Gender and Ambition Theme Analysis

Judy Jones, the daughter of the wealthy Mortimer Jones, is introduced as an eleven-year-old with a “passionate quality” and a perceptible “spark” that Dexter immediately finds bewitching. However, her imperiousness on the golf course leads Dexter to quit his caddying job. His “winter dreams” remind him that he should not be taking orders from someone so young. After making his fortune in the laundry business, Dexter sees Judy again; she is now “arrestingly beautiful,” but not known for much else. Interestingly, the reader knows nothing of Dexter’s appearance, but only about his class background and his ambition. On the other hand, Judy is defined solely by her looks and how she uses them to her advantage. Fitzgerald’s characterizations of Judy and Dexter illustrate the limitations of gender. While Dexter is able to channel his vitality into his business ventures, Judy’s only hope is to use her allure to find a suitable husband.

T.A. Hedrick, however, is contemptuous of Judy’s tendency to turn her “big cow-eyes on every calf in town,” a metaphor that overlooks the deliberateness of her actions. She turns her gaze on men to make them consider her for marriage—though she isn’t quite sincere about her interest in them, having many suitors (and therefore many options for her future) makes tactical sense. It’s clear, then, that Judy is planning for her future as deliberately (and some might say as cynically) as Dexter; however, Judy is criticized for this while Dexter is praised.

Dexter hears about Judy’s lover from New York—“the son of the president of a great trust company”—whom she jilts in favor of “a local beau” who does not bore her. Just as Judy is flighty and indifferent to her suitors, Dexter acknowledges that Irene Scheerer will not bring him happiness, but a “bushel of content.” She offers domestic comfort—a prospect that he eschews in favor of another month of Judy’s fickle passion. Like Judy’s indifference for her “mournful” New York lover, Dexter, after telling Irene about his infidelity, recalls nothing “sufficiently pictorial about Irene’s grief to stamp itself on his mind.” Both consume people like objects, picking them up then discarding them at their whim. Fitzgerald shows that both Dexter and Judy share a “hard-minded” attitude borne from their respective ambitions for wealth and influence.

When Judy marries Lud Simms, a prominent man from Detroit, she becomes a housewife who is treated carelessly by a man whom she loves. There is a cruel irony in this fate: Judy has secured the wealthy man whom she wanted, but is now treated with the indifference she had once inflicted on her beaus. When Devlin, a business associate, tells Dexter about Judy’s marriage, Dexter seems both surprised and disappointed by the report that Judy “[s]tays at home with her kids” while her husband runs around. He is surprised because he had associated that careless behavior with Judy. Devlin insists that, despite Simms’s running around, “they’re not going to get divorced or anything” and that “she forgives him” when he’s “particularly outrageous.” This forgiveness mirrors Dexter’s own habit of returning to Judy every time she treated him poorly. Her vulnerability reminds him of his own—not just that which he felt in the past, but also the vulnerability he still feels, despite all of his material acquisitions. The difference is that Judy has no other recourse than to be a wife and mother. While Dexter had the option to discard Irene, and then put his failed engagement with Judy out of his mind to focus on his business pursuits, Judy’s business was to marry a man who could bring her wealth and prestige.