F Scott Fitzgerald

The Beautiful and the Damned F Scott Fitzgerald Special edition

The Beautiful and Damned tells the story of Anthony Patch, a 1910s socialite and presumptive heir to a tycoon's fortune, and his courtship and relationship with his wife Gloria Gilbert. It describes his brief service in the Army during World War I, and the couple's post-war partying life in New York, and his later alcoholism. Gloria and Anthony's love story is much more than just a couple falling in love. Their story deals with the hardships of a relationship, especially when each character has a tendency to be selfish. The way Gloria and Anthony are portrayed seems to draw on Fitzgerald's personal life with his wife. Zelda was a firecracker of a woman, and Scott was quite the party guy himself. As Joanna Stolarek suggests, Fitzgerald draws on "Zelda, the object of the writer's literary passion" (Stolarek et al 53). Considering that Fitzgerald uses his life with Zelda as a template for this novel, The Beautiful and Damned can be very telling of his personal life.