without my permission."
He demanded she revise the manuscript—remove sections that made him look bad, change details, tone down her voice.
Under pressure from Scott and her doctors (who controlled her access to the outside world), Zelda agreed to extensive edits.
Save Me the Waltz was published in 1932. It sold poorly—Scott's publisher gave it almost no marketing support. Reviews were mixed.
But it existed. Despite everything, Zelda had published her own novel under her own name.
Scott published Tender Is the Night two years later.
The novel featured a brilliant, troubled woman named Nicole Diver who suffers mental illness while married to a psychiatrist. It drew heavily on Zelda's psychiatric records, her experiences in hospitals, her creative frustrations.
Once again, Scott had mined Zelda's life—this time her pain and vulnerability—for his art.
Once again, he got the credit and the literary acclaim.
Zelda spent the late 1930s and 1940s cycling between hospitals and brief periods at home.
She endured insulin shock therapy, electroshock therapy, and other brutal psychiatric treatments that were standard at the time.
Scott visited occasionally, but he was living in Hollywood, drinking himself to death, having affairs. He died of a heart attack in December 1940 at age 44.
Zelda was in Highland Hospital in Asheville, North Carolina when she heard. She was granted a brief leave to attend his funeral.
Then she was sent back to the hospital.
March 10, 1948. Highland Hospital, Asheville.
A fire broke out in the main building late at night. The building was old, made of wood, went up fast.
Zelda was on a locked ward on an upper floor. The doors were secured—hospital policy to prevent patients from wandering.
As the fire spread, staff tried to evacuate. But the locked doors slowed everything down. Smoke filled the hallways.
Nine women died in that fire.
Zelda Sayre Fitzgerald was one of them.
She was 47 years old. Trapped in a locked room. Burned alive.
They identified her body by a charred slipper.
The woman who had been "the most sought-after girl in Alabama." Who had lived with more freedom than almost any woman of her generation. Who had fought to be recognized as an artist in her own right.
Died locked in a psychiatric hospital, forgotten by most of the world.
Today, most people know F. Scott Fitzgerald as one of the greatest American writers.
They've read The Great Gatsby. Maybe Tender Is the Night.
Ask about Zelda, and they might say: "Oh, wasn't she the crazy wife?"
But here's what they don't teach you:
Those "authentic female voices" in Scott's novels? Many were Zelda's actual words, stolen from her diaries.
Those brilliant, troubled female characters? Those were Zelda, mined for material without consent or compensation.
That tortured artist storyline in Tender Is the Night? That was Zelda's life, repackaged as fiction and published under his name.
Zelda Sayre Fitzgerald was a writer. She published short stories, articles, a novel, and a play.
She was a painter. Her work has been exhibited posthumously and is held in collections.
She was a dancer. She trained with passion even though she started "too late."
She was a woman who refused to be contained—by Southern propriety, by marriage expectations, by her husband's jealousy, by psychiatric institutions.
And history remembers her as "F. Scott Fitzgerald's crazy wife."
That's not an accident. That's erasure.
When a woman threatens a man's ego, she becomes "difficult."
When she insists on her own creative voice, she's "competing."
When she has a mental health crisis, she's "crazy."
When she dies, she becomes a footnote.
Zelda Sayre Fitzgerald: Born July 24, 1900. Died March 10, 1948.
The writer whose words were stolen and published under her husband's name.
The artist whose creativity was dismissed as "madness."
The woman who fought for her own voice and was institutionalized for it.
Who wrote her own novel despite being told she had no right to their story.
Who died locked in a burning hospital while the world remembered her only as "Scott Fitzgerald's wife."
Her book, Save Me the Waltz, is still in print.
Her paintings are in museums.
Her letters reveal a brilliant, witty, deeply thoughtful mind.
But you have to look for them.
Because the world wanted her as a muse, not as an artist.
As an inspiration, not as a creator.
As a beautiful, tragic figure in someone else's story—not as the author of her own.
So here's what we do:
We say her name. Zelda Sayre Fitzgerald.
We read her book. We look at her paintings. We remember that she didn't "inspire" great literature—she WROTE great literature, and it was stolen.
We remember that when history calls a woman "crazy," we should ask: who benefits from that diagnosis?
We remember that she died locked in a room, and we make sure other women's voices are never trapped again.
Write. Paint. Create. Claim your own story.
Don't let anyone steal your words.
Don't let anyone call you crazy for demanding recognition.
Don't let anyone reduce you to a footnote in someone else's biography.
Zelda fought for that. She died for that.
The least we can do is remember.