The American Mythology of Individualism: Emerson, Ayn Rand, and the Romantic Child

Emerson and Rand might seem an odd couple, but once read together, the connection seems inevitable. Through a focus on their constructions of individualism, this chapter charts key political differences between these two great mythologisers of the American self, as well as drawing out repetitions across their work that disrupt any wholly secure separation between them. The central interest, however, is with their constructions of childhood. In reading the contrasting constructions offered by these two self-declared ‘Romantic’ thinkers via Rand’s Atlas Shrugged and The Romantic Manifesto and Emerson’s essays ‘Self-Reliance’ and ‘Domestic Life’, this chapter offers a reading of the fissures necessary to the production of the seamless subject.