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<title> An unusual family </title>
In this essay I am going to discuss the main theme and the importance of the setting for that theme in the novel The Fifth Child by Doris Lessing.
The main theme of the novel can be seen as the shattered family happiness and how people react towards an abnormal child and how having an abnormal child affects family life. 
When Harriet and David's fifth child is born a period of trouble starts. The family, that used to be so happy, is now shattered and miserable. Harriet has a difficult pregnancy with severe pains and when Ben is finally born, something is terribly wrong with him. Ben does not look or behave, as a normal child would do. Harriet's mother Dorothy is helping her take care of the household. Harriet still tries to keep the family together and continues having the family gatherings at Easter and other holidays when all their relatives would visit them in their enormous house and spend time with them. The gatherings used to be popular and the house would be full of people, but slowly, one by one, people are dropping out and starts having excuses for not visiting. "The summer holidays again. It was 1975. There were fewer guests: some had written or rung to say they could not afford the train fare, or the petrol. 'Any excuse is better than none,' remarked Dorothy" (p. 74). Their relatives are afraid of Ben and his strange ways and prefer not to be around him. 
David's sister Sarah has got a child that has Down's syndrome, but nobody seems to mind. They know what is wrong with Sarah's baby, but no one knows what to make of Ben. The attitude towards David and Harriet is that they deserve Ben. Since they already have four normal children they should suit themselves for having a fifth one. Especially Harriet is blamed for the way Ben is and for choosing to lead her life the way she does. "Again Harriet was wondering why she was always treated like a criminal. Ever since Ben was born it's been like this, she thought. Now it seemed to her the truth, that everyone had silently condemned her. I have suffered a misfortune, she told herself; I haven't committed a crime." (p. 94).
Even though Ben is a strange child Harriet never stops caring for him and this is something the rest of the family has a difficult time understanding and you can see throughout the novel that Harriet's love for Ben is never accepted by the other members of the family. Ben is mean to his brothers and sisters and David and the children feel that she is giving all her attention and love to Ben and neglecting them, which in a way makes Ben the enemy. After Harriet has brought back Ben from the institution, to give him a second chance, the family does not approve, and Harriet feels that they do not understand her. "That evening she stayed with Ben, and she did not see the other children at all. David went up to the other room away from her. How she felt at this time was that she was shielding them from Ben while she re- educated him for family life. But how they felt it, she knew, was that she had turned her back on them all and chosen to go off into alien country, with Ben." (p. 108)
The novel is set in the 60's and 70's England. The family lives in a big house outside London and that is where most of the plot takes place. Their house is referred to as their "fortress" (p. 30) where they feel that they can be a happy family isolated from the difficulties of the rest of the world. At least this is true until Ben is born. "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, to isolate, to diminish their best selves." (p.29). The society around them is growing more violent and hostile and is no longer a place where a woman can walk home alone at night. "The little town they lived in had changed in the five years they had been there. Brutal incidents and crimes, once shocking everyone, were now commonplace." (p. 29). When Harriet and David choose family life, with a lot of children and happiness they are considered to be strange and old fashioned by the people around them. 
I have in this essay tried to tell the theme of the novel and how the setting is related to it. Everyone does not accept Harriet and David's choice of lifestyle and in the novel you see that people can react strangely when having to confront something that is strange and unknown to them.
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