This poster presents a dissertation which will explore Zelda Fitzgerald’s dual personality, both as a flapper and a writer, whilst analysing the failed female artists in her only novel and short stories. This will be done by examining how Zelda’s novel, Save Me the Waltz, reflects the socio-historical context in which it was produced, and more specifically the status and role of women in society in nineteen-twenties America. This dissertation will demonstrate how Zelda’s writings suggest that despite social advancements for women and new experimentation in aesthetic and form, there was still communal notions of domesticity that remained inescapable for the independent modernist woman and artist. By being split into three sections, this dissertation will follow a who, what and why framework. Chapter one will explore how Zelda enable’s narrative through autobiography, displaying herself, and her female protagonists as artists. This chapter will demonstrate how both Zelda and her protagonists are dreams, aspirers and hard-workers whilst demonstrating how arbitrarily close to their dreams they came. Chapter two is concerned with the failure of these dreams and will analyse closely what happened to these female artists following a mathematical asymptotic framework and using the American Dream as a both a theory and an idea in nineteen-twenties America. Finally, chapter three focuses on why these dreams were unattainable for female artists by exploring ideas of the patriarchy and a gendered American dream, supported by modernist and feminist theories.
Permanent link to this resource: https://doi.org/10.24384/000512
Pattinson, Stacey
Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences\Department of English and Modern Languages
Year: 2018
© The Author(s) Published by Oxford Brookes University