Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in Winter Dreams, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Class Mobility and the American Dream
Gender and Ambition
Dreams, Happiness, and Reality
Time, Progress, and Repetition
Summary
Analysis
Dexter and Judy embark on a romance. She reveals that she thinks that she loves him, but a week later, during a picnic supper, she disappears with another man in her roadster. Dexter is upset and unconvinced by Judy’s assurances that she did not kiss the other man, but he appreciates her courtesy in attempting to protect his feelings.
Judy’s non-committal behavior is a way of asserting her power. She is aware of herself as a coveted object and aware of Dexter’s love, but also seeks her own pleasure.
Themes
Before the summer ends, Dexter learns that there are still other men. Furthermore, he realizes that Judy’s habit is to maintain a favorite suitor for a short time and then neglect him in favor of a new man in town. When the old suitor threatens to stop seeing her altogether, she allows for a brief reconciliation, which encourages him to continue to seek her affection “for a year or so longer.”
Judy’s objectification of her lovers mirrors Dexter’s objectification of people. She is only interested in the “new man in town,” just as Dexter is only interested in the “glittering people.” However, because her identity is reliant on her desirability, she encourages men’s affections even after she loses interest.
Themes
Literary Devices
During three days in August, Dexter and Judy spend long evenings on her veranda. Between “strange wan kisses,” he asks her to marry him. Her initial response is ambiguous. Then, she accepts his proposal. Soon thereafter, she distances herself from him and, in September, becomes involved with a man from New York whom she dumps by the end of the month in favor of a local suitor.
Judy’s affections are weakening (“wan kisses”), but she still feels the pressure to marry. When a new man comes to town, he offers her a distraction from Dexter, but she loses interest in him as well, suggesting that Judy is bored by many of the men in her social class.
Themes
When the summer ends, Dexter is 24-years-old and remains socially active, but, due to his “confessed devotion” to Judy, he takes no interest in local women. He begins thinking of moving to New York and taking Judy with him. She remains the most desirable woman he has ever known.
Get the entire Winter Dreams LitChart as a printable PDF.
The following fall, when Dexter is twenty-five, he becomes engaged to Irene Scheerer, a nice, honorable young woman who is less attractive than Judy. Dexter feels no passion for her and he continues to ruminate on all of the ways in which Judy insulted his dignity by beckoning him, then growing bored with him. By fall, he convinces himself that he cannot have Judy.
Dexter’s engagement to Irene is marred by his sense that she is second-best, just like his father’s grocery store was second-best. He thinks that he can be content with her, but he struggles to overcome the sting of Judy’s rejection. Judy remains a “glittering object” out of his reach.
Themes
At the end of the week, Dexter goes to a dance where Judy is also present. He dances with her once, but does not engage her in conversation or compliment her appearance. Judy seems indifferent to his lack of sociability, which wounds him, though he is not jealous to see her with another man. Instead, he talks with Irene about books and music. Though he knows “very little about either,” he decides that, given his youth and new class status, he “should know more about such things.”
Dexter is disappointed to realize that Judy does not rely on his attention. Conversely, he is less interested in paying attention to Irene, but does find her useful in making him appear more cultivated. Dexter is not interested in arts and culture, but wants to appear as though he is to fit in better with members of the upper-class who appreciate such things.
Themes
By May, Judy has gone traveling and Dexter is busy with Irene. The relationship brings him tranquility, compared to the “turbulence” he had felt the previous May with Judy. Despite his “tranquility of spirit,” he worries that his life with Irene will offer domestic security, but neither the “fire and loveliness” nor “the wonder of the varying hours and seasons” that he had experienced with Judy.
Dexter cannot let go of his past with Judy and seeks to relive his past summers with her. His obsession with memories from his youth prevents him from progressing into an adult relationship with Irene.
Themes
Literary Devices
One evening, in mid-May, Dexter and Irene plan to go to the University Club’s lounge to watch the dancers. However, Irene’s mother informs Dexter that she has a “splitting headache,” prompting Mrs. Scheerer to send her to bed. Dexter returns to the University Club alone, but finds himself bored with the dancers. In the midst of a yawn, he hears a familiar voice greeting him: it is Judy, dressed in gold from head to toe, who has left her date alone across the room so that she can reunite with Dexter. She prompts him to leave with her, this time in his car, and he gladly goes along. He is enchanted by her once again.
Dexter’s yawn is a sign of his boredom with his current life, which becomes reinvigorated once Judy reenters it. She appears to him in gold, like the ”glittering object” he had always desired. Whereas she had expressed indifference toward him during their last meeting, she refocuses her attention on him once again. As they had once before, they leave together in a car.
Themes
Literary Devices
Together, Dexter and Judy drive downtown, then back toward the University Club. He wonders if she is aware of his engagement to Irene, and he is confused by her sudden desire to marry him. Judy insists that he could never love anyone in the way that he loved her and expresses a wish to repeat their past, though Dexter is skeptical.
Judy wants Dexter back because he is promised to someone else. Judy’s mention of his desperate love for her is an attempt to lure him away from Irene and to possess his love as her own. Her ego, which relies on her desirability, cannot tolerate Dexter choosing another woman.
Themes
Judy acknowledges Dexter’s engagement to Irene and the mention of Irene’s name causes a feeling of shame in Dexter. Judy asks that he drive her home, then she begins to cry, wondering why her beauty has not brought her happiness. She makes a final appeal to Dexter for marriage, which inspires a wave of feelings in him. He settles on accepting her as “his own, his beautiful, his pride.” He decides to take Judy back. Judy then invites Dexter into her house. He accepts and spends the night with her.
Judy is eager for Dexter to accept her as a beautiful object. His decision confirms the value of her beauty which, for a woman of her time and social class, is supposed to offer her comfort and security in the way in which Dexter thinks economic success will offer him comfort and security. Judy’s failure to find satisfaction in her beauty, however, casts a pall over Dexter’s own attempts to find happiness in social status. She cannot reconcile her need to be wanted with the fact that she does not really want Dexter.
Themes
