Zelda through Daisy

Like most authors, F Scott. Fitzgerald is not exempt from incorporating the effects of societal and personal events into his writing. The rise of the flappers throughout the Roaring Twenties and his wife’s heavy involvement in the ideology of the revolution became a recurring theme in Fitzgerald’s novels and female characters. In The Great Gatsby, F. Scott Fitzgerald portrays his strained relationship with wife Zelda through his characterization and actions of Daisy Buchanan

Zelda Sayre Fitzgerald was raised the privileged daughter of Supreme Court Justice Anthony Sayre in a prominent southern family with roots dating back to the Confederacy. As a child, Zelda was well known for her mischievous, vivacious personality and her physical beauty, traits that would follow her to her adulthood leading to her becoming the quintessential woman of the Jazz Age. Being the eccentric wife to a renowned author, Zelda became instantly famous due to her inspiration for the character of Rosalind Connage in Fitzgerald’s first novel The Side of Paradise, a novel advocating the “free” lifestyle of both Fitzgerald and Zelda.

Fitzgerald’s first attempt to court Zelda, however, was not originally successful. Scott, a twenty-one year old second lieutenant, attempted to court the youthful eighteen year old Zelda after meeting her at a dance. The young couple had a short-lived romance of only a couple months in which Zelda “threw herself into their courtship,” testing the waters that could possibly lead her to her ultimate escape of the South (Cline). Zelda initially agreed to an engagement but was doubtful of Fitzgerald’s ability to maintain her materialistic lifestyle. This inability would lead to Zelda’s eventual withdrawal from the engagement. Zelda moved on to other men, and Fitzgerald left to war for a year, returning and successfully publishing his novel The Side of Paradise. With his persistence and publishing of his novel, Scott is finally able to marry Zelda in 1920 (Curnutt). Together, the couple would embrace “the freedoms and excesses of the 1920’s Jazz Age” (Curnutt), consequently morphing Zelda into the symbol of the liberated woman and the “flapper” lifestyle.

As the couple continued to live a luxurious lifestyle, the Fitzgerald’s briefly stopped at France and had their only child Frances “Scottie” Fitzgerald. Zelda can be quoted in saying that she wished her daughter was a “beautiful little fool” (Curnutt). The Fitzgeralds’ joy, unfortunately, was ephemeral; Scott found difficulty in producing any plays or novels of great success, leading the family into debt. During the couples period of struggle, Scott found solace in alcohol leading to an addiction and alleged violence between Zelda and himself. In an attempt to escape the distractions of America, the family returned to France which led to the successful creation of Scott’s novel The Great Gatsby, but the straining of his marriage due to Zelda’s secret affair with French aviator Edouard Jozan (Bruccoli). Through the affair was ambiguous in nature, Zelda’s close friends noticed a change in the Fitzgeralds’ relationship. Scott was too immersed in his writing to notice Zelda’s slow detachment from him and Zelda only became more and more infatuated with the young Frenchmen, going as far as to indirectly profess her strong attraction to him in her novelSave Me the Waltz (Cline).


The relationship would only dissipate after The Great Gatsby as the couple separated, Fitzgerald continuing his work in America while Zelda attempted to become a professional dancer in vain and eventually being diagnosed with Schizophrenia, after which she was sent to a clinic where she wrote her only novel Save Me the Waltz, recounting the couples unstable marriage (Curnutt).

While Fitzgerald’s relationship with Zelda was hardly idealistic, he found inspiration for several of his novels through her. He became well known for “describing in semi-autobiographical fiction the privileged lives of wealthy, aspiring socialites” (Willhite) and creating a new breed of characters: “the independent determined young American woman” (Bruccoli). Not only did he use Zelda as inspiration for his heroines but Scott also quoted Zelda through his characters and on one occasion used a passage straight from Zelda’s diary for one of his novels (Curnutt). Through Scott’s constant use of Zelda in his writings, it becomes more than evident that Scott had a slightly obsessive deep compassion and care for Zelda, or rather the modern woman he hoped Zelda would be.

