The marriage between Dominique Francon and her father’s business partner, architect Peter Keating is an ironic marriage. Dominique is fascinated with the idea of architecture, and is specially fascinated by fellow architect Howard Roark’s designs, but yet she marries Keating for her own personal reasons and begins to sabotage her once old lover’s career. Contrary to much of the society’s perspective and opinion, Francon views Roark’s architectural designs to be better than the other two architects Toohey and, soon to be her husband, Keating. She marries Keating more for the fact that he is recognized more by the public than Roark, although she believes that Roark should be just as or even more recognized by society. Francon decides to marry Keating as she begins to accept the reality of what she believes will to each architect. She holds no true emotions for him. She knows this when she goes to him and offers her hand in marriage. It can be said he does not hold true love for her as well, as he was engaged to Catherine, whom Keating honestly loved, and was set to marry her the very next day. It is almost as if Francon and Keating married only to appeal to the public eye, as Francon was a very beautiful business women and a respected women and Keating was a successful architect whose career was on the rise. Marrying Francon would help his career more than a marriage to Catherine would.
From this marriage, Francon is seeking to bring the downfall of Roark. Not just Roark himself, but his career as well. Francon believes in a malevolent universe, one where Roark cannot survive in. In this malevolent universe, only those who are evil, meaning they resorted to corruption and such, survive. Although it is ironic as Francon was Roark’s lover, Francon is doing this because she wants to protect Roark. She realizes that he will never succeed or get the recognition he deserves as long as Keating and Toohey were still working in architecture. Her feelings for, who she viewed as the greatest architect of the group, Roark led to Francon to seek a way to end Roark’s misery. She believes if someone must ruin, or end, his career as an architect, then she would rather be at her hands, as she loved him and had the greatest respect for him. She wants to ruin his career out of mercy, so that he does not have to go through failure time and time again. Francon despises having Keating and Toohey being chosen for projects over Roark. The marriage between Francon and Keating was just a step towards her plan to bring the downfall of Roark. She wanted to prove to herself that what she thought about this malevolent universe she lives in was true. She wants to prove that those who are evil, as Keating shows he is through his corruption, will go somewhere in life and live a good life, while those who are good, in this case Roark, will always be considered inferior to someone such as Keating.
Her marrying of Peter relates to her deeper convictions and conflicts as they come as a result of her pessimistic ideals. As a pessimistic, she only views the negative aspect of life. Although it is quite possible for Roark to gain the recognition he deserves, her pessimism does not let her believe he is capable of triumphing over the other two architects, who use corruption and other malevolent ways to gain their success. Francon holds no real feelings or emotions for Keating, marrying only for her grand scheme. As stated before, Francon does not believe Roark can survive in the malevolent universe. This marriage further extends this belief as the evil, corrupt Keating is marrying a woman who will help him climb the social ladder, essentially getting what he wanted. Her marrying Keating is a sense an attempt to show Roark that he cannot compete with him and Toohey. During their marriage, Francon is constantly fighting with Roark and hires some of his clients away from him, and gives them to Keating instead. After the Stoddard Trial, Francon creates her own idea of how life is and decides she has to learn to live in it. That is what cause her to go to Keating and set up the marriage. Again, going back to the idea of Roark being the inferior architect of the group of three, she believes the world does not deserve to witness the work of Roark, and so she will go and be with the one who the world praises for all his work, Keating. The marriage is a reflection of her belief that the strong will survive and will get what they want. Keating’s work is flourishing, and so she goes with him, as it will help both of them gain what they want.
