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Dunstable Ramsay, protagonist of Robertson Davies' novel Fifth Business, was a very interesting man who led a rich and intriguing life. He possessed many positive traits that led to his successes, but he also had his share of faults that would inevitably lead to certain failures. Dunstan's reclusive and judgmental nature meant that he could neither truly ever love someone nor belong anywhere as he would have wished. The fact that he was a man unto himself, a unique specimen, affected his professional life as it disturbed some people who could influence its direction and because he did not follow a typical career path. His inherent qualities hindered his progress in life.
Our hero, though gifted in many ways, always retained a reserved and private nature, which denied him of intimate relationships with those he cared for most. From the beginning of the book, we see that Dunny's tyrannical mother incited him to shrink away from intimacy. She never showed him the love he so hungered for and never sought his affection. He was never taught, and so he never learned, to let his emotions out, instead of bottling them permanently and damagingly inside of him. As a boy, Dunny became his own best friend for lack of a better companion. He developed a rich inner life at the cost of valuable social interactions. This inner life continued and grew throughout his life, particularly once he had developed a unique interest in saints. Although he would have liked to, as he expressed in his 'wisdom' later on in life, he never got very close to anyone. He held secrets deep inside and kept his desires and opinions to himself, leaving the true identity of Dunstable Ramsay as an enigma.
After masquerading for so long, Dunstan simply forgot that sharing himself with others was even a possibility and he lived a life of unexploited relationships. One of the most life-altering results of these reservations came with his first long-term girlfriend, Diana. He was terrified of ending up with a woman like his mother so he kept Diana at a safe distance by shrouding himself and his past in mystery, dooming their relationship. No one ever really knew Dunstanhe never wanted them tohe was mistrustful of everyone since he had not been shown the appropriate parental love as a child. The only person he was able to care for was Mrs. Mary Dempster as she was completely harmless and non-threatening to his sense of selfthe complete opposite of his mother.
Liesl was the first person in Dunny's life able to force him to at least peek out of his shell. In her psychoanalysis, she accurately perceived Dunstan's inability to form intimate bonds with people and the repercussions of this. She confronted him with her revelations "You despise almost everybody except Paul's mother [Mary]. No wonder she seems like a saint to you; you have made her carry the affection you should have spread among fifty people." (1) Through this analysis, Dunny realized that not even Mary Dempster, whom he cared for so deeply, had seen the real Ramsay; Mary never learned of his conviction that she was a saint or even of the misplaced guilt he carried his whole life on her behalf. He admonished this after his fool-saint's death "…I begged forgiveness for myself, because, though I had done what I imagined was my best, I had not been loving enough, or wise enough, or generous enough in my dealings with her." (50) As a painfully secretive person, Mr. Ramsay was never able to break down the mistrust bred into him by his family and share enough of himself with someone to show them that he cared and to build a meaningful personal relationship. Dunstan went through life the only way he knew how, as a recluse starving others of the affections he wanted returned to him so badly.
Like many people, Dunstable Ramsay sought a place to belong, where he would feel at once welcome and comfortable. Unfortunately, like many people, Dunstable was extremely judgemental and could never find or accept such a place. Dunstan's intelligences had its downfalls, namely that he led his life as an informed yet hopeless cynic, constantly analysing and judging those around him. His best friend Percy Boyd Staunton was handed down the worst of these harsh judgements. Dunstan not only considered his intelligence as superior to that of Boy's, he also thought that he was more interesting and more morally soundan all-around better man. This tempered and limited the men's friendship as the self-proclaimed 'intellectual' was never able to fit in with the 'terrible pack of fatheads' (168) with whom Boy associated. He was eternally categorizing and dismissing their ways, 'so humourless and so cross' (168), so different from his own.
