Polemical novels, such as The Fountainhead (1943), of primarily known Russian-American writer Ayn Rand, originally Alisa Rosenbaum, espouse the doctrines of objectivism and political libertarianism.
Fiction of this better author and philosopher developed a system that she named. Educated, she moved to the United States in 1926. After two early initially duds and two Broadway plays, Rand achieved fame. In 1957, she published Atlas Shrugged, her best-selling work.
Rand advocated reason and rejected faith and religion. She supported rational and ethical egoism as opposed to altruism. She condemned the immoral initiation of force and supported laissez-faire capitalism, which she defined as the system, based on recognizing individual rights, including private property. Often associated with the modern movement in the United States, Rand opposed and viewed anarchism. In art, she promoted romantic realism. She sharply criticized most philosophers and their traditions with few exceptions.
Books of Rand sold more than 37 million copies. From literary critics, her fiction received mixed reviews with more negative reviews for her later work. Afterward, she turned to nonfiction to promote her philosophy, published her own periodicals, and released several collections of essays until her death in 1982.
After her death, her ideas interested academics, but philosophers generally ignored or rejected her and argued that her approach and work lack methodological rigor. She influenced some right conservatives. The movement circulates her ideas to the public and in academic settings.
Having read Anthem by Ayn Rand beforehand, I was familiar with Ayn Rand's philosophical view. She was one of the advocates of egoist beliefs, and therefore, the majority of her books stands for what she valued. Of these books, "The Husband I bought" is no exception. It represents how foolish it is to sacrifice oneself for the benefit of another person. To show this, she used an extreme representation of a woman who is in love with a man so much that she sacrificed her whole life only to see the man who apparently has no affection towards her happy. In brief, I thought the book shows an exaggeration of one-sided love to imply her philosophical belief-a person himself is responsible for his/her own happiness but not for any other or vice versa.
But then, assuming that Ayn Rand's belief is the case, how do we define what love is if it even exists at all? I wonder how Ayn Rand would have defined it.
Her decision of leaving him was right, but in a different way without ruining her life. She may have kept him physically but not emotionally. Affection or obsession in something not only love can be harmful.
The Husband I Bought by Ayn Rand is drama-type short story about (primarily) Henry and Irene (on the surface) though one may argue the story is always about more than Henry and Irene's relationship with each other. After entering a favorable discussion about Ayn Rand, The Husband I Bought comes up as a recommendation though is unavailable for purchase at the time, then a wonderful surprise comes in the form of news: the short story becomes available for purchase in a book form with an English as well as Mongolian translation meeting in the middle of the text (at least in certain stores in Mongolia)! After buying then reading the book form of the short story from an Internom, I engage in a discussion of the text with the recommender. Ayn Rand is a clever writer situating stories in connection with individuals as well as livelihoods in a way or so that acknowledges life is always around a corner whether that be the interior of a character or an extension beyond and/or within an environmental physical understanding. The text seems to engage concreteness with slipperiness so as to reveal a perspective of a perspective of an underlying perspective of a continuous cycle of perspectives necessary to divulge the core of Ayn Rand's meanings (such character and situational developments will be quite familiar to any familiar with Ayn Rand's larger texts such as Atlas Shrugged and The Fountainhead) throughout the short story. Even so, Ayn Rand's story developments on a seemingly smaller scale (in respect to her larger stories of a seemingly larger scale, more so of contexts and actual physical elements of a story in book form) in The Husband I Bought are compelling to discuss especially regarding socio-economic understandings in accordance with the available contexts within the short story. I feel so many connotations between such a short story and Jane Austen's Persuasion (realistically, more so than Persuasion, of course, any familiar with Jane Austen's stories will find many socio-economic underpinnings at play conflicting with society at large in tandem with private vs. public life in Jane Austen's stories): the tangles between wealth, status, love, and/or happiness comparatively from beyond and within colloquial to more global understandings can always seem to be quite riveting, entertaining because one can agree in a way or so though find such a way or so very disagreeable (alas, the discussions leave one to contemplate standards of character and moral in connection with long-term living understandings versus any sense of immediate need, while one must define need and/or want for one's self). I'm glad about reading the text and enjoy the text even more with a discussion thereafter (reading the text).
Onward and Upward, Kevin Dufresne www.Piatures.com IG: @Dufreshest