Date of Award

4-26-1993

Degree Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Master of Arts

Department

English

First Advisor

Gordon Van Ness, III, Ph.D.

Second Advisor

Ellery Sedgewick, Ph.D.

Third Advisor

Robert Lynch, Ph.D.

Abstract

Ayn Rand, renowned author of such titles as Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged, based many of her heroines on her androgynist views derived from her upbringing and lifestyle. Parker balances her research mostly between Rand’s life and her female protagonist in Atlas Shrugged, Dagny Taggart. Taggart possesses some disdain for a few female characters in the novel, which reflects some of Rand’s lack of female friends due to anti-feministic opinions, the most notable identifying her own sex as weak and submissive. Ayn herself said that she based all of her characters off of a male hero in a children’s comic books series. Her negative experiences with trying to form these female friendships lead her to create these masculine heroines to escape from the overwhelming feminism she was experiencing. According to Parker, this explains why Ayn in fact did favor male dominance over females, which explains why many of her characters possess masculine character traits.

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