The Fountainhead: Part 3: Chapter 9 Summary & Analysis

Dominique and Wynand are on a summer cruise on his yacht, and Dominique thinks he has “a brilliant kind of gaiety without guilt.” Wynand tells her she can’t be in love with him because she is in love with integrity, which exists only in art, and which he definitely doesn’t possess since he runs the Banner. He tells her that he doesn’t mind “slugs” like Toohey and Scarret, but when he sees “a man of a slightly higher dimension,” he wants to “make a sort of Toohey out of him.” He explains that the only thing he ever wanted is power, and he enjoys knowing he can force anyone to do anything. He thinks the “man [he can’t] break would destroy [him].” He also insists that integrity doesn’t exist.

One night in fall, they stand watching the New York skyline and Wynand says he likes to “see a man standing at the foot of a skyscraper.” It doesn’t dwarf him but makes him greater than the structure since “it’s man who made it—the whole incredible mass of stone and steel.” He says what he and Dominique like about these buildings is “the creative faculty” and “the heroic in man,” which he loves to think about but doesn’t believe in. He says that when he is ready, he will build a new home for the Banner, which will be “the greatest structure of the city.”

Dominique suddenly tells Wynand he must fire Toohey, which surprises him. She says it is the only way to save the Banner, since Toohey wants complete control over it. She says Toohey only wants control of the papers as a means to control the world. Wynand refuses to take her seriously, and he considers Toohey to be an irrelevant pest but nothing more.

Some days later, Dominique tells Wynand she married him so he could be “[her] chain to the world” but that he has become her “defense” instead. She says she still doesn’t love him, and he says he doesn’t care about that. He says he loves her so much that even her indifference is irrelevant to him—only his desire matters, not even the object of his desire.