Lessing, Doris: 1919 - 2013

The Fifth Child, 1988 - Information About the Book

General Information | Facts | Author | Commentary | Articles | Podcasts

General Information
- Good for Discussing:
  Destruction of a Family by the Arrival of a Troubling Child
  Societal Pressures and Alienation
  Dark Side of Domestic Idealism
- The novel is about a family's shocking experience when, after four 'normal' children, the fifth is born deformed, different and destructive. The idyll of the large happy family is shattered at his birth. See Summary.
  "Ben, in the World" is the sequel.
- Information from Wikipedia
- Reader Rating:
- Doris Lessing’s inspiration for writing “The Fifth Child.”
  
  Lessing was inspired by the folk story of changelings, where fairies or little people leave one of their children in a human cradle. This child grows up unaware of its origins, while the little people observe its growth. This theme is prevalent in many cultures and fascinated Lessing, prompting her to explore it in her novel.
  In her Massey Lectures, later published as “Prisons We Choose to Live Inside,” Lessing discussed how society can revert to barbaric behavior, especially during war times. This idea of humanity’s dark side is mirrored in “The Fifth Child,” where the character Ben represents a primitive force that disrupts societal harmony.
Facts
- Awards: "The Fifth Child" received the Grinzane Cavour Prize in Italy. In the nomination of the books students play a leading role.
- Topics
  
  Family Dynamics and Dysfunction
  The novel focuses on the Harpers, a seemingly perfect family whose lives are disrupted by the birth of their fifth child, Ben. The dynamics within the family change drastically as they struggle to cope with Ben’s differences.
  Otherness and Alienation
  Ben is described as different from birth, both physically and behaviorally, which leads to his alienation from the family and society. His difference raises questions about what it means to be "normal" and how society treats those who do not fit into conventional molds.
  
  Motherhood and Gender Roles
  The protagonist, Harriet, faces intense scrutiny and pressure as a mother. The novel examines the expectations placed on women to be nurturing and self-sacrificing, and how Harriet's inability to conform to these expectations affects her.
  
  Nature vs. Nurture
  The book delves into the debate over whether Ben’s behavior is a result of his inherent nature or the environment in which he is raised. It questions the extent to which parents can shape their children’s destinies.
  
  Social and Cultural Critique
  Lessing critiques the societal and cultural pressures of the 1960s and 1970s, particularly the idealization of the nuclear family and the stigmatization of those who deviate from societal norms.
  
  Mental Health and Disability
  Ben’s characterization touches on themes of mental health and disability. The novel explores how these issues are misunderstood and mishandled by both the family and wider society.
  
  Isolation and Loneliness
  Both Harriet and Ben experience profound isolation. Harriet becomes increasingly isolated due to her obsessive focus on Ben, while Ben’s alienation is a result of his perceived abnormality and the family’s inability to integrate him.
  
  The Supernatural and the Gothic
  The novel has elements of the supernatural and the Gothic, with Ben sometimes described in monstrous terms, creating an atmosphere of fear and unease.
  
  These topics collectively create a rich narrative that challenges readers to think deeply about family, societal expectations, and the complexities of human nature.
- General Perception
  
  The novel has been praised for its intense narrative and provocative themes. Critics have lauded Lessing's skill in creating a suspenseful atmosphere and her ability to delve into complex social and psychological issues.
  Many readers and critics appreciate the novel's depth and Lessing's unflinching look at difficult subjects. It's often seen as a thought-provoking work that challenges readers to consider the darker sides of family life and societal expectations.
  
  Some have found the book's tone and subject matter too bleak or disturbing. The portrayal of Ben and the resulting impact on the family can be seen as overly negative or even sensationalist by some readers.
  
  "The Fifth Child" has left a lasting impact and is frequently included in discussions of modern literary fiction that tackles unconventional and controversial themes.
  
  Lessing's writing style is characterized by its clarity, psychological insight, and ability to evoke strong emotions.
  
  The novel is relatively short, but its concise narrative packs a powerful punch. The pacing and buildup of tension contribute significantly to its impact.
  
