Not Logged in.
Book Jacket

Z: A Novel of Zelda Fitzgerald


A novel that is as heartbreaking as it is mesmerizing.
Summary and Reviews
Excerpt
Reading Guide
Author Biography

How do accounts that Zelda wouldn't marry Scott unless he was well off play into her flapper image?

Created: 02/27/13

Replies: 3

Posted Feb. 27, 2013 Go to Top | Go to bottom | link | alert

Join Date:

Posts: 0

How do accounts that Zelda wouldn't marry Scott unless he was well off play into her flapper image?

Many accounts contend that Zelda wouldn't marry Scott unless he was well off—a view they themselves encouraged in the early years of their marriage. How does this play into the flapper image Zelda embodied in the '20s?


Posted Mar. 26, 2013 Go to Top | Go to bottom | link | alert
jorie

Join Date: 04/19/12

Posts: 14

I am not sure if this agrees with the novel!?

I haven't read another accountment of Zelda Fitzgerald, as although I was curious to the hilt to get to know her after seeing *Midnight in Paris*, as the film explored everything that I love about the Jazz Age -- especially the writers' salons in France; yet, I wanted to have a fresh pair of eyes and an open heart about who Zelda was and of whom would greet me when this book arrived. Therefore, I held off gathering a few books through the library that made an attempt to explain her life. I am not certain if this question pertains to the novel, as a moment ago I answered a similiar question,.. except without the inclusion of the angle of the Flapper culture.

One of the first things that I found as began to read "Z" is that Zelda's voice is very strong and very present almost as though Ms. Fowler was channeling her as she wrote the story. In that regard, I didn't find that her reasoning behind not marrying Fitzgerald to be motivated by money or status, but rather, by a strong desire to encourage him to be more than even he might have realised he could become. She reads an affirmation of a passage from a book she had read, where she felt personally tied into the story. Its that affirmation that is mentioned again when its broached her true motivations to hedge off Scott and to delay their marriage until he attempts to launch his writing career. I still stand by what I wrote a few minutes ago, as far as what is presented in this novel at the time their marriage takes place.

I will have to wait and go back over later chapters to see what insight I have obviously missed or what isn't readily coming to mind as I type this...


Posted Mar. 26, 2013 Go to Top | Go to bottom | link | alert
jorie

Join Date: 04/19/12

Posts: 14

Ah ha! I found it! :)

On pages 84-87, Ms. Fowler reveals the plot by Fitzgerald to launch both of them into the public eye by parading around as characters they would invent to appeal to a wider audience and give them the immunity of failing before they could succeed. The illusion began in the Biltmore hotel suite when Zelda was first hearing the reporter's inquisitive enquiries about why she would or why she would not marry Scott ahead of his wealth arriving. Her blood was boiling towards Scott, because she was conflicted about why he would lead on a reporter to agree to something this absurd and untrue. When she returned, the full scope of her embracing the Flapper scene started to come into focus.

Scott believed that in order to continue the momentum of "This Side of Paradise" she would have to embody the public perception of who Rosalind was,... even if it meant swallowing her pride and shattering the bits of her own personality in the process for the sake of public appearances. I felt that Zelda wasn't fully committed to this as Scott hoped she would be, but I think, being a newlywed and wanting to applease her husband as much as understand his newfound position as a 'young novelist'... she humoured him. This might have had been the springboard for what was yet to come,... as far as her downfall and spiral. You can only handle as much as your able too, but if you start to contort yourself into a new ediface of who you are from the outside inward,... you might inadvertly forsake too much of what cannot be redeemed. If being a Flapper meant re-inventing who she was and how she lived, I think she made that choice based on wanting to please Scott, but not because she felt it was right on principle.


Posted Apr. 02, 2013 Go to Top | Go to bottom | link | alert
dianac

Join Date: 04/02/13

Posts: 91

RE: How do accounts that Zelda wouldn't marry Scott unless he was well off play into her flapper image?

I'm not sure there is any correlation between the two.


Reply

Please login to post a response.