Mrs. Mary Maloney: How To Get Away With Murder

How to Get Away with Murder

A good house wife answers to her husband’s every wish because freedom wasn’t an option unless she wanted to commit murder. Cooking, watching the children, and cleaning the house used to be a woman’s only tasks. Wanting freedom was frowned upon because it was better to just put on a smile and welcome your husband home with a kiss on the cheek. “Lamb to the Slaughter” by Roald Dahl is narrated by Mrs. Mary Maloney who demonstrates her independence by going to the extremes, being insane, and being meticulously manipulative.

For instance, Mrs. Mary Maloney had a predictable, unchanging life that left her with a lot of time to realize she wanted her independence, but attempting something extreme was the only way to

The feeling Mrs. Maloney has after Mr. Maloney’s announcement that he is leaving is hysteria, and she experiences this because it means change from the only life she has ever known. Her feelings cause her to kill her husband and her madness allows her to continue her night almost normally, until she mysteriously discovers that her husband is dead. She fixes her makeup and the heads to the market to pick up some groceries. On her way home, “She was quietly singing to herself”(3). She entered her house and called out to her husband, but then, for the first time, she saw her husband dead on the ground. She called the police in tears and said, “Quick! Come quickly! Patrick’s dead!”(3). When Mary took a trip to the neighborhood market, she was somehow able to convince herself that she would see her husband alive when she gets home. She told herself that nothing was unusual about this Thursday. At the market, she smiled, used her manners, and appeared very sane and innocent, even though she had just committed murder. Mrs. Maloney was even able to sing to herself as she entered

After the murder occured, Mary went to her bedroom to prepare. She touched up her makeup and rehearsed what she was going to say to the neighborhood grocer and what she needed to buy for dinner tonight because she wanted to make sure she looked, and sounded, believable. Before she left, she made sure to pop the lamb in the oven to cook all the fingerprints and blood off the evidence; and maybe to save it for later. When the police, crime scene photographers, and detectives arrived, she tells them how she put dinner in the oven, went to the grocer for vegetables, and came back to find him like this. For hours on end, the authoritative men searched for clues. It was late and Mary said, “Here you all are, all good friends of Patrick’s, and you’re helping to catch the man who killed him”(4). She then asked, “Why don’t you eat up the lamb in the oven?”(4). Initially, the men refuse, but Mary insists and they cave in. When Mary is applauding the men for all their hard work, she makes sure to slip in how the killer must be a man. She is putting the idea that a woman could never do this sort of thing into their heads. Mrs. Maloney also offers up the lamb to the men knowing they couldn’t refuse because they all felt pitiful towards the woman who was just widowed. She tells them to eat it all up