My copy of AS has a photo of Rand in it, so I remember picking up on the Hitchcock-cameo right away. I thought it was Rand's way of writing in self-deprecation and praise at the same time. If Dagny feels jealousy, she sees the fishwife as a threat, which means (if only for a moment) Dagny has marked her as an equal. Which is a major compliment. And to turn your question around, I thought it revealed the soft side of Rand.

The first time we meet Dagny is a great example of her soft side-- the reader sees her on the train where she takes a moment to feel the music of Richard Halley and talk with the brakeman. Then transition to Jim's office where he says "You don't feel anything!"

Would AS be published "out there" in a time when the government is crippling the producers and people are galting? I think that was her point. That, right then, the fishwife's writings would get stifled. I think Ayn Rand wrote her books when she wrote them partly because she knew later might be too late...and she'd already lived through 'later' once in her life and knew what it looked like. It was another warning about the government wanting to control the meaning of certain words and language.
Also, how a young Ayn Rand would behave in the presence of a John Galt. She got to explore that a bit. Something she longed to experience and never did.
Thank you for posting this. As every one of Rand's passages are, it's brilliantly written.

Ah yes. 'What else is she?' Dagny the industrialist is asking what else does she do? but does Dagny the woman also mean 'What is she to you?'.

I really enjoyed reading this part in the book. It is a powerful scene that counters the naysayers claims that Rands protagonists are just cold and greedy and care for nothing but profit. KH you said it best when you said this is a rare glimpse of Dagny examining her emotions and empathizing with another. It powerfully shows her humanness, and that of other producers as well.

This scene should be included into the movie.

Here's one of my favorite parts, and it shows Dagny's feelings and love of life:
Chapter 7, The John Galt Line:
Once, when she was sixteen, looking at a long stretch of Taggart track, at the rails that converged - like the lines of a skyscraper-to a single point in the distance, she had told Eddie Willers that she had always felt as if the rails were held in the hand of a man beyond the horizon-no, not her father or any of the men in the office-and some day she would meet him.
She shook her head and turned away from the window.
She went back to her desk. She tried to reach for the reports. But suddenly she was slumped across the desk, her head on her arm. don't, she thought; but she did not move to rise, it made no difference, there was no one to see her.
This was a longing she had never permitted herself to acknowledge. She faced it now. She thought: If emotion is one's response to the things the world has to offer, if she loved the rails, the buildings and more: if she loved her love for them-there was still one response, the greatest, that she had missed. She thought: To find a feeling that would hold, as their sum, as their final expression, the purpose of all the things she loved on earth...To find a consciousness like her own, who would be the meaning of her world, as she would be of his...No, not Francisco d'Anconia, not Hank Rearden, not any man she had ever met or admired...A man who existed only in her knowledge of her capacity for an emotion she had never felt, but would have given her life to experience...She twisted herself in a slow, fail movement, her breasts pressed to the desk; she felt the longing in her muscles, in the nerves of her body.
Is that what you want? Is it as simple as that? she thought, but knew that it was not simple. There was some unbreakable link between her love for her work and the desire of her body; as if one were the completion of the other-and the desire would never be satisfied, except by a being of equal greatness.
Her face pressed to her arm, she moved her head, shaking it slowly in negation. She would never find it. Her own thought of what life could be like, was all she would ever have of the world she had wanted. Only the thought of it- and a few rare moments, like a few lights reflected from it on her way-to know, to hold, to follow to the end...
She raised her head.
On the pavement of the alley, outside her window, she saw the shadow of a man who stoood at the door of her office.

the scene may just be to show that Dagny has developed feelings for John. however, because Rand was so methodical and thorough, I wouldn't be surprised if she intended for this scene to carry more weight. what writers intend to reveal in scenes or not is always an interesting topic. it reminds me of an article i read. in 1963, a teenager wrote to various writers (Rand included) and asked them about intentional addition of symbolism. if you're interested, here it is:

http://www.theparisreview.org/blog/2011/...

Rand's response cracked me up. i really wish she had responded to the question just to know how conscientious she was with her fiction. a member here, amagi, mentioned the other day that she met Rand and asked the author if she knew what the Scandinavian definitions of Ragnar and Dagny were. amagi said that Rand was not aware of their meaning, in which case it's just a happy coincidence that their roles match their names' definitions (Ragnar = happy warrior while Dagny = new day), although a reader could certainly say that Rand did this intentionally. i think that readers take in a lot more meaning than what authors consciously include in their art, but that's part of the beauty of writing stories and releasing them to the world.

EitherOr mentioned the scene with Dagny on the train where she is enjoying Halley's music being whistled. i agree that it's a good example of dagny displaying her softer side. at this point in the story, Dagny wasn't yet on the "flight or fight" response. she was able to be in enough of a relaxed state-of-mind to let the right side of her brain have its enjoyment. her world wasn't perfect and not everything was pleasant, but she wasn't yet fighting the system the way she spends the rest of the book doing. the next time Dagny is able to relax is also the next time we clearly see her express an emotion that isn't sexual (oh, there's another topic: was dagny's sexual affair with hank an emotionally one or not?) is when she's in the gulch with John. the world is horrible outside, but she's found common ground in the haven with that select group of men and women. because she doesn't have to fight in the gulch, she can relax enough to be the person she might have been able to be in the outside world if the country hadn't been pushed to its tipping point by the moochers. i imagine that, should the story have continued after dagny re-entered the gulch, we would have eventually met a character displaying a better balance of intellect and sensualism. it's clear that dagny is multifaceted and capable of emotion; the reader just doesn't get to see too much of her softer side in the portion of dagny's story that Rand chose to write.

I think it was a way of reminding us at times that Dagny was a woman. That may sound dumb but I think when you meet a tough business woman it is easy to forget that she is a woman. As tough as she was she still wanted what most women and most people want...love.

This is *exactly* what I'm talking about - Rand was the first I've read who portrayed romance in a RATIONAL way


Reading her has taught me to expect nothing but the best from whoever I bring in my life, because to be with someone who doesn't embody your values is to be *hypocritical* to your values just as much as any collectivist action might be.

I just went through this: I tried to bond with someone because they had the "outer" but not the philosophy (reach through the computer and b**tch-slap me, I know) - not saying they have to be an Objectivist per se, but they should embody what you consider to be the highest, so you can be like your own "Galt & Dagny" or O'Conner & Rand herself)

Shakespeare once said, "Reason & love keep little company together," meaning that if your rational you'll never feel love...that one must FOREGO reason in order to feel it, but Rand, especially with Atlas, definitely DISPROVED that...at least as much as you can in fiction, anyway.


This might sound cheesy, but when I read "The Romantic Manifesto" I originally thought it would go into her concepts about romance and love ;), not artistry or esthetic principles. Silly moi.