DOI: 10.36347/sjet.2018.v06i12.007

Pages: 417-419

Doris Lessing’s novel The Fifth Child tells the story of a middle-class family falling apart from the birth of the fifth child, and it is also a novel about feminism and motherhood, describing a mother’s strangeness. And painful pregnancy, production and parenting experience. This article analyzes the maternal experience in the novel from the perspective of feminist theory, and Lessing’s serious thinking on this subject. The study found that the maternal experience of Lessing subverts the traditional motherhood mythology, challenges the consciousness construction of the motherhood under the patriarchal system, and opens up new ways for the mother to realize the subjectivity. At the same time, the author also implies the female subjectivity. The construction cannot be limited to the value of the mother.