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How does one justify the rape of Dominique in FH?

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Whyz

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Please explain with unequivocal terms how this works. Ayn Rand did not believe anything without proof of its existence and its foundation in objective reality. Feelings of course, without their rational basis are subjective and should not be a reason to believe anything. Did you read somewhere that she believed in "love on first sight" per se? If so please reference the source and page numbers as this is something I am extreemely surprised at.

"She wondered why she had never noticed that she did not know his name and why she had never asked him. Perhaps because she had known everything she had to know about him from that first glance" (chap. 2, pg 220, last paragraph)

"She could accept, thought Dominique, and come to forget everything that had happened to her, save one memory: that she had found pleasure in the thing which had happened, that he had known it, and more: that he had known it before he came to her and that he would not have come to her but for that knowledge. ." (Chapt. ,pg 219, 4th paragraph)

I finally have my book on me. I think these quotes from Fountainhead are pretty clear and to the point.

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Perhaps I meant evasion in the sense of avoiding the implication of such value as he would mean to her. Perhaps evasion is the wrong term all together?

After giving it some thought, I think it might be the best term to use there after all, with a clarification that it was not an intellectually dishonest evasion of knowledge but an attempt to steer clear of emotional attachment. Among Objectivists, the word has the former meaning most of the time, so it can be expected to confuse people a little when it is used in a different sense. :thumbsup:

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Feelings of course, without their rational basis are subjective and should not be a reason to believe anything.

Emotions are. But sensations are not. The things I mentioned are things you see and hear, and then draw inferences from. If you do the latter rationally, your knowledge is objective.

Imagine two men approaching you on the sidewalk. One of them is loitering slowly with his back bent, facing down, wearing crumpled and stained clothes. His hair is long, oily, and unkempt; his face is grimy and unshaven, with its muscles limp and the chin fallen in; his eyelids are half-closed; his eyes move slowly and don't focus much on anything. He doesn't look into your eyes. He is holding an empty bottle of cheap beer in his hand.

The other man is pacing briskly, with his spine upright, holding his head up. His hair is trim and clean. His face is tidy, with sharp features and taut muscles. His eyes are pointed forward, in the direction he is going; they keenly survey the objects along the path ahead. He is wearing a dark blue suit and an immaculate white shirt; he is holding a suitcase in his hand. He looks straight into your eyes briefly, then moves on.

Can you draw objective conclusions about the natures of these two people?

I knew you could.

The purer a personality, the more clearly it is reflected in the person's appearance. The people you meet day by day are usually mixed bags, which makes it more difficult to evaluate them. One sign about them makes you think they are honest, but tnen you see another sign that calls it into question. But the characters of The Fountainhead are abstractions of the essential components that make up the personalities of people--so with them, all signs point one way.

Did you read somewhere that she believed in "love on first sight" per se?

We had a thread on this topic.

"Because he could always read her mind"?! How does he do that?! :thumbsup:

By looking at the way she acts and reasoning about what could have made her act that way.

----

See also the quotes in Dominique's post . They pretty much settle the issue of whether Roark knew her mind. (Thanks for looking them up, Dom!)

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After giving it some thought, I think it might be the best term to use there after all, with a clarification that it was not an intellectually dishonest evasion of knowledge but an attempt to steer clear of emotional attachment. Among Objectivists, the word has the former meaning most of the time, so it can be expected to confuse people a little when it is used in a different sense. :thumbsup:

Yes, I find it to be that way with many words, which is something new for me to learn and should help me to write with greater clarity, by getting into the habit of defining how I am using a particular word within the context I am using it.

See also the quotes in Dominique's post . They pretty much settle the issue of whether Roark knew her mind. (Thanks for looking them up, Dom!)

More than happy to when I'm at home. This is helping me to understand the books much better, and I already liked and understood them. :D

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To summarize your points, you are claiming that Dagny Taggart was mentally ill (obsessive, in this case) rather than a mistaken but passionate valuer. You have also accused Ayn Rand's ideal woman of being an emotionalist.

What is your evidence for each of the numbered claims you have made above?

(Perhaps others in this forum will point out other problems in the original post, while I concentrate on these attacks on one of Ayn Rand's greatest characters -- and by implication, on Ayn Rand herself. Of course, as always, everyone is welcome to contribute to any point.)

