F Scott Fitzgerald
Francis Scott Key Fitzgerald once said "Mostly we authors must repeat ourselves-that's the truth. We have two or three experiences in our lives- experiences so great and moving that it doesn't seem at the time that anyone else has been so caught up" (de Koster n. pag.). Fitzgerald's works contain many themes that are based from experiences in his life. Many of these experiences he talks about were with the women in his life. People like his mother, Ginerva King, and Zelda Sayre all had major impacts on Fitzgerald. The women in F. Scott Fitzgerald's life influenced his writing in a number of ways. The first major woman to make and impression on Fitzgerald's life was his mother. Mary (Mollie) McQuillan was of Irish decent. Her parents were Irish immigrants who became rich as grocery owners in St. Paul (Bruccoli 1). Mollie inherited a fair amount of money from her family, but the family had difficulty maintaining the high standard of living they were accustomed to (Bloom 11). When they fell into financial trouble it was her father they turned to. The fact that Fitzgerald's mother, rather than his father, was the financial foundation for their family influenced Fitzgerald greatly. Even as a young boy he was aware
She often worried about his health and babied him. She even broke off their engagement when he failed to get his novel published, but later agreed to marry him when This Side of Paradise was published (de Koster 23). In it, the character George O'Kelley (fictionalized Fitzgerald) tries to court Jonquil Cary in Tennessee (meant to be Zelda Sayre in Alabama) (Kuehl 66). The multiple characters based on her show her great influence on Fitzgerald's work. Because of their strange situation, Zelda began having emotional problems. The theme that arose from this about a wife's inherited money appears frequently in Fitzgerald's writing (Magill 679). Her influence is apparent in the way she is used as a model for Fitzgerald's characters. When he marries her after she is widowed, he stops writing. Another influence on Fitzgerald was his first love, Ginerva King. The hero a scandalous middle-aged novelist who lost his Ginerva as a young man and never got over it. Scott later recorded a dream in which he admitted being ashamed of her" (de Koster 15). The first time Ginerva shows up in one of Fitzgerald's works is in a short story called "The Pierian Springs and the Last Straw. She wanted her only son to have "social ambition" ("Brief Biography 1). His pursuit of Ginerva changed his attitude and personality.
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