  Overall, "The Fifth Child" is regarded as a significant work in Doris Lessing's oeuvre, notable for its daring exploration of unsettling themes and its challenge to conventional perceptions of family and societal norms.
Author
- Why kids like Ben
  - Transcript
    This book, as I discovered much to my surprise, is liked very much by adolescents. As I'll go to a school and I'll find a teacher saying, 'You know, the kids like this book very much'. I used to be surprised, and now I'm not. And I get letters from Germany and France, etc, saying, 'I teach The Fifth Child. It's always a great success, the children don't know what to think'. This has this quality. So I am... I never understood it... Ben is a very clumsy, awkward, unlikeable creature – if you take him as a member of a middle-class family. If you see him as someone who would be perfectly at home in a cave on a hillside 50,000 years ago, he's not peculiar at all; he's just in the wrong place. And when people said that Ben was evil, I've never understood it; he just was... he didn't belong, that's all. And we can't tolerate people who don't belong. We don't like them at all.
    Well, so there I am in a North London school not very far from here... and what was interesting was that the pupils were all black and brown and Asian. There were about three white. Now this... if you're not used to this idea, it's quite... you have to get used to the idea – I was quite shocked. I thought, then what must this place be like to live in, where you have different cultures side by side? So there was a class – a literature class – and a teacher who said, 'The kids love The Fifth Child'. So there I am with the kids and they say they love The Fifth Child. And there is an extremely beautiful girl – and a plum-blossom fairy, I tell you, a most beautiful girl, who says, 'I love The Fifth Child – Ben is me! Ben is myself!' And I said, 'Now come on – Ben is not a beautiful girl, you know'. And she said, 'I am Ben!' And I thought, well, what are adolescents? They're clumsy, they're awkward, they can't get along. They know that they're... that they'll never, never grow up, they don't fit into anything, so they identify with Ben. And that is why, at last, I discovered why kids like Ben.
- Background
  - Transcript
    Now I'm going to talk about the history of one book and how it ended up, because I can illustrate a lot about this kind of difference doing that. And there is another misunderstanding which is very common, and it's this – it's a letter which you get from a fan: 'I too am wanting to be a writer, Mrs Lessing. Tell me, how do you get your plots? Where do you get your ideas from? Where do you get your inspiration?' And you write back and say, 'Well, you see, it's not really something that happens once, it might take years'. And you know quite well that this person who is wanting some information from you... where do you get...? Or you might write and say, well, you see a face on a bus, you hear something on the Underground, and it sets up a whole string of memories, and you think, my God, that's a short story!
    Now, this is how books and stories get written. It's not a sort of inspiration like a butterfly suddenly arriving on your head... so you say, my God, that's an inspiration! Oh, good! This is how the outsiders might see it, or hopeful neophytes might see it, but in actual fact it's probably years of memory and ideas of... and a lot of thought ... that's it, a lot of thought goes into this.
    
    Now, I'm going to start off with The Fifth Child, which is a book... one of my books that's got a kind of life of its own. Not all books do, but this does, and it's always coming to life again and being reprinted and so on, and I get a lot of letters... a lot of letters about it.
    
