The Fountainhead: Part 4: Chapter 17 Summary & Analysis

The city is pleased at Wynand’s renunciation. Lancelot Clokey tells Toohey that it’s unfair that the union double-crossed Toohey and didn’t get him his job back. Toohey says that he was the one who told them to accept the terms, and he is confident that he’ll be back at his post within a month since he has filed a suit with the labor board.

Roark goes to meet Wynand, but Wynand refuses to see him. Roark writes him a letter, telling him “to start again” from where he is, and that what happened doesn’t matter and is “not the final verdict on [him].” The letter is returned to Roark, unopened.

Alvah Scarret runs the Banner, even writing the editorials. Wynand goes in to work and attends to advertising and financials, and he doesn’t even read the paper anymore. He hasn’t seen Dominique since the meeting, and he can’t bring himself to go to the Connecticut house and face her.

Dominique lies by the lake by the Connecticut house and thinks that she has “never been able to enjoy […] the sight of the earth” before, and that “it’s such a great background, but it has no meaning except as a background.” She has always thought of the people who owned the earth, which was why it used to hurt her before. But she has now realized that “[t]hey don’t own it. They own nothing. They’ve never won.” She has seen Wynand’s life, and she now realizes this. The earth is beautiful, and she can now love it. She thinks that she has learned “to bear anything except happiness. [She] must learn how to carry it. How not to break under it.”

Roark has rented a house at Monadnock Valley for the summer. Dominique arrives there unexpectedly. Roark thinks he has “all he had wanted,” but he is pained to think of Wynand, even now. He asks Dominique to wait until Wynand recovers, but she says he never will. Roark asks her to have some pity for Wynand, and she tells him not to speak “their language.” When Roark defends Wynand, saying he had no choice, Dominique says he could have closed the paper. Roark says that it is Wynand’s life, and Dominique says this is her life. Roark tells her he loves her. She says she knows what his strategy is for the trial, and that it won’t make a difference if anyone finds out about them now. Roark agrees. Dominique says she will always be his, even if he loses the trial and ends up in jail. They have sex.

The next morning, before Roark awakens, Dominique wears Roark’s pajamas and calls the sheriff’s office, saying she is Mrs. Wynand, calling from Roark’s summer house in Monadnock to report her missing ring which is a present from Roark. When the cops arrive and two reporters from a local paper arrive, they find Roark in a dressing gown, having breakfast with Dominique. They write down details about the supposedly missing ring and depart. Soon, the story of Dominique and Roark having an affair is all over the papers. Dominique says she would like her name smeared in the Banner, just as Wynand had allowed Roark’s to be. She says she is “happy” and “free,” and that she and Roark now “stand together—against all of them.”

When Scarret sees the story, he realizes how much he loves Wynand, and he is furious at Dominique. He wants to know what they are to do, and Wynand tells him to run the story since “It’s news.” Scarret tells Wynand to divorce her, and Wynand agrees. He goes to see Dominique at the house in Connecticut and she tells him that she and Roark haven’t been together after she married Wynand, but they have been in love from before that. He is calm and turns to leave, and Dominique screams at him that he had no right to become what he did if he can bear this news so calmly. Wynand says that this is why he is bearing the pain—he knows he deserves it.

Guy Francon calls Dominique, asking if she will be leaving Wynand now, and she says she will be. He asks her to stay with him until the Cortlandt trial, and Dominique agrees. He tells her that Roark seems like “the right man” and that he is happy for her. He can tell that she is worried about the trial, and he assures her that Roark will be acquitted.

Alvah Scarret sees that he can redeem Wynand’s reputation by blaming Dominique. He sells the story of Wynand “as the victim of a passion for a depraved woman,” claiming “it was Dominique who had forced her husband to champion an immoral cause.” The plan works, and the Banner slowly grows in popularity once again. Wynand washes his hands off the whole thing.