“‘Second-hand lives’ (Complete to-date)”

This is an early outline of the full novel, from shortly after Rand identified the story’s climax. As an early outline, there are some events or elements of the story written here that either don’t make it into the final novel or change by the end (a small example: the architectural competition that Keating wins in Part I was originally for a library building, later changed to the Cosmo-Slotnick building).

As in the novel, throughout her notes Rand refers to Roark and Dominique’s first sexual encounter as a “rape,” one instance of which appears in this outline. Rand’s planning notes (see this item below), the relevant scenes in the novel, and Rand’s later comments about it make clear that the encounter between them is fully consensual (if antagonistic). In a letter to a fan many years later, Rand wrote: “It was not an actual rape, but a symbolic action which Dominique all but invited. This was the action she wanted and Howard Roark knew it.…Needless to say, an actual rape of an unwilling victim would be a vicious action and a violation of a woman’s rights; in moral meaning, it would be the exact opposite of the scene in The Fountainhead.”