Reading both Jane Austen's 'Emma' and Ayn Rand's 'Atlas Shrugged', at the same time, can be quite an experience. I don't know how I managed to land myself in this position, but here I am.
I know now, why Emma is more critically acclaimed than Pride and Prejudice. Here we have a heroine, who is flawed, and flawed not just in a minor way. Emma is not as lightly let off as Elizabeth with only her preconceived notions and her judgement amenable to criticism. Emma is everything you'd never expect to see in your heroine. She's spoilt, proud, jealous, interfering, and thinks no end of herself. She's an amazing heroine; more real than any of JA's other heroines have ever been.
Dagny Taggart, on the other hand, is a typical Rand heroine. (I sometimes wonder why, all of Rand's heroes and heroines, have to look the same. Lithe, strong, with angular lines on the face. Any bit of flab on the body, or absence of angles and lines on the face...and the character has to be relegated to the bad guys.) Dagny is as strong as any of Rand's earlier characters. But, I cannot point what I find wrong about her. I personally preferred Domique Francon, the woman who chose to destroy the man she admired, before the rest of the society could destroy him. Maybe this is what comes from reading two books, as dissimilar from each other as can be, simultaneously.