At the turn of the century, women’s role in society began to change rapidly. Women became intolerant of the suppression forced upon them by the changing society of the early twentieth century. Lady-like rules of the past were quickly vanishing, woman did not wish to “button-up their gloves,” speak in the refined language of the aristocracy, or partake in the feminine submissiveness demanded by woman of the pre-flapper era. The Flapper Revolution called on young woman who dress in revealing clothing rode in automobiles, flirted with men and sought out individual pleasures; flapper became the “epitome of modernism” (Gourley). Zelda Sayre Fitzgerald would become the poster-girl for the modern woman, embodying all aspects of the flapper lifestyle. Daisy Buchanan, the character most notably inspired from Zelda in Fitzgerald The Great Gatsby, too, became representative of the flapper lifestyle. Daisy, like Zelda, sought to find a liberated self, breaking the barriers of tradition with her open sexuality and personification of the “freedoms of modern life” (Chadwick).

Daisy’s life and relations in the novel seem to parallel Zelda’s life in most aspects. Daisy was a woman who lived for the moment, preoccupied by the today over the tomorrow, a belief system advocated by Zelda herself (“The Great Gatsby”). And like Zelda, Daisy came from a southern, aristocratic family of “old money”; she was a girl who knew “how to dress, how to act and what to say in order to maintain appearances” (Willett). Daisy was the perfect representation of the changing roles of woman during the 20’s; she portrayed the dichotomy of both the sexual and virginal woman of the time. 

Fitzgerald’s relation with Zelda becomes present as the novel progresses through Daisy’s relationship with Jay Gatsby. Gatsby and Daisy were separated by a class distinction that would not allow Daisy, whom was graced with a “voice of money” as described by Fitzgerald, to elope with a soldier of no particular social class. However much like Fitzgerald returned with wealth to redeem himself, Gatsby also returned to New York to finally return to his love Daisy; both men feeding their respective lover “illusion that money makes everything beautiful, even if it’s not” (“The Great Gatsby”). Though Daisy is married, Gatsby persist on seducing the “idea of Daisy…rather than the real woman she is”.

When viewing Zelda and Scott as portrayed through Daisy and Gatsby, Fitzgerald’s frustrations in his marriage to Zelda become apparent. He has personified Zelda as a detached and irresponsible wife. As Daisy practically ignored her “beautiful little fool” child, Zelda did as well, with her conveniently equivalent daughter. And Daisy’s dependency on her husband Tom, for his money and strength, parallel Zelda’s necessity of financial stability. 

Zelda’s affair becomes a key role in the novel’s plot. “Daisy’s two betrayals of Gatsby were based on Zelda’s broken engagement to Scott and her romance with Jozan” (Cline). In the novel, Gatsby valiantly tries to reserve Daisy’s love for himself, much like Scott attempts to do with Zelda after the Jozan episode. Scott goes on to take inspiration from Zelda in Daisy’s response, “…I love you now – isn’t that enough? I can’t help what has passed” (Cline). As the lust for Daisy brought success the downfall of Gatsby, early Fitzgerald biographers defined Zelda as both “an inspiration and a liability”, even Hemingway characterized a fictional Zelda, in A Movable Feast, as a harridan who derailed her husband’s career.

By the end of the novel, Gatsby and Daisy cannot be together; Gatsby is killed and Daisy returns to her abusive relationship. Scott and Gatsby’s “American Dream” become a fantasy alone, as Gatsby died, so did the illusion of Fitzgerald’s marriage to Zelda. Fitzgerald makes the claim that his relationship with Zelda was improbable from its conception. The tragic ending of the novel does not only provide a glimpse into the dismal delusions brought on by Scott and Zelda’s disconnect from reality, but the universal illusions construed in lust, ambition and the inability to move on from the past.