Lamb To The Slaughter Mary Maloney

692 Words2 Pages

In a relationship, people should play equal parts in making it work, right? Well, in the 50’s, women were expected to be family caretakers, stay at home wives, and reflect well on their husbands, and men were the ones who worked, whereas if a woman chose to work, she was considered selfish. In Lamb to the Slaughter by Roald Dahl, Mary Maloney represents traditional 1950’s gender roles by showing her caring for her husband and staying at home. The author uses this to send a message that gender roles are unfair. Mary Maloney cares for her husband like a typical 1950’s wife would, but the actions and love are not reciprocated. Mary Maloney would always wait for her husband to come home from work patiently, and greet him as soon as he comes in. …show more content…

In the story, her husband doesn’t treat her with the same respect as she does because according to medium.com, “A typical day for married men in 1950 was for their wives to wait on them and make their lives easy for them. If men held full-time jobs, they were considered amazing husbands. If they even “babysat” their own child, they were revered. Housewives' jobs were to wait on their husbands and children, hand and foot.” Study.com says, “In the later years of the 1950s, social researcher Betty Friedan began working on research which found that contrary to the image of the happy homemaker, many American women were quite unhappy with their lives.” This shows that women were unfairly treated by their husbands. Then, the author writes, “‘For God’s sake,’ he said, hearing her, but not turning around. Don’t make supper for me. I’m going out.’ At that point, Mary Maloney simply walked up behind him and without any pause she swung the big frozen leg of lamb high in the air and brought it down as hard as she could on the back of his

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