The Fifth Child is a novel by Nobel Prize-winner Doris Lessing, first published in the United Kingdom in 1988, and since translated into a number of languages. The book describes the changes in the happy life of a married couple, Harriet and David Lovatt, which occur as consequence of the birth of Ben, their fifth child.
The novel is in some senses a traditional “Gothic novel”, but it tackles a variety of themes encompassing childhood development, the nuclear family, and the difficulties of pregnancy. The novel’s most significant passages play upon universal human fears of the unknown, in the vein of much great horror fiction.
A sequel, Ben, in the World (2000) further develops Ben’s life after he has left his family.
The text attempts to address and question the notion of the family as something natural or inherently human, instead of a construct of dominant patriarchal culture. Harriet is marginalized by her own family for being the bearer of a thing of otherness (Ben).
Ramazan Dicle 