Research on the Middle-class Anxiety in The Fifth Child

Doris Lessing’s novel The Fifth Child reveals the prevalent phenomena of class anxiety in British middle-class families in the 1970s by creating the tragic figure of “Ben”, a class changeling who is incompatible with his middle-class family. The root cause of Ben’s tragedy lies in the class dislocation within his own family, his mother Harriet’s humble family background and his father David’s fragile economic strength jointly leading to this dislocation, with Ben as the externalization of this class dislocation and the class anxiety it triggers. Ben’s tragedy is a microcosm of the class anxiety of the British middle class at that time. It not only reflects the common anxiety of the middle class against the historical background of economic stagflation and social structural changes, but also embodies Lessing’s deep concern for class issues.