    What I wanted to write, and did want for many, many years, was to write about that folk story about the fairies, or the little people. They leave one of their children in a human cradle, and this child grows up as a human and never knows it's one of the little people, or a goblin or a dwarf or anything like that. But the little people know it, and this story, as... as it is told in folklore, is the interaction between the little people watching the growth of their child in a human cradle in a human house, and the humans not knowing it. And as a story it has infinite variations – it's in every culture – it's in Africa... various places in Africa. Anywhere you go, you say, 'Do you have this story?' and they do have it in one form or another.
- Doris Lessing said at a chat at Barnes&Noble, January 20, 1999, about THE FIFTH CHILD:
  An interesting thing about THE FIFTH CHILD. When I wrote it, it never occurred to me that young people would like it. For instance, in Italy the Italians set up a literary prize and called in novels from all over the world. The judges got it down to a final 20 and sent them to schoolchildren and asked them which they thought should win this prize. They chose THE FIFTH CHILD. Since then, when I go around lecturing and meet teachers and librarians, they always tell me how much the children like that book. Don't ask me why. Right now I am writing a sequel to it. This is actually because of the suggestion of my German publisher, because that book did very well in Germany. It was on their bestseller list for weeks and weeks. This one is called BEN, IN THE WORLD, and all I can say is that it is a very sad story. I have finished the first draft and now am working on the second. Many people have said to me that my character Ben is evil. All I see is that he is a creature out of context, because he would have been perfectly all right on a hillside or in a savage group, but you put him in a middle-class family and he is totally destructive. So now I have become extremely sorry for this poor creature. Often people don't like sequels, so I am taking a bit of a risk.
Commentary
- The novel raises a host of questions about human variation and its societal treatment; the tyranny of the visual in the establishment of normalcy and social power; the constructedness of the normal and the deviant, defective, or abnormal; and the gap between professional diagnoses and family realities. The chapters on Ben's institutionalization are riveting, distressing, and handled in a complex fashion. Neither the institution nor its staff are demonized, nor is Harriet's rescue portrayed as a unilaterally heroic act.
  Students argue passionately over who is most at fault, Harriet, David, or Ben himself, and such debates are highly illuminating not only about how we conceive parental (and especially maternal) responsibility but also how we conceive the rationing of family and social happiness and whether it should be decided on a Utilitarian or other model. Lessing makes it impossible to establish the objective nature of Ben's difference, and whether we are meant to read him as an archetype, a figure of science fiction (an atavism or a product of maternal impressions), a metaphor for the construction of racial, ethnic, or class difference, or a figure of social realism (a mentally disabled, physically atypical, or autistic child; a child with disabilities produced by maternal drug use).
  Ben resembles Robert Louis Stevenson's Edward Hyde ("Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde"), a figure of "nameless deformity" and physical vigor who distresses people for reasons they find hard to articulate. He also compares productively to Victor Frankenstein's creation in Mary Shelley's Frankenstein. The novel is an excellent addition to courses on disability studies or medical ethics and teaches well alongside Michael Bérubé's Life as We Know It: A Father, a Family, and an Exceptional Child.
  Holmes, Martha Stoddard
  Excerpted, with permission, from the Literature, Arts, and Medicine Database at New York University School of Medicine, © New York University.
Articles: General Information | Detailed/Scholarly Information
- General Information:
- Review: "The review gives a clear summary of plot and themes and offers some interpretation, but it focuses more on personal reaction and surface elements." Nerd Team 30; October 31, 2019
- Review: "The article gives a general overview and some interpretive commentary, but it’s not deeply analytical." Old Paper & Cats; March 28, 2022
- Bad News For the Nice and Well-Meaning: "The article offers a moderately informative analysis that situates the story within its broader themes (family breakdown, societal expectations, and the unsettling nature of Ben’s otherness)." Carolyn Kizer, New York Times; April 3, 1988
- The Painful Nurturing of Doris Lessing's "Fifth Child": "The article provides a reasonably informative analysis, though it’s more of a review-style critique with interpretation than a deep scholarly analysis." Mervyn Rothstein, New York Times; June 14, 1988
- Blaming the Mother: "The article provides a reasonably clear and focused literary analysis of The Fifth Child (1988), particularly examining themes like motherhood, maternal ambivalence, and societal blame." Alexandra Kallman, Lund University; Spring 2014 (pdf 28pp)
- The Uncanny Unnamable : "The article offers a focused perspective on The Fifth Child, linking Lessing’s naming choices to themes of identity and belonging.” Christine De Vinne, Notre Dame of Maryland University; March, 2012
- Doris Lessing’s horror novel: "The article gives a generally descriptive and surface‑level interpretation with some useful observations about tone and ambiguity". Old Papers & Cats; March 28, 2022
- The novel explores the complexities of family life: "The article gives a clear, basic overview of The Fifth Child’s plot and themes (family breakdown, alienation, social judgment), but it stays largely descriptive". With bibliography. Ebsco
- Motherhood: "The thesis provides a focused and scholarly examination of motherhood and mother‑blame, adding meaningful critical context". Lund University; Spring 2014 (pdf 28pp)
- Detailed/Scholarly Information:
- Patterns of exclusion in Doris Lessing’s The Fifth Child: "The article offers a detailed and insightful academic analysis, exploring themes like exclusion, social and psychological symbolism, and the broader implications of Ben’s character." Université de Bretagne Occidentale; December 6, 2011
- Abjection and Exclusion: "The article gives a clear, scholarly analysis showing how The Fifth Child interprets Ben’s “otherness” through the lens of abjection and exclusion, linking the novella’s themes to societal attitudes toward difference and marginalization." Southeast University, Nanjing, China; August 20, 2024
- The Uncanny Unnamable in The Fifth Child and Ben, in the World: "The article analyzes The Fifth Child by exploring how Doris Lessing uses names, especially Ben’s, to highlight themes of identity, belonging, and the “uncanny” inability to classify or fully humanize Ben within the narrative." Notre Dame of Maryland University, USA; March, 2012,
- Creating Oneself as a Mother: Dreams, Reality and Identity: "The article offers a focused thematic analysis, especially on motherhood, dreams, identity, and how Lessing blends reality and imagination." University of Edinburgh; Autumn 2010,
- Gothic Elements and Family Disintegration: "The article provides a detailed and insightful scholarly analysis by identifying and explaining the Gothic elements in The Fifth Child, demonstrating how they relate to themes such as family disintegration and the breakdown of domestic bliss." Sivas Cumhuriyet Üniversitesi, Türkiye; 2025 (pdf 24pp)
- Existential Reading: Survival between Being and Doing in The Fifth Child: "The article gives a clear and focused existential analysis, examining how Doris Lessing portrays the protagonist’s personal choices and conflict between the individual and society through an existential lens." Universidad de Guanajuato; 2022 (pdf 9pp)
- Subversion of Traditional Family Structure: "The article offers a focused academic reading from a cultural materialist angle, exploring how The Fifth Child subverts traditional family structures and gender roles within its 1980s British context." Üniversitesi, Malatya, Türkiye; 2022 (pdf 11pp)
Podcasts:
- This is a weird novel that raises questions about parenthood, family, and the impenetrable depths of nature. March 31, 2021
  "The episode provides a thoughtful, context‑rich discussion of The Fifth Child’s themes (e.g., family, parenthood, the “alien” or monstrous child and its disruption of domestic ideals), grounding the book in broader literary and philosophical references rather than just summarizing the plot."