Geamănu Alexandra Ramona

English Major, 2nd year, group 2

English Literature
Professor Eliana Ionoaia

Echoes of Gothic Elements in The Fifth Child

The aim of this essay is to establish the reminiscences of gothic elements which can
be found in the novel The Fifth Child by Doris Lessing. For a better understanding, I will
start the essay with a definition of Gothic Novel:

Gothic (goth-IK): a literary style popular during the end of the 18th century and the
beginning of the 19th. This style usually portrayed fantastic tales dealing with horror, despair,
the grotesque and other “dark” subjects. Gothic literature was named for the apparent
influence of the dark gothic architecture of the period on the genre. Also, many of these
Gothic tales took places in such “gothic” surroundings. Other times, this story of darkness
may occur in a more everyday setting.  In essence, these stories were romances, largely due to
their love of the imaginary over the logical, and were told from many different points of
view. This literature gave birth to many other forms, such as suspense, ghost stories, horror
and mystery. Gothic literature was not so different from other genres in form as it was in
content and its focus on the "weird" aspects of life. This movement slowly began open 
people's eyes to the possible uses of the supernatural in literature.
(http://www.uncp.edu/home/canada/work/allam/general/glossary.htm#g)

The Fifth Child is defined as a Gothic-horror novel which was written in the second
part of the 20th century. Elements characteristic to Gothic style can be identified in this
particular novel, for instance: an atmosphere of mystery and suspense, omens and visions,
inexplicable events which come as a shock for the others, the psychology of terror, the
presence of supernatural and the grotesque.
The story begins with Harriet and David Lovatt who are a 1970’s couple and
moreover are determined to destroy the boundaries of their English society by wishing more
than two children. The beginning of the novel creates a fairy-tale atmosphere, they are a
perfect family, in which one could find love and peace and understanding. But something
came to disturb the happiness of this family: the birth of the fifth child, Ben, a child who is
believed to be non-human, the changeling child who brings misfortune to the family.
From this point on, their life is about to be changed forever. The first omen which
initiates the catastrophe is the fact that Harriet and David did not planned to have this child:
“How could it have happened? They had been careful, particularly so because of their
determination not to have any more children for a while.” (Lessing, 40)
The pregnancy is very distressful for Harriet, bringing her pain and anguish. Although
the baby is still in the womb, he struggles to come out and does anything it takes to get
attention.

“She was frantic, exhausted…she was peevish; she lost her temper; she burst into tears.
David saw her sitting at the kitchen table, head in her heads, muttering that this new foetus
was poisoning her.”(Lessing, 41)

Under the influence of pain, she imagines all sorts of things happening in her womb,
horror images and frightening things which makes one go insane. These are another omens
which predict the coming of this baby as being the destroying element of the family. The
creatures that she imagines seem to be a curse through their ugliness and mutilations.

Phantoms and chimeras inhabited her brain. She would think, when the scientists make
experiments, welding two kinds of animal together, of different sizes, then I suppose this is
what the poor mother feels. She imagines pathetic botched creatures, horribly real to her, the
products of a Great Dune or a borzoi with a little spanie; a great cart horse and a little
donkey; a tiger and a goat. Sometimes she believed hooves were cutting her tender inside
flesh, sometimes claws. (Lessing, 52)

After a while, she decides to take tranquilizers so that she could bear the pain. She
knows that something is wrong with the baby, that he is special and she tries to stop the
anguish. The following image reveals the fact that the womb and the body cannot bear the
presence of this creature inside. The gothic rises from the act of violence she imagines to do
to her baby.
“And as she walked, strode, ran along the country lanes, she fantasized that she took the big
kitchen knife, cut open her own stomach, lifted out the child – and when they actually set
eyes on each other, after this long blind struggle, what would she see?”(Lessing, 59)

Ben’s birth comes as a relief for Harriet because the savagery of her personality
began to reveal itself. For her, this was the end of the terror. But the terror was not over. After
seeing him, Harriet considered him a troll, a creature from another planet or dimension. The
first meeting between the mother and her child was supposed to be a kind and maternal one,
but in this particular case it was not.

