Feminine InfluencesParallels For Fifth Business and Hamlet

June 7 2010

Though written centuries apart, the protagonists of Fifth Business by Roberston Davies and

William Shakespeare’s Hamlet both share parallel issues: the feminine influences in their lives. They are

both haunted by indiscretions of the women in their lives, causing them difficulties with any other

women they meet throughout their journey. They both distrust and fear women, and as their stories

progress they are forced to take steps that will rid them of their anger and hatred towards the feminine

influences in their lives.

Dunstan Ramsay in Fifth Business, often referred to as ‘Dunny’, was raised in a strict

Presbyterian household where emotions were a controlled part of life, often hidden behind cool

demeanours. His first encounter with the hidden side of femininity is when his mother discovers his egg

for magic tricks. Her outrage and vicious beating of him made him fear the hidden brutality that was

covered by a facade of loving tenderness. This caused Dunny to become extremely suspicious of all

women, wondering what it was behind their primary impressions that they would unveil to be ugly,

ruthless shadows of themselves. His obsession with Mary Dempster was the only outlet for his need to

control a woman, a female that he believed to lack a truly shadowy part of her psyche. However, his

distrust of woman transcended the war, even into a relationship with a young nurse who saved his life

after being mangled by an explosion. He viewed as being too much of his mother, believing that she,

much like his mother, wanted to control his life in its entirety and become a large part of it. His only

relationships revolved around his domination of the opposite sex, especially the one concerning Mary

Dempster – he was able to control her femininity by becoming her guardian. When he meets Liesl, a

brilliant but ugly woman linked to Paul Dempster, she reveals to him that he was so besotted by

masculine qualities such as honour and loyalty that he had forgotten entirely the sensuality and passion

that a human was made up of, and that of which women were the keepers. Dunny was only able to

accept this hidden side of both him and women when he fought with Liesl, winning over these desires,

before embracing them in the symbolic union of their lovemaking. This confrontation, though late in

life, was the only way he was able to confront and accept the demons relating to the feminine influences

in his life, as well as the feminine side of himself, buried amongst his stoic respect and saintly

composure.

Hamlet in Shakespeare’s famous literary work also has the same maternal issues. Abandoned

when his father died, as he saw it, when his mother remarried within months to his uncle, he felt

betrayed and somehow exposed to a new, evil part of feminine beings. He projects this onto all women,

including Ophelia, believing that women were fickle and wanton creatures with no loyalty to anything

but themselves. However, his confrontation with his mother allows him to gain trust in her as she agrees

to be co-conspirator in his murderous plan for his uncle. Ophelia’s death opens his heart to her once

more after her rejection, even going so far as to challenge Laertes’ love for his sister as lesser than his

own. It is at the end of his journey, where he is faced with his death that he embraces both sides of

himself – included beyond the reason of man, but the passion of woman, ‘Let it be’. It is only then, as his

mother’s dying breaths warn him of the plot to kill him, which Hamlet is able to look past the

abandonment and distrust of women to accept his whole being. His hypocrisy about women being

feeble and weak is recognized as a part of himself, and thus he is able to die whole.

Both of these men began life disillusioned to the female character, and when they experience a

darker side than thought, they begin to distrust and project faults onto any other woman they happen

upon. It is only when they are faced with a sense of total choice that they are able to make the

breakthrough where they accept both sides of their personalities. Their feminine sides of passion,

sensuality, emotion coincide with their masculine aspects of loyalty, strength, and honour. These

similarities prove that both needed to have serious confrontations in order to deal with their insecurities

and fears regarding the women in their lives before they could fully accept themselves and human

beings as being less than angels but more than simpletons to be looked down upon.