Compare And Contrast Lamb To The Slaughter And The Lady Or The Tiger

In the two well known stories, “Lamb to the Slaughter” and “The Lady or the Tiger,” both deal with relationships that have gone wrong. The story for “Lamb to the Slaughter,” starts out with Mary Maloney, who is pregnant and sews and waits for her husband to come home everyday. When her husband comes home one day and tells her that he is leaving her, she gets upset and ends up killing him with a frozen lamb leg. By the end of the story she is able to also get away with doing it. As for “The Lady or the Tiger,” this story deals with a King, whose daughter has fallen in love with a man who is not of the same status as she is. When the king finds out of this, he sends him to their version of a court system, which consists of choosing between two doors. One that has a tiger that will kill them and one that has a girl that the man will get to marry. The princess knows which door has each option in it and has the power to tell him which one to choose. Although in the end, the story never actually tells you which one she picks, and leaves it up to you to imagine what she does. Both of these stories have a lot in common, such as dealing with complicated relationships, as well as both of these women end up losing no matter what they choose.

The biggest similarity between the two stories would be that in both stories that relationships are complicated.

In both stories neither of the women want to lose their partners, and both are faced with the decision of what to do. To complicate the relationships even more, Mary Maloney loves her husband almost too much, to the point where she helps him with all of his needs. As well as the princess who knows what girl is behind that door, and had hated her because “she had often seen, or imagined that she had seen, this fair creature throwing glances of admiration upon the person of her lover… [and] sometimes the glances were perceived, and even returned”

(Stockton).
In both of these stories Mary Maloney and the princess both have the power to kill their husbands. While in Mary Maloney's case she decided to kill her husband, instead of facing the fact that he was leaving her. While for the princess there are both pros and cons for each situation, although either way she still ends up losing him.
If Mary Maloney were in the princesses shoes, she would most likely choose to send her husband to the tiger. This is because even in the story “Lamb to the Slaughter,” she couldn't deal with the fact that her husband was leaving her, much less getting married to another woman who she didn't like. She would probably decide that he would just be better off dead, like she felt in her story. She had even said that “she loved to luxuriate in the presence of this man” (Dahl).
Overall, both of these stories have a lot in common.