With all the hype surrounding the May 10 release of the new film adaptation of The Great Gatsby, I can't help but wonder about the woman Fitzgerald dedicated his classic American tale to. 

Zelda Fitzgerald, F. Scott Fitzgerald's wife, was inarguably his greatest muse. (Metropolitan Magazine, Wikimedia Commons)

Zelda Fitzgerald, F. Scott Fitzgerald's wife, was inarguably his greatest muse. When Scott courted Zelda, he redrafted the character of Rosalind Connage in "This Side of Paradise" to resemble her. Zelda shared her diary with Scott, and he used direct excerpts from her diary in the novel. The soliloquy of the protagonist at the end of "This Side of Paradise" is taken directly from Zelda's journal. Zelda agreed to marry Scott once the book was published and they were wed on April 3, 1920.

Early in their marriage, Zelda joked about Scott taking content straight from her diary, but her joking later developed into a feeling of deep resentment. In an interview with the literary editor of the New York Tribune on "The Beautiful and Damned," Zelda said, "It seems to me that on one page I recognized a portion of an old diary of mine which mysteriously disappeared shortly after my marriage, and, also, scraps of letters which, though considerably edited, sound to me vaguely familiar. In fact, Mr. Fitzgerald - I believe that is how he spells his name - seems to believe that plagiarism begins at home." 

In the late 1920s, the couple moved from New York City to Europe, where they mingled among other artists of the Lost Generation. When Fitzgerald rose to fame and gained wide recognition for his work, the marriage quickly fell apart. While Scott worked on "The Great Gatsby," Zelda became involved with a French pilot named Edouard Jozan. When Zelda asked Scott for a divorce, Scott locked her in their home until she stopped asking. The couple kept up appearances among friends, though they were deeply unhappy together. Just before Scott finished "The Great Gatsby," Zelda overdosed on sleeping pills, but the couple never spoke of the incident. Fitzgerald continued to openly use their unhealthy relationship as material in his writing. The couple fell into unhealthy patterns of jealousy, and Zelda went to extremes to get Scott's attention as they grew more miserable.

In 1930, Zelda was admitted to Sheppard Pratt sanatorium due to strain from her marriage, where she was later diagnosed with Bipolar disorder. While she was in the sanatorium, Zelda wrote a semi-autobiographical novel titled "Save Me the Waltz," in which she used their troubled life together as inspiration. Scott couldn't stand the fact that Zelda published a work about their marriage - though he did the same in his 1934 novel, "Tender is the Night." "Save Me the Waltz" and "Tender is the Night" each provide opposite portrayals of their failing marriage.

When Fitzgerald came out to Hollywood to give screenwriting a shot, while Zelda was transferred to a mental hospital in North Carolina, he began a relationship with a movie columnist named Sheilah Graham. Scott died in 1940, having not seen Zelda for over a year and a half. Zelda spent her last years working on a second novel that she never completed. In 1948, the hospital where she was a patient burned to the ground, and she died in the flames.

The toxic dynamic between the two was rooted in deep passion, and Fitzgerald's desperate desire to make things work. This romantic desperation is a theme that carries throughout many of Fitzgerald's novels, and can largely be attributed to Zelda - only Zelda was caught in a broken relationship that would no longer work. 

Reach Contributor Sydney Golombek here.