The idea of Zelda as a woman trapped by circumstance has been dismissed by her daughter, who argued that viewing Zelda as a “classic ‘put-down’ wife whose efforts to express her artistic nature were thwarted by a typically male chauvinist husband…is not, in my opinion, accurate.” Bruccoli, Matthew J. (July 2002) [1981], Some Sort of Epic Grandeur: The Life of F. Scott Fitzgerald (2nd rev.ed.), Columbia, South Carolina: University of South Carolina Press, ISBN 978-1-57003-455-8 , retrieved January 1, 2023– via Internet Archive French identity cards for the Fitzgeralds circa 1929, the year in which Zelda's mental health deteriorated. She crawled into the friendly cave of his ear. The area inside was grey and ghostly classic as she stared about the deep trenches of the cerebellum. There was not a growth nor a flowery substance to break those smooth convolutions, just the puffy rise of sleek grey matter…” verifyErrors }}{{ message }}{{ /verifyErrors }}{{

More recently, it has been reissued by Handheld Press. However, interest in Zelda’s writing and life has only really surged since the 2013 film adaptation of The Great Gatsby. Several novels have been based on her life. Turnbull, Andrew (1962) [1954], Scott Fitzgerald, New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, LCCN 62-9315– via Internet ArchiveAn Italian critic comes to see Alabama’s classes and offers her a solo role at the Opera in Naples, on a modest salary. At first, Alabama dismisses the idea, knowing she could not move Bonnie to a new school and that David would not follow her. After some thought however, she decides to take the offer and go to Naples, leaving her family behind. This is the main difference between Alabama’s story and Zelda’s: Zelda Fitzgerald had also learned ballet as an adult, and received this same offer. The author, however, refused. Tate, Mary Jo (1998) [1997], F. Scott Fitzgerald A to Z: The Essential Reference to His Life and Work, New York: Facts On File, ISBN 0-8160-3150-9– via Internet Archive Davis, Susan Lawrence (1924), Authentic History Ku Klux Klan, 1865–1877, New York: Davis Publishing, ISBN 978-1-258-01465-0– via Internet Archive One of the great literary curios of the twentieth century Save Me the Waltz is the first and only novel by the wife of F. Scott Fitzgerald. During the years when Fitzgerald was working on Tender is the Night, Zelda Fitzgerald was preparing her own story, which strangely parallels the narrative of her husband, throwing a fascinating light on Scott Fitzgerald's life and work. In its own right, it is a vivid and moving story: the confessional of a famous glamour girl of the affluent 1920s and an aspiring ballerina which captures the spirit of an era.

At Phipps Clinic, Zelda developed a bond with Dr. Mildred Squires, a female resident. [2] Toward the end of February, she shared fragments of her inchoate novel with Squires, who wrote to Scott that the unfinished novel was vivid and had charm. [21] Zelda wrote to Scott from the hospital, "I am proud of my novel, but I can hardly restrain myself enough to get it written. You will like it—It is distinctly École Fitzgerald, though more ecstatic than yours—perhaps too much so." [22] Zelda wrote diligently each day and finished the novel on March 9. She sent the unaltered manuscript to Scott's gifted editor, Maxwell Perkins, at Scribner's. [23] In Winter of 1929, Zelda Fitzgerald's mental health abruptly deteriorated. [15] During an automobile trip to Paris along the mountainous roads of the Grande Corniche, Zelda seized the car's steering wheel and tried to kill herself, her husband F. Scott Fitzgerald, and their 9-year-old daughter Scottie by driving over a cliff. [16] Within months, she was hospitalized with hallucinations, anxiety, depression, suicidal thoughts, and exhaustion. She discharged herself against her doctor’s advice, desperate to return to the ballet studio, but within weeks she had relapsed.Save Me the Waltz is the only novel ever written by Zelda Fitzgerald, the wife of famous American writer F. Scott Fitzgerald. Published in 1932, it was written in six weeks while Zelda was hospitalized for schizophrenia. It is a semi-autobiographical account of her relationship with Scott, providing insight into their disturbed marriage. People are like almanacs, Bonnie—you can never find the information you’re looking for, but the casual reading is well worth the trouble.” – David Knight, Save Me the Waltz Following her high school graduation in 1918, Zelda met F. Scott Fitzgerald at a weekend country club dance. She was a regular at such social activities, and he was an officer stationed at nearby Camp Sheridan. Scott began a courtship, but Zelda was hesitant about his financial prospects and continued to court other suitors. When he published his first novel, This Side of Paradise, in March 1920, she finally agreed to marry him, and the two wed in New York on April 3. Zelda gave birth to their only child, Frances (“Scottie”) Fitzgerald, the following year. In part, then, it’s Zelda’s story the way that her husband wanted it to be told, but there are still elements that are very different from Scott’s and that can therefore be assumed are Zelda’s unique style — lush description, vivid colors, a southern summer brought to life in dripping heat and suffocating magnolias, the anguish and pain of obsession and alcoholism, and the frantic search for an identity outside of marriage. She talked with so spontaneous a color and wit — almost exactly in the way that she wrote — that I very soon ceased to be troubled by the fact that the conversation was in the nature of the free association of ideas and one could never follow up anything. I have rarely known a woman who expressed herself so delightfully and freshly; she had no ready-made phrases on the one hand and made no straining for effect on the other.”

In the autumn of 1929, she was offered a salaried position with the San Carlo Opera Ballet Company in Naples, dancing a solo role initially in Aida with more solos to follow during the season, but had to decline the offer as she was not mentally capable of fulfilling the demanding contract. The rich prose style has also been connected to Surrealism, in its attempts to disrupt realism by creating unexpected connections. In the novel, Alabama’s first kiss with David becomes a deep, nightmarish dive into the frontal cortex of his brain: Most of the stories appeared under her husband’s name. The F. Scott Fitzgerald byline fetched a far higher price and made it easier to get pieces accepted, but it also meant that Zelda struggled to establish any kind of writing the identity of her own.

In 1927, at the age of twenty-seven, Zelda started taking ballet lessons again. She studied with notable teachers including Lubov Egorova in Paris, and it soon became an obsession that preoccupied her for up to eight hours a day, often to the detriment of her relationships with her husband and daughter. Published in October of 1932, Save Me the Waltz is part memoir and part bildungsroman, a semi-autobiographical account of Zelda Fitzgerald’s marriage to novelist F. Scott Fitzgerald. Her only published novel, Save Me the Waltz follows the life of Southern belle Alabama Beggs and her marriage to artist David Knight. This time she was sent to a hospital in Switzerland, where the doctors recommended psychological treatment. After seeing a highly sought-after psychiatrist, Dr. Oscar Forel, she was diagnosed with schizophrenia. A shooting star, an ectoplasmic arrow, sped through the nebulous hypothesis like a wanton hummingbird. From Venus to Mars to Neptune it trailed the ghost of comprehension, illuminating far horizons over the pale battlefields of reality."