An Analysis of the Burden of Guilt in Robertson Davies's Fifth Business

Analysis, Pages 15 (3723 words)

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Interwoven with light and shadows, Robertson Daviess Fifth Business is penetrated with fantastical elements that rub uneasily against feelings of guilt. A snowball thrown by young "Boy" Staunton misses Dunstan and hits Mary Dempster, causing the premature birth of Paul and the insanity of Mary. Guilt ensues and threatens to envelop Dunstable, Dunny, and Dunstan. One is his name by birth; the other a pet name; and the third, his true name upon being born again. With so many identities, Dunstan struggles to understand his role as fifth business and to learn to untie himself from his burden of guilt.

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Conventional religion may confine Dunstan Ramsays spiritual growth, but it lays a firm foundation for him to mature. Myth finds a place in the heart of Dunstan and teaches him to grow. Magic is the escape of yore that Dunstan seeks and successfully rediscovers. Religion, myth, and magic are intertwined in Dunstan Ramsays life, crucial for the completion of Ramsay as a person through the wonder they inspire.

Dunstan Ramsays family, especially Dunstans authoritative mother, is the essence of Scottish Presbyterianism in Dunstans life. The Scots are the paragons of common sense and prudence they are not allowed the "usual failings normally associated with the human condition," and Dunstan is indeed acutely aware of any shortcomings he might have. Though Dunstan declares that "the Scottish practicality that [he has] imitated from [his] parents [is] not really in grain with [him]"2, the "chilly Presbyterian ethos" remain.

When he dodges Percy Boyd Stauntons snowball and it hits Mary Dempster which causes the premature birth of Paul and the "madness" of Mary Dunstan is tortured by guilt, for he is "a Presbyterian child and [he knows] a good deal about damnation" While saying prayers at home, Dunstan learns that "a respectful salute to Providence before breakfast is enough for anybody" Such organized religion does not aid ones spiritual growth but contricts ones creative soul.

Like a good Presbyterian, Dunstan dutifully talks about religion with Diana Marfleets father, the Canon. However, it is without conviction of faith that Dunstan relates these tales and the Canon would rather speak of the war.

With a "lionlike spirit", Dunstans mother dominates the family. She places herself above God in Dunnys world. When the young Dunstan breaks some eggs while practising magic tricks, his mother whips him and he becomes so dejected that he thinks about hanging himself. Dunstan obtains his mothers forgiveness only when, on his knees, he begs her, and secondarily God, to forgive him. However, that night, Dunstans mother kisses him and calls him her "own dear laddie" Dunstan is confused "how could [he] reconcile this motherliness with the screeching fury who had pursued [him] around the kitchen with a whip, flogging [him] until she [is] gorged with what? Vengeance?"

The stern Scottish Presbyterianism leaves Dunstans soul thirsty and this incident increases his appetite for magic, for it is "necessary for [him] to gain power in some realm into which [his] parents [his] mother particularly could not follow [him]" Even Diana, Dunstans English nurse who nurses him back to health during the war, complains that Dunstan is too intellectual and that he analyzes things on "which feeling was the only true guide" To enrich his spirit, Dunstan visits Mary Dempster and, as his visits to Marys house become more frequent, Dunstans mother makes him choose between her and Mrs. Dempster. Unable to confine his spirit any longer, Dunstan makes a third choice and enlists.

In Deptford, there are five churches: "the Anglican, poor but believed to have some mysterious social supremacy; the Presbyterian, solvent and thought chiefly by itself to be intellectual; the Methodist, insolvent and fervent; the Baptist, insolvent and saved; the Roman Catholic, mysterious to most of [the inhabitants] but clearly solvent, as it was frequently and, so we thought, quite needlessly repainted" The organized religions in Dunstans hometown do not encourage spiritual adventures. In fact, there is a general dislike among these descendants of hard-bitten pioneers" for the "queer and persistently unfortunate"

