48 pages • 1 hour read
The Fifth Child
A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Background
Content Warning: The section of the guide includes discussion of ableism.
Authorial and Literary Context: Doris Lessing and the Limitations of Authorial Intent
Doris Lessing controversially disavowed the label of “feminist” despite her 1962 novel, The Golden Notebook, earning accolades as a groundbreaking feminist classic. The Fifth Child also explores feminist themes of female autonomy, the horrors of motherhood, and Exposing the Myth of the Ideal Family; however, Lessing likewise took issue with some of the ways the novella was interpreted.
In a 2007 interview, Lessing explained that the novella was inspired by folklore about fairies and changelings, where an offspring of fantastical creatures like goblins and gnomes is raised by humans, with neither the child nor the human parents knowing of its magical origins. The novella was also inspired by a letter that Lessing had read in a newspaper from a mother of four children who confessed that her fifth child was a “devil” who rejected affection, ruined their domestic bliss, and made her siblings suffer. The letter pushed Lessing to write The Fifth Child as a horror story about a non-human child (“Doris Lessing.” Web of Stories), and the idea of a literally monstrous offspring echoes Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein (1818) and Ira Levin’s Rosemary’s Baby (1967).
