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<title> "We were going to be happy!" </title>
In Doris Lessing's book 'the Fifth Child', we are introduced to a young couple, David and Harriet Lovatt, who is determined to fulfil their dream: to create a big family with love. Lessing brings up a lot of themes in her book, which I think, all deal with the couple's beliefs in the happy-family concept. Beliefs that are not always easy to hold on to. As we all know, things does not always turn out how we want them to, and that is exactly what happens to David and Harriet. When the fifth child Ben is born, their happy- family idyll is gradually being shattered and people start to take a distance. Life becomes very difficult for the Lovatts and we get to follow Harriet's despair and her determination to save her family. But Harriet has to choose between her family and Ben, and this is when I think the book focuses on its main theme - when we get to read how Harriet's and David's philosophical beliefs make them act in different ways. 
	"Happiness. A happy family. The Lovatts were a happy family. It was what they had chosen and what they had deserved'. This is a quote from the beginning of the book where Harriet and David are reflecting over their situation, how they succeeded in creating their dream family. It had not been easy holding on to their believes in "the greedy and selfish sixties" as Lessing describes it, but they had managed, and they had proved that they could do it, not only for themselves, but also for their family and their contemporary world. But what had made them special? Harriet is looking at her sister and her misfortunes, her bad relationship to her husband and the misshapen child. Harriet believes that the bad relationship and the quarrelling had attracted the mongol child. David gets really upset over this trait of Harriet's, he does not like her being fatalistic. Later on in the book, when their family is shattered, when there is no family spirit left, Harriet is again reflecting over their situation, but this time, she is thinking about what went wrong." She said to David, "We are being punished, that's all". "What for?" he demanded, already on guard because there was a tone in her voice he hated. "For presuming. For thinking we could be happy. Happy because we decided we would be." "Rubbish", he said. Angry: this Harriet made him angry. "It was a chance. Anyone could have got Ben. It was a chance gene, that's all." "I don't think so," she stubbornly held on. "We were going to be happy!"
When we get deeper into the book we get to follow Harriet's inner thoughts - her feelings after having let them sending Ben away. Being fatalistic, she cannot ignore the fact that she has a child, and that in the long run, it is her responsibility to take care of Ben, her being the one bringing him to this world. "...she could not banish Ben from her mind. It was not with love, or even affection, that she thought of him, and she disliked herself for not being able to find one little spark of normal feelings: it was guilt and horror that kept her awake through the night". Harriet is filled with guilt since it was only her decision to take him back. She is totally on her own taking care of Ben, nobody is there to help her or to support her. But what keeps Harriet from not giving up is that she thinks, back in her head, that she still has a chance to get her family back, to get their family spirit back. All the other members of the family has already lost their hopes. David tells Harriet to choose between the family and Ben. He is even denying Ben being his child. 'We have no children, Harriet. Or rather, I have no children. You have one child". We can see how David is reacting through his childhood beliefs: his children were not going to grow up like he did, with a shattered family. His family got to be the perfect one until the fifth child was born, but after that, everything was lost. This made him realise that you cannot choose your future, and therefore, he felt that he did not have any responsibilities towards Ben and his future. Harriet on the other hand, who grew up with her sisters and her parents, knew the basis of a family life and knew how to fight for a family to stay together. 
Both David and Harriet found it important to hold on to their beliefs, but yet they both failed in rescuing their family. Harriet, the fighter, refused to give up, while David, took the easiest way out: Two extremes that could not meet in the middle.
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