When Dunstan witnesses Mary Dempster restoring life to his dead brother, Reverend Phelps advises him that this is blasphemous and that the age of miracles is past. The Reverend Amasa Dempster, Mary Dempsters husband, is a devout Baptist parson. He christens Paul the moment he is born though his premature son is frail at the time. Dempster loves his wife only "on principle" and prays daily to God for the strength to bear his heavy cross, because his wife has become "simple" from the snowball that had struck her. Marys aunt Miss Shanklin acknowledges that religion makes Amasa proud, and the minister even dies praying. Amasa is fervent about religion and condemns Dunstan for teaching Paul about saints and card tricks, as the Reverend considers them Devilish "anathema" 12. Dunstan, though wholly religious, is not to be fazed by such ideals from an organized religion. He feels no guilt because, to him, the stories of saints are "tales of wonder," full of mysticism and beauty.

Reverend Amasa Dempster thinks of himself as an important actor in the spiritual life drama of Deptford. Seeing how entrapped the minister is in his fervent religious ideals, Dunstan notes that "this is one of the cruelties of the theatre of life; we all think of ourselves as stars and rarely recognize it when we are indeed mere supporting characters or even supernumeraries"

Father Regan, a Catholic priest in Deptford, also dismisses Dunstans claim that Mary Dempster is a special woman, a saint. He gives plausible reasons of why reforming tramps and raising Dunstans brother from the dead are not miracles and advises Dunstan to put this foolish notion away and forget it. However, it is from Father Regan that Dunstan first learns about the fool-saint. The priest warns Dunstan against flirting with Mother Church and against the romance of religion, but this only makes Dunstan more eager to keep in touch with his fool-saint, Mary Dempster. The villagers of Deptford, though all educated in matters of religion, are not spiritual. They are uncomprehending as "cows at a passing train" when Dunnys religious work is accepted by the Bollandists. Unlike his colleagues, Dunstan is able to take his dry Deptford religious training and explore it further to satisfy his rich spiritual life.

Briefly associating himself with the Socit des Bollandistes, Dunstan Ramsay meets Padre Blazon, a Bollandist monk who exemplifies the mythic in an organized religion. Padre Blazon does not think it is sacrilegious to speak of the shadows of saints, for "it is faith! It is love! It takes the saint to the heart by supplying the other side of his character that history or legend has suppressed that he may very well have suppressed himself in his struggle toward sainthood" Wisdom is not spectacular, as Dunstan quickly learns from the eccentric monk. Blazon passionately voices advice that Dunstan takes to heart. The former helps Dunstan strengthen his faith in Mary Dempster and tells him, "If you think her a saint, she is a saint to you.

What more do you ask? That is what we call the reality of the soul; you are foolish to demand the agreement of the world as well". Trying to "link the wisdom of the body with the wisdom of the spirit until the two are one", Blazon urges Dunstan to try to understand the subtlety, and stop whimpering about the cruelty", for the torment of the spirit does not necessarily lead to wisdom17. Albeit still weighed down by the guilt he bears, Dunstan tries to heed Blazons words that Mary Dempsters simple-mindedness is part of Gods plan to save him. The beginning of wisdom occurs when Dunstan forgives himself for being human. Dunstan also tries to comprehend who Mary is in his personal world, and how she figures in his personal mythology. Through Blazon, Dunstan learns that the answer is to be found not in objective truth, but in psychological truth.

Many years afterwards, Dunstan meets Blazon again, and the latter notes that Dunstan is indeed a transformed man whose life is illuminated by his fool-saint. Dunstans belief in miracles has coloured his life with beauty and goodness. Trained by the Bollandist tradition of looking at the shadows as well as the light, Dunstan is able to conquer his personal devil. Padre Blazon, one of Dunstans mentors, congratulates the now middle-aged man, "Well done, well done! You met the Devil as an equal, not cringing or begging for a trashy favour! This is the heroic life, Ramezay.

