Lamb to the slaughter

Lamb to the slaughter

I have just read the short-story “lamb to the slaughter” by Roald Dahl. Furthermore I also saw the shot-movie based on the short-story by Hitchcock. The movie and the short-story were sort of different, but both were good. However I liked the short-story the best. The story is about a wife and her husband, and how the wife kills her husband.  

In this blog post I am going to focus on the main character, Ms. Maloney, so I am going to answer two questions about her. Moreover I am going to focus on her, on what she was described as in the short-story, not the movie.

·         How would you describe Mary Maloney as a person?

A more modern Housewife,
 Bree Van Der Kamp from
"Desperate housewifes"

Mary Maloney is a very typical housewife from the 60’s. She stays home all day waiting for her husband to come home. Furthermore when he comes home, she does everything to pleas him. She cooks for him and makes sure he can relax when he comes home from work. Maybe she is too “perfect”, and perhaps that is why her husband leaves her. If you have seen the TV show “desperate housewives”, Ms. Maloney is the same kind of person as Bree Van De Kamp. Both obsessed with being perfect, therefore never express their feelings and frustrations. That is maybe why she acts the way she does, it became too much for her, so she did not know what to do, and therefore she killed him.

·         Did it seem like Ms. Maloney had a well-thought plan when she first knocked out her husband?

Picture from the movie by Hitchcock

As I said earlier, I think that Ms. Maloney killed her husband in pure frustration. She had not planned anything. However, as I have also said earlier, she knew how to hide her feelings and to act cool. So Ms. Maloney pulls this off by just acting like she usually does, and it is not hard for her at all. Maybe she would regret her actions later, but she is cynical so she does what is best for her.