The writings of Anais Nin and Zelda Fitzgerald portrayed the disenchantment that they experienced in their relationships with men. During the early 20th century, gender roles were changing. Ideal gender roles were transforming or decaying. Women were being called into active duty by the state while men were being sent overseas to fight in World War I. The American economy became vulnerable as did the ideals which were held in place by tradition. Women took jobs in order to support their families as well as their country. As a result, the feminine role was transformed from the traditional one of wife and mother to that of bread winner and head of household. Competition between men and women manifested itself into romantic relationships where egoism became most demonstrative.
Zelda Fitzgerald was born in 1900. She witnessed Southern traditions crumble and was an active participant in its destruction. Prior to 1920, women wore long skirts and corsets. They were expected to be virtuous housewives or coquettish princesses. Zelda popularized the flapper; Rebellious and Independent. The flapper was a dancer who cut her hair into a bob, adopted a more masculine style of dress, was sexually free, spoke her mind, laughed out loud, drank alcohol and smoked cigarettes. She mocked traditional values and had fun doing so.
The women and men that admired this icon did so because she brought excitement to the world. She expressed what everyone was thinking but was too inhibited to say themselves. The flapper brought about anarchy to the old culture of sexual repression and gender expectations. Zelda’s diaries reveal these social changes and probe into the psychology of egoism. At that time Sigmund Freud’s new theories on the nature of human beings was becoming popularized in the media. Human weaknesses and hidden agendas were exposed for all to bear witness. Freud’s psychological revelations into the hidden intentions of the modern western psyche made the traditional beliefs of societal expectations of gender roles appear absurd and hypocritical. He claimed that most people do not want freedom because freedom requires responsibility. In order to understand Zelda Fitzgerald’s literature, it is necessary to have some background information of her life. The context in which she wrote, the social climate in which she lived, and her psychological state of mind must be discussed in order to analyze her writings accurately.
Zelda Fitzgerald was the wife of F. Scott Fitzgerald. She was rebellious, beautiful, and considered to a very brilliant conversationalist. Her husband used her as a muse in his writings. He popularized the flapper in his literature and characterized her as a charming but egotistical flapper. He used many of her ideas in his stories and sometimes copied direct words from her diaries and letters to him. How this must have affected her must have been profound because throughout her life she struggled to create her own identity and failed in her attempts at achieving her own success as a writer. Scott told Zelda that he wanted her to stop writing fiction. “I told you if I came in and found you writing, I would crumble it up” (Milford, 1970, p. 272). She refused to stop writing so they came to a compromise which was dictated by Dr. Rennie her psychiatrist, “If you write a play, it cannot be a play about psychiatry, and it cannot be a play laid on the Riviera, and it cannot be a play laid in Switzerland, and whatever the idea is, it will have to be submitted to me first” (Milford, 1970, p. 273). Since she was forbidden to write about things which she knew about from first-hand experience, she was greatly handicapped as a writer. While she saw this as unfair, there was little she could do about it since he was a very powerful man and she was took on the role of being the weaker sex who was dependent upon him. Her sense of identity was created by her husband through his interpretation of her in his works.
While some may argue that Zelda was driven to madness by her husband, she was diagnosed with schizophrenia at age 30 by Dr. Joseph Breurer who was Freud’s mentor. Schizophrenics do not exhibit a sense of self, but are demonstrative of the human psyche which resides next to them. They take on aspects of other people and portray imaginative displays of their family and/or culture. In indigenous cultures, schizophrenics are revered as shamans who reflect the tribal group to the spiritual world and vice versa. Zelda frequently stated that she felt like she had no identity. In her journal she wrote, “I am losing my identity here without men” (Milford, p. 206. 1970) Scott loved her deeply, but he was also an egoist like so many other modern American men. Their relationship portrays a new sort of mythological union of opposing energies which come together in a creative force, and demonstrates their competition with each other.
Zelda was an artist whose main medium was dance. She was a living work of art more so than she was a talented writer or painter. In her letters and journals, her writing is superb. However, her fictional work is not nearly as captivating or revealing. This may be due to the fact that she was stifled. She was most lucid when she was able to be free and honest.
After suffering from a mental breakdown for the first time in 1930, she wrote “Save Me the Waltz” in two months while in a mental institution. At the same time Scott was struggling with his writers block. It was her first attempt at writing fiction. Prior to this she had been practicing ballet for a few years. Her book is titled, “Save Me the Waltz”. It is challenging to read because the setting frequently changes abruptly and there are many misspelled words. The first draft no longer exists but we do know from her letters that there were many revisions of it. During the two months that she was writing letters to Scott and writing the book, Scott was not aware that she was writing “Save Me the Waltz”. Two years later he would write “Tender is the Night” which closely parallels her work. They quarreled competitively over their writings.
