The female protagonist in F. Scott Fitzgerald’s short story “Winter Dreams” is Judy Jones. She is the wealthy, captivating socialite whose beauty and unpredictability dominate Dexter Green’s romantic imagination.
Judy first appears when Dexter is a teenage caddie at a golf club in Minnesota. Although Dexter comes from a respectable middle-class family, Judy belongs to a privileged world that he finds alluring and difficult to enter. Their relationship repeatedly draws close and then collapses as Judy’s flirtatiousness and emotional carelessness frustrate Dexter’s hopes.
Fitzgerald based Judy partly on Ginevra King, a wealthy Chicago socialite whom he pursued unsuccessfully as a young man. That experience helped shape his recurring interest in class, desire, status, and the illusion of the American dream. “Winter Dreams,” first published in 1922 and later collected in All the Sad Young Men, is often viewed as a precursor to The Great Gatsby. Judy is sometimes confused with Daisy Buchanan, but Daisy is a different character from a different work.