SAVE ME THE WALTZ

In the early days, Zelda was glad enough to use Scott Fitzgerald's name to promote her stories; his editor handled a slightly cut version of Save Me the Waltz. His friends loyally attended Zelda's art shows and bought her paintings.

Zelda was always on the verge of an independent identity she never embraced. In 1929, a ballet company in Naples invited her to join it as a soloist: she turned down the job and shortly afterwards became a professional invalid. 

In a vivid section of Save Me the Waltz, the heroine does go to Naples, not just as a soloist, but as the prima ballerina in Swan Lake. She is lonely and adrift. When her snooty daughter visits, she is embarrassed by her relative poverty. Naples sickens the child; both the girl and the dancing mother are relieved when she returns to her father. 

Shortly thereafter, as if in punishment, an infected foot ensures that the heroine will never dance again. Instead of living out this dark dream, even finding within it a possible happy ending, Zelda cracked up.

The Naples invitation makes nonsense of the condescending assumption that Zelda's dancing was a pathetic symptom, not a vocation, but her refusal to follow through was, I think, the turning point of her life.