The Fountainhead: Part 1: Chapter 12 Summary & Analysis

Alvah Scarret, editor in chief of the Wynand papers, regularly writes a column called “Observations and Meditations” in the Banner. He writes about social justice issues that have human appeal, like making a case against the land sharks who bother slum dwellers. After his articles are published, the sharks are embarrassed and sell their property to a real estate agency, without realizing that Wynand actually owns it.

Dominique Francon assists Alvah Scarret with investigating the conditions of the slums and gathering human material for his pieces. She once lived in a room in a tenement for two weeks, scrubbing her floor and cooking her meals in a shared kitchen. Though she had never done these things before, “she did them expertly” and was “indifferent to the slums as she had been indifferent to the drawing rooms.” She gets back to her penthouse apartment and writes “merciless, brilliant” articles on the slums.

Dominique is asked about the slums at dinner parties. She casually calls out the rich people who own these tenements, telling them in public about the clogged sewers and stalactites in their buildings. When Dominique is invited to speak at a meeting of social workers, she sees a sea of faces “lecherously eager with the sense of their own virtue.” Here, she talks about slum-dwellers who do not pay rent and drink too much and spend too much money on a radio, and the social workers are upset to hear her criticisms of the poor.

Dominique gets home to find Alvah Scarret waiting for her. He offers her the opportunity to head the Women’s Welfare Department at the paper, but she refuses, saying that she doesn’t want a career. She shows him a copy of the speech she gave at the meeting, and Scarret asks her why she couldn’t make her dinner-party comments at the meeting and the speech at the dinner party. Dominique says that both sides are true, and there would have been no point in reversing them. Scarret wants to know what the point is, and Dominique says it amuses her.

Dominique tells Scarret that if she found a job, a project, or a person she really wanted, she’d “have to depend on the whole world.” She says that all people are connected, and one never knows who wields power over what, or who might have the power to take away the thing one values. She likens the connections between people to “a net,” and says our desire pushes us into the net. Just so one can keep the thing one values, one must “cringe and crawl” and accept terrible sorts of things and people.

Dominique says that mankind in general is disappointing. People have some dignity when they suffer, she says, but when they enjoy themselves, one can see that humankind is base and shallow. She wants either perfection or nothing, which is why she takes nothing. The only desire she permits herself is freedom—“To ask nothing. To expect nothing. To depend on nothing.”

Francon worries about Dominique, sometimes wondering if he hates her. But then he recalls an image from her childhood of her jumping over a high hedge, and he realizes he feels tenderness for her. He thinks Keating will be good for her, but he knows that she turns down invitations to go out with him. So Francon organizes a lunch for the three of them and then he pretends to remember an important meeting and leaves halfway through—a ploy that Dominique sees through from the very start.

Dominique looks at Keating “with a glance so gentle that it could mean nothing but contempt” and tells him she understands what her father’s plan is for the two of them, and that she is also impressed that Keating has her father “on a leash.” She treats him with “exquisite kindliness” which Keating understands means that “their relationship is of no possible consequence” since she does not pay him “the tribute of hostility.” He realizes he “dislikes her violently” but cannot help feeling “incredulous admiration” for her beauty and elegance.

Dominique asks Keating to take her to the theater later that night and to call her by her first name, both of which Francon is delighted to hear about later that day. He tells Keating he wishes she’d get married, since she is 24 and beautiful and still a virgin, which he finds strange. He also mentions that his partner, Lucius Heyer, who had a stroke, is better but still in the hospital. Francon hints that Heyer might not be well enough to resume his duties, and that “[o]ne must look ahead.”

Keating now meets Dominique frequently. She always accepts his invitations, though Keating wonders if she is out to prove that she can “ignore him more completely by seeing him often than by refusing to see him.” Yet, Keating is always eager to see Dominique again and has not visited Catherine in a month. Mrs. Keating wants to know all about Dominique and wonders how rich she actually is. Keating is bored by his mother’s questions but also feels relieved to hear them, as though they are “pushing him on and justifying him.”

The doorbell rings, which is strange because it is so late. Catherine is at the door, looking hesitant but determined. Mrs. Keating immediately understands that something has happened, “to be handled with great caution.” Keating invites Catherine in, feeling “nothing but [a] sudden stab of joy.”

