zelda and daisy
- This is a preview of the essay.
To view the full text you must login!
Zelda & Daisy; The Inspiration of the Character
By Pauline Browne
April 27, 2000
Behind every great man there is a great woman. In the case of F. Scott Fitzgerald, her name was Zelda. The two were deemed so similar that, to quote Nancy Milford, author of the essay Zelda, " they seemed most of all like incestuous brother and sister." Their writing styles were so alike, that it was said to be impossible to distinguish one from the other without reading the signature at the bottom of the page. It is also a fact that articles and stories written by Zelda alone were often signed by Fitzgerald, for commercial reasons.
Of a list compiled by Edmund Wilson on the influences on Fitzgerald's work, the author said:
your catalogue is incompletethe most enormous influence on me in the four and a half years since I met her has been the complete, , fine and full-hearted selfishness and child-mindedness of Zelda.
After having established the fact that Zelda Fitzgerald played a huge role in her husbands writing career, the question this essay addresses is, "In what possible ways did Zelda influence Fitzgerald's depiction of Daisy in The Great Gatsby?" This can be determined by addressing the similarities and differences between Zelda and the ficticious Daisy.
Independence a characteristic both women are desperately longing for but in different ways...