Word: lessinger
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By Doris Lessing
IN The Fifth Child, Doris Lessing once again explores the political by describing the personal. This new novel focuses on how society relinquishes responsibility for outcasts and the lower classes. Lessing's story is a fairy tale with a point, and her vision of British society is stern, satiric, and...
The novel tells the story of David and Harriet, whom Lessing describes as "conservative, old-fashioned," in the midst of the rebellion of the 1960s. David and Harriet are "made for each other," a fact Lessing makes abundantly clear. The first sentence of the novel informs us that the moment...
Lessing has a keen eye for the paradoxes of the free love decade. She notes, not without humor, that Harriet, as a 25-year-old virgin, was treated with the type of bitchy solicitude usualy reserved for women with "loose morals."
BY focusing on the irresponsibility of the middle class, Lessing is able to comment on the nature of class conflict in Britain. most of the Lovatt children conform to society, but Ben's malevolent presence forces them out of the house to live with relatives. David and Harriet are left...