Winter Dreams
In this article we will explore the impact that Winter Dreams has had on different aspects of today's society. From its influence on interpersonal relationships to its relevance in the global economy, Winter Dreams has left a significant mark on the modern world. Through analysis of various studies and research, we will examine how Winter Dreams has shaped the way we live, work, and relate to others. In addition, we will reflect on the role that Winter Dreams plays in the future and how its presence will continue to reinvent and transform different areas of our daily lives.
| "Winter Dreams" | |
|---|---|
| Short story by F. Scott Fitzgerald | |
 Metropolitan cover, December 1922 | |
 Text available at Wikisource | |
| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
| Genre(s) | Short story |
| Publication | |
| Published in | Metropolitan magazine All the Sad Young Men |
| Publication type | Magazine Short Story Collection |
| Publisher | Scribner (book) |
| Media type | |
| Publication date | December 1922 |
"Winter Dreams" is a short story by F. Scott Fitzgerald first published in Metropolitan magazine in December 1922 and collected in All the Sad Young Men in 1926.[1] The plot concerns the attempts by a young Midwestern man to win the affection of an upper-class socialite. Frequently anthologized, the story is regarded as one of Fitzgerald's finest works for evoking "the loss of youthful illusions."[2][3]
In the Fitzgerald canon, scholars consider the story to be in the "Gatsby-cluster" as the author expanded on many of its themes in his 1925 novel The Great Gatsby.[2] Writing his editor Max Perkins in June 1925, Fitzgerald described "Winter Dreams" as a "first draft of the Gatsby idea."[4]
Background
Fitzgerald based the short story on his unsuccessful romantic pursuit of socialite Ginevra King.[5] A wealthy heiress from a Chicago banking family, Ginevra enjoyed a privileged upbringing, and the Chicago press chronicled her mundane activities as a member of the elite "Big Four" debutantes during World War I.[6]
While teenagers, Ginevra and Fitzgerald met at a sledding party in Saint Paul, Minnesota, and shared a romance from 1915 to 1917, but their relationship ended when Ginevra's family intervened.[7] Her imperious father, stockbroker Charles Garfield King, or someone else purportedly humiliated the impressionable young writer and bluntly told him that "poor boys shouldn't think of marrying rich girls."[8] Due to his middle-class status and her family's intervention, Ginevra spurned Fitzgerald by January 1917.[9] Fitzgerald claimed that Ginevra rejected him "with the most supreme boredom and indifference."[10]
Following his failed pursuit of Ginevra due to his insufficient wealth, Fitzgerald's attitude towards the upper class became embittered,[11][12] and he wrote in 1926: "Let me tell you about the very rich. They are different from you and me. They possess and enjoy early, and it does something to them, makes them soft where we are hard, and cynical where we are trustful, in a way that, unless you were born rich, it is very difficult to understand. They think, deep in their hearts, that they are better than we are."[13] For the remainder of his life, Fitzgerald harbored a smoldering resentment towards the wealthy.[12]
Despite his subsequent marriage to Southern belle Zelda Sayre, the author remained until his death "so smitten by King that for years he could not think of her without tears coming to his eyes."[14]
Plot summary
Dexter Green is a middle-class young man born in rural Minnesota who aspires to be part of the "old money" elite of the American Midwest. His father owns the second most profitable grocery store in the town. To earn money, Dexter works part-time as a teenage caddie at a golf club in Black Bear Lake, Minnesota, where he meets the 11-year-old Judy Jones. He quits his job rather than be Judy's caddie as he cannot abide acting as one of her obsequious servants.
After college, Dexter opens a successful a laundry business. He returns to the Sherry Island Golf Club and plays golf with the affluent men for whom he once caddied. He encounters Judy Jones again on the golf course, only now she is older and more beautiful. In the evening on Black Bear Lake, Dexter swims to a raft where he encounters Judy piloting a motor boat. She asks him to drive the boat while she aquaplanes. Judy invites Dexter to dinner, and a romance blossoms, but he discovers that he is merely one of a dozen beaus whom she is clandestinely romancing.
After eighteen months, while Judy vacations in Florida, Dexter becomes engaged to Irene Scheerer, a kind-hearted but ordinary-looking girl. When Judy returns, she again ensnares Dexter's affections and asks him to marry her. Dexter breaks off his engagement with Irene, only to be spurned again by Judy a month later. Unable to cope with this recurrent heartbreak, Dexter joins the American Expeditionary Forces to fight in World War I.
Seven years later, Dexter has become a successful businessman in New York. Now wealthy, he hasn't visited his home in years. One day, a Detroit man named Devlin visits Dexter on a business pretext. During the meeting, Devlin reveals that Judy Simms—formerly Judy Jones—is the wife of one of his friends. Devlin recounts how Judy's beauty has faded, and her husband treats her callously. This news demoralizes Dexter as he still loves Judy. Dexter realizes that his dreams are gone, and he can never return home.
