Dominique Francon is the heroine in Ayn Rand's The Fountainhead. A lithe, angular beauty, she consciously inflicts problems on herself and those she loves in the hope that they will surmount the conflict. For example, she blashphemies in her newspaper column all the buildings her love, architect and main character of the novel, Howard Roark, creates so he receives fewer designing contracts. Her intent in this is to force Roark to go against his principles(he believes in only designing new buildings, not making copies of old temples and columns, and refuses to build for people who reqest he alter his work) out of necessity to live. She also weds a man whom she hates to prove to herself that she can survive and doesn't care about love.
My favorite incident in the novel including Dominique is when she is talking about a statue she saw in a museum. She fell violently in love with it upon sight, so she paid an exorbitant amount of money to own it. As soon as she has it in her possession, she admires it, then throws it down a set of stairs, destroying it. This was done, not out of insanity, but love(at least love in this novel's sense) because she did not want those unworthy of of understanding the genius needed to create such a wonderful sculpture to see it, such is her need to to destroy the man she loves above all else and herself.