The Fifth Child characters

Appears from the start

A woman who rejects the fashionable informality and smaller families of her generation in favor of a large household organized around marriage, children, and family gatherings. Harriet's certainty is tested by a terrifying fifth pregnancy and by her conviction that the child others reject still remains her responsibility.

Appears from the start

Harriet's husband, who shares her dream of a stable, crowded family home. David is initially confident that love and conventional domestic life will protect them, but fear of his fifth son drives a widening division between him and Harriet.

Appears from the start

Harriet and David's fifth child. Ben is abnormally strong and difficult even before birth, then develops into a watchful, powerful boy whose needs and behavior resist the family's expectations. The adults around him struggle to decide whether he is ill, dangerous, misunderstood, or fundamentally unlike them.

Appears from the start

Harriet and David's eldest child, born into the warm and busy household they deliberately create. As Ben comes to dominate family life, Luke is among the older children whose security and willingness to remain at home are damaged.

Appears from the start

One of Harriet and David's older children. Helen grows up amid the large holiday gatherings that define the family's early happiness, then shares her siblings' fear and resentment as the atmosphere of the house changes.

Appears from the start

Harriet and David's third child, part of the close group of siblings born before Ben. Jane's childhood is shaped first by the family's confidence and later by the precautions and divided loyalties created by her youngest brother.

Appears from the start

The youngest of the four children born before Ben. Paul receives less attention as Harriet struggles through her next pregnancy and its aftermath, and his unhappiness becomes another cost of the family's concentration on Ben.

Appears from the start

Harriet's mother, who provides practical help as births and large family visits strain the Lovatt household. Dorothy sees both Harriet's exhaustion and the danger surrounding Ben, and her support does not prevent painful disagreement about what should be done.

Appears from the start

David's wealthy father, whose money helps sustain the large house and the family-centered life Harriet and David could not otherwise afford. His assistance also reveals how much their supposed independence rests on relatives they expect to gather around them.

Appears from the start

A young man on the margins of conventional life who can communicate with Ben more easily than Ben's family can. John and his companions accept Ben into their rough group without demanding that he behave like an ordinary Lovatt child.