Charlotte Perkins Gilman and Zelda Fitzgerald provide unique insight into the patriarchal worlds they lived in through autobiographical accounts of their lives. The Living of Charlotte Perkins Gilman and the diaries of Gilman and her first husband, Charles Walter Stetson, serve as Gilman’s autobiographical texts of the period before, during, and immediately after her breakdown. The correspondence between Fitzgerald and her husband, F. Scott Fitzgerald, as well as Scott’s letters to Zelda’s psychiatrists serve as a biographical (and, in the case of her letters to Scott, autobiographical) account of her life during the period of her institutionalizations, from 1930 up to Scott’s death in 1940. These biographies and autobiographies, studied in conjunction with their fictionalized autobiographical accounts, Gilman’s “The Yellow Wall-Paper” and Fitzgerald’s Save Me The Waltz, illustrate the struggles these women, and by extension, many women of their time, experienced when they were unable to live up to the expectations a patriarchal society placed on them to be perfect wives and mothers. The construction of the feminine by the patriarchy required women to be complacent, meek, dependent, and infantile, and this construction, complicated by the issues of institutionalization and hysteria, is at the heart of the works of Gilman and Fitzgerald. The subtexts present in their fiction demonstrate that Gilman and Fitzgerald not only understood and felt the pressure of the patriarchal construction of femininity, but were acutely aware of how it could exert itself on women, particularly white, economically privileged women. Both authors, victims of the same patriarchal mechanism that dominated society during the turn of the twentieth century, provide insight into their own perspectives through their autobiographies, and then create fictional worlds in which the implications of these perspectives are realized to the detriment of their protagonists. While critics have examined this focus within individual stories by these writers, they have not been examined together in a comprehensive discussion of the patriarchal construction of the feminine and its manifestation in the autobiographical/biographical and fictional works of Charlotte Perkins Gilman and Zelda Fitzgerald.

In recent years critical projects spanning philosophy, the social sciences, science studies, and nearly everywhere that has employed the term ecology have engaged in thinking humans and non-humans together as collectively producing outcomes, where objects do work beyond how humans perceive or make use of them. Taking Zelda Fitzgerald’s Save Me the Waltz as its focus, this thesis explores how this reorientation might contribute to literary studies and to literary criticism more specifically. The thesis considers a notion that novels constitute objects with biographies running “against” the biographic material of their authors, mobilizes actor network theory as a manner of mapping that biographic assemblage, and tentatively develops a biographic network approach as one alternative to traditional literary interpretative practices. Attending to the novel as an actor shifts critical focus away from its interior – the “text” or content – and expands traditional literary criticism’s default practice – interpretation – and logic – mimetic representation – in hopes of facilitating a discussion of Zelda’s novel in a manner which destabilizes the overdetermined themes that continue to scaffold her imaginary. Ultimately, this work argues that a biographic network approach can prove instructive as a “method” for dealing with other texts which remain relatively obscured at the margins of literary consciousness.

Orientador: Cleide Antonia Rapucci / Resumo: O presente trabalho propõe uma análise do romance publicado pela estadunidense Zelda Fitzgerald (1900 – 1948), intitulado Save Me the Waltz (1932), segundo o olhar da crítica feminista. A análise contempla como os papeis de gênero aparecem incutidos nas personagens, reproduzidos por meio de padrões de masculinidade e feminilidade nos quais são construídos. Também discute sobre a vida e obra de Zelda Fitzgerald, junto ao contexto em que a obra foi publicada (mesmo contexto em que a trama se passa), tendo em vista tratar-se de uma narrativa de autoria feminina com suas particularidades. Por fim, atrelado tanto à crítica feminista quanto à escrita de autoria feminina, foi feita a análise sobre o gênero da obra levando-se em conta a ficcionalidade, o autobiográfico, a literatura sulista e a literatura de formação e de artista. O método de análise do corpus orienta-se pela crítica feminista e tem o trabalho de Showalter (1977 e 1994) como base. Os gêneros textuais abordados alinham-se com as ideias de Lejeune (2008), Jones (2002), Nanney (1993) e Pinto (1990). / Abstract: The present work analyses the only novel published by the American writer Zelda Fitzgerald (1900 - 1948), named Save Me the Waltz (1932), according to the feminist criticism. The analysis takes into consideration how the gender roles appears engrained in the characters behavior, reproducing the patterns of masculinity and femininity in which they are constructed. It also discusses Zelda Fitzgerald's life and work along with the context the novel was published (same as the story), considering as a narrative of female authorship with its specific aspects. At last, related to the feminist criticism and the female authorship, the genre of the novel is going to be discussed, taking into account the fictional, the autobiography, the Southern Literature and literature of formation or the artist. The method of analysis is guided by the feminist criticism, Showalter's work (1977 and 1994) is our methodology model. Lejeune (2008), Jones (2002), Nanney (1993) and Pinto (1990) are aligned with the ideas of the textual genres mentioned. / Mestre