You are fit to be the Devils friend, without any fear of losing yourself to Him!" Finally able to accept the dualism of the world, and of the person, Dunstan tries to help the nave "Boy" Staunton recover something of the totality of his life after Boy denies changing the Dempsters lives with his brick-in-a-snowball. Dunstan tells Staunton, "Dont you want to possess [your life] as a whole the bad with the good?Its time you tried to be a human being" It is also due to Blazons teachings that Dunstan is able to retaliate when Boy denounced one of his major religious works: "Im not surprisedyou created a God in your own image and when you found out he was no good you abolished him. Its a quite common form of psychological suicide" 241. To Dunstans surprise, his analysis is correct.

Straddling the cusp of the mythological world, Mary Dempster is Dunstan's fool-saint. Hit by a snowball while pregnant with Paul, Mary knows no fear. Sweet and girlish in a hardworking village that has no need for such beauty, Mary roams the village, giving her processions away to neighbours. Dunstan, drawn to this "simple" woman because of the snowball incident, feels that he has made her what she is. By defending Mary in public, Dunstan is laughed at by his peers, thereby increasing his "sense of isolation of being forced out of the world [he belongs] to into the strange and unchancy world of the Dempsters" 20. Indeed, it is a strange world. Mary Dempster performs three acts that Dunstan knows to be miracles, and it is Mary who ignites Dunstans desire to make her a saint and it is her who launches him into his quest for saint knowledge.

Denounced by McCausland as a "moral idiot" who has no sense of right and wrong, Mary copulates with a tramp in the towns notorious gravel pit because "he [wants] it so badly". Later, Dunstan discovers the tramp is reformed through his sexual act with Mary Dempster. Mary "willingly transgresses one of Deptfords most rigid taboos in order to provide solace indeed, redemption to a fellow creature" and, because of this, Dunstan is no longer allowed to visit the Dempsters. Dunstan continues to do so on the sly, for Mary Dempsters "experience offers important information about the nature of a life lived with an awareness of the presence of the mythic world in the actual world" Dunstan is one of the few people who recognize that Mary Dempster is wholly religious.

Tied up in her own home with no friends but Dunstan, Mary seems to "live in a world of trust that had nothing of the stricken, lifeless, unreal quality of religion about it", whereas her husband the Reverend Amasa Dempster imposes religion as he understands it. Mrs. Dempster knows she is in disgrace, but she does not feel disgraced; she knows she is jeered at, but she feels no humiliation. In fact, she lives by a light that arose from within and she taps the "root that [feeds Dunstans] life" Soon after, Mary performs her second miracle, reviving Dunstans brother Willie from the dead. Before going off to war, Mrs. Dempster advises Dunstan that it does no good to be afraid. Dunstan remembers this not only during the war, but during his struggle with his Devil as well. While Dunstan lies wounded in the ruins of a church after cleaning out a German machine-gun nest, he is saved by Mary Dempsters third miracle: he sees her face on the statue of the Little Madonna, the Immaculate Conception.

Waking up from a coma in an English hospital nearly half a year later, Dunstan recalls the miracle and begins to "whore after" saints and religious art in the Low Countries, France, Austria, and Italy. During the course of his search, Dunstan rediscovers religion and understands that "the Presbyterianism of [his] childhood effectively insulated [him] against any enthusiastic abandonment to faith. But [he] became aware that in matters of religion [he] was illiterate, and illiteracy was [his] abhorrence". What Dunstan learns revives and confirms his childhood notion that "religion was much nearer in spirit to the Arabian Nights than it was to anything encouraged by St. James Presbyterian Church"

The happiness Dunstan finds in the mythic garden of hagiography endures and leads him to write many books and articles on how people need saints. Exploring this mystical realm, Dunstan wonders, "Why do people all over the world, and at all times, want marvels that defy all veritable facts? And are the marvels brought into being by their desire, or is their desire an assurance rising from some deep knowledge, not to be directly experienced and questioned, that the marvellous is indeed an aspect of the real?"

