I just finished reading Bits of Paradise, a collection of short stories by F. Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald. I’ve always admired F. Scott, but because Zelda doesn’t have much writing that has been published, she kind of sat on the back burner for me. It was both interesting and sad to read the footnotes after the byline of Zelda’s short stories where it noted that for her work to get published, the byline had to read F. Scott’s name or for both of their names to be credited. It wasn’t until the 1930s that some of her work was credited to her completely. This makes me think about how successful of a writer she would be today when women can take full credit for their work.
She had a deep desire to develop a talent that was entirely her own. There are many rumors about her mental health and whether or not she was misdiagnosed. Because of her rebellious spirit and unconventional ideas, it was taken as a sign of mental illness rather than as an indication of an artistic genius.
WARDROBE:
F. Scott dubbed Zelda the “first American flapper”. She was a modernist who challenged society’s standards and expressed her rebellion through her clothing. The 1920s marked a change in fashion for women and Zelda was quick to adopt the new trends: shorter skirts, bobbed hair, exposing shoulders and backs, slim silhouettes. But Zelda also allowed her passion for ballet to influence her fashion choices. She enjoyed dressing in layered chiffon and less restricting clothing. And her unpredictable, risque nature was the reason for her choice of slip dresses and see-through clothing.
Nancy Milford wrote about Zelda saying:
“But it was not her beauty that was arresting. It was her style, a sort of insolence toward life, her total lack of caution, her fearless and abundant pride.”
In fact, both F. Scott and Zelda were known for their glamour, often being observed for their clothing choices, but they were also well-known for their artistic accomplishments and their intense love for each other.
Writing Style & Tools:
In my opinion, Zelda should’ve been a poet. Her writing is lyrical, and descriptive and often uses complex metaphors:
“I take a sun bath and listen to the hours formulating, and disintegrating under the pines, and smell the resiny hardihood of the high noon hours. The world is lost in a blue haze of distances, and the immediate sleeps in a thin and finite sun.”
Zelda only wrote one book, “Save Me the Waltz”, and one play, “Scandalabra. A couple of my favorite short stories by her are “The Continental Angle”, which is her descriptive work at its peak, and “A Penny Spent”, a depiction of her clever ability to plot an unconventional love story of sorts. There’s not much documented on the tools Zelda preferred to do her writing with, but I would imagine that she would enjoy using beautifully bound journals to write her diary entries in.
HOBBIES:
Zelda had to constantly live in the shadow of her husband, F. Scott, when it came to her writing. So apart from writing, she was also a dancer. She saw dancing as something she could call her own. Her dream was to dance in Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes. F. Scott didn’t approve of her dancing but that probably only fueled her passion for it even more. She also enjoyed gardening and swimming. And what surprised me more was that she was actually a very good painter. Her paintings were abstract and displayed a modernist influence as well as an awareness of surrealism. She often used watercolor and gouache. Flowers were one of her favorite subjects to paint as she loved gardening and flowers. She also painted cityscapes of New York and Paris, and oddly enough, she was known for painting paper dolls. Some of her paintings were quite fantastical, even depicting images of Alice in Wonderland with the dancing cards and Queen of Hearts, which also reflects her passion for ballet and dance.
xx
Disclaimer: “Author Aesthetic” is a series I created for fun and to entertain my imagination. While the facts about the authors are true, my assumptions of what they would be like today are fictional and my own opinion.
bonitappétit 