Revised Blueprints: Early Versions of Part II of The Fountainhead | Audra Hilse

Added: 2026-05-19

[00:00:00]Peter, if I ever want to punish myself for something terrible, if I ever want to punish myself disgustingly, I'll marry you.

[00:00:11]Says Dominique Francon to Peter Keating towards the end of part one of The Fountainhead.

[00:00:19]And of course, we all know what happens next.

[00:00:22]At the beginning of part two, she meets and has her first antagonistic encounters with Roark in Connecticut.

[00:00:30]She returns to New York without knowing who he is, sees the designs for the beautiful Enright House building, and then is formally introduced to the architect of the Enright House, Howard Roark, at a party.

[00:00:47]Realizing that this man she has fallen so quickly in love with is not an anonymous quarry worker, but rather a brilliant architect whose name is beginning to be known, she sets out to try and prevent him from putting more of his work out to a world that, as she believes, doesn't deserve it.

[00:01:08]She starts to win commissions away from Roark for Peter Keating, and when the opportunity presents itself in relation to a commission that Roark does get, that of the Aquitania Hotel building, Dominique publishes an article intended to completely destroy Roark's reputation and career.

[00:01:28]Roark sues Dominique over this libelous article, but they continue their affair in private while this lawsuit plays out between them in public.

[00:01:40]Roark wins this lawsuit against Dominique, but her article has its intended effect, and work on the Aquitania project is halted the day after Roark's victory in court.

[00:01:55]And then Dominique marries Peter Keating.

[00:02:01]Now, you're probably sitting there thinking, "That's not what happens in The Fountainhead."

[00:02:09]And that's true. It isn't.

[00:02:11]But that is a sequence of events that Ayn Rand considered in an early outline of the novel.

[00:02:19]In fact, she considered three different versions of the later events of part two before landing on the third and final version that we read in the published book, which is that Dominique wins commissions away from Roark, later agrees to model for the Stoddard Temple sculpture, and finally marries Peter Keating in the aftermath of Roark's loss in the Stoddard trial.

[00:02:44]So, why so many different versions? This is in fact the greatest number of different outlines for any single part of The Fountainhead that we have in Ayn Rand's papers. So, parts one, three, and four do not have three different outlines each.

[00:03:00]So, it seems that there was something especially challenging about this part of the novel for Ayn Rand.

[00:03:07]I'm going to tell you about these earlier versions that she considered and offer some of my thoughts about why I think she made the changes that she did.

[00:03:18]We only have the outlines and one very short page of additional notes about these early versions.

[00:03:26]So, it isn't that she wrote very explicitly about why she made these changes, but I think that in looking at what the changes are, we can get a good sense of why she made them.

[00:03:39]So, three different versions.

[00:03:42]Now, version one, I started to tell you about at the beginning.

[00:03:46]This comes from a June 1938 outline.

[00:03:51]And it's part of a set of detailed outlines that Rand is making just before she sits down to start writing the very first draft of the novel.

[00:04:00]And this version of events has this libel lawsuit between Roark and Dominique.

[00:04:07]Now the one short additional page of notes that we have uh goes with this version uh with this version one outline.

[00:04:16]And that additional page of notes seems to indicate that Ellsworth Toohey is heavily involved in manipulating Dominique into writing and printing this libelous article about Roark. And it also makes clear that Roark is forced to sue Dominique over this. Whatever she writes in this article, it's not something that he can just let slide.

[00:04:38]And then the next point in the outline uh that Rand writes is {quote} lawsuit and love affair {unquote}. So she's setting up this very dramatic tension between what's going on between Roark and Dominique in private versus in public.

[00:04:53]Now as I noted earlier, Roark wins this lawsuit but he loses the Aquitania project almost simultaneously.

[00:05:01]And then at this point in version one, Dominique marries Peter Keating.

[00:05:05]And then the Stoddard Temple and trial proceed after Dominique's marriage to Keating.

[00:05:14]And there are a couple of interesting points in the outline then about this.

[00:05:18]Apparently, there was going to be a scene in which Roark was to visit Dominique and Keating in their married home in order to convince them that Dominique should model for the statue to go in the Stoddard Temple.

[00:05:31]Now evidently he was going to succeed at this, but unfortunately we have no additional notes about it, so I have no idea how Ayn Rand envisioned that conversation going.

[00:05:42]And the second very interesting point is that in this version, when Roark lost the Stoddard trial, he was going to lose everything.

[00:05:52]Not just money, but his office, even his apartment. And he was going to have to go live in his unfinished symphony in the incomplete Aquitania Hotel building.

[00:06:06]So, that's version one.

[00:06:10]Now, version two comes from a March 1940 outline. So, not quite 2 years later. And the interesting thing about this version is that the whole libel lawsuit and everything around it is gone from version two. So, Ayn Rand has already decided something about that doesn't work.

