Fifth Business Themes & Symbolism

Fifth Business Significant Topics

The Role of Women in Society

The role of women in society is analyzed in the story from the point of view of a male narrator, Dunstan Ramsay. Dunstan minimizes the role of women in his own life by avoiding marriage and escaping his mother. He does this because of certain dark beliefs he holds about the negative power of women, beliefs he has gained through his upbringing in the psychologically twisted village of Deptford. It is certainly understandable why Dunstan fears women. He watches his own father be emotionally consumed and subsumed by his mother, much as a black widow spider physically consumes her mate. Mrs. Ramsay lays down rules and codes of conduct that are impossible to bear, and when either her husband or her children thwart these codes, her wrath is terrible. Mrs. Ramsay is only comfortable with, and loving toward, her son Dunstan when he accepts her opinions as his own. Dunstan,...
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