[pt] Outros nomes para uma rosa: Zelda Sayre Fitzgerald em tradução toma como objeto de pesquisa a obra literária de Zelda Fitzgerald, colocando em posição de destaque Scandalabra – a única peça teatral completa que sobrevive da autora. Tradicionalmente considerada uma curiosidade literária escrita logo após a tépida recepção crítica e o relativo fracasso comercial de Save Me the Waltz, ou então como uma fonte de conflitos dentro de um período conturbado do casamento dos Fitzgerald, Scandalabra permanece um texto que foi pouco estudado e analisado pela crítica. Uma leitura mais atenta desse texto e sobretudo de suas rubricas e indicações cênicas, no entanto, revela que ali se esconde um exercício fascinante e mesmo inovador da escrita dramática. Além disso, uma leitura mais contextualizada da peça também pode acenar para um esforço concreto da própria autora em aperfeiçoar sua escrita, uma vez que é possível verificar o desenvolvimento de temas e recursos técnicos e estilísticos que vinham sendo exercitados desde os primeiros contos escritos no início da década de 1920. Esta tese, portanto, parte das muitas identidades públicas e autorais construídas por e para Zelda Sayre Fitzgerald para investigar a obra literária dessa mulher tão famosa, tão presente no imaginário popular e, ainda assim, tão estigmatizada e pouco estudada. Ao propor um recorte que considere como objeto de pesquisa os doze contos, o romance Save Me the Waltz e Scandalabra, este estudo almeja uma análise integrada desse conjunto de escritos já publicados em inglês e traduzidos apenas parcialmente em português – uma análise que não é exaustiva e tampouco total, mas que é inédita na medida em que compõe o primeiro estudo da obra de Zelda Fitzgerald ancorado nos Estudos da Tradução. A tese apresenta também uma tradução comentada de Scandalabra, texto até então inédito em português. / [en] Other Names for a Rose: Zelda Sayre Fitzgerald in Translation foregrounds Zelda Sayre Fitzgerald s literary works, putting Scandalabra —the only complete and surviving play the author wrote— at the center of its analysis. Traditionally dismissed either as a minor literary curiosity that followed the lukewarm critical and commercial reception of Fitzgerald s only published novel, Save Me the Waltz, or as a source of domestic conflict during a turbulent, contentious time in the Fitzgeralds marriage, Scandalabra has not yet been subjected to proper study or commentary. A closer reading of it, however, reveals that this forgotten piece offers a fascinating, and even innovative, exercise in dramatic language, especially in its use of stage directions. Moreover, contextualized reading of the play can also point to a conscious effort in Zelda Fitzgerald s development as a writer, as it provides an assessment of the author s development in her craft. This study first discusses the many public identities built by and for Zelda Sayre Fitzgerald and then investigates Fitzgerald s literary works, focusing specifically on her twelve short stories, Save Me the Waltz and Scandalabra, to propose an integrated analysis of this set of writings, published integrally in English and only partially translated into Portuguese. Although neither exhaustive nor total, this study is unprecedented insofar as it composes the first study of Zelda Fitzgerald s work that is anchored on the field of Translation Studies. This thesis also presents an annotated translation of Scandalabra, which had never been translated into Portuguese.

When a writer, usually a woman, uses fairy tales as a veil through which to narrate a story of her life, I call this practice asymptotic autobiography. In mathematics, the asymptote is a straight line that a curve approaches increasingly closely, but never actually touches. I define “asymptotic autobiography” as a term for discussing any personal narrative that deliberately employs fiction in order to tell truth. In this inquiry, I examine the use of fairy tale language in giving voice to women writers’ autobiographical representations, using Zelda Fitzgerald’s novel and letters as the focus for my analysis. My research and critical analysis will examine how Save Me the Waltz, which Zelda Fitzgerald wrote while she was a psychiatric patient in the Phipps Clinic, uses fairy tales to provide a mapping of the many performances that autobiographical selfhood entails. By experimenting with open-ended fairy tale conventions instead of being limited by clinical truths, and by contextualizing her personal history in the realm of the imaginary, Fitzgerald removes her story from the psychiatric ward and places it safely in legend. The first three chapters of this dissertation show how, in sequence, the autobiographical self becomes free through the use of fairy tales in three stages: once the autobiographer has worked to separate herself from being bound by illness or clinical reality (Chapter One), she is free to make the decision of which self or selves she wishes to narrate and perform (Chapter Two); only once she has established her sense of self can the autobiographer then locate her plot, her map, and her narrative (Chapter Three). In Chapter Four, I offer an example of asymptotic autobiography in the form of a one-person play script that I wrote and performed about Zelda Fitzgerald’s life and hospitalization, using as a frame the fairy tale “The Swan Maiden.” This hybrid essay-performance combines the play script itself with personal writing of my own in which I describe the difficulties I had approaching and performing the rich material of Zelda’s life. / text

This thesis examines Zelda Sayre Fitzgerald’s writing published between 1920 and 1932. To date, biographers and scholars have largely failed to carefully examine and understand Zelda’s publications. During this period Zelda critiques the materialism and generational lack of respect she finds in the North in her articles, while using her imagination to discuss the possibilities of the South in her short stories. All of her works during these years culminate in her novel, Save Me the Waltz, in which much of her life and return to the South is mirrored by her heroine, Alabama Knight. This thesis examines Zelda’s publications in this 1920 to 1932 period in order to reveal her perception of the society she had become a part of when she married F. Scott Fitzgerald and to understand the transition in her desire to at first fit in to the Northern society that expected her to be the flapper and celebrity wife, and then later to find success and self-expression in a return to the South.

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