Dagny Taggart
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Dagny Taggart is the main character in Ayn Rand's novel Atlas Shrugged. Dagny is Vice-President in Charge of Operations at Taggart Transcontinental. She is the female heroic character, the counterpart to John Galt, and her journey is the journey of the reader exploring and understanding Galt's philosophy. Those in the know understand that she is the one who really runs the railroad.
In the course of the novel, she forms romantic liaisons with three men of ability: Francisco d'Anconia; Hank Rearden; and John Galt, respectively. Galt is the one who, because of the sum total of his qualities, will become the ultimate choice of Dagny. However, she stays on good terms with the other two, even though she ends her sexual relationships with both of them. In the cataclysmic scene near the end of the book, Dagny and her two former lovers, (with Ragnar Danneskjöld, whom she likes but was never romantically involved with), risk their lives to save her present lover. This implies that Rand's perception of egoism (as opposed to some popular interpretations of the term) does not necessarily imply narrow-minded sexual jealousy or a blind possessive feeling towards another person.
'Dagny Taggart' was also the name of the wife of Nathaniel Taggart, the founder of Taggart Transcontinental and Dagny's idol.
Dagny appears in sections 112, 113, 114, 132, 133, 141, 145, 146, 147, 148, 151, 152, and 161.
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[edit] Interpretation
[edit] Feminism
Feminists have long been divided in their attitudes to the character. She is manifestly a strong, assertive woman who seeks and succeeds in having a major career in business - an idea which was far more daring at the time of writing than at present. She is the one and only female business executive in her environment, all the many colleagues and rivals which she encounters throughout the long book being exclusively male. Of course, being born into the rich and powerful Taggart Family was very helpful, but was far from enough, and she had to struggle hard for her unprecedented ambition; obviously, all previous Taggart women (including Dagny's 19th century namesake) had confined themselves to traditional female roles. And even through running the company in fact, she had to content herself with being Vice-President, with her brother's being male being apparently his main qualification for the top job.
As against the above, Feminists have often criticised the description of Dagny Taggart's appearance at the Reardens' anniversary party :"…the diamond band on the wrist of her naked arm gave her the most feminine of all aspects: the look of being chained." (It has been pointed out that this scene is, however, described from Lillian Rearden's point of view, not Ayn Rand's). Dagny Taggart, while being otherwise invariably strong and assertive, seems, in some scenes, to have a submissive attitude to the men in her life - manifested in sexual encounters in which the man (all three of them, in turn) use some physical violence which Dagny seems to enjoy (though this is not as blatant as Dominique Francon's relationship with Howard Roark in The Fountainhead, described explicitly as "rape" by the character herself). Also subject to feminist criticism is Dagny's adoration of Galt and explicit acceptance of him as her superior - though, to be sure, similar attitudes are exhibited by male characters who are portrayed as otherwise quite strong and assertive. (See [1], [2], [3], [4].)
[edit] Character comparison
Unlike Hank Rearden's attitude to his brother Philip, Dagny never feels that she has a sense of loyalty imposed upon her by the fact of James Taggart's being her brother. The contrast between these two pairs of very unlike siblings clearly shows that, in Rand's opinion, Dagny's attitude was the correct one and Hank's was wrong - being a sibling is not in itself a reason to give a person something, if that person gives nothing in return.
Dagny shares many of the characteristics of Kira Argounova, the main character of Rand's first book We the Living, whose life was spent in the crushing struggle with the Soviet regime and who was finally killed in an attempt to escape the Soviet Union and get to America (and which Rand states explicitly was meant to represent herself, in character though not in specific biographical events). In a sense, Dagny is a more fortunate Kira, and actually gets a chance to do the kind of things Kira of which Kira dreams. Dagny also shares some of the characteristics with Dominique Francon. Especially, her daring act of proudly revealing to the world her relationship with Rearden recalls Francon's similar revelation of a relationship with Roark.
[edit] Trivia
'Dagny' is a Scandinavian name, quite rare in the US, and presumably implies that the original Dagny Taggart, the wife of Nathaniel Taggart in the 19th Century, was of Scandinavian origin. (See [5]).
