Dagny Taggart: Exemplar of Independence and Mind-Body Integration
by Edward W. Younkins
Achiever and creator, Dagny Taggart, the intellectual equal of Ayn Rand’s male
heroes, is perhaps the strongest female protagonist in Western literature. Free of inner conflict, she is passionately creative and comfortable with respect to her fundamental relationship to existence. She is a model of synthesis, unity and mind-body integration. Dagny personifies the values of independence, individualism, purpose, and self-actualization.
The Randian view is that the human intellect is capable of transforming the physical environment in correspondence with man’s survival requirements, regardless of the creator’s gender. There is no gender-based difference in intelligence or rationality. Being male or female is inconsequential to one's choice to focus on reality and to create. It follows that Dagny, like Rearden or Francisco, understands science and technology and can be a producer who creates the values upon which human life depends. A woman like Dagny can be successful in heavy industry because intellect is more life-giving and efficacious than mere muscle. In Rand’s view, a machine is the physical embodiment of mind (i.e., intelligence).
Dagny, the primary narrator of Atlas Shrugged, is an engineer and the operating vice-president of a transcontinental railroad, who deals with every industry and every policy of the looters. Because of her integrating context, she has contact with every industry, which permits the reader to see the total collapse of modern industrial civilization. For her entire career at Taggart Transcontinental, Dagny has worked with actual operations, beginning at the bottom as a night operator and working her way to the top of the company. Dagny is always in charge and is a symbol of productivity. As a creator who does not want to work or live against her principles, Dagny’s goal is to bring about her kind of world.
From one perspective, Atlas Shrugged is a love story. Dagny is a genius who desires to find an equal -- her great man at the end of the railroad track. Because Rand’s ultimate hero is a man, it is logical that the main narrator would be a woman who falls in love with the hero. Dagny swears to kill the destroyer who is draining the brains of the world and to find the inventor of the revolutionary motor that can turn static electricity into kinetic energy. Of course, John Galt is both of these men. Ultimately, and ironically, she falls in love with the very man that she has vowed to murder.
The plot-theme of Atlas Shrugged is the men of the mind going on strike against an altruist-collectivist society. Throughout much of the story, Dagny’s pursuits serve as surface, cover, or subsidiary plots that mask the plot-theme. These include Dagny’s struggle to save her company and industry and her quests to find the inventor of the motor and to stop the destroyer. It is through these ventures that the plot-theme is gradually revealed.
In Part One of the novel, called “Non-Contradiction,” Dagny attempts to rebuild the Rio-Norte Line (a.k.a. the John Galt Line). In this section she comes across an array of paradoxes, such as: (1) a motor of great value being abandoned on a scrap heap; (2) a philosopher (Hugh Akston) working as a short-order cook; (3) men of outstanding ability mysteriously disappearing; and (4) a brilliant copper producer (Francisco) who has turned into a worthless playboy. These seeming contradictions have no apparent logical solutions. Yet, she is told several times in this section by Francisco and Dr. Akston, “Contradictions do not exist. Whenever you think that you are facing a contradiction, check your premises. You will find that one of them is wrong.” Part Two, titled “Either-Or,” is about a fundamental choice for Dagny. She can either work for the railroad and concurrently be a slave to the looters, or she can quit and be free. In this section Dagny is confronted with two incompatible codes of ethics. Finally, in Part Three, named “A is A,” Dagny learns the true nature of the novel’s events, all of the paradoxes are resolved, and she joins the strikers in Galt’s Gulch. Dagny has learned that contradictions exist only in the minds of men who are confused.
Dagny, like Hank Rearden, is a self-initiator who goes by her own judgments and is the motive power of her own happiness. Unlike Rearden, she does not feel guilty for her achievements. Dagny is a purposeful, strong, and passionately creative embodiment of mind-body unity. She understands that the world lives because of the work of the prime movers and then hates them for it. The parasites both need the creators and despise them at the same time. They desire to exploit the creators and then make them take moral blame for their actions. Dagny realizes that it is because producers are concerned with nature and reason that they are able to create within the reality of an objective and knowable universe. According to Dagny, “the sight of an achievement was the greatest gift a human being could offer to others.” She knows that material production is an expression of man’s highest aspect -- his creative mind. It is the mind that enables men to deal with physical reality. Dagny recognizes that the creators are expected to feel guilty for their virtues. Of course, the creators are guilty only of not claiming their moral value and virtues.
Dagny realizes that other producers are not threats and that wealth can be created without destroying others. It is through the efforts of honest men that wealth is created. People can create if they function according to the nature of man and the universe and if they adopt a proper morality. When the National Alliance of Railroads passes the “Anti-dog-eat-dog rule,” putting Dan Conway’s superb Phoenix-Durango Railroad out of business, Dagny does not consider profiting from its destruction. In fact, she rushes to Conway’s office, encourages him to fight the directive, and offers to help him in his efforts. Dagny understands that she cannot truly create value when force is used to destroy a competitor.