“And her heart contracted with pity for him: poor little beast, his mother disliking him so
much[…] I wonder what the mother would look like, the one who would welcome this alien.”
(Lessing, 62)

Another gothic element comes from a Freudian point of view, where the concept is
known as “The Uncanny”. The German word ‘unheimlich’ is obviously the opposite
of ‘heimlich’ [‘homely’], the opposite of what is familiar; and we are tempted to conclude
that what is ‘uncanny’ is frightening precisely because it is not known and familiar. Naturally
not everything that is new and unfamiliar is frightening, however; the relation is not capable
of inversion. (http://people.emich.edu/acoykenda/uncanny1.htm)

He was muscular, yellowish, long […] He was not a pretty baby. He did not look like a baby
at all. He had a heavy-shouldered hunched look, as if he were crouching there as he lay. His
forehead sloped from his eyes to his crown. His hair grew in an unusual pattern from the
double crown where started a wedge or triangle that came low on the forehead, the hair lying
forward in a thick yellowish stubble, while the side and back hair grew downwards. His
hands were thick and heavy, with pads of muscle in the palms. (Lessing, 60)

These peculiarities foreshadow the major differences between Ben and the rest of the
world, the good and the bad, the normal and the abnormal, the natural and the supernatural.
Ben is seen in antithesis with his siblings and for this reason he develops a defending
behaviour from what his parents want him to be: a normal child. Another gothic element is
that Ben plants fear and terror in the middle of his family. His violence has no limits and
begins with Paul as the first victim. The fact that he is able to hurt someone in the family
terrifies his parents and from this point on, Ben is considered dangerous for the other
children.

Just after all the family had gone away, as the school term began, Paul went into Ben’s room
by himself. Of all the children, he was the most fascinated by Ben. Dorothy and Alice, who
were together in the kitchen heard screams. They ran upstairs to find that Paul had put his
hand in to Ben through the cot bars, and Ben had grabbed the hand and pulled Paul hard
against the bars. (Lessing, 71)

The suspense of the novel continues, this time with a horror image and a murder,
which emphasizes the gothic echo of the novel: Ben kills a dog. This episode reaches the
climax of Ben’s violence and he is seen as a destroyer. This outsider cannot fit in this family
because of his violence and his awkwardness. The character does not have scruples, he likes
the massacre and the brutality.

Towards the end of the holidays, someone came bringing a dog, a little terrier. Ben could not
leave it alone […] He had opened his door, gone quietly past his sleeping parents, down the
stairs, found the dog, killed it, and gone back up again, quietly, into his room, and shut the
door..all that, by himself! (Lessing, 75)

Ben’s behaviour made Harriet concentrate her full attention on him. Women in
distress is another aspect of gothic interpretation; Harriet suffers that her child is a monster
and does not understand why is this thing happening to her. But she struggles to raise him
even if that means to sacrifice the rest of the family.
The family atmosphere changes drastically. Harriet and David do not know what is
the proper decision to take regarding Ben, what to do with him, how to raise him and more
important, how to protect the others from him. But David saw as a solution sending Ben to a
specialised institution, one which can deal with Ben’s problems.
Another echo of Gothic novel is the image of the institution, which reminds of the
frightening and cold castles from the horror movies. The climate is an important factor for
creating the atmosphere of mystery and suspense. This image represents an omen for Ben’s
destiny. Because he is different, he does not have the right to live a normal life.

