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THE EDUCATION OF AYN RAND, 1905–1943
This painstaking research also enabled Rand to surpass the limitations
of her fi rst attempts at fi ction. Characterization had always been
a particular problem for Rand. In Night of January 16th her characters
are powerful symbols but unconvincing human beings. We the Living
circumvented this weakness because Rand made most of her characters
composites of people she had known in Russia. Now she repeated this
technique by drawing liberally on biography and observation.
The great exception to this method was Dominique. To capture the
psychology of Dominique, a bitter and discontented heiress, Rand conjured
up her own darkest moods. She tapped into all the frustration and
resentment of her early years, her feeling that the world was rigged in
favor of the mediocre and against the exceptional, and then imagined,
“[W]hat if I really believed that this is all there is in life.” 20 In the novel
Howard would teach Dominique to let go of these poisonous attitudes,
just as Rand herself had become more optimistic with her professional
success and freedom to write.
She combined this introspection with a new analysis of Frank, her
beloved but troubling husband. When they fi rst met, Frank was brimming
with hopes and plans for his Hollywood career. He had several
near misses, including a screen test with D. W. Griffi th for a part that
helped establish Neil Hamilton (later famous on TV as Batman’s Police
Commissioner Gordon). But as Rand’s fortunes soared ever upward,
Frank’s collapsed. In New York, with Rand’s income suffi cient to support
them both, Frank idled. He took charge of paying the household
bills but made little effort to establish himself in a new line of work. It
was an inexplicable turn of events for Rand, who valued career above
all else.
Now, as she crafted Dominique, Rand hit on a satisfying explanation
for Frank’s passivity. Dominique, like Frank, would turn away from
the world in anger, “a withdrawal not out of bad motives or cowardice,
but out of an almost unbearable kind of idealism which does not
know how to function in the journalistic reality as we see it around
us.” 21 Dominique loves Howard, yet tries to destroy him, believing he is
doomed in an imperfect world. Confusing and confl icted, Dominique
is among Rand’s least convincing creations. More important, though,
was the effect this character had on Rand’s marriage. Seeing Frank as
Dominique glossed over his professional failures and cast his defeated
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