Thoughts on the Roles of Lillian Rearden and Dagny Taggart (Meagan Adler)

            In reading Atlas Shrugged this week I particularly liked the way Ayn Rand emphasized the contrasting personalities between the characters of Lillian Rearden and Dagny Taggart to communicate the community’s thoughts on gender roles; I think she uses Lillian to represent the conventional role of women in the industrialist society while she uses Dagny to represent a revolutionary female figure who refuses to be limited by society’s defined gender roles.  Although Dagny looses humane qualities in her pursuit of becoming an independent industrialist, we cannot help but admire her bold and unconstrained fight against the traditionalized mindset of male dominance.  Betty Pope,  Jim Taggart’s partner in his indifferent relationship, demonstrates that it is not only the men who believe in male superiority, but it is also the women.  She says, “‘I think that your sister is awful.  I think it’s disgusting- a woman acting like a grease-monkey and posing around like a big executive.  It’s so unfeminine.” (pg. 73).  Additionally, Balph Eubank’s expression of the community’s thoughts on an “‘unusual phenomenon’” communicates that Dagny is “‘a woman who runs a railroad, instead of practicing the beautiful craft of handloom and bearing children’” (pg. 133).  This conveys that the purpose of women is to stay at home and care for children, discouraging them from climbing the social ladder to high executive positions.  We are furthermore exposed to the distinctions between Lillian and Dagny at the Rearden’s party when Lillian says “‘I am humbly aware that the wife of a man has to be contented with reflected glory” (pg. 132).  This shows that Lillian believes that she is supposed to live in the shadows of her husband rather than create her own individual image.  Lastly, we see Lillian’s submissive role in her relationship when she asks permission from her husband to go to sleep; she allows herself to be possessed by Henry as “it was, at times, her duty to become an inanimate object turned over to her husband’s use” (pg. 153).  Overall, I like how the dissimilarities portrayed between Dagny and Lillian underscore the conventional versus the cutting-edge roles of females in the industrialist society.