Status Updates From Seduction and Betrayal

Wow. I miss strong, well-written essays and analyses by well-informed, opinionated female writer-thinkers.

On Sylvia Plath: 'Her work is brutal, like the smash of a fist.'

'Portions of [Zelda's] diary and her letters had been used in This Side of Paradise.'

On Zelda Fitzgerald: 'Zelda Fitzgerald's sad, wasted life seemed to have been buried beneath the ground, covered over by the desperate violets of Scott Fitzgerald's memories.'
[...]
'Or, perhaps, the reckoning, which was breakdown, insanity, was merely mysteriously there, compelling the earlier transgressions and excesses.'

On the Brontës: 'They were serious about the threatening character of real life. Romance and deprivation go hand in hand in their novels.'

“Fortunately, some of Ibsen’s more far-out heroines — Hedda Gabler, Rebecca West, and Irene — are childless and this makes their suicides and falling off a mountain easier on the moral sensibilities of the audience” ok Elizabeth unfortunately you’re right😭