If Dagny has any fault, it is her overoptimism and overconfidence. Throughout the story she believes that people are better and more rational than they really are and that she can accomplish more than any one person possibly could achieve. Dagny believes that she can overcome the incompetence and irrationality of those around her. She fails to understand the futility of operating Taggart Transcontinental by herself. She also thinks that the looters and moochers want to live and that they will listen to the voice of reason. Dagny learns that they don’t and they won’t. Their escape from reason is their escape from reality. Each person faces a moral choice to be rational or to be irrational. By the end of the novel, Dagny realizes that people of reason are condemned in a world dominated by people of whim and force. By facing reality, she sees those surrounding her for what they really are and ultimately accepts the depravity of the looters.
Dagny chooses romantic partners who affirm her positive sense of life, which involves the integration of values, love and sex. She understands that love is an emotional response, as are friendship and admiration, when one encounters a person who embodies his or her values. Dagny’s romances with Francisco, Rearden, and Galt exemplify what a relationship between two integrated and self-actualized persons can be. Her relationships illustrate that sex is the supreme form of admiration of one human being for another and that the values of one’s mind are connected to the actions of one’s body.
In her youth, Dagny’s relationship with Francisco was based on mutual competence and a shared belief in the benevolent universe premise. Both know that reality is open to the attainment of rational values. The universe is a place where achievement is possible. They realize that life is about achievement, that happiness is the norm, that suffering is unnatural, and that tragedy is the exception. They feel benevolence toward their fellow men and see others as potential sources of joy and fulfillment. Dagny and Francisco expect to succeed and be happy. Francisco becomes the first man after Galt to join the strike. To do this, he has to give Dagny up, adopt the public persona of a worthless playboy, and methodically destroy his own business. Based on her judgments of his behavior, Dagny accepts that he has become a hopeless playboy and moves on with her life. By the time Francisco tells her the truth about his actions it is too late.
At Hank and Lillian Rearden’s anniversary party, Dagny overhears Lillian’s criticism of the bracelet made of Rearden Metal that Hank had given to her. When Dagny exchanges her own diamond bracelet for Lillian’s bracelet, the astute reader realizes that it is only a matter of time before a romance develops between Dagny and Hank. Not only does Dagny wear the Rearden Metal bracelet as a symbol of her budding relationship with Hank, she also displays it in recognition of what the metal means to her work and to her railroad. As portrayed throughout the novel, for Dagny there is an inextricable connection among her values, the love she has for her work, the love she has for others, and the desires of her body. Because Hank holds a mind-body dichotomy, he is repulsed when he and Dagny have sex for the first time. Dagny, on the other hand, calls it her proudest attainment. When Dagny has sex with Rearden, she is offering the pride of her mind, body, work, courage, and freedom. Rearden learns that sex is a physical expression of his spirit and that sex is one’s greatest celebration of life. He comes to realize that it is a major compliment to a woman if a man wants her because it is expressive of his values. Rearden corrects his forgivable errors of judgment but by then Dagny has again moved on.
John Galt is both an abstract philosopher and a practical inventor. Like Francisco and Ragnar, he majored in both philosophy and physics and is both a thinker and a man of action. Galt is the epitome of mind-body and reason-emotion integration. As a man of rationality, he has an undiverging adherence to the facts of reality. While he is on strike, Galt sees Dagny and falls in love with her. Of course, he can’t have her because he is on strike and she is a scab who hates him for being the “destroyer.” In order to have a chance with her he would have to renounce the strike and his ideas, return to the world, and crush any chance of a free world for himself and for others. Despite his love for her and the fact that he learns that she has fallen in love with Hank Rearden, he is certain he has made the right decision and never wavers from his chosen course. Of course, Galt is confident that they will someday be together and that she loves him. Notice how, in the Valley, he refuses to let his best friend Francisco have a chance of regaining Dagny for himself.
When Dagny meets Galt in Mulligan’s Valley she knows that she has finally met the man she was searching for at the end of the rail. When she sees Galt she perceives his rationality, productivity, integrity, confidence and guiltlessness. When she meets Galt she knows she wants him, but to have him she would have to give up her work and the outside world. Dagny realizes that if she did give up the fight for her railroad then she would not be worthy of Galt and would not be the right woman for him. The sex scene between Dagny and Galt in the dark abandoned Taggart Tunnel back in the world actualizes their relationship. Back in the world, Galt is Dagny’s reward for her unswerving productive efforts. In the tunnel in the hub of her railroad, he is the man holding the rails beyond the horizon.
Dagny is a woman ahead of her times with respect to freedom and independence. There are only a few men in the world to whom Rand’s foremost, female, fictional hero could submit or surrender herself. Dagny is a one-of-a-kind woman of strength and courage seeking an extraordinary man like Galt, Rearden, or Francisco, but not like Eddie Willers (even though he is their moral equal). Eddie is a rational thinker and a moral man but he is not the genius that Dagny requires. Eddie loves Dagny, but that is not enough. After all, A is A.
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