It is these differences that Dunstan always seemed to seek out in others. Rather than searching for a common ground on which to find his elusive place of belonging, as he professed to be doing, he focused on the negative traits of others. Unaware of this as he was, the man actively searched for what might set him apart from those he came into contact with. He even managed to find fault among the men who shared his great and rare passion for saints, the Bollandists. He described his feelings of alienation in his letter to the Headmaster
I seemed to be the only person I knew without a plan that would put the world on its feet and wipe the tears from every eye. No wonder I felt like a stranger in my own land. No wonder I sought some place where I could be at home, and until my first visit to the Collège de Saint-Michel, in Brussels, I was so innocent as to think it might be among the Bollandist. ... Although I thought I had purged my mind of nonsense about Jesuits, some dregs remained. (16)
The opinions that Dunny formed of others, so quickly and often unfairly, limited his social options, ensuring that he never somewhere to belong. It seems that the manifestations of Dunny's subconscious pushed him to become an island unto him. He would find excuse after excuse as to why each of his new surroundings was inappropriate for him. These criticisms granted his innermost wish.
It is common that a person's social interactions are altered by their imperfections but even Dunny's professional life was stunted by his strangeness. Undeniably, Mr. Ramsay was an 'original' man. He was unconcerned with what others thought of him and with the norms of the time. Combine the two factors and one's behaviour is bound to break the mould. From when he strived to be a 'polymath' as a child right on through to his obsession with myth, Dunny knew that he was different; he just grew tired of hiding that fact. On the other hand, he wasn't even aware of some of his eccentricities and would have been shocked if he was told they were as such. The teacher's long-standing friend Boy Staunton wounded him deeply by doing just that. Boy frankly explained to his friend some of what set him apart from his peers
Dunny, we have to face it, you're queer. … Good God, don't you think the way you rootle in your ear with your little finger delights the boys? And the way you waggle your eyebrowsgreat wild things like moustaches, I don't know why you don't trim themand those terrible Harris Tweed suits you wear and never have pressed. And that disgusting trick of blowing your nose and looking into your handkerchief as if you expected to prophesy something from the mess. You look ten years older than your age. The day of comic eccentrics as Heads has gone. Parents nowadays want somebody more like themselves. (1)
Boy was the Chairman of the Board of Governors at Colborne College and he gave these reasons, among others, for denying Dunstan of what he had been striving towards for years as a teacher. Boy refused to give his friend the post as Headmaster because he was too 'queer.'
Dunny's career featured other set-backs brought on by his oddities as well. Once he had discovered his interest in saints, the man got stuck on this 'boyish hobby' and never progressed in his formal studies, as previously anticipated. Dunstable best explains his feelings of the situation in this self-deprecation
Dunstan Ramsay, what on earth are you doing here, and where do you think this is leading? You are now thirty-four …you teach boys who … regard you as a signpost on the road they are to follow and … they pass you by without a thought; and here you are, puzzling over records of lives as strange as fairy tales, written by people with no sense of history, and yet you cannot rid yourself of the notion that you are well occupied. Why don't you go to Harvard and get yourself a Ph.D., and try for a job in a university, and be intellectually respectable? (16)
This quote illustrates that this character was fully aware of the shortcomings preventing his progress; he was just indifferent to them. Regardless of what others thought of him, he retained the conviction that what made him 'strange' was meaningful, therefore worthwhile and indispensable in his life. Although Dunny once hoped for a prestigious academic career, culminating in a position as a Headmaster, he was too weird to be considered as such an authority figure. Dunny's queer nature brought interest to his life but also deprived him of some things, namely the 'text-book' career he had one foreseen for himself.
No one is perfect, and certainly not Dunstable Ramsay. He spent his days as many do, striving to be the best he could be and to find some meaning and substance to life. Whether he achieved these particular goals or not is a matter of personal perception. However, as an imperfect human being, he did not achieve all of his goals. Dunny's irreparable flaws thwarted some of his ambitions. He was too reticent to share himself with others to ever allow anyone to get close to him. Even if an individual managed to break down his barriers somewhat, he would still be constantly judging them and therefore never felt as though he belonged among them. These feelings were not completely misplaced, since he did have trouble 'fitting in' because he was a true eccentric, something that compromised certain aspects of his career. According to this analysis, Dunny becomes a tragic hero, who spends his days crusading against the 'evils' surrounding him when the real enemy, and the ultimate cause of his failures, was within him.
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