Lamb To The Slaughter Mary Maloney Essay

In the short story, Lamb to the Slaughter, by Roald Dahl, Mary Maloney changes as the story progresses. Initially she is excited to spend time with her husband, she then becomes uneasy and begins to hate him for his rejection of her. Finally, she does what she has to do to take care of herself and her unborn child. In the beginning of the story, Mary Maloney is looking forward to her husband returning home. She waits for him without anxiety and has his drink ready for when he returns from work. “For her, this was always a blissful time of day.” “She loved to luxuriate in the presence of this man, and to feel--almost as a sunbather feels the sun--that warm male glow that came out of him to her when they were alone together.” After her husband

rejects her offers of another drink or some cheese and crackers, he tells her to sit down. “It wasn’t till then that she began to get frightened.” She listened to him with horror and then wondered if she had imagined that he had told her he wanted to leave her.

She felt like she was in a daze and went downstairs and found the first thing in the freezer, a leg of lamb. She hit her husband over the head with it, and it wasn’t until he fell that the shock wore off and she realized what she had done. She was very practical about the whole thing. “All right, she told herself. So I’ve killed him.” Her mind then became very clear. Mary decided that although she did not care about herself, she did care about her unborn child and, as a result, wanted to protect it. At the grocer, she created her alibi and convinced herself that she had not done anything to her husband, but that she was just going to cook him dinner. She decided that the best way to protect herself and her child was to act natural. “That’s the way, she told herself. Do everything right and natural. Keep things absolutely natural and there’ll be no need for any acting at all.” When she saw her husband, Patrick, was dead, she found herself crying; she did not need to act at all. Eventually, she fed the lamb to the investigators and in the end, she is a bit hysterical about how she got away with

murder. “And in the other room, Mary Maloney began to giggle.” In the story Mary Maloney changes how she feels about herself and her husband. At the beginning of the story, she waits patiently for him with excitement. When he comes home and starts talking to her she gets uneasy by his tone. Then she starts to hate him during the middle of the story because he rejects her. Finally, she transitions into caring only about herself and her child.