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<title> "The Fifth Child" - main theme and importance of setting </title>
"The Fifth Child" is a novel written by Doris Lessing. In this essay I will first describe what I see as the main theme of that novel and then discuss what importance the setting has for that theme. I will especially use the section starting "Happiness. A happy family" and ending ""She had intended to sound humorous." (pp. 28-31). I will also refer to other parts of the book.
	 The main theme as I see it is the following: It is impossible to shut out the real world and create a private world of happiness. The outside world will always be there and thrust itself on those who try and the world they create is not free from the outside world. The two maincharacters, David and Harriet Lovatt try to do that. They conciously had decided what their life should be like as is showed in these quotations "The Lovatts were a happy family. It was what they had chosen" (p. 28) and "For thinking we could be happy. Happy because we decided we would be" (p.141). They made their home their private world, the house is referred to as "their fortress, their kingdom" (p. 30). Attempts of shutting the world out are made by avoiding the news as much as possible (p. 30) and making their home the centre of the world. But the world the Lovatts created was never free from the outside world, had it not been for Davids' father and his money they would not have been able to achieve their perfect world. Another part of the theme is the inevitable intrusion of the real world. This is made very obvious when Ben is born. He becomes one of those youths that hang around certain cafés and owed respect to nobody as the outside world is described (p. 29). What originally was the distant outside world soon became the Lovatts' reality.
	 The setting of the novel has several aspects that I feel are of importance for the main theme. I am referring to location, social setting and time. The location is very important, since the world the Lovatts try to create is centred to their home. Their house is a reflection of what they have decided their life should be like, by buying that house they have tried to create a happy perfect world. The kitchen is described to be waiting for guests and unborn children, already near what it ought to be (p. 21) and the main room is said to be the future heart of their kingdom (p.14). The house is also very big which allows every child to have a room each, a private world, which David finds very important (p. 31). There is also a detail about the house that very clearly shows a difference that appears with Ben. In a scene early in the novel it is stressed that the curtains were drawn (p. 21), this is when life still is happy. Later on, when Harriet is expecting Ben, there is a scene where again the curtains are commented upon, and this time the curtains were not drawn (p. 54). The setting show how real life no longer is entirely shut out. Another aspect of the setting, the social setting, is of importance to the theme for more than one reason. For one the class system is a part of the world the Lovatts try to keep out, and when real life imposes on the family after Ben is born the social differences between David's family and Harriet's family are made very obvious in a conversation where a suggestion from Molly, David's father's wife brings out this remark from Harriet's sister who is working-class: "Typical upper-class ruthlessness" (p. 87). The social setting is also important because even though the Lovatt's ignore social class it is David's father and his wife who provide the money for the house. The last aspect of the setting that I will bring up is the time, which contributes to the desire to create a private world. Harriet and David are both described by others to be conservative, old-fashioned and timid (p. 7) and when they met it was the 60s, a time with a spirit that was far from conservative and timid. In my eyes the Lovatts saw no other way to live life as they wanted than to create a world of their own since the outside world was not what they wanted.
	 As I first wrote the main theme is that it is impossible to create a happy, private world where the outside world is shut out since the real world always makes its way into that, and the created world is not free from the real world. The different aspects of the setting that I have discussed, location, social setting and time are all of different importance for the theme. The location is a reflection of the Lovatts' wish to create a world of their own, social setting is both a part of the world they try to shut out and a necessity for the one they try to create whereas time is the cause for their attempt to create a private world.
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