Dunstan tries to gain wisdom without "wearing either the pink spectacles of faith or the green spectacles of science" and concludes that "faith [is] a psychological reality, and that where it was not invited to fasten itself on things unseen, it [invades] and [raises] bloody hell with things seen" After puzzling over records of lives as strange as fairy tales, Dunstan realizes that "a serious study of any important body of human knowledge, or theory, or belief, if undertaken with a critical but not a cruel mind, would in the end yield some secret, some valuable permanent insight, into the nature of life and the true end of man"

Dunstan Ramsay finds in the simplicity of the lives of the saints, in their perception of life as a pure channel of love, a form of escape from the rigid beliefs of his parents. The "mystical aspects of religion to which [Dunstan] is exposed here provide a counterbalance to the starkly intellectual perceptions of right and wrong to which he is accustomed through his Presbyterian upbringing with its severe unemotional empiricism, which rejects any notion of spirituality of the mystical"

When Mary Dempster, the fool-saint who has nurtured his spiritual soul, dies in a mental asylum, Dunstan cries. When the embalmer asks Dunstan if Mary is his mother or aunt, Dunstan does not answer, for Mary is even more than a friend to him. She is his spiritual guide. Though he feels no sorrow when his mother passed away, Dunstan feels sadness when he lost Mary. In his later years, Dunstan finds again the statue of the Little Madonna he saw in the church on the battlefield. He is not allowed to take pictures of it, but he has no need to, for the Little Madonna is his, forever.

Surgeoner, the tramp whose life Mary Dempster changed forever, heads Lifeline Mission. He shows Dunstan what prayers can bring for the shelter and proceeds to weave myths of hope to those at the Mission. Surgeoner, too, has a great deal to teach Dunstan about life when the latter scorns at the effectiveness of myth on the common people: "You educated people, you have a craze for what you call truth, by which you mean police-court factsl provide something that strengthens faith". The former tramp tells Dunstan Ramsay how, on the night he has intercourse with Mary, it was as if he had been purged in the fires of Hell and returned a pure man. Years later, Dunstan echoes this sentiment and accepts what he had learned from Surgeoner that day that there was to be no release by muffling up the past.

The penchant for magic never wholly dies in Dunstan Ramsay. In his youth, Dunstan reads books on magic tricks and could not "accept his world as the real world, so far as the wonderful art of deception was concerned". Later, while he travels in Europe in search of Wilgeforitis or the Uncumber, Dunstan meets Paul Dempster, now a grown man. Earlier, Paul had run away with a circus headed by Willard the Wizard, who lusted after boys. Although Dunstan taught Paul both magic and saints, it is the magic that lingers. In Europe, Paul works as Faustus Legrand and performs magic tricks.

A few years later in Mexico, Paul reappears as Magnus Eisengrim in the Teatro Chueca. The elegance of the magic show entrances Dunstan Ramsay, for Magnus does not "present as a funny- man but as one who [offers] an entertainment of mystery and beauty, with perhaps a hint of terror as well". The self-assured Magnus is full of dignity, and he returns to Ramsay the money he has stolen from him in Europe, for previously, he had needed the money for his mentor Willard the Wizard, Le Solitaire des Forts.

From Magnus, Dunstan learns that people love romance and marvel; people also need something to wonder at. He realizes that people love to cast others in roles "without trying to discredit them with knowledge of their off-stage life unless they drag it into the middle of the stage themselves" 35. As Dunstan is being "subsumed" in the magic show, he is aware that he is recapturing the best of his childhood and the glorious freedom that comes with it. Paul Dempster, in his persona of Magnus Eisengrim, "teaches Ramsay that access to the mythic world does not necessarily have anything to do with organized religion: the access he offers, unlike that offered by his mother, is offered in the context of the world of the theatre".

