The Ginger Man by J. P. Donleavy
"The Ginger Man," a novel by J. P. Donleavy, follows the chaotic life of Sebastian Dangerfield, an American expatriate supposedly studying law at Trinity College in Dublin after World War II. The narrative presents a picaresque and slapstick exploration of Sebastian's irresponsible and often reckless behavior, which includes neglecting his family, indulging in petty theft, and evading his financial duties. As he grapples with a longing for wealth and status, largely fueled by his marriage to Marion, Sebastian's life spirals into a series of misadventures marked by conflict and evasion.
The character of Sebastian is depicted as a larger-than-life rogue, dominated by self-pity and a profound inability to take responsibility for his actions. Despite his charm, he is a deeply flawed individual, whose misfortunes seem to follow him wherever he goes. The novel also touches on themes of cultural identity, as Sebastian expresses a love-hate relationship with both Ireland and America. Alongside him, Marion, his wife, is portrayed as a more subdued but equally troubled character, struggling with the squalor of their life. Through humor and irony, Donleavy crafts a story that reflects on the complexities of human behavior, societal expectations, and the nature of belonging.
The Ginger Man by J. P. Donleavy
First published: 1955, expurgated; 1963, unexpurgated
Type of work:Novel
Type of plot: Picaresque
Time of work: Late 1940’s
Locale: Dublin and London
Principal Characters
Sebastian Balfe Dangerfield , the protagonist, an American student in IrelandMarion Dangerfield , his wifeKenneth O’Keefe , another American student, Sebastian’s best friendLilly Frost , one of Sebastian’s Dublin mistressesMary , another of Sebastian’s Dublin mistresses, with whom he renews an affair when in London
The Novel
The Ginger Man presents the slapstick, bawdy, picaresque adventures of Sebastian Dangerfield. Born in St. Louis, Missouri, Sebastian is supposedly studying law at Trinity College in Dublin on the GI bill sometime after World War II. (J. P. Donleavy was a Trinity student from 1946 to 1949.) Sebastian pays no attention to his studies and ignores his responsibilities to Marion, his English-born wife, and Felicity, their infant daughter.
Sebastian is a wild man who behaves reprehensibly: He runs up bills he has no intention of settling, neglects to repay loans from his friends, steals a mistress’s belongings, takes money intended for his child’s milk, accidentally exposes himself on a train, gets into fights in bars, slaps another mistress, hits his wife, and tries to suffocate his crying infant daughter with a pillow. He careens recklessly while driving from one corner of Dublin to another, praying to his patron saint, the Blessed Oliver Plunket, to keep him from too much harm.
Sebastian longs for a life of wealth and status, which is one of the reasons he married Marion, who is the daughter of an admiral. He reads an American business magazine, his “bible of happiness,” with the delight and fantasizes about becoming “Sebastian Bullion Dangerfield, chairman of Quids Inc., largest banking firm in the world,” yet he never intends to make any effort to create this wealth. Instead, he and his family move from one ramshackle house to another, constantly fleeing the efforts of one persistent landlord, Egbert Skully, to collect what he is owed.
The squalor of their surroundings depresses Marion, who is accustomed to a much more comfortable environment; she is especially annoyed when an upstairs toilet Sebastian has put off repairing falls through the ceiling. Sebastian counts on his inheritance to rescue him from the mire that he has created for himself, but Marion writes his father about the sordid details of their life. When his father finally dies, Sebastian is to receive nothing for twenty years.
Marion eventually leaves Sebastian, and after a selfish affair with the spinsterish Lilly Frost, Sebastian, with nowhere left to hide in Dublin, retreats into further exile in London. There he renews an affair with Mary, one of his Dublin mistresses, and lives off the goodwill of friends such as Percy Cocklan. The same pattern of problems and evasions of responsibility is bound to repeat itself. Sebastian has chased himself into exile; he is forever on the run from himself, leaving behind homelands as irretrievable as the past with which they are associated.
The Characters
Sebastian Dangerfield thoroughly dominates the novel; every experience and every detail of daily life in Dublin is filtered through his corrupt sensibility. Sebastian is a walking contradiction: He professes to love all things Irish but characterizes the country as “this dreary stage of church-bound hopelessness.” He remains so completely American as to claim to be part Mohawk, yet he can love the United States only when he is not there. He wants affection from his wife and mistresses but returns little. He is totally blind to the causes of his misfortune: “My problems come with me wherever I go, even on detours.” His problems must follow since he and they are one. Sebastian is the most complete rogue in any American picaresque novel, but he is not repugnant. He is a larger-than-life comic creation full of ironic self-pity: “I came down the stairs with my usual innocence and pain.” The irony is heightened because Sebastian is aware that he is both the teller of this tale and its hero, and he frequently steps back to observe himself in action. When he boasts, “I even worked once,” or explains, “If Marion wants to make the barbarous accusation that I took the milk money, it’s just as well I took it,” Sebastian comes closer to self-mockery than he does to self-justification. He cannot be a villain since he is too much the victim: “I may be just a bit younger than Christ when they tacked him up but they’ve had me outstretched a few times already.” Such hyperbole and other comic devices establish sufficient ironic distance between readers and this outrageous character whose only occupations are seeking pleasure and creating havoc.
He is an unusual protagonist because Donleavy makes no efforts to explain him or to provide evidence to be used to psychoanalyze him. Sebastian is simply the way he is. He is a rebel in spite of himself; like the heroes of traditional picaresque novels, he wants desperately to belong to the moneyed class but is unable to do so because he is fundamentally unable to compromise. Some characters of this type refuse to conform because of principles; Sebastian has no such principles but possesses an overabundance of wayward passions.
This monomaniac is desperately afraid of responsibility: “Marion, stay away a little longer, please. Don’t want the pincers on me just yet. Greasy dishes or baby’s dirty bottom. . . .” The key words here are “just yet.” He tells himself that he will eventually accept society’s strictures, that he is just not ready for them, but he gives no indication that he will change. When the plumbing breaks and his excrement comes down on his wife, he flees, leaving her to clean up another of his messes. He will always run away.
Like many of the women in Donleavy’s fiction, Marion is an underdeveloped character. Bored, depressed, and irritable, she is as unpleasant as Sebastian with none of his comic charm. Kenneth O’Keefe, another American student at Trinity, is the most fully conceived character after the protagonist. A more subdued version of Sebastian, he has all the excessive inclinations of his friend but is unable to act on them. His sexual frustrations seem to stand for those of repressed Ireland itself.
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