He encouraged her to revise the book because he wanted to write the story of their experiences in Paris. For her to publish the same story he wanted to write before him was a severe blow to his ego. Zelda wanted it to read like a true-confessions story but in the end she edited it. It probably would have been much more appealing if it had been written in the same way she wrote her letters. It is perplexing to see how such depth and insight which is vividly expressed in her letters and diaries is almost nonexistent in “Save Me the Waltz”. The writing is poetically descriptive at best and awkwardly obtuse at worst. She wrote many profound letters during the same time she was at the hospital writing the novel. Here is one of the letters which she wrote to her doctor:
“I am forced to bear the hopeless months of the past and God knows what in the future. Why do I have to go backwards when everybody goes on...If you do cure me what’s going to happen to all the bitterness and unhappiness in my heart. It seems to me a
sort of castrations, but since I am powerless I suppose I will have to submit, though I am neither young enough nor credulous enough to think that you can manufacture out of nothing something to replace the song I had” (Milford, p.185. 1970).
“Save Me the Waltz” did not express such clear perception. Scott wrote to the publisher after he proof read the work, “Zelda’s novel is now good, improved in every way. She has largely eliminated the speak-easy-nights-and-our-trip-to-Paris atmosphere” (Milford, p. 170. 1970). On the first page of the book it reads, “…his towers and chapels were builded of intellectual conceptions” (Fitzgerald, 1932). This is just one example of the many misspelled words and incongruent contexts that were never edited. To see it on the first page set off an immediate negative impression. On page 42 there is the most absurd error, “David David Knight Knight Knight for instance couldn’t possibly make her put out her light till she got good and ready” (Fitzgerald, 1932). This oversight is almost comical in hind-sight for it is so contrary, like a mythological joke which makes one turn inward to reflect.
The main character is named Alabama. She is a ballerina/flapper. The story is autobiographical in many ways. She used one of Scott’s letters in which he repeatedly told her that he wished he could keep her locked up in a tower like a princess. In the book he is portrayed as Alabama’s husband. His name is David Knight which is symbolic of the ‘knight in shining armor’ role. Alabama revolts against the conventional men and women through her marriage with her husband. They make a mockery of themselves on a cruise ship. Alabama sits in the dining room with her legs propped wide open on the table. They are joined by another married couple in which both parties make it apparent that they openly defy proper etiquette and traditional loveless marriages. David Knight asks Alabama if she would like for Lady Parsnips to join them for a drink. She replies sarcastically, “All right-but they say she sleeps with her husband” (Fitzgerald, 1932, p. 60). Later on in the conversation, Lady Sylvia Priestly-Parsnips invites Alabama to her party in an equally satirical manner, “I am quite altruistic…I’ve got to have somebody for the party, though I hear you two are quite mad about each other. Here’s my husband” (Fitzgerald, 1932. p. 61). Lady Sylvia Priestly-Parsnip’s husband is not named. He says sarcastically, “I’ve been wanting to meet you. Sylvia here- that’s my wife- tells me that you are an old fashioned couple” (Fitzgerald, 1932. p. 61). It is interesting to see that the man is not identified with a name and he is whimsically introduced. Zelda appears to be turning the tables on gender roles in marriage. Alabama mockingly tells them that she and her husband are, “A Typhoid Mary of time-worn ideals”. The women continue to banter about their messy houses and parties. They laugh and shower affection on the husbands. The husbands engage in the jovial conversation with good humor. It is apparent that they are friends as well as marriage partners. The honesty of the characters is the most lucid and candid part of the book. They are sarcastic the whole time but their contrary statements reveal that proper etiquette is often veiled in deceit.
The writing reverts back into obscurity when later in the story the couple begins to drift apart. David Knight becomes a successful painter and has an affair with another woman. Alabama says that her dance is “perpetually broken by the wound of love”. She goes on to become a successful ballerina despite her broken marriage. Her father also dies which shatters her view of herself. She tries to find meaning in these losses, but fails to reconcile her relationship with men. Instead she says that her life was like an old ashtray that just discards the old waste to make way for something new. This imagery reveals a schizophrenic type of personality in which the schizoid is more of a vessel than an individual.
Anais Nin also shows similar signs of schizophrenia. Many critics suspect that she was bi-polar so that could be a reason why she slips into schizoid views of herself from time to time. Anais Nin was born in 1903 and lived through the same social upheavals which transformed gender roles in America. She was only 3 years younger than Zelda. Like Zelda Fitzgerald, she was extraordinarily beautiful and a brilliant conversationalist. She had many friends who were mostly artists and writers. Anais Nin wrote many diaries. She also kept what she called a “lie box” because she told so many lies about herself that she could not always remember who she lied to. Because she identified herself according to her friendships, that is suspiciously characteristic of a schizoid type personality. In her diary she asks herself, “To what extent do people have an individual life or represent another’s warmth?” (Nin, 1969, p.182). It is not uncommon for women to merge with men; to adopt an identity from them but it is also a schizoid tendency. Perhaps a lack of individuality causes this split, or perhaps we are in reality just a reflection of what others think of us.