Again I hate to digress so far from the original topic, but as I have been charged for a third time that I am attacking Ayn Rand I must (wearily) defend myself. In my previous postings I tried to explain that discussing a character in what you think is a negative way is not an attack on the author. Dagny Taggart and Dominique Francon are both flawed characters up until the relative end of each novel, when they "see the light" for lack of a better phrase. First let me address the so called "ambivalence" of my statements. I cannot assert hypothetical conditional occurrences as unequivocal statements. I am now going to provide textural support in the numbered order you have reformatted my post in. The following is from Atlas Shrugged (1957 paperback edition):

1:

"Where are you going?"

"To the country. To a cabin I own in the Berkshires..." (Chapter 6 Miracle Metal, p.519)

note: I don't think this number can be disputed

2,3,4:

"Don't think of Taggart Transcontinental - she had told herself on her first night in the cabin - don't think of it until your able to hear the words "Atlantic Southern" or "Associated Steel."

"It seemed to her she was fighting the unpredictable cruelty of her own mind. She would lie in bed, drifting off to sleep - then suddenly find herself thinking that the conveyor belt was worn at the coaling station at Willow Bend Indiana...and then she would be sitting up in bed, crying, "Stop it! - and stopping it, but remaining awake for the rest of the night."

"It was the times that she could not stop it that she dreaded, the times when unable to stand up - as in physical pain, with no limit to divide it from the pain in her mind - she would fall down on the floor of the cabin or on the earth of the woods and lie still, with her face pressed to a chair or a rock and fight not to let herself scream aloud..." (Chapter 8 By Our Love, p.571)

note: This description fits Burgess's own description perfectly: "a form of having one's thoughts dominated by some one focus, involuntarily and out of control."

please explain to me how she was in control of those thoughts and how TT didn't dominate her focus. If you can.

4,5,6,7:

"She stopped. When she looked up at their faces, the fire had gone out of hers. She crumpled her sketch and flung it aside into the red dust of the gravel. "Oh what for?" she cried, the despair breaking out for the first time. "To build three miles of railroad and abandon a transcontinental system!" (Chapter 2 The Utopia of Greed p. 738)

note: Dagny is obsessed with Taggart Transcontinental, the dying hulk crippled by Directive 10-289, and fighting uselessly in a rational world than staying in paradise, even after Francisco had just explained his reasons and everyone else's of the morality of work and how it can't be justified in the outside world (if you want me to look that one up its relatively close to the above quote: you get the idea).

"She shook her head. "I can't..."she whispered, "not yet..."...Oh, if only I didn't have to hear about it!..." (Chapter 2 The Utopia of Greed p. 738)

Again she is agonizing over the railroad and not the ethics behind her work. She was obsessed (yes I am using that word again) with physical hulks and just couldn't seem to let go of her obsession. This is not demeaning. Ayn Rand wrote her that way for a purpose. Francisco and Galt repeatedly tried to show her the err of her ways but she just couldn't let go - contrary to reason. This is obsession. If you need quotes about how they tried to convince her to stay I suggest you look them up yourself - they are interspersed all around.

Let me emphasize this again as you have repeated this accusation several times: analyzing a character is not attacking the author!!! Burgess I don't appreciate your insinuations of slandering Ayn Rand or her characters. I am not condemning them, nor passing judgment but going on specific information found in Rand's novels. I draw my own conclusions. If these conclusions are wrong than by all means show me how they are wrong. Don't accuse me of transgressions I have "committed" - which is what you have been doing. You have not contributed to the discussion except to pull apart and propagate claims of attacking Ayn Rand - which I highly resent.

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"Myself,"

A good source about Rand's intentions in portraying her characters is "Journals of Ayn Rand." She writes there which charactes have a flaw and how she evaluates the flaw. Rand writes there about Dominique Francon's flaw as independence turned agaisnt itself in protest against the world she sees around her. (p. 230)

Rand writes about Dagny Taggart on pages 424-426, and indicates that Dagny makes an error, but she does not refer to it as a character flaw. It is over-optimism and over-confidence about running Taggart Transcontinental on her own.

For Dagny, the dying "hulk" of Taggart Transcontinental is her heritage from her glorious ancestor, a remnant from a glorious age. She makes an error in thinking she can save this remnant.

-- Michelle Cohen

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Again I hate to digress so far from the original topic, but as I have been charged for a third time that I am attacking Ayn Rand I must (wearily) defend myself. In my previous postings I tried to explain that discussing a character in what you think is a negative way is not an attack on the author. Dagny Taggart and Dominique Francon are both flawed characters up until the relative end of each novel, when they "see the light" for lack of a better phrase. [...]

note: Dagny is obsessed with Taggart Transcontinental, the dying hulk crippled by Directive 10-289, and fighting uselessly in a rational world than staying in paradise, even after Francisco had just explained his reasons [...]

