Paulina Holbreich

D. Lessing`s “The Fifth Child”

Monday, February 25th, 2008 | Book Reviews | No Comments

Imagine! You are pregnant and both, you and your handsome husband are really looking forward to this new baby. Your FIFTH baby! Everybody in your large family is pleased to spend their freetime on holiday at your big house and helps you where help is needed.  Some of this big family members sometimes wonder and are surprised about your desire to have AT LEAST 6 children and why you had 4 of them in only 5 years. In their opinion you are exergerating a bit.
But it was always hard for you to preserve your attitude towards sex and the value of a real family, especially in the sixtees.

Back to our main characters – to Harriet and her husband David Lovatt.
When Hariet was pregnant last time they decided to give it a break for a couple of years. Both are really dismayed when she`s pregnant again. Because they don`t trust the Pill and don`t use any other contraceptives but only the count-days-method, David holds the responsibility for this pregnancy on Harriet. During her pregnancy Harriet developes a hatered to this ”monster”(that`s how she called her foetus) inside her body who tries to hurt her from inside. She cannot sleep because of the permanent moving of the foetus thus the doctor prescribes her a sedative. Poor Harriet takes more and more of these “drugs” to calm down the baby.
After eight months of horrible aches in the belly, which she hardly can stand anylonger, Harriet gives birth to their new family member. It is a boy!
“He was not a pretty baby. He did not look lake a baby at all. He had a heavy-shouldered huncher look, as if he were crouching there as he lay.”

Ben, this is how Harriet called him, has green-yellowish cold eyes and a head, which is too big for his body. From the first moment, this strange child starts his fight! He`s struggling and kicking around with an abnormal strength and he`s insatiable hungry.
The four other children are afraid of Ben. Harriet is sure, she cannot love her own baby and David doesn`t even touch him.
Their dream of a family life in an isolated, protected world of their large house begins to darken.
Nobody admits that Ben is the destroyer of the happyness and pleasure. Herriet is condemned by everybody, even by David, her husband.
When Ben is 6 month old, he tries to hurt his brother Paul. When he`s about one year old, he kills a dog and then also a cat. Ben strangles them! He seems to be uncontrollable and heartless.
Not human!!
The family insists on putting him into an institution for freaks, where they are kept away from the society and are druged to death eventually.

What a RELIEF! Everything turns back to normality. The four other children adore their mother who almost didn`t pay attention to them since her last pregnancy. David and Harriet hope for a new beginning in their torn relationship.
“Harriet understood what a burden Ben had been, how he had oppressed them all, how much the children had suffered,…”

Harriet realizes, how much Ben had influenced the characters of the other four unfold young minds. She owned them and her husband David so much!
At the other side Herriet has remorse having given away her own child, although she never did feel any affection towards him. Her decision is set. She will go and see where and how Ben is now.
Nor David neither her mum are able to talk her out of it.
This is the turning point of the story!
Harriet is torn between the ruthlessness and cruel society and her responsibility as a mother. Her pathetic feelings caused again condamnation from everybody, for the rest of her life.
When she arrives at the institution Ben was brought to, by her family, she doesn`t even think about any other possibilities and decides to bring her son back home. She finds him in a room with walls out of white plastik and smeared with Bens own excrements !
“The doctor” gave him something very strong, so he was away for half a day and moreover they put him in a strait-jacket.
Obviously he would die very soon, because while he was druged he couldn`t eat.

Back home her children and David sat silent.
“He would have been dead in a few months. Weeks probably.” A silence.
“I thought it was the idea!”, said David.

For the next time Harried cared again much more about Ben then about the other children. This was David`s job.
Ben is sometimes like a pet who either trust or doesn`t trust his owner. Herriet threats Ben with returning him to this horrible place if he wouldn`t obbey her. So he is really afraid of her.
Soon he should go to school but Herriet is afraid that he would hurt there somebody. He did.
The two older children want to leave and go to a boarding school. The other two prefere to go to a friends house after school. David is almost never at home but at work. Once a happy family life now it breaks apart. The only reason for it is – Ben.
Lateron Ben becomes part of a street-gang of youths. The teenagers tease him with names like Gobblin, Hobbit or Gnome but he doesn`t mind. They take him to their trips. Harriet is their sponsor because she`s glad when he`s away and she is able to spend time with the othe two children.
Soon, she knew it, they would leave too, to go to a boarding school. The main reason for it again is Ben.
Ben finishes his primary-school and can hardly write his own name or read. In spite of this fact he changes to another school. He starts bringing home his own gang of ten boys who obbey him wordlessly although he speaks seldom.
“When he did say something, it was never much more then Yes, or No.Take this!Get that!”
“They were a bunch of gangly, spotty, uncertain adolescents; he was a young adult.”

After twenty years, Herriet´s and David´s marriage turned in a way they never supposed it would.
They didn`t have a family anymore. The large house, the symbol for family life, should be sold.
Herriet feels terribly lonely. Nobody ever understood her thoughts about this strange creature she has given birth to.
Ben is about to leave too. His gang becomes famous for its brutal crimes. Ben came and went with the same cold blooded mood of an animal. He didn´n even say good-bye.

Tags: baby, book, crazy, hatred, monster, strange child