Catherine seems nervous, and Keating suddenly realizes she looks terrified. She tells him she wants to be married “as soon as possible.” Mrs. Keating says she is happy to hear they are engaged, and Catherine is relieved that she doesn’t mind. Catherine tells Keating she “suddenly had the feeling” she’d never marry him and was in “mortal danger” that “something was closing in” on her and that she’d “never escape it.” Keating wants to know what she wants to escape from and Catherine says, “Everything. My whole life.” She asks him if he’s never felt an inexplicable fear like that, and he says he has.

Catherine says she was busy working in her uncle’s apartment and the room was stuffy, and it was very quiet except for rustling paper that sounded “like somebody being choked to death.” Toohey was working in the living room, but when she turned to look for him, she could see only his shadow, “a huge shadow, all hunched.” She felt the papers would rise off the floor and choke her so she screamed—but her uncle didn’t hear her, because his shadow didn’t move. He asked her where she was going when she ran out the door, but she didn’t answer him because she was “afraid of him.”

Mrs. Keating says Catherine is clearly overworked and “a mite hysterical.” Keating briefly disagrees, thinking of Toohey’s voice when he gave a speech at the meeting, but then he quickly changes his mind and agrees with his mother, saying he’ll wring Toohey’s neck one of these days for giving Catherine so much to do. Catherine defends Toohey, saying he doesn’t like her working so hard but that she wants to do her “own little bit in such a big cause.” She feels proud of her work.

Keating says they’ll get their marriage license the next morning and can then be married at once. Catherine is relieved to hear it, and she tells Mrs. Keating that she has worried that Mrs. Keating wouldn’t approve of their marriage. Mrs. Keating says she had no cause for worry. Keating asks Catherine to spend the night at his house, but Mrs. Keating insists that she go back home.

After Catherine leaves, Keating is ready for his mother’s objections and is determined to not cave in. Yet, he listens when Mrs. Keating tells him that this marriage will be “the funeral […] of all the hopes” she’s had for him. While Catherine is “a nice girl” and would make a good wife for any “nice, plodding, respectable boy,” she is not worthy of Keating’s greatness. She tells him that no one gets to be the best in their field “without the strength to make sacrifices.” She tells him “It takes strength to deny yourself in order to win other people’s respect.” 

Mrs. Keating says she isn’t thinking about herself, because while Catherine would be a “respectful and obedient” daughter-in-law, Dominique wouldn’t. Keating says he doesn’t stand a chance with that “hell-cat,” but Mrs. Keating says he’s slipping and needs to try harder. Keating says he doesn’t want Dominique, and Mrs. Keating points out that he’s being foolish because Francon is offering him a partnership and asking him to marry his daughter. She asks Keating to stop thinking about himself and “think of others.” Mrs. Keating predicts that Francon would be upset when Keating introduces “the little guttersnipe” that he chose over Dominique—and Keating realizes she is right. Mrs. Keating says that if Keating marries Catherine, he’ll have to forego the partnership and lose his job.

Mrs. Keating says Catherine is a “clumsy little girl” and that other people won’t respect him when they meet her. She continues in this vein, while Keating begs her to stop talking, sometimes mumbling that he loves Catherine. She tells him he can at least ask Catherine to wait for a few months, because after Heyer dies and Keating is made partner, he might be able to get away with the marriage. She also tells him that if he marries Catherine right away, he will be breaking his mother’s heart, and she entreats him to “give one minute to the thought of others.”

When Keating goes to Catherine’s apartment later that morning, he still hasn’t decided what he’s going to do. Catherine is happy, and she says Toohey laughed so much when she told him the news the previous night. Keating tells her about Heyer being ill and that Francon has hinted that Keating might be the next partner. He also says that Francon has the crazy idea that Keating should marry his daughter, so it might be wise to wait to get married until after Keating becomes partner, just so Francon can do nothing to him.

Catherine immediately agrees, saying that she, too, thinks that it would be better for them to wait. Toohey is going to a university on the West Coast to give his lectures, and she’d felt bad about leaving him without help. Also, Toohey had laughed so much when she’d told him, which made her wonder if it would be wiser to wait. Keating suddenly says, “Insist on it now,” but then laughs afterwards, as if it were a joke. When he leaves her apartment, he tries to fight the feeling that something is “closing in on them both and they had surrendered.”