[00:06:29]Instead, in this version what happens is Roark gets the Aquitania Hotel commission, but there's some kind of public campaign against this hotel building.

[00:06:39]And Dominique takes advantage of this situation to win a greater influence over one of the shareholders of the Aquitania project, one of the men who's funding this building.

[00:06:50]And as events progress, the shareholders have to come together to vote to decide, are we going to continue trying to build this hotel building in the face of this public outcry against it?

[00:07:03]And the outline implies that these shareholder votes that Dominique has influence over are the deciding factor in the vote being no. They will not continue trying to build the hotel.

[00:07:16]So, once again, work on the Aquitania is halted partway through construction, and it becomes Roark's unfinished symphony.

[00:07:26]And then at this point in version two, Dominique marries Peter Keating. And then the same as in version one, as best I can tell, the Stoddard Temple and trial were to proceed after the marriage, with Roark once again losing everything when he lost the Stoddard trial and having to go live in the unfinished hotel build.

[00:07:48]That's version two.

[00:07:53]Now, version three comes from a December 1941 outline. And this date is important because this is right after Ayn Rand has signed a contract with a publisher with Bobbs-Merrill to actually publish The Fountainhead. So, now she's finally able to sit down and finish writing the whole story.

[00:08:15]And this version of events is essentially the one that we see in the final novel. So, after Roark and Dominique are introduced to each other at Kiki Holcombe's party, Dominique sets out to win commissions away from Roark for Peter Keating.

[00:08:31]She writes a lot about Roark in her column, but in the manner of this very double-edged praise {slash} criticism that most people don't understand.

[00:08:43]Roark gets the Aquitania Hotel commission in this version and Roark does halt on it partway through construction, but primarily due to fallout from the 1929 stock market crash, not due to any interference on Dominique's part.

[00:09:00]Indeed, Dominique is not directly involved in any of Roark's projects until Roark accepts the commission for the Stoddard Temple.

[00:09:09]And then Roark goes to Dominique and asks her, "Will you model for this statue that I want to be the centerpiece of this temple?"

[00:09:20]And Dominique says, "Yes."

[00:09:24]Of course, thanks to Toohey's manipulations behind the scenes, Roark is sued over the completed temple building. And Toohey also foments a great public outrage and outcry against the Stoddard Temple.

[00:09:39]The lawsuit goes to trial and Roark loses the Stoddard trial.

[00:09:44]In this version, he does not lose everything when he loses the Stoddard trial.

[00:09:50]And in this version three, it is after Roark's loss in the Stoddard trial that Dominique goes to Peter Keating and says, "Will you marry me?"

[00:10:00]And Keating, of course, agrees.

[00:10:06]So, that's version three.

[00:10:11]So, I think what we are seeing in the changes between these different versions is two major things that Ayn Rand is doing.

[00:10:21]I think she is streamlining and essentializing the events of the novel, not just within part two, but across the novel as a whole.

[00:10:30]And the other thing she is doing is working out Dominique's character.

[00:10:35]Think it's safe to say that Dominique is the most complicated, difficult to understand character in The Fountainhead, and that seems to have been true for Rand herself because many of these changes are uh surrounding what are Dominique's actions during this part of the story.

[00:10:53]And I think in version one, we can see this pretty clearly. So, version one has this libel lawsuit um and I suspect that Ayn Rand always had some questions about whether this was in character for Dominique to do, to print libel, remember, untrue, negative things intended to damage a reputation about Roark. So, I think Ayn Rand always had some questions about that.

[00:11:21]Um I think that's why the you know, that one additional page of notes we have indicates Toohey was supposed to be involved in manipulating Dominique into doing this because it's It's something she would do wholly of her own accord.

[00:11:34]But because Ayn Rand takes it out of version two, I think she eventually saw that Dominique really wouldn't even allow herself to be manipulated by Toohey into printing libel about Roark. It's just not something she would do.

[00:11:51]And then in looking at that and and seeing, "Okay, this isn't going to work for Dominique's character." I think it may have helped Rand also to essentialize the events a little bit. Because if we have a lawsuit and trial for this libel issue, and then we have the Stoddard trial, and then there's a trial of Roark at towards the end of the novel, which she definitely already knows is going to happen. Well, that's three trials, and two of them are right near each other in the same part of the story, and maybe for this particular story, that's one too many.

[00:12:28]But if the libel the whole libel issue is out of character for Dominique, that makes it easy to take one of those out.

[00:12:36]And then we have, I think, the more balanced version, which is we have the Stoddard trial at about the midpoint of the novel, and then, of course, the final trial towards the end.

[00:12:47]And so I think that's why we see the changes that we do between version one and version two, with the libel lawsuit is just gone out of version two.

[00:12:57]But I think that ultimately version two actually has very similar problems to version one.

