Winter Dreams

There are several versions of Judy Jones. There is the beautiful Judy who embodies Dexter’s winter dreams. There is the femme-fatale: the artificial, narcissistic, demanding, and careless Judy. Conversely, there is the loyal housewife who loves her unfaithful husband and stays at home with her children. Lastly, there is the Judy whose story is not told except through the perceptions of others. Because Judy appears primarily through the lens of Dexter’s fantasies and disappointments, it is the first two versions of Judy Jones who predominate.

The story’s male characters praise and covet Judy Jones’s superior beauty, and her seeming awareness of her own desirability as she moves fluidly from man to man only increases her attractiveness; like a commodity, Judy’s value increases with demand. Judy’s commanding and controlling nature also enhances men’s desire to possess or “own” her. For Dexter, Judy represents the zenith of social success, wealth, youth, beauty, and love.

However, unlike the fantasies her admirers project onto her, Judy’s character contains contradictions. As a young girl, she is “beautifully ugly”—a person who will, with her “lovel[iness],” bring “misery to a great number of men” (663). Her “absurd smile,” characterized by the downward twist of her lips “at the corners,” is more like a frown (663), and the fact that her eyes are “almost passionate” suggests she merely feigns passion (663).

The frown-like quality of Judy’s smile also hints at a profound sadness. That her smile appears merely as an “invitation to a kiss” perhaps suggests that Judy sees her beauty and seductiveness as her only source of power (667). However, because she ultimately will settle down, she plays a purposeless game. She toys with men’s emotions and utilizes her beauty to control them, but only temporarily. Like Daisy Buchanan of The Great Gatsby, Judy plays reckless games as a distraction from an unsavory reality: the inevitability of being a “beautiful little fool.”

Irene Scheerer is Judy’s foil. She is “light-haired and sweet and honorable, and a little stout, and she had two suitors whom she pleasantly relinquished when Dexter formally asked her to marry him” (668). Although Irene is desirable, she is ordinary. Her appeal to Dexter lies precisely in the sense that she would be a fitting wife, maintaining the home and taking care of the children: “He knew that Irene would be no more than a curtain spread behind him, a hand moving among gleaming teacups, a voice calling to children” (669). In essence, Irene is invisible to Dexter and ultimately takes a back seat to his winter dreams; although Dexter causes “serious hurt” to Irene and her parents (671), he does not regret his affair with Judy.

Mr. Mortimer Jones is a member of high society and one of the Sherry Island Golf Club patrons whom Dexter strives to emulate. Early in the story, Dexter imagines becoming a “golf champion.” He imagines “stepping from a Pierce-Arrow automobile” and, “like Mr. Mortimer Jones,” strolling “frigidly into the lounge of the Sherry Island Golf Club […]. Among those who watched him in open-mouthed wonder was Mr. Mortimer Jones” (662). After hearing that Dexter intends to quit his job as a caddy, Mr. Mortimer Jones attempts to dissuade him, but Dexter has higher aspirations than to succeed as a caddy. Rather than catering to the very rich, he seeks to become a member of the very rich. That Mr. Mortimer Jones is Judy’s father only contributes to Dexter’s need to quit his job. After all, he cannot marry Judy if he serves her or her father.