The Fountainhead: Part 3: Chapter 2 Summary & Analysis

Keating and Dominique are spending a quiet evening together at home. Keating stares into the fire, thinking that he’d always “heard and read” that “looking dreamily into a fire” in one’s own home makes a person happy, and he wonders why he doesn’t feel happy. He thinks he could describe this scene to friends and they’d be envious of his contentment, but he doesn’t feel contented, even though he has superiority, fame and wealth—all the things he’d wanted.

In the past year, Keating added Dominique to his “possessions.” He enjoys introducing her to strangers and “watch[ing] the stupid, uncontrolled look of envy in their eyes.” He tells himself their marriage is better than he’d expected, with Dominique turning out to be “the ideal wife” who “devote[s] herself completely to his interests.” Only their sex life leaves him unsatisfied, since she is indifferent to him and “he had never made her experience anything.”

Dominique fills Keating with a feeling of dread he cannot quite understand. He tells her he might finally know why—it’s because she has never once said what she thinks or expressed a desire of any kind. He says she is “like a corpse” or like “a blank negation.” He asks her, “Where’s your I?” To this, Dominique asks where his “I” is, shocking him into the realization that he doesn’t have one, either. She tells him that he has never wanted her “to be real.” He has only wanted “a mirror.” Most people “want mirrors around them. To reflect them while they’re reflecting too. […] Reflections of reflections and echoes of echoes. […] No center and no purpose.”

Keating kneels before Dominique and tells her that she and Roark always make him feel like they are giving him “a steep wall to climb” or a “command to rise.” He always hated Roark and desired Dominique, which is why he married her despite knowing she despised him. She tells him that she never wanted to take revenge on him, but that she married him for her own reasons. She apologizes for destroying him by killing his “pretense” of self-respect, and she says she doesn’t want him to suffer. Keating tells her he loves her.

Just then, Toohey calls and says he will be coming over, and Keating immediately switches to his usual performance mode. Toohey tells them that Dominique should meet Wynand to convince him to give Keating the Stoneridge project. Dominique says that she has heard that Wynand expects sex in return for favors, and Toohey doesn’t deny it. Toohey says he has arranged for her to see him, and Keating asks her to call Wynand first thing in the morning since it’s “the chance of a lifetime.” He says he won’t be stopped by “fool gossip” and that Dominique can take care of herself.

When Keating leaves the room, Toohey confesses that he is disappointed that marriage to Keating hasn’t destroyed Dominique like he hoped it would, which is why he is plotting to have her sleep with Wynand. Dominique says she suspects that this is “only a side issue” and asks him what he has against Wynand. Toohey laughs, saying Wynand is “too observant,” which annoys Toohey, so he thinks the time is right to have him meet Dominique to see what will be left of either of them afterward.