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<title> The Fifth Child - the Fear for the Abnormal </title>
The theme of Doris Lessing's novel "The Fifth Child" is people's and society's fear for the abnormal and how they deal with this fear. Not wanting to face what they cannot control or understand, the characters in this book turn away and ignore. In this essay I will deal with the importance of the setting for this theme. I find the setting crucial to the theme, because the society that the people live in gives them their ideas of what is normal and these norms can differ a great deal in various societies. 

Harriet and David meet in the sixties. They both want to create a large, happy family, even though people think they are mad because it is not the normal thing to do in England of the sixties. Harriet's mother says that they sometimes scare her with their family plans. Harriet's answer to this is that in other countries having six children would be perfectly normal. The theme of the novel lies in this. People always fear what is uncommon or abnormal, and when something is they want to normalize it or not have anything to do with it at all. And what is strange in one society could be perfectly normal in another.

When their family is a happy one Harriet and David close the door to the brutality that now surround them. Because they do not want to face the problems that have arisen in their little town. Their relatives come to spend the holidays at the large house to have a piece of happiness. When Ben is born they do not enjoy visiting the Lovatts' anymore. Not wanting to be around the abnormal child, the relatives make arrangements for sending him to an institution. But Harriet brings him home and they stop coming, they fear Ben and his abnormal parents, who has chosen to keep him.

But Harriet and David do not have a choice, they cannot turn away from their child, no matter how unlovable he may be. Harriet feels she has to take care of him and she spends all her time looking after him, even though it means sacrificing what she has fought for, her family. She feels she has no other choice but to stand on Ben's side and have the people she loves turn against her. All this is because the society that Harriet and David were brought up in, has given them their moral: they cannot leave their child to die in the institution he is being brought to. Earlier they could close their door to the brutality of the world outside, but when it enters their family they will have to face it. Others will not though. The doctors that Harriet visit, will not admit that there is something wrong because they are frightened. And they do not have to deal with it. They can close their doors and pretend everything is as usual. 

Everyone who meets Harriet fears her because she gave birth to Ben. Harriet too is afraid, of Ben and of herself. Her world has turned upside down; Ben, a child that was supposed to become a part of their happiness, destroyed it. This unfortunate child has divided the once so happy family into two sides, like England is described on page 30: "There was an ugly edge on events: more and more it seemed that two peoples lived in England, not one - enemies, hating each other, who could not hear what the other said."

The setting is important for the theme. Harriet's and David's acts reflect the values of the society they belong to. The morals in England in the sixties and the eighties make Harriet and David odd when they wish to have six children. Another typical thing is trying to hide what does not fit into the pattern. The search for a scapegoat to keep us apart from what scares us also tallies with the time and place where this novel is set, and so does the doctors' and teachers' behavior. The values would be different in another time or part of the world.

Authorities, doctors and teachers, do not to see or do not to admit that they do. They choose to deal only with problems they feel that they can handle, because it makes them feel like they do a good job. If the doctors would admit that Ben is abnormal they would not have a solution to the problem anyway, and that would make them feel like bad doctors, since their task is to make people well. The same goes for the teachers, their work is to teach the pupils and if they admit that there are those whom they cannot teach they would be bad teachers. The pupils that do not fit in often are "truants" as Lessing writes on page 145 and that is "to the relief of their teachers". There is another aspect of it as well, and that is that the authorities do not want to take the blame, they are afraid of becoming the scapegoat. Nobody dares sharing Harriet's burden, that is being the scapegoat.

The setting of this novel is in fact the theme. The values and norms that the characters have are essential to the events and the way of handling the situation depends on the society they belong to. Lessing has shown us a conflict that is quite common; society's demands force David and Harriet to parent Ben, but at the same time the same demands do neither let him into the society nor his parents.
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