[00:13:03]So in version two, it's not trials, but it's public campaigns against Roark and his buildings. If we have this campaign against the Aquitania Hotel, and then a campaign against the Stoddard Temple, and then a campaign against Roark late in the story. Again, that's three across the whole novel. Two of them are very near each other.

[00:13:22]Maybe that's too many.

[00:13:25]And I think that Ayn Rand still had questions about Dominique's characterization then in version two, because she's still actively involved in doing a harm to Roark in this version.

[00:13:37]It's not printing libel about him, but it is winning this influence over a shareholder of the Aquitania project and having some sort of direct influence in shutting that project down.

[00:13:49]And we don't see her do anything like that in the final published book, which is the characterization of her that Ayn Rand was satisfied with.

[00:13:59]So, version two, some similar some issues of duplication of events, and also I think Ayn Rand still had questions about would Dominique really do this?

[00:14:10]And she decided no, Dominique would not do this.

[00:14:15]And so, as we get to version three, the most interesting changes in version three are not just that the the campaign and the shareholder vote related to the Aquitania are gone, but the changes in version three that are different from both of the earlier versions, I think really tell us where Ayn Rand was in her thinking about this story and these characters at this time. So, what are the two big changes from both of the earlier versions?

[00:14:44]One of them is the timing of Dominique's marriage to to Peter Keating, and the other is what happens to Roark when he loses the Stoddard trial.

[00:14:58]So, what is different for Dominique in version three?

[00:15:02]She wins a lot of commissions away from Roark in version three. It's debatable that that's causing him any real harm.

[00:15:09]She's mostly just clearing out the people who weren't really good clients for him in the first place.

[00:15:15]And she does a lot of writing about him, but couched in these double meanings where what she's actually saying in all of these articles is Howard Roark is a great architect. He's a brilliant architect.

[00:15:27]But, he shouldn't be sharing his brilliant architecture with all of you because you're not good enough for it.

[00:15:34]And he's at fault for doing that. He shouldn't be sharing that with you.

[00:15:39]Now, most people don't follow that double meaning, but that's what she's actually saying.

[00:15:44]But, then so she's not printing libel about him. She's not actively getting any of his projects shut down. What does she do in version three?

[00:15:53]She agrees to model for the sculpture to go in the Stoddard Temple.

[00:15:58]She helps Roark bring one of his beautiful, even sacred buildings into the world.

[00:16:06]And what does the world do?

[00:16:08]The world mocks it, spits on it, defaces it, even deforms it when later the committee of architects comes in to alter the building to fit Toohey's designs.

[00:16:23]And Dominique at this point in the story sees that she helped people have that negative reaction to a great value of hers, and she can't stand that. She cannot stand when people do not see the greatness of things that she sees.

[00:16:42]And this is what she has to punish herself for.

[00:16:46]So, unlike in version one and two, the time the earlier timing of her marriage to Keating seems to be that she has done some active harm to Roark and is punishing herself for that. But, Ayn Rand has decided that's not in character for Dominique. She wouldn't actively harm Roark.

[00:17:03]So, what is she punishing herself for?

[00:17:05]It's for having helped Roark in version three.

[00:17:11]And then what happens to Roark in version three?

[00:17:14]He loses the Stoddard trial, and it's a real setback for him. He loses a lot of money. He loses a lot of potential clients because they just they don't want to get involved with an architect who's had this, you know, scandal, this very public scandal.

[00:17:29]But he doesn't lose everything.

[00:17:32]He doesn't have to go live in the unfinished Aquitania hotel building.

[00:17:37]And I think what Ayn Rand saw as she was working on this version three outline was that thematically for the story of The Fountainhead, it was wrong for Roark to have to start all the way over from scratch in the middle of the story.

[00:17:50]Remember, a major point of Roark's character in The Fountainhead is that people like him can and will succeed in the world.

[00:17:58]He started over from scratch once. He had to close his office at the end of part one and go work in the granite quarry.

[00:18:05]He shouldn't have to do that again at the midpoint of the story. His career is on an upward trajectory. And so even with the setback of the Stoddard trial, it can't be all the way back at zero.

[00:18:17]That's just not right for the story Rand is trying to tell here.

[00:18:23]So, what these outlines and other planning material that we have about The Fountainhead give us evidence of is that Ayn Rand held herself to her own very high standards about what makes a great story and a great novel.

[00:18:40]That there was a dramatic and interesting series of events and actions was not good enough for her.

[00:18:47]They had to be the right dramatic and interesting events and actions to achieve that very tight integration of theme and plot and characterization that she spoke later in her life about as being essential for the telling of a great story.

[00:19:08]And it's clear also from this planning material that it's not that that very tight integration came automatically to Rand. It didn't. It was something she she kept working on it. She kept thinking about it. But because she didn't settle for anything less, she wrote and we now still have to read and love today the great novel that is The Fountainhead.

[00:19:33]Thank you.

[00:19:37]>> [applause]