Describe and analyze the character of Judy Jones.

It is important that the reader mainly sees Judy through Dexter Green's eyes, which admire Judy less for who she is than for what she represents: the upper class to which Dexter wishes to belong. Her father is the prominent Mortimer Jones, a member of the Sherry Island Golf Club, where Dexter caddies. Dexter uses the idea of Judy—the young, idealized beauty whom he remembers—to convince himself that he can always return to the past and recapture moments that are long gone.
When Dexter first encounters Judy, he describes her as "arrestingly beautiful," with a color in her face that suggests "fluctuating and feverish warmth" as well as intense life and passionate vitality. Mr. Sandwood, a young man who is also a member of the golf club, where Dexter is now a guest, also finds Judy beautiful, while T.A. Hedrick finds her too promiscuous to be pretty.
As for her personality, Dexter describes it as "the most direct and unprincipled . . . with which he had ever come in contact." Judy is assertive, unlike many women of the era (including Dexter's fiancee, Irene Scheerer) and goes after whatever she wants "with the full pressure of her charm." He also notes how Judy makes men conscious "to the highest degree of her physical loveliness." On the other hand, she is not a woman who can be "won," and, when men come on to her too strongly, she loses interest. Judy goes through numerous suitors, including Dexter. With Dexter, she has an on-again–off-again affair which culminates in an engagement that never results in marriage.
Judy is aware of her beauty, which she thinks is greater than that of any other woman in her town, but neither her beauty nor her wealth make her happy. The subject of Judy's beauty, however, is entirely determined by who is looking upon her. For Dexter, there is no one more beautiful or more coveted than Judy (though, for him, so much of Judy's beauty and charm is determined by her class status).
Judy may very well have been the most beautiful girl in Black Bear, Minnesota, but Dexter's associate, Devlin, finds that she was "a pretty girl when she first came to Detroit" but is merely "all right" now. Devlin's comment about Judy's looks disillusions Dexter and helps him realize that he idealized Judy as part of his dream that he could hold on to the past and regard himself, still, as a young man with plenty of time to create more future plans. For Dexter, those plans involved owning all of the "glittering things" which belonged to the upper class, including Judy. When Dexter learns that Judy has aged and leads an unhappy life with an alcoholic, he realizes that he, too, is growing older and that his career is no longer "largely a matter of futures." He also realizes that his image of Judy as a coveted object never accounted for her humanity.