Again she is agonizing over the railroad and not the ethics behind her work. She was obsessed (yes I am using that word again) with physical hulks and just couldn't seem to let go of her obsession. [...]

Let me emphasize this again as you have repeated this accusation several times: analyzing a character is not attacking the author!!!

"Myself," for your post, you have done an extraordinary amount of work and in a very short time. Your evidence -- the passages you have cited from Atlas Shrugged -- are neatly and aptly presented. I have reviewed them as you have presented them in your post. As a consequence, I am grateful to you for helping me understand a phenomenon that has puzzled me since I joined ObjectivismOnline.

Using the evidence you have presented -- not your interpolated comments -- I have reached a conclusion opposite from your psychological interpretation. I see no evidence of obsession (a form of mental illness) in Dagny Taggart, Ayn Rand's most admirable female character. To the contrary, what I see in the passages you have selected is a dramatization of the agonizing conflict of a passionate valuer struggling with wrenching alternatives dealing with a core value, her work.

How can you and I reach opposite conclusions from examining the same passages? Because we are starting from different premises, which means different contexts. You are interpreting Ayn Rand's fiction -- the world's greatest romanticist fiction -- as if it were naturalism.

The essence of naturalism is reporting of deterministic human events. The essence of romanticism is a stylized view of life based in part on a theory of man as volitional, not determined. (For both man not possessed of volition, which is the premise of naturalism, and for man possessed of volition, which is the premise of romanticism, students of Objectivism should see Ayn Rand, The Romantic Manifesto: A Philosophy of Literature, pp. 81, 82, 83, 90, and 113.)

You have thereby repudiated not only the esthetics of Objectivism, but its roots as well, in a view of man as a being of volition rather than a being driven by demons beyond his control. Do mentally ill individuals actually exist? Of course they do, as our daily newspapers repeatedly inform us. Ayn Rand, however, did not write stories centered on characters in need of psychotherapy. She wrote about characters who are good or bad because they make choices -- or evade them -- about philosophical ideas that guide their actions.

Again, I thank you for your diligent research and for helping me gain some insight into a problem that has puzzled me. Now I know that, under the guise of "analysis" of literature, literary naturalism in esthetics, like "moral tolerationism" in ethics, is merely another wave of assault on Objectivism.

Any further use of ObjectivismOnline to advocate your naturalistic interpretation of Ayn Rand's fiction will result in a formal warning for violation of the Forum Rules. In part, they state:

[intellectual Guidelines, Prohibited behavior](1) This site supports discussion of [...] the principles of Objectivism, as defined by the works of Ayn Rand and supported by the Ayn Rand Institute; and [...] their application to various fields. Therefore participants must not use the website to spread ideas contrary to or unrelated to Objectivism.

[i had to delete some characters -- shown here in square brackets -- to remove an errant graphic command.]

"Myself," there are plenty of other forums on the web that will tolerate, indeed, welcome, your "analyses" of Ayn Rand's fiction. Advocate your views on this subject there.

[burgessLau edit: Added ] inadvertently cut off in the quotation; and deleted statement about example, now removed, formerly added to Forum Rules.]

Edited by BurgessLau
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Did [Ayn Rand believe] in "love on first sight" per se? If so please reference the source and page numbers as this is something I am extreemely surprised at. Is love based on "features of [a] face, posture and carriage, intonation...and look in the eyes?" Give me a break! This is physical attraction and I have no idea how this can translate through these attributes alone the essence of a person.

I don't know whether AR believed in love at first sight, but I wouldn't be surprised if she was. The way a person speaks and carries themselves can tell a lot about the essence of their person and character. Even initial attraction is never solely determined by physical looks alone.

As an example of what I mean, take a look at the following photographs of Rita Hayworth, an actress during Hollywood's Golden Era:

picture1, picture2, picture3.

Now try to tell me that just any woman can look like at, regardless of whether she is a moral woman or not, and regardless of whether she possesses a very developed sense of delicate femininity. Put Britney Spears into the pose in the first picture, and she will look both hilarious and ridiculous at the same time, despite the fact that she is not an ugly girl herself, by anyone's standards.

A woman like Rita in the first picture would probably be instantaneously attractive to a guy like Roark, because, to paraphrase a saying, she is wearing her entire character and values on her sleeve (and what a wonderful "sleeve" it is :D); she contributes her entire set of values and virtues to her physical appearence, and therefore exibits an appearence of a moral goddess. Here's a picture of Britney, also wearing her entire character and values on her sleeve. After looking a Rita's photographs first, and then looking at Britney's, if you were anything like me you recoiled from the latter picture as obscene.