Writing the biography for Magnus proves to be a pleasure for Dunstan, because he does not have to be historically correct or weight evidence. His work with Magnus enables Dunstan to depart from the dry conventional histories and religions he grows up with and write a story that is "full of romance and marvels, with a quiet but sufficient undertone of eroticism and sadism". As Dunstan progresses in his quest for self-knowledge, he realizes that "growing knowledge is accompanied by its dialectical opposite: it is knowledge that generates mystery". Indeed, Dunstans expanding knowledge about himself through Magnus magic show unveils more mystery and beauty for him to discover. He learns that one always learns ones mystery at the price of ones innocence.

In his conversation with Boy and Dunstan, Paul explains to the latter why he followed Le Solitaire des Forts despite what Le Solitaire did to boys, how many people feel irrational responsibilities and cannot crush them, just like the loyalty Dunstan feels towards Mary Dempster. Finally, when Dunstan denies having told Paul about Boys nickname, "Pidgy Boy-Boy," this eloquent prestidigitateur teaches Dunstan something about ones persona, "We all forget many of the things we do, especially when they do not fit into the character we have chosen for ourselves. You see yourself as the man of many confidences, Ramsay. It would not do for you to remember a time when you told a secret".

Aside from Magnus, Liesl Lisolotte Vitzliptzli is also a "powerful denizen of the spectral world of illusion, [becoming a mentor] of [Dunstan Ramsays] emerging unified personality, drawing him into a world of physicality and irrational wonder. Liesl, a graceful and intelligent woman imprisoned inside a deformed body, knows that Dunstan is a hagiographer. She flatters Dunstan and draws confidences out of him, leading Dunstan to believe that there is more than one kind of magic. Liesl displays for Dunstan the magic and beauty of mechanics, showing him that what is out of sight is often unappreciated by others, such as clockworks. She tells Dunstan that the reason why he loves Mrs. Dempster is that he despises everyone else.

With Liesl, Dunstan is able to unload some of the burden he has carried with him for so long. From her, he learns that one "pays a high price for secrecy" and secrecy makes him look "grim-mouthed and buttoned-up and hard-eyed and cruel, because [he is] cruel to [himself]". Liesls conversations function as mirrors, and Dunstan sees that he is like a "little boy" whose "bottled-up feelings have burst their bottle and splashed glass and acid everywhere". Since Dunstan is infatuated with the beautiful Faustina from the troupe, he is crushed when he discovers she is a lesbian. Liesl admonishes Dunstan, asking him why, if he loves Faustina so much, he never gives her anything?

Liesl is the Devil who tries to seduce Dunstan. However, as the one-legged Dunstan fights with his Devil, a great cloud seemed to have lifted from his spirit. Like St. Dunstan, Dunstan Ramsay broke the Devils nose. When Liesl meekly reenter Dunstans bedroom later that night, Dunstan is able to make love with her as an equal and receive her "healing tenderness". Dunstan finally understands from Liesl that, crushed by the guilt he carries with him, he is "not very human." Even in Calvinism, the cruelty of life can be endured because there is compromise with oneself.

Dunstan, on the other hand, is visited by the "revenge of the unlived life" for "there is a whole great piece of [his] life that is unlived, denied, set aside" 43. He makes a fool out of himself, as he pours his heart out to the first intelligent woman Liesl he meets. As a twice-born Dunstable is renamed Dunstan by Diana who has conquered his personal devil, Dunstan is now able to answer the question Liesl poses, "Who are you? Where you you fit into poetry and myth? Do you know who I think you are, Ramsay? I think you are Fifth Business," the one who knows the secret of the heros birth and whose career often outlasts the golden voices44.

Growing up surrounded by strong religious ideals, Dunstan Ramsay retains some of his childhood beliefs and adds to them his fascination with myth, which allows him to explore the more romantic sides of religion. Rediscovering his childhood love of magic, Ramsay learns again wonderment and awe. With religion, myth, and magic imbued in his spirit, Dunstan Ramsay is able to relieve himself of his burden and mature at last.