Doris Lessings The Fifth Child Essay -- Doris Lessing Fifth Child Ess

In her apologue The one-fifth Child, published in 1988, Doris Lessing examines how one couples search for contentment has tragic implications. In this role, the couple, David and Harriet, and the family be slowly destroyed by the armorial bearing of the fifth child, Ben, who is unattractive, shows no emotions or attachments to other people, and is destructive. The other children in the family count to be able to cope on a normal, socially satisfactory level, but Ben never seems to be able to grasp acceptable behavior. Significantly, the novel never explains the cause of Bens abnormalities. While Lessing does not supply the commentator with a cause, one explanation I found is in psychoanalysis. Sigmund Freud, the pause of psychoanalysis, is explicit in his belief that neuroses, some of which are displayed by Ben, are generally developed in childhood and that they are the leave alone of problems in the relationship between the child and the parents. This is tidyly seen when he writes, The complicated excited relation of children to their parents what is known as the Oedipus complexwas the nucleus of every case of neurosis (25 Nicholi). In what follows, I will show that the cause of Bens lack of development and social psychoses is caused by the way he is inured by his parents. Early in the novel we are told that Harriet and David meet at a business party and they quickly realize they are ideally suited for each other. They soon marry and settle into a fair suburban home. They are also quick to begin their family, having first a son, then two daughters, and another son. Their large country home becomes the substance of family gatherings and parties, which Harriet particularly enjoys. She is worn out from her 4 young chi... ...normal and pathological. While it is clear from a psychoanalytic standpoint that Bens condition is a result of his parents lack of love and nurturing, it is also important to discover at what caused H arriet and David to treat Ben this way. In trying to form a absolutely happy life, they failed to account for things that were out of their control. They initially blamed the close ages of their children and Bens disposition, but it seems that their resentment of Ben came from a deeper resentment of their own unfulfilled dreams of perfection. As their lives became less perfect, indeed, increasingly chaotic and tragic, they treated Ben with less love. Harried and David, and their four other children, may have had a better chance for rejoicing if Harriet and David had not made such an attempt to achieve, and even force, a gaiety that was absolutely perfect.