April 23, 1930—Hearing voices, Zelda Fitzgerald, muse and artistic competitor of the author of The Great Gatsby, entered Val-Mont Clinic in Switzerland, as she took another step on the road to mental deterioration following a nervous breakdown the month before.
Zelda had considerable talent for writing, but F. Scott Fitzgerald made it clear that he was the literary breadwinner in the family. Looking for a field that Scott couldn’t enter, she took up painting, then pursued more determinedly what had until then been a longtime hobby: ballet.
Exactly a month ago, Zelda had suffered a psychic collapse while she was ramping up her ballet routine. When her taxi became stuck in a Parisian traffic jam, she became so alarmed about being late for her dance lessons that she jumped out of the vehicle and began running through the streets in her ballet clothes.
Scott promptly checked her into as clinic outside Paris, from which she discharged herself on May 11. Two weeks later, she checked into Val-Mont.
At this juncture, it is probably impossible to sort out the causes of Zelda’s mental distress. Just offering a diagnosis is problematic. Most of the psychiatrists who treated her early believed she was schizophrenic, but her last doctor believed she had untreated bipolar disorder. (Years later, it was also disclosed that during her remaining 18 years of off-and-on confinement, one of her attending doctors had had a pattern of inappropriate relations with female patients, and that Zelda might have been one of these victims.)
Zelda had considerable talent for writing, but F. Scott Fitzgerald made it clear that he was the literary breadwinner in the family. Looking for a field that Scott couldn’t enter, she took up painting, then pursued more determinedly what had until then been a longtime hobby: ballet.
Exactly a month ago, Zelda had suffered a psychic collapse while she was ramping up her ballet routine. When her taxi became stuck in a Parisian traffic jam, she became so alarmed about being late for her dance lessons that she jumped out of the vehicle and began running through the streets in her ballet clothes.
Scott promptly checked her into as clinic outside Paris, from which she discharged herself on May 11. Two weeks later, she checked into Val-Mont.
At this juncture, it is probably impossible to sort out the causes of Zelda’s mental distress. Just offering a diagnosis is problematic. Most of the psychiatrists who treated her early believed she was schizophrenic, but her last doctor believed she had untreated bipolar disorder. (Years later, it was also disclosed that during her remaining 18 years of off-and-on confinement, one of her attending doctors had had a pattern of inappropriate relations with female patients, and that Zelda might have been one of these victims.)
The notion of untreated bipolar disorder can’t be dismissed out of hand—the 1930s were still, after all, something like the Neolithic era of modern psychiatry. (George Gershwin's psychoanalyst diagnosed the composer's dizziness and intense headaches as symptoms of neurotic depression when they in fact represented the onset of the brain tumor that would kill him at age 38.)
A second question then came to the fore: how much of Zelda’s troubles derived from her own fragile mental state, and how much was due to Scott?
For the first three decades after his death, Scott’s care for his wife did not come under close scrutiny. Changes in beliefs about women’s need for autonomy, as well as the publication of Nancy Milford’s Zelda, opened the way to harsher questions about the novelist's influence on his wife.
Scott’s alcoholism certainly didn’t provide Zelda with the stability she desperately needed. Moreover, she presented him with an annoying dilemma: she was intelligent enough to appreciate his work, but also talented enough to create her own.
A flair for phrase-making, keen eye for detail and sense of irony informed Zelda’s writing. The latter gift was turned, a couple of years into their marriage, on Scott, who had appropriated some of her diary entries into his own work. In a satirical review of his novel The Beauty and Damned, published in the New York Herald-Tribune, she wrote:
"On one page I recognised a portion of an old diary of mine, which mysteriously disappeared shortly after my marriage, and also scraps of letters which, though considerably edited, sound to me vaguely familiar. Mr Fitzgerald...seems to believe that plagiarism begins at home."
In the years before her breakdown, several Zelda short stories had appeared in the magazine College Humor, with her husband sharing a byline, in some cases, to increase her fee.
But when Scott perceived a more direct threat—Zelda’s attempt to craft a full-length novel, submitted to his publisher without his knowledge, based on her experiences but also examining his alcoholism—he protested to his Scribner editor Max Perkins. Save Me the Waltz (1932), written during her convalescence, suffered from lack of publicity from Scribners, which abided by Scott’s wish not to promote the book so as not to encourage her “delusions of grandeur.”
And yet, Scott was hardly the sole contributor to her mental deterioration, nor even necessarily the decisive factor. Mental illness was a virulent strain in her Southern family: her grandmother committed suicide, as did her brother, three years after Zelda’s institutionalization. It should also be noted that Scott tried to secure for her the best psychiatric help in Europe after her collapse.
Moreover, even before the 1930 mental collapse that began her inexorable downward spiral, Zelda had alarmed friends by:
* suddenly bursting into laughter for no reason;
* grabbing the steering wheel of the car as Scott drove, almost plunging them off a cliff;
* taking an overdose of sleeping pills after the end of an affair with a French aviator;
* accusing her husband of sleeping with friend/rival Ernest Hemingway;
* practicing ballet lessons for up to 10 hours a day, to the point where she became wan and thin; and
* developing a crush on her female ballet instructor.
Zelda was released from the Swiss psychiatric clinic in September 1931, but suffered a relapse five months later. By this time, Scott—back in the U.S. , with funds running low—placed her in an institution in Baltimore. After he had applied pressure on her to give up writing, she took up art as therapy. But in 1934, after the publication of Tender Is the Night—in which the schizophrenic rich beauty, Nicole Diver Warren, was modeled on her—she suffered yet another relapse.
We now know that the relationship of Scott and Zelda, far from being simply a tragic love story, was also one of what Scott called “emotional bankruptcy,” marked by emotional manipulation and mutual recriminations. It is a fascinating case, not merely of literary history, but of how attitudes toward women’s ambitions and the psychiatric profession altered the treatment of a beautiful, talented, but profoundly troubled woman partnered with an equally glamorous, tormented--and personally and professionally jealous--husband.
Zelda was released from the Swiss psychiatric clinic in September 1931, but suffered a relapse five months later. By this time, Scott—back in the U.S. , with funds running low—placed her in an institution in Baltimore. After he had applied pressure on her to give up writing, she took up art as therapy. But in 1934, after the publication of Tender Is the Night—in which the schizophrenic rich beauty, Nicole Diver Warren, was modeled on her—she suffered yet another relapse.
We now know that the relationship of Scott and Zelda, far from being simply a tragic love story, was also one of what Scott called “emotional bankruptcy,” marked by emotional manipulation and mutual recriminations. It is a fascinating case, not merely of literary history, but of how attitudes toward women’s ambitions and the psychiatric profession altered the treatment of a beautiful, talented, but profoundly troubled woman partnered with an equally glamorous, tormented--and personally and professionally jealous--husband.
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