She enters a room, her body, a network of fragile, angular lines. Her clothes glitter like fresh, crisp snow; they shine like glass, and are the color of water. Her piercing eyes scan the crowd surrounding her, and her cool skin shimmers in the low evening light. Ayn Rand’s heroine from the novel The Fountainhead (1943) is portrayed as a cold, calculating woman, with strict ideals and a fighting spirit; only when she realizes she cannot adhere to these ideals as the men around her are able to hold onto theirs, when she is “tamed” by protagonist Howard Roarke, does her “icy” façade melt. Thusly, one is led to wonder: Is it at all possible for a woman to preserve ideals and traits considered “masculine?”
In the tantalizing pages of Rand’s novel, the reader comes to know the great Howard Roark, Rand’s literary portrayal of the “ideal man.” An aspiring architect, Roark subscribes not to the traditional ancient methods of aesthetics in architecture, but rather to the functional, the minimalist, the modern. As such, Roark is seen throughout the course of the chronicle in voluntary struggle. He is subtly suggestive of a Christ-like figure, as he refuses to compromise his individuality or his principles. Arising from this “ideal man” portrayal is a lack of development of the unembellished character of Roark himself; he does not progress in his beliefs, he does not seek converts to his way of thinking, he does not entreat upon others. In short, according to Rand’s portrayal of gender, the ideal man need not be changed nor change himself.
Conversely, Dominique Francon, Rand’s heroine, is portrayed as a vicious, obstinate, headstrong, unusual young woman, the perfect foil to Howard Roark, completing him, perhaps, the way every woman “should” complete a man. Tangent to Roark’s character, however, she does not refuse change; rather, she changes because of Roark. Her ideals are centralized to the inherent putrid state of the world and the belief that no true greatness, no true individuality, can survive in such a world. As such, she immerses herself in that which she despises in order to shade herself from the vision of the world destroying the things she loves. The same is true as she encounters Roark for the first time: She recognizes his potential and pays great homage to it internally, but externally attempts to destroy him, socially and emotionally, before the rest of the world is able to strip him of his singularity. As her character progresses, however, Dominique realizes that she wishes to find failure in this attempt in order to satiate her curiosity; she desperately longs to determine whether absolute good and genius can survive in her cynical world. She is married several times for the sake of Roark’s grand destiny, and even weds him, after he illegally bombs a building project he deems unacceptable by his standards.
Understanding the nature of each of these intertwined characters is essential, but more tantamount to the comprehension of Dominique Francon’s gender disposition is the nature of her love for Howard Roark. Dominique surrenders her heart and soul to Roark, but before Roark and Francon achieve their grand “happy ending,” Dominique is wed to a man who describes her as living her life without a soul, as if she is merely a mind, devoid of human emotion, simply for the grand purpose of further Howard Roark’s success. She despises him, but contrarily fights tooth and nail for his success in the architectural community, her own way of punishing him for betraying the set of ideals by which she and Roark live. This parallels Dominique, where Roark is suggestive of Christ, with the Virgin Mother of the New Testament, bringing forth the Christ figure, though she does so by granting her first husband all the successes of the world, while also removing from him from what he desires most in life-her love. This love, instead, she grants to Howard Roark without reserve, however, Rand portrays the love shared by Dominique and Roark not as emotional, understanding, or compassionate (all traits considered to be feminine), but as a harsh, strictly logical machine, a depiction which seems to mold even the fuzziness of love into Howard Roark’s sociopathic modus operandi.
Finally, this love coalesces at a peak in which Dominique finally surrenders herself to Roark completely. Rand writes, “Late at night, often, she came to Roark’s room. She came unannounced, certain of finding him there and alone. In this room, there was no necessity to spare, lie, agree, and erase herself out of being. Here she was free to resist, to see her resistance welcomed by an adversary too strong to fear a contest, strong enough to need it; she found a will granting her the recognition of her own entity, untouched and not to be touched except in clean battle, to win or to be defeated, but to be preserved in victory or defeat, not ground into the meaningless pulp of the impersonal…it was-as it had to be, as the nature of the act demanded-an act of violence. It was surrender, made more complete by the force of their resistance…it was an act of clenched teeth and hatred, it was the unendurable, the agony,” (Rand, 282) And afterwards, Dominique sits on the floor at Roark’s feet, placing a cigarette between his lips and lighting it for him. At the conclusion of this encounter, which is not rape, but rather, systematic, emotionless lovemaking, a new Dominique Francon emerges. Where previously stood the cold, calculating, unusually masculine quintessence of a woman equal to her male peers, the reader now observes a soft, dull version of Dominique, one Rand later describes as having “the body of a sacrificial object publicly offered, beyond the need of concealment or desire,” (Rand, 438). As the result of some implicit desire to be governed over, she is shown, stripped not only of her masculine qualities, which have been replaced by submission to Howard Roark, but also stripped of her individuality, her poise, her purpose; she is immersed only in that which is of Howard Roark’s best interest, interests correlated to those of the masculine (even chauvinist in this case) male.
As evinced by Dominique Francon’s character progression into what a woman “should” be, according to Rand’s theories of Objectivism, the issue of feminist culture is exactly what “The Performative” curtails feminism to be: a state of being as acted out in repetition; a gender identity based on habit, in Dominique’s case, by the habit of denying herself for the grand destiny of another, which amounts to personal sacrifice, a feminine attribute. By this definition, certainly one can ascertain that feminism as a whole is a consequence of personal action, that is, allowing one’s female (by biological sex) self to be arranged in terms of socioeconomic, political, marital, or religious status; allowing control of one’s impulses and body to be relinquished to male (by biological sex, but therefore associated with the masculine) control; and allowing one’s thoughts to be organized into the paradox that is feminism therein. Ironically, in her Objectivist stance, Ayn Rand herself, though married, still succeeded in the propagation of her ideals of the ethic of egotism and emphasis on the individual; both her success and the actual principles which led to her success can be considered masculine in nature. Hence, the position held by feminists is an ironic one; by aligning with group principles similar to those held by the majority of the feminist community, these women, who otherwise would be considered People, adopt the typecast of the feminine victim-the very image which feminism would abolish. Undoubtedly, the true plight of feminism should happen only on the individual basis, from the inside out of the singular woman who wishes to take charge of her feminine or masculine Person however she sees fit to do so.
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