The Breakdown of Zelda

'The Crack-Up' is the title given to a series of essays written by Fitzgerald during a period of his life when several bad things happened to him. The first thing that happened was that his wife, Zelda had a mental breakdown. It was at the young age of 29 that Zelda went to a mental hospital for the first time. While she was in the hospital Fitzgerald began to drink excessive amounts of alcohol. When Zelda came out of hospital she was emotionally hollow. She described herself as being like 'an empty shell'.

'The once active and vibrant woman now seemed to him a colourless 'blob', who moved in slow motion and felt threatened by hallucinatory voices.'

Although she was severely affected by her mental illness, Zelda was aware of the devastation she had caused in Fitzgerald's life. In a letter to Fitzgerald she wrote,

'Had I any feelings they would all be bent in gratitude to you and in sorrow that all of my life there should not even be the smallest relic of love and beauty that we started to offer you at the end'.

After one of his visits to the hospital to see Zelda he told a friend that, despite Zelda's emotional state he still loved her. When Zelda recovered from her first breakdown she attempted to commit suicide by strangling herself. After this she made frequent attempts to kill herself but always failed. In 1948 she died in a hospital fire.

Review by: Rhona 8T

Zelda as she appeared just before her breakdown, probabaly in 1929	This snapshot was taken in 1931 when, for the first time she had broken down in April 1930, Zelda was well enough to leave the sanitarium. In the family photograph album it is entitled 'Recovered'.	A self portrait of Zelda some time in the early 1940s.

ZELDA - Review by Alex-8C

These photographs above show how Zelda changed over the years. She was a very beautiful, vibrant, talented woman whose mental illness changed her quite dramatically.

This letter written to Scott expresses Zelda's sadness about their tragedy. She refers to herself as an 'empty shell' but she makes it clear that she loves him dearly and that she is sorry for having caused so much pain and suffering.

Letter & comment from Jeffrey Meyers' biography of Fitzgerald:

"Dearest and always Dearest Scott:

I am sorry too that there should be nothing to greet you but an empty shell. The thought of the effort you have made over me, the suffering this nothing has cost would be unendurable to any save a completely vacuous mechanism. Had I any feelings they would all be bent in gratitude to you and in sorrow that all of my life there would not even be the smallest relic of the love and beauty that we started with to offer you at the end....

Now that there isn't any more happiness and home is gone and there isn't even any past and no emotions but those that were yours where there could be my comfort - it is a shame that we should have met in harshness and coldness where there was once so much tenderness and so many dreams... I love you anyway - even if there isn't any me or any love or even any life.

Zelda"

Statement from Fitzgerald's friend Nora Flynn:

'He was so dreadfully unhappy. Zelda was then in the sanatorium. Once, after she got out, he brought her over to visit. She wore such odd clothes, and looked so ill - and walked about just touching things. Finally she started to dance for us. And Scott sat over there. I shall never forget the tragic, frightful look on his face as he watched her. He had loved her so much - they both had loved each other. Now it was dead. But he still loved that love and hated to give it up - that was what he continued to nurse and cherish, that love which had been, and which he could not forget.'

This statement from a friend describes how unhappy Fitzgerald was about his wife's sad state. The friend explains that Scott still clings to the dream of how things used to be. Scott Fitzgerald in his books often wrote about people who had impossible dreams. Just like Gatsby dreams that Daisy will one day be his wife, or Myrtle dreams that she will one day marry the rich and powerful Tom Buchanan. From the letter it seems that Scott Fitzgerald was in fact like many of the characters he created in his stories.

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