Zelda Fitzgerald in Love and Madness: Her Letters to F. Scott

The article examines Zelda Fitzgerald’s mental health struggles during the 1930s through her letters to F. Scott Fitzgerald. It highlights her resistance to psychiatric treatment and marital and societal constraints, highlighting her creative letter writing and art as tools for agency and autonomy. Despite prolonged institutionalisation and personal challenges, Zelda’s letters reveal her struggle for personal and professional identity, contrasting poetic self-expression with the clinical detachment and sterility of psychiatric discourse.