It was early afternoon when she approached a large solid building of dark stone, in a valley
high among moors she could hardly see for grey drifting rain. The place stood square and
upright among dismal dripping evergreens, and its regular windows, three rows of them, were
barred.[…] She rang again. The building was silent: she could hear the shrill of a bell a long
way off in its interior. […]There was a smell of disinfectant. Absolute silence.[…] (Lessing,
95)

Furthermore, it can be identified the presence of grotesque, as a way to describe the

life of the unwanted children who were dropped at the institute. Flawed children, different
from what is considered normal in society, imperfect human beings who nobody wants. Their
physical description is terrifying, especially because they do not look human anymore.
Society left its mark on them by not fitting. The feeling of claustrophobia in this institute
intensifies the feeling of anguish and abandonment.
“Grotesque: In literary criticism, the subject matter of a work or a style of expression
characterized by exaggeration, deformity, freakishness, and disorder. The grotesque often
includes an element of comic absurdity.”
(http://www.gale.cengage.com/free_resources/glossary/glossary_fh.htm#g)

She was at the end of a long ward, which had any number of cots and beds along the walls.
In the cots were – monsters. […] A baby like a comma, great lolling head on a stalk of a
body… then something like a stick insect, enormous bulging eyes among stiff fragilities that
were limbs…a small girl all blurred, her flesh guttering and melting – a doll with chalky
swollen limbs, its eyes wide and blank, like blue ponds, and its mouth open, showing a
swollen little tongue. […] A child seemed at first glance normal, but then Harriet saw there
was no back to its head; it was all face, which seemed to scream at her. […] A smell of
excrement, stronger than the disinfectant.” (Lessing, 98)

Ben’s description is disturbing and dreadful and comes as a punishment for not
founding a place in the world. This Gothic description estranges the reader from thinking at a
human being, rather than a persecuted animal. Ben suffers not only physically but mentally
too. Therefore, this episode adds the fact that he has feelings as any other human being. He is
not a monster.

“On the floor, on a green foam-rubber mattress, lay Ben. He was unconscious. He was naked,
inside a strait-jacket. His pale yellow tongue protruded from his mouth. His flesh was dead
white, greenish. Everything – walls, the floor, and Ben – was smeared with excrement. A
pool of dark yellow urine oozed from the pallet which was soaked.” (Lessing, 99)

The end of the novel continues the mystery and the suspense atmosphere which
overwhelms the reader by not knowing what comes next. The feeling of uncertainty, the
tension and the dystopia end the novel and let the reader create his own story about what will
happen to Ben. This gothic characteristic gives the reader the chance to put the last piece of
puzzle at its place.

…what then ? Could Ben, even now, end up sacrificed to science? What would they do with
him? Carve him up? Examine those cudgel-like bones of his, those eyes, and find out why his
speech was so thick and awkward? (Lessing, 158)
 In conclusion, even if The Fifth Child is a novel classified as an After Mode novel,
one can find the echoes of the Gothic style: the mystery, the grotesque, the supernatural, the
suspense are just few of the key-elements of this novel. Doris Lessing’s childhood left a mark
on her personality and determined her to create a novel which contains the elements which
are characteristic to a Gothic novel, the one which frightens while reading it.
Bibliography:

Primary:
Lessing, Doris The Fifth Child
London, Flamingo, 2001

Secondary :

 http://www.gale.cengage.com/free_resources/glossary/glossary_fh.htm#g
Gale®, “Glossary of terms”, United States <<http://www.gale.cengage.com/about/>>

http://www.uncp.edu/home/canada/work/allam/general/glossary.htm#g
Lawrence Locklear, 1996, United States, <http://www.uncp.edu/uncp/site/>

http://people.emich.edu/acoykenda/uncanny1.htm
Abby Coykendall, “The Uncanny, by Sigmund Freud” <http://people.emich.edu/acoykenda/>

http://personal.georgiasouthern.edu/~dougt/goth.html
Douglass H. Thomson, “A Glossary of Literary Gothic terms” <
<http://personal.georgiasouthern.edu/~dougt/>

http://www.virtualsalt.com/gothic.htm
Harris, Robert. "Evaluating Internet Research Sources."
  VirtualSalt. 22 November 2010.  Web. 20 Apr. 2011.