Critical analysis
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Frequently anthologized, critics praise Fitzgerald's "Winter Dreams" as among his finest works for evoking "the loss of youthful illusions."[2][3] In the Fitzgerald canon, scholars categorize "Winter Dreams" as part of the so-called "Gatsby-cluster" as the author expanded upon its themes in his 1925 novel The Great Gatsby.[2] Writing his editor Max Perkins in June 1925, Fitzgerald described the short story as a "first draft of the Gatsby idea."[4]
Fitzgerald scholar and biographer Matthew J. Bruccoli described "Winter Dreams" as "the strongest of the Gatsby-cluster stories."[2] He continues:
Like the novel, it examines a boy whose ambitions become identified with a selfish rich girl. Indeed, Fitzgerald removed Dexter Green's response to Judy Jones' home from the magazine text and wrote it into the novel as Jay Gatsby's response to Daisy Fay's home.[2]
Scholar Tim Randell asserts that "Winter Dreams" should be regarded as a crowning literary achievement as Fitzgerald "achieves a dialectical metafiction" in which he deftly criticizes "class relations and print culture."[16] Fitzgerald's short story "identifies ruling class interests as the collective origin of meaning and 'reality' for the entire social body" and "conveys the possibility of counter, collective meanings" driven by class antagonism.[16] Randell argues that the story chronicles a young man's alienation with modernity due to a "lack of communal meaning" and his self-conscious descent into despair and melancholy.[17]
References
Citations
- ^ Fitzgerald 1989, p. 217; Randell 2012, p. 109.
- ^ a b c d e f Fitzgerald 1989, p. 217.
- ^ a b Randell 2012, p. 108.
- ^ a b Fitzgerald 1995, p. 121.
- ^ Bruccoli 2002, pp. 53–59; Randell 2012, p. 109.
- ^ Corrigan 2014, p. 59; Diamond 2012.
- ^ Noden 2003; Mizener 1965, p. 70; Bruccoli 2002, pp. 80, 82.
- ^ Corrigan 2014, p. 61; Smith 2003.
- ^ Noden 2003; Mizener 1965, p. 70; Bruccoli 2002, pp. 53–59, 80–82.
- ^ Noden 2003.
- ^ Borrelli 2013: Ginevra "came to embody 'not only his condemnation of the rich but his ambivalence, his fascination with wealth and his sense of inferiority around it,' said James L.W. West III, who teaches Fitzgerald at Pennsylvania State University and wrote The Perfect Hour, a 2005 history of Fitzgerald and King's romance."
- ^ a b Mizener 1965, p. 141: Fitzgerald harbored "the smouldering hatred of a peasant" towards the wealthy and their elite social milieu.
- ^ Fitzgerald 1989, p. 336.
- ^ Mizener 1972, p. 28; Stevens 2003; Noden 2003.
- ^ Bruccoli 2002, pp. 53–59.
- ^ a b Randell 2012, p. 110.
- ^ Randell 2012, p. 123.
Works cited
- Borrelli, Christopher (May 7, 2013). "Revisiting Ginevra King, The Lake Forest Woman Who Inspired 'Gatsby'". Chicago Tribune. Chicago, Illinois. Retrieved March 11, 2025.
- Bruccoli, Matthew J. (2002) . Some Sort of Epic Grandeur: The Life of F. Scott Fitzgerald (2nd rev. ed.). Columbia, South Carolina: University of South Carolina Press. ISBN 1-57003-455-9 – via Internet Archive.
- Corrigan, Maureen (September 9, 2014). So We Read On: How The Great Gatsby Came to Be and Why It Endures. New York City: Little, Brown and Company. ISBN 978-0-316-23008-7 – via Internet Archive.
- Diamond, Jason (December 25, 2012). "Where Daisy Buchanan Lived". The Paris Review. New York City. Retrieved March 18, 2020.
- Fitzgerald, F. Scott (1995). Bruccoli, Matthew J. (ed.). A Life in Letters: A New Collection Edited and Annotated by Matthew J. Bruccoli. New York City: Scribner. ISBN 978-0-684-80153-7.
- Fitzgerald, F. Scott (1989). "Winter Dreams". In Bruccoli, Matthew J. (ed.). The Short Stories of F. Scott Fitzgerald. New York City: Scribner. ISBN 978-0-684-19160-7.
- Mizener, Arthur (1972). Scott Fitzgerald and His World. New York: G.P. Putnam's Sons. ISBN 978-0-500-13040-7 – via Internet Archive.
- Mizener, Arthur (1965) . The Far Side of Paradise: A Biography of F. Scott Fitzgerald (2nd ed.). Boston: Houghton-Mifflin Company. ISBN 978-1-199-45748-6 – via Internet Archive.
- Noden, Merrell (November 5, 2003). "Fitzgerald's First Love: A Young Debutante Who Became the Model for Gatsby's Daisy". Princeton Alumni Weekly. Vol. 93, no. 8. Princeton, New Jersey. Archived from the original on January 4, 2020. Retrieved March 18, 2020.
- Stevens, Ruth (September 7, 2003). "Before Zelda, There Was Ginevra". Princeton Weekly Bulletin. Vol. 93, no. 1. Princeton, New Jersey. Archived from the original on August 1, 2020. Retrieved December 22, 2024.
- Randell, Tim (2012). "Metafiction and the Ideology of Modernism in Fitzgerald's 'Winter Dreams'". The F. Scott Fitzgerald Review. 10. University Park, Pennsylvania: Penn State University Press: 108–121. doi:10.1111/j.1755-6333.2012.01072.x. JSTOR 41693881. S2CID 170297357.
- Smith, Dinitia (September 8, 2003). "Love Notes Drenched in Moonlight; Hints of Future Novels in Letters To Fitzgerald". The New York Times (Monday ed.). New York City. Retrieved March 18, 2020.
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