jbgotmar

86
More oxford books @ www.OxfordeBook.com
THE EDUCATION OF AYN RAND, 1905–1943
slimmed the manuscript and pruned complexity from Roark’s character,
allowing him to stand out more sharply as an idealized fi gure.
Even so, Roark’s relations with women remained one of the most
troubling parts of the book. Often, as Rand struggled to make concrete
what she intended by the heroic, she described characters with icy emotional
lives and distant, destructive relationships. Although their passions
for each other are all-consuming, in another sense the novel’s
characters never truly relate to one another. Friends fi nd their greatest
moments of connection in silence, because it seems that in silence they
truly understand one another. Lovers don’t hold hands, they hold wrists.
And then there is the infamous rape scene.
As in Night of January 16th the grand passion of The Fountainhead
begins in violence. The fi rst encounters between Dominique and Roark
are charged with sexual tension. The two meet when Roark is working in
her father’s quarry. Dominique requests that he be sent to repair a marble
fi replace she has deliberately scratched. Seeing through her ruse, Roark
smashes the marble, to Dominique’s shocked delight, and then sends
another man to set the replacement. Encountering him again while on
horseback, Dominique slashes Roark across the face with a riding crop. He
returns a few nights later to fi nish what both have started, slipping through
her bedroom window. Rand wrote the scene to emphasize that even as she
resisted, Dominique welcomed Roark’s advances. Yet it remained a brutal
portrayal of conquest, an episode that left Dominique bruised, battered,
and wanting more. Rand herself offered confl icting explanations for the
sadomasochistic scene. It wasn’t real rape, she insisted to a fan, then called
it “rape by engraved invitation.” 34 Certainly Rand perceived the encounter
as an erotic climax for both characters. Risqué for its time, the rape
became one of the most popular and controversial parts of the book. 35
The rape scene was a remnant of Rand’s fi rst intellectual preoccupations.
In its basic structure The Fountainhead resembles many of Rand’s
early works. Its hero is a principled criminal with a complicated love life,
and the plot culminates in a trial that affords the airing of philosophical
views. Rand did what she could to improve the characterization of
Roark, sharpening and defi ning his sense of individualism as the novel
progressed. 36 But with a deadline looming, structural changes were
impossible. The Fountainhead is ultimately a hybrid work that caught
Rand in transition from one set of intellectual interests to another.
Fore more urdu books visit www.4Urdu.com