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<title> Essay on The Fifth Child </title>
In this essay I will try to show what I find as the theme in Lessing's novel, The Fifth Child. I will also point out of what importance the setting is for the theme.
I think that a very important thing to keep in mind when reading "The Fifth Child" is that Harriet is a strong focal point. This isn't all that obvious but it shines through on some occasions in the book. One of these occasions is when Harriet's thoughts: "Two months to go" (53), are given almost as a statement in the middle of her discussion with David about her pregnancy. The descriptions of Ben in the first three-quarters of the book is her descriptions, they are not objective. Is he really a monster? After the meeting with John, the gardener, Ben is described more and more as human, though Harriet refuses to see him as such.
 What is the novel actually about? It's easy to read it as just another horror story, but I have another idea of the theme. What Lessing really wants to tell the reader is how a family tries to live in a fantasy world and how a particularly special child comes to be blamed for a problem which was there from the start.
From the very beginning, Harriet and David build their relationship around the their shared future wish for a large and happy family. They set their goal too high without considering the consequences. This can be seen on p.13: "Both, somewhat defiantly, because of the enormity of their demands on the future, announced they 'would not mind' a lot of children" (my italics).
Everything turns out fine until right before Harriet becomes pregnant with her fifth child. Their neighbourhood has grown more brutal and David's firm is not going very well. Harriet's mother, Dorothy, has grown sick of having to help them, and David's father is tired of aiding them financially. They have lived their fantasy for a while but it starts falling apart. This pregnancy couldn't come more inconveniently.
Harriet never wants Ben, the fifth child, she distances herself from him even before the pregnancy grows painful, saying that this foetus is "... poisoning her" (41). She knows that her world is doomed to fall apart but she cannot bare the fact that her and David's dream about a big, happy family, the very thing they built their relationship and lives around, never had a chance to survive. She needs something to blame, a scapegoat, and here comes an unwanted child.
This "monster of a child" is fighting her from the inside, and the world is fighting her from the outside. She is more or less on sedatives the whole time of the pregnancy and this naturally affects the foetus. She gives birth to a physically deformed and emotionally disturbed baby. Harriet considers Ben a punishment for their wish for "too much" happiness, just like she thought: "... Sarah and William's unhappiness... attracted the mongol child" (29)
Harriet tries hard to do her motherly duty and care for Ben, whom she hated from the start (who wouldn't hate a nemesis?), but she gets no response from him. Due to Ben's emotional handicap, he has a violent nature which leads to some nasty events which in turn make the whole family turn against him. The fact that Ben is not the real problem is indicated many times when doctors and teachers keep saying his special, but not abnormal. When the family wants to get rid of him by sending him away, Harriet says: "... we have to find a doctor who says he's abnormal" (87). Surely Ben works as a catalyst in enlarging and speeding up the Lovatts' problems, but he is not the real issue, Harriet and David bares the real responsibility for the "death" of the family.
The setting is very closely interweaved with the theme in the novel. David, coming from a broken family, and Harriet, with a happy childhood, find each other mostly because their attitude towards the trends of the 60s. They have the same, in the 60s, odd vision for the future. To defy the people who doubts and taunts them, they blindly set off for happiness. This is what triggers the whole problem. 
Another important issue for the story is the big change of climate in English society during the 70s. This even reaches their neighbourhood - "The little town they lived in had changed in the five years they had been here... Gangs of youth hung around certain cafés and street-ends and owed respect to no one" (29) Harriet and David see this outside change as a potential threat to their happiness and isolate themselves, but the real threat comes from the inside. Paradoxically enough, what in the end helps the Lovatts with their problem, Ben that is, is one of the, at first, threatening gangs.
Important also is the fact that there was, in the field of medicine, an over-belief in pharmaceutics in the 70's. Harriet's doctor prescribes heavy sedatives for her to use during the pregnancy. This is what gives Ben the damages he apparently has. Within psychology the trend was to blame the nuclear family for the creation of mentally disturbed individuals. This is reflected in how Harriet thinks everyone is blaming her for Ben (she actually seems to blame herself as well) and therefore finds even more reason to project the blame on Ben, the catalyst.
The theme, the child who becomes the scapegoat, and the setting, late 60s to early 80s are almost inseparable.
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