Parallels

Taking a back seat to your man

I'm not much of a Whitney Houston fan, but the news of her death was troubling to me.  An woman artist with a true gift, gone too soon due to the excesses and indulgence that often comes from living a super-successful lifestyle, where you are admired, adored and emulated.  Oh, and there's the man in the mix, of course.  A man less talented but with a dominant personality.  Even more prone to the excesses which may or may not have led her into deterioration.  A source of competition and perhaps a font of envy and jealousy.


It's a tale as old as time, yet no less tragic each time it happens.  I have such a tale in my own family history.  It's my great-aunt Zelda (biologically a cousin, but always referred to as an aunt by my family) and her husband F. Scott Fitzgerald.


Zelda Sayre's talent as a writer was unmistakeable, and her penchant for outrageousness was well-known, even before she met Scott.  After they met, they created a perfect storm of chaos, destructive to both.  Not many people know that my Aunt Zelda was an incredible writer herself, and that many of Scott's novels had sections lifted almost verbatim from Zelda's journals.  When she tried to get published, he often stood in her way, and when she did publish, it was often on the condition that she include her husband's name in her byline, as it was simply too difficult to think that two brilliant writers could exist in a marriage.  Publishers were convinced he must be ghost-writing for her, and ironically often it was the other way around.


Eventually, Zelda's excesses (as well as the pressures of always being known as the writer's wife and never the writer and artist she was in her own right) led to numerous breakdowns and an early demise.  I've always wondered how well Aunt Zelda would have fared on her own, unmarried, or perhaps married to a non-writer, publishing and existing as an artist on her own, much the way Gertrude Stein did in the same era.


And I wonder if Whitney Houston would have done better without Bobby Brown, if perhaps some of the roads they traveled down were due to his jealousy of her tremendous gift, just as Scott envied the liquid, stream-of-consciousness prose that was Zelda's hallmark.


Two brilliant women, gone to soon, with massive potential left un-lived.  A true marriage between artists is difficult and fraught with the potential for disaster.  Perhaps the artist or writer is better suited to marriage with someone not in the same business. Perhaps writers and artists need  spouses in more hands-on, methodical professions to keep them balanced and sane. 


I married a farmer, and I'm very happy about that.  I think Aunt Zelda might have been happier with a farmer, too -- less legendary, perhaps, but happier.