Summary

     In "Winter Dreams," published in 1922, Judy Jones symbolizes the old money society, lavishly ornamented and prone to idleness because the wealth is inherited rather than earned. Her family owns the single most illustrious house on Lake Eremie, luring so many suitors including Dexter Green. He vies for her love because she is the lustrous pinnacle of society, and a successful conquest would realize the potential that the American Dream claims is within every person's ability if only they work hard enough.

     It is in the context of the "rags to riches" dream that Fitzgerald excoriates the old money families that do nothing to earn their luxuries. Their money breeds slothfulness and debauchery and corrupts all those who became entangled in their affairs. Dexter Green abandons a promising love life of stability because of the intoxicating glamor Judy radiates. He loses his character in the pursuit of a grail, something he can never truly attain because old money societies are beyond the scope of the American Dream. No amount of labor can achieve the opulence of the Joneses; it is an aristocracy inaccesible to all but the most overprivileged, and ultimately Judy Jones becomes repugnant to Dexter for the mediocre quality of life she embraces. She embraces it because she has never learned how to work for anything substantial or cultivated any ambitions outside frivolous dalliance, a pathetic lifestyle that swallows her beauty by the end of the story.

     Fitzgerald completely comprehends the context in which this story lies.  His family was not well-to-do, and following his literary success, he became debacherous and excessive.  After leaving college, he became determined to earn a fortune.  In the 1920s, his lifestyle embodied carousing and overindulgence.  It wasn't until a decade later when he became a sobering voice, criticizing the lifestyle he used to epitomize.  Much of his work centers around the idea that the society of old wealth is inaccessible to those middle class who wish to enter it.

Passages

“He [Dexter] wanted not association with glittering things and glittering people–he wanted the glittering things themselves” (1826). 

The directness of Dexter's desire colors it almost an obsession, an internal imperative to secure fancy possessions because Dexter uses them to validate his success in life.

"Dexter had seen that, in one sense, he was better than these men. He was newer and stronger. Yet in acknowledging to himself that he wished his children to be like them he was admitting that he was but the rough, strong stuff from which this graceful aristocracy eternally sprang" (1829).

Fitzgerald displays the tension between the idle, old money and the industrious, new money society of self-made entrepeneurs. Though Dexter is of the latter class, he aims to construct the factors that enable the old money in a system that reeks of decay.

"He put his arm around her [Judy], commanded by her eyes. He kissed her curious and lovely mouth and committed himself to the following of a grail" (1831).

Fitzgerald characterizes the old money society as a phantom: it is not for people who must pursue it, but only for those who had it already. If the Jones' lifestyle is that apex to which the American Dream aspires, it is a cruel and fatuous endeavor.

Key Terms

American Dream - the grand ideal that success can be had by anyone and is basically granted by the Constitution: life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.  The American Dream was debunked after the Great Depression made people realize that things beyond their control could affect their destiny.  It became a too-simple story.

boiled down version: hard work = success, getting ahead, and upward mobility