Ayn Rand's Selfless Woman Dominique Francon is not a person; she is a barometer. The only significant woman character in Ayn Rand’s novel The Fountainhead, she serves solely as an indication of her current husband’s success. While she is Mrs. Peter Keating, her husband is at the height of his architectural career. When Keating trades her to Gail Wynand, it is then Wynand who is at his best, having secured as wife the woman he desperately wanted to possess. As Mrs. Roark, finally, Dominique signifies the victory of the virtuous egoism that her husband represents over its antithesis, evil altruism. Dominique herself, however, does not adhere to this same virtuous egoism, instead becoming, paradoxically, selflessly dependent upon others in her need for fulfillment from the men whom she embellishes. Thus, in her portrayal of Dominique’s relationships in The Fountainhead, Rand suggests that women are not people in and of themselves; they require men to worship and so are unable to achieve Rand's ideal of pure egoism. Rand first indicates that women are not self-contained people when she has Dominique relish in the memory of her rape at the hands of Howard Roark, the man who will become her long-term partner. Dominique, Rand writes, does not feel as if she has been violated following the assault but rather experiences “the same kind of pleasure she had felt in [Roark’s] arms” (1) when thinking of it. Roark, Rand’s protagonist and ideal man, cannot bear for his buildings to be built in any way other than that which he specifies, as evidenced by his dynamiting of Cortlandt Homes. But according to Rand, Dominique, The Fountainhead’s only candidate for the ideal woman, not only suffers but savors the desecration of her own body. Here, Dominque is captivated by an experience that Roark, had he been the victim rather than the rapist, would have considered a repulsive evil. But because Dominique is a woman, she is not sufficient alone, so Roark’s rape is considered a gift to complete rather than an infringement upon her ego. Rand reiterates women’s lack of independent ego when she marries Dominque to Peter Keating. Dominique does not choose this marriage out of love for her groom but out of a need to suffer in a way commensurate to the pain of her hero, Roark: If he cannot create the buildings that are his passion, then she, because she is his dependent, must be similarly hindered. Thus, she marries Keating, Roark’s opposite and the archetypal selfless man. Keating, Dominique observes, is one of the people who “want nothing but mirrors around them. To reflect them while they’re reflecting too”, he has “no center and no purpose” (2), or in other words, no ego. Therefore, by marrying him, Dominique puts herself in as close proximity as possible to the “blank death” (2) of collective thinking that she so despises. Here, it nearly seems as though Dominique has an opinion of her own. Nevertheless, she does not, as her hatred for those who think the thoughts of others —or even engage in collaboration and cooperation with their fellow humans—is identical to Roark’s. Even in her resolve, she is an echo of her first lover, a version of him without agency: Roark would scorn the idea of wounding himself in response to harm wrought upon another. ZEITGEIST VOL. 2, NO. 1 PAGE 19 BY: ANONYMOUS
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