In the following essay excerpt, Martin examines the contradictory, yet equally unrealistic, ways in which men react to Judy Jones in "Winter Dreams."

In her first appearance, Judy is a "beautifully ugly" eleven-year-old whose behavior is unpredictable and outrageous (ordering people around, raising a golf club against her nurse). Also in this first scene she is described as "passionate" and "radiant," and as having "vitality." When she's next seen, at age twenty, she is again described as having "passionate vitality" (the word "passionate" is used three times in these first two descriptions, and later her "passionate energy" is noted); she gives an impression of "intense life."

And how do the men in the story react to her passionate vitality? "All she needs," says Mr. T. A. Hedrick, "is to be turned up and spanked for six months and then to be married off to an old-fashioned cavalry...