The Fifth Child

The Fifth Child critiques the social expectation, both imposed and internalized, that “good” women are inherently maternal, wholly fulfilled by motherhood, and content to selflessly sacrifice and erase their personal autonomy for the sake of raising a family.

Harriet begins the novella embracing domesticity and motherhood as a “natural” part of her identity and feels like she has struck gold when she finds a partner who shares her desire to have “[s]ix children at least” (9). Her husband, David, reinforces her role by asserting to his own divorced mother, with a measure of criticism, “You are not maternal […] It’s not your nature. But Harriet is” (13). Harriet’s wide-eyed belief in motherhood leads her to assume that with a larger family, she could “do better” than four children and maximize her happiness by having more. Her mother, Dorothy, warns, “The trouble with Harriet is that her eyes have always been bigger than her stomach” (26). The idiom appropriately connotes the error (and subsequent horror) of Harriet’s vision of domestic bliss and the limitations of her stomach/womb, suggesting a critique of biological determinism.

Even before Ben’s birth, Harriet suppresses her doubt, exhaustion, and discomfort and accepts that complaints about maternity and parenting are best left unspoken.