It could be argued that females have more of a tendency to absorb their identities and see themselves in reflections. This question can be explored in Anais Nin’s “Stella” which is a short story in the novella “Winter of Artifice”. Stella questions reality, “There was no more Stella, but a fluid component participating at the birth of the world” (Nin, 1945, P.17). Like Alabama, Stella is a ballerina. “There is a lightness which belongs to other races, the race of the ballet dancer" (Nin, 1945, p. 15). Her lover is a married man who is an egoist, much like David Knight. He resembles her father in that they both display narcissistic behavior. They are emotionless. Instead of love they feel sexual desire, or they just feel power they feel they get from being needed. This is expressed in the knight-in-shining-armor archetype. The negative aspect of the Knight is that of a soldier. The Soldier/Knight kills and/or rescues. Women who have relationships with these men are Princesses/Ballerinas. They are perpetually held away from their own identity. They are not free and happy unless they are rescued by the knight. When the princess does no longer need the knight, she becomes a potential rival and the soldier comes out of the shadow. The ballerina is the dancer upon the stage. She is the shadow of the princess. The ballerina is also an egoist. She craves the spotlight. She is a narcissist at times. She absorbs the emotional content of the rhythmic interactions displayed by others, and she projects it on the stage. She is a drama queen who is the star. She does not need to be rescued. If the soldier does not adore her, she cannot find any sense in the dance. She goes back to the helpless princess role and he either switches to save her, or they end the relationship. If the role is quitted, a psychic death occurs in the ego. This Soldier/Knight-Ballerina/Princess archetypal relationship is demonstrated in “Winter of Artifice”. Stella is an actress who loves to dance. She describes her inability to have a proper identity because she is portrayed on the screen to be someone who she is not. She is having an affair with a married man. She is mad at him over some trivial thing which she cannot even make sense of. She ascends up to her bedroom where there is one window up toward the ceiling and mopes. The bedroom contains mirrors which “throw aureoles of false moonlight, the rows of perfume bottles creating false suspended gardens…They were all made of the invisible material which had once been pawned off on a gullible king” (Nin, 1945, p.15). Her lover is calling her on the phone. She ignores it. He calls again and she enjoys the feeling but does not understand why. She puts a musical sort of instrument on the phone and goes up one more stair to her bedroom. The phone rings again and she begins to lose interest. She was reveling in the moment when the knight loves the princess the most and she absorbed all that love from him, but now that she had it, the sound of the phone ‘rang with a dead mechanical persistence. “The music alone was capable of climbing those stairways of detachment…” (Nin, 1945, p. 15). She recognizes the illusion and in doing so the spell is broken.
Stella also breaks the illusion she has of her father when she sees how he treats his mistress. “The greater her love, the greater had grown his irresponsibility and devaluation of this love” (Nin, 1945, p. 25). She describes her father as a ballerina, “He was walking now with famous grace that the stage had so much enhanced, a grace which made it appear that when he bowed, or kissed a hand, or spoke a compliment, he was doing it with his whole soul” (Nin, 1945, p. 26). She is integrating the roles by acting them out. Through this performance she finds reconciliation.
Anais Nin was a psychotherapist who was familiar with mythology. She often speaks of mythological tales in her diaries and compares them to relationships. She demonstrated the individuation process through her unveilings of the roles that people play. Zelda Fitzgerald and Anais Nin emphasize the word “exigencies” in their works. Stella laughs when her father complains about “his Don Juan fatigues, the exigencies of the role women impose on him” (Nin, 1945, p. 31). Alabama: “Damp and unconvincingly tenaciously gripped the exigencies of her role” (Fitzgerald, 1932). Exigency is an urgent call for action. It sounds like a call for help.
Princesses in towers need to be rescued in order to have a happy ending, but as times change, women became more independent. Both authors expressed the changing of ideal gender roles in Modern America. Zelda’s ballerina died while Anais Nin transcended the gender roles. Both women were extraordinarily talented and offered much insight into the psychological realm of male/female relationships.
References
Fitzgerald, Zelda. (1932). Save Me the Waltz. Scribners. 1974. New York, NY.
Milford, Nancy. (1970). Zelda: A Biography. Scribners. New York, NY.
Nin, Anais. (1945). Winter of Artifice. Swallow Press. 1948. Ohio University Press.
