Abstract

Adored by a post-war American public, ripe for the egoism expounded in her writings, novelist Ayn Rand and her philosophy of Objectivism held many in their sway. But when Ayn asks her husband to set aside his emotions and accept that she has found another lover purely as a result of reason, her husband, her lover, and her lover's wife, all adherents to Rand's philosophy, must submit to one of its perverse conclusions. In The Emotionalists, award-winning playwright Sky Gilbert reveals a towering intellect caught in her own contradictions and a society of friends damaged by their principles. Gilbert's command of his characters, enmeshed in their Objectivist conundrum, is masterful. The Emotionalists is an intelligent, witty, and disturbing examination of the limits of reason and the need for honest emotion.