The Fifth Child

The motif of the gaze emphasizes the agency associated with looking and the denial of looking away. The interactions between Ben and Harriet often focus on looking, observing, staring, and its opposite—avoidance, “cold eyes,” and complacency. Lessing argues that society refuses to look at things that disturb or do not conform to the norm. They ignore it, refuse to look at it, or deny it recognition; in this case, this impulse translates into shutting Ben away in his room, keeping him out of the house with John, and, more extremely, sending him away to die in an institution.

Often objectified by the gaze, Ben also challenges others by returning the gaze and confronting their stares: “[W]homever he was looking at became conscious of that insistent gaze and stopped talking; or turned a back, or a shoulder, so as not to have to see him” (61). Ben’s gaze, his perspective and autonomy, remain a mystery. The narrative is told through Harriet’s eyes, a biased yet conflicting and contradictory voice of shame, frustration, and sympathy. Yet Ben does a lot of looking as an outsider in his own home.