Why? The answer should be obvious. Even though you've only had an instant's exposure to both women, I don't think you'll have difficulty distinguishing a heroine from a slut.

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  • 8 months later...

This may be unecessary on an Objectivist website, but...

FOUNTAINHEAD SPOILER WARNING

I am in the middle of The Fountainhead, and I just read about Howard's rape of Dominique. What in God's name is supposed to be heroic about that? I absolutely loved Atlas Shrugged, mostly because of how heroic all the characters were, but I am just not understanding Roarke that well, and after he raped a woman I have to find some answers. What was Rand trying to show? I understand that Dominique actually enjoyed it, and presumably it is the only way that Roarke could have had her or something, but I thought people were ends in themselves and not a means to an end...

If anyone has any insight into how this rape is justifiable, please enlighten me.

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What fact tells you that it was rape?

Besides the fact that she struggles -- which, I admit, could just be the result of kinkiness (though I would like to know how many strangers have S&M relations on their first encounter...) -- at nearly the end of part 2, chapter 2, Rand writes:

She thought, if they knew... those people... that old life and that awed reverence before her person... I've been raped... I've been raped by some red-headed hoodlum from a stone quarry... I, Dominique Francon... Through the fierce sense of humiliation, the words gave her the same kind of pleasure she had felt in his arms.

(Elipses are Rand's)

So she says (or thinks, at least), that she was raped. It does not matter that she enjoyed it. From Roarke's point of view, he forced a woman to have sex with him, who struggled to the point of drawing blood. How could anyone know that someone fighting so fiercely actually wants it? And she didn't really know she wanted it herself until after he had committed the act.

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Besides the fact that she struggles -- which, I admit, could just be the result of kinkiness (though I would like to know how many strangers have S&M relations on their first encounter...) -- at nearly the end of part 2, chapter 2, Rand writes:

(Elipses are Rand's)

So she says (or thinks, at least), that she was raped. It does not matter that she enjoyed it. From Roarke's point of view, he forced a woman to have sex with him, who struggled to the point of drawing blood. How could anyone know that someone fighting so fiercely actually wants it? And she didn't really know she wanted it herself until after he had committed the act.

Dominique was raped in the figurative sense, but not literally. She struggled, but she never called for help or told Roark to stop. From The Fountainhead, page 216:

"She fought like an animal. But she made no sound. She did not call for help."

For a thorough explanation of this scene, please read post number 27 in this THREAD.

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Thanks, AisA. I did a search for a post of this subject assuming there had been one, and it came up empty. Thank you for pointing it to me.

Betsy's suggestion that Roarke's spiel about marble was actually deeper than it seemed, I think, illuminates the fact that Roarke was telling Dominique that her seductiveness would have consequences. She wanted it, and he wanted it, it seems. But that still doesn't change the fact that she fought him hard when he came on to her. If I really like a girl, and I know by her behavior that she really likes me, and I try to sleep with her, and she struggles, I know that if I were to continue, I would be raping her. It just seems that there is really no other way to explain it than rape.

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If you were the type to be getting with someone like Dominique, you might have a different perspective. Although she may seem like a heroine of sorts in this book, you have to ask yourself if that's really the way you would want things to be. I would probably think she was weird and not want to have to play this ridiculous game in order to have her. You'll see more about the game I'm talking about as you get farther into the book.

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Perhaps I'm strange, but I always liked Dominique. She seems to be someone who must be earned. It is a characteristic not often found in females and I think it is very becoming.

This sort of thing is in Atlas Shrugged, to a lesser degree. For example, Rearden pins Dagny's arms behind her in a painful position and kisses her. Rand describes this as how Dagny wanted to be taken.

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This sort of thing is in Atlas Shrugged, to a lesser degree. For example, Rearden pins Dagny's arms behind her in a painful position and kisses her. Rand describes this as how Dagny wanted to be taken.

In my experience, women generally prefer men who are aggresive & take control, and are even a little bit rough. This is the case with almost every woman I've been with, and my female best friend. I think it helps emphasize their partner's masculinity, and in effect, their own femininity. My best friend goes a bit further and applies the take-control attitude to other areas of life as well; she's a really headstrong, often bitchy, woman, and thinks it's incredibly sexy when a man can stand up to her and hold his own when she starts acting ridiculous (which is pretty often, gotta love her :alien: ).

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In my experience, many women like it rough. It's that whole concept of taking control and being dominant. Chicks dig it.

This made me think about the name "Dominique". It is similar to the word dominant and its variations -- I wonder if anyone can theorize a possible connection?

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