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They Say I Say Paper

ENG 202
Gary Konas
Xiaoqian Zeng
Apr. 3. 2015

Feminism In Winter Dreams

Winter Dreams is a famous novel written by F. Scott Fitzgerald.
The whole story takes place in the upper class of America
throughout World War I. In the critical essay A Feminist Reading of
Fitzgeralds Winter Dreams, Lihua Zhang and Liying Cui argue that
Winter Dreams reflects the disillusion of the American Dream,
which includes the relationship between wealth and love, the way
of dealing with true love and love in illusion... (1). In other words,
Winter Dreams indicates sexism, which the womans role was to
be obedient to her husband at that time in America. I agree with this
opinion. I think that reading Winter Dreams from a feminist point
of view helps us to understand the different ways that women are
subjugated in society.
In Winter Dreams, Dexter, a poor young man falls in love with
Judy, a wealthy girl in the upper class, when he is a young boy. Judy
represents Dexters dream. In order to make this dream come true,
Dexter makes great efforts to become rich and finally succeeds.
However, Judy marries Lud Simms, a rich person who turns out to be
abusive man, and her beauty fades soon because of the unhappy

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marriage. Dexter ends up with a depressed and meaningless life,

feeling that his dream has ended, something in his heart has been
lost.
In this novel, there are two female characters: Irene and Judy.
However, both of these two are silent, we can only hear their story
through the male narrator and their psychological activities are
missing from the narration. In fact, when I first read this story, I put
my whole attention on Dexter because I thought he was so
innocent. It is written from his point of view so I was sympathetic
toward him. The two female characters, Irene and Judy, what they
look like, and how they feel about everything, are all interpreted by
a male. As Zhang and Cui point out, these two women images fail
to portray women as creative, rational people, but deliberately
construct women images conceived in the imagination of males
(2). Even though I first felt sorry for Dexter, when I read this story
second time from a feminist perspective, I focused on the two
female characters and found that they are actually the victims.
Irene represents a traditional upper class American woman
image--the angel in the house, who complies to the social rules,
gets married to a man, then pleases her husband, attends to his
every comfort, and obeys him. Like Zhang and Cui mention in their
essay Irene perfectly meets the social requirements for her internal
side, the angel-in the house role she is supposed to play, instead of
a living person to be herself; her internal emotional needs
completely fade out (2). For a lot of men, Irene is a woman who

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most appropriately fits being a wife: she is easy going, gentle and
loyal, naive and kind. The personality traits the writer uses to
describe her demonstrate that those factors were what American
society believed that women should have. That also explains the
reason why Dexter expresses she was so sturdily popular, so
intensely great. Irene is a woman who will do her job well as a
wife.
In comparison, Judy represents a totally new woman image. The
writer spares no effort in depicting how beautiful she is, and her
beauty is fatal to men. People may view her as a rebellious flapper
because she makes the best use of her beauty: she socializes with
dozens of rich men and makes them lose their head, then abandons
them. Personally, I really admire her courage. At that time in
America, it was brave that a woman did not follow the social
requirements and rules, and lived her life as she wanted rather than
being a traditional woman like Irene. Zhang and Cui share the same
opinion with me. They say that in this way, she is definitely a rebel
against the social conventions and norms of her time...Judy breaks
the social rules... (3). Indeed, Judy pursues individual freedom and
follows her heart as she likes. However, even a brave woman like
Judy still cannot escape from the shackles of society. In the end of
the story, she marries a rich man, but he turns out to be depraved
and abuses her. Thus, her beauty fades out fast. I think it indicates
that no matter how women struggle with the social shackles, they
cannot to break away from them.

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When Dexter knows that Judy is not beautiful anymore and

becomes a normal housewife, he says long ago, there was
something in me, but now that thing is gone. I think it shows that
Dexters love of Judy was based on Judys beauty, but when her
appearance is no longer charming, his dream ends.
All of this reflects the idea that women should have a
subordinate status and they must be dominated by their husband.
As Zhang and Cui summarize the society says that beautiful
women must bear patiently their suffering and accept the fact that
they are victims of the circumstances of life (4). Even today, there
are a lot of women in the world like Irene and Judy, some of them
have already escapeed from the shackles of society, but some of
them are still in these shackles. Although weve made progress,
reading Winter Dreams from a feminist perspective shows us that
womens status is still below mens, and the shackles still exist.

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References
Fitzgerald, F. "WINTER DREAMS." Maclean's 35.22 (1922): 22. Web.
Zhang, Lihua, and Cui, Liying. "A Feminist Reading of Fitzgerald's
Winter Dreams. Theory and Practice in Language Studies 4.3
(2014): 513.web.