<doc.id=1032.a4>
<title> You cannot plan happiness -My thoughts about the theme and setting in Doris Lessing's The Fifth Child </title>
I think that after having read Doris Lessing's The Fifth Child you have many things to think about. The novel has many themes, but I think the most important one is that you cannot plan, or expect, happiness. So, in this assignment I am going to show why I think this is the main theme, and also why the setting is important for the theme. All quotes are taken from the edition printed by Flamingo 1993.
I think that from the very beginning of the novel you learn that Harriet and David Lovatt try to plan happiness. When they meet, they choose to get married almost immediately, buy a big house and get several children, because this is their idea of happiness. And everything seems to happen just the way they want it to happen. "Happiness. A happy family. It was what they had chosen and what they deserved." (p.28). They had planned happiness. They thought they were happy because they had chosen to be. Harriet truly believed that you are as happy as you deserve. Things were getting rougher in society, but the Lovatts had their own sphere, where they were happy. They thought they could shut out evil. They had not done anything bad to attract bad luck, so why should they worry? Harriet go as far as saying that she believed that her sister had got a daughter suffering from Down's syndrome because their "unhappiness, their quarelling, had attracted the mongol child" (p.29).
Harriet thought that she was in a position to say this, because she had truly planned and deserved her happiness. She and David did not quarrel. When Harriet had her fourth child, she and David were very content. They finally had everything they had wanted. They had a big house with many children, they had a nice home where their relatives gathered and enjoyed themselves. They had decided not to have more children for another three or four years. Everything was perfect. Then Harriet fell pregnant again. "To her utter dismay. And David's." (p.40).
This is the first time Harriet and David are not content with their lives. As they will soon notice though, it is certainly not the last. But at this time they do not know this, so they try to cheer up. Harriet's pregnancy soon becomes unbearable though, and she has to eat a big amount of painkillers. The baby is very strong, and kicks hard, and Harriet feels totally sore inside. When baby Ben finally is born, Harriet considers him different from the very beginning. For starters, he is not cute. He does not look like other children and he is very big and strong. He is not cuddly. Harriet does not love him the way she loves her other children, but she tries to be just as good to him as to them.
When Ben grows up, he becomes very frightening. He kills the family's pets, a cat and a dog. He even tries to kill his older brother Paul. Of course, the other children do not like him and are scared by him. Harriet is disliked in a way too, because she refuses to let Ben die in an institution. The children leave home early to go to boarding schools. The relatives will not come to their house in the holidays anymore. The family's happiness is totally shattered.
I think the setting is important for the theme. Harriet and David meet in England in the 1960s. The ideology then was certainly not to get married and have a bunch of kids. Harriet and David were seen as oddballs because they wanted to do this. But they did not care about this. They had other values than most people of their time. They chose to go their own way. They chose what they thought was going to be happiness. Time and place are also important later in the story. Ben is born in 1974. What is crucial about this time is that it was still not uncommon to place a child with disabilities in an institution, where it was left to die. On the other hand, it was not all right either. This is typical for a Western European country, like England. In some countries, for example in Eastern Europe, children are still put in institutions if they are disabled. 
Of course, the social setting is also important. David's parents are divorced. This has affected him, and that is why he thinks it is so important to have a real home, one home. David's father is wealthy, and this is also important to the theme, and the whole story. Harriet and David could not manage on David's salary. David's father had to help them a lot financially. Had he not done this, problems would have occurred much earlier in the story.
You can try to make up plans for everything. Harriet and David tried to plan happiness. They tried to shut out evil. They had deserved happiness, and therefore they ought to be happy. Or? Harriet and David learnt something. They learnt that you cannot plan happiness.
</doc>