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<title> A happy family </title>
The novel I have read, "The fifth child", is written by Doris Lessing. What I will try to do in this essay is to describe the main theme as I see it. I have tried to give a picture of David and Harriet, the main characters, to explain my point of view and also give a picture of the society they are living in.

I think the phrase on page 28 give the best explanation possible of what I feel is the theme. It says, "The Lovatt's were a happy family. It was what they had chosen and what they deserved." I think this phrase says a lot about the whole novel and I will explain this further.

 When Harriet and David are introduced to us we get the picture of them as two people being different, old-fashion and conservative. Later on we find out that their biggest dream is to have a big and happy family, no matter what it takes. They go ahead and by a too big house, they can not pay for which shows on page 20.

Their dream also includes living in the countryside and having lots of relatives and friends coming and going in the house. It seems that they have everything worked out except the part concerning money. They do not have it and they do not really care. This fits with the thinking of the sixties when everything was possible and people had a sense of hope. On page 18 when Molly, David's mother, confronted him about the money issue and about the fact that he was going to have to ask his father for help he just thought that "what mattered was the house and the life that would be lived in it." This shows that he does not care about the money and that he is not very realistic. I think this example shows how both David and Harriet are thinking.

Another example of how they are thinking is that David and Harriet do not want to see the problems with tiredness and lack of money. They are so convinced they can live a life with only happiness and no sadness that they are unable to see anything else. Problems are not included in the happy life they have planed. I think this is what the theme is about. They see the money run out, yet they keep having babies because that is the plan. Harriet is getting more and more tired and yet they keep having the house full people because that is the plan and when Ben arrives, their fifth child, they send him away and try to ignore him. Things that do not have a place in their idea of a happy family they just ignore and try to forget and that includes Ben. In the end their dream of a big family has turned to the opposite because of their attempts to keep the family together. When Harriet takes Ben home from the institution the rest of the family feel betrayed by her as we can see on page105-106. 

The happy family is an illusion that is to be protected in any way possible. Harriet and David counted for example on Dorothy, Harriet's mother, to help them take care of the children and the household. One time on page 41 Harriet says "But it is so easy when people are here, everyone helps me." And that is exactly the way they are counting on it to be. They are being happy, but always on someone else's expense. The big trouble starts when they have to manage on their own and the idyll is shattered. Suddenly they find that they are in an impossible situation. They can not see beyond the fact that unhappiness has entered their home and the family is no longer one unit.

The novel takes place in the sixties and the following twenty years in England. The sixties were a time of sexual revolution, liberation and the belief that everything is possible. I think David and Harriet as characters fits into this description quite well. They certainly believed that everything was possible if one just tried hard enough and in a way they wanted to liberate themselves from the society and mostly from the norms of the society concerning children and families. On the other hand they are a product of the society they tried to walk away from. On page 29 it says "it had been hard preserving their belief in themselves when the spirit of the times, the greedy and selfish sixties, had been so ready to condemn them..." The way Harriet and David act towards other people, like Dorothy, gives a picture of themselves as mirrors of the society they dislike. 

I hope I have made my point clear and that there is no doubt about what I believe is the main theme of the novel. A happy family is a key word and also the phrase I have chosen for the title because I think it goes like a read thread through the book. David and Harriet have been described as individuals and social beings and I have also tried to show how their thinking forms their lives and people around them.
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