Mary Maloney's Wife Analysis

I believe Mary Maloney’s actions should be condemned, by the reasoning of her actions as being wicked. Throughout the story Mary has committed homicide, plead not guilty for her husband's death and has given false statements to police officers, which under the Canadian law are all crimes. Regardless of the prior event when Patrick gives shocking news to his wife, which I assume is about leaving her, Mary’s actions are not acceptable. Even after killing Patrick there was a chance Mary could do the right thing and plead guilty, which she did not, making her continue with her bad actions. Overall, I believe Mary’s actions should be condemned because even if life is tragic there is no reason to kill her husband or a human being.

Mrs. Maloney gets away with the murder in the end. This caused by a revolting ending in which he police detectives eat the leg of lamb that was used to kill Patrick. The writer creates an unbelievable ending by making the story, up to the murder, set in a very normal family house. It is not somewhere you would associate with a morbid killing. The writer builds up an impression that the marriage may not be as good as it could be, and both were under strain not to release the tension onto each other.

Mary Maloney is a loving and caring 1950’s housewife who loves her husband through everything, but something changed with her on that fateful day. On that day Mary changes her loving ways into a conniving and irrational person. In the story “Lamb to the Slaughter” Mary Maloney is going about her day and comes home from the grocery store and “claiming” she had no idea what had happened to her poor husband. Even if someone acts normal like nothing has happened they might just be guilty under that facade. In the case of Mary Maloney, after she retrieves bad news from her husband she goes and retrieves a frozen leg of lamb, and sneaks up behind her husband and hits him on the head killing him where he stood. Mary Maloney is a conniving criminal who was fully aware and responsible for her actions after the murder.

The last thing someone would expect when they return home to their spouse would be to get murdered by them, right? If that’s what Patrick Maloney thought, he could not be more incorrect. Patrick Maloney returned home to his wife late one evening after work, she was waiting for him as any attentive and busy housewife would in the 50’s. Moments later he was purposefully and shockingly killed by his wife Mary. Mary Maloney is a convicting criminal aware of and responsible for her lawless action due to her deliberate behavior of trying to lie and cover up the murder of her husband, which she committed in Roald Dahl's short story Lamb to the Slaughter. The 1950’s was when the short story took place and was a time where “gender roles were very prominent and men were the alphas.”(Stoneham) Women's expectation in society was to abide by all her husbands needs and “be content with cooking and cleaning as her sole purpose.” (Stoneham) Marriage was an important virtue and commitment at this time and divorce was unheard of and shameful. When Mary’s husband returned from work he told her he would be leaving her and the baby she was pregnant with. This gave Mary motive to kill her husband. Mary was guilty because she had legitimate reason to want him dead, she made up a story as to how her husband died to stay out of trouble, and she took great joy in the fact that she tricked the policemen into eating the murder weapon.

She was there to buy peas, potatoes and corn for dinner. She was not there when Patrick was killed; it could not have been her. When same came home she was surprised that her husband was killed. It might have been a skilled ex-convict that he was capable of killing Patrick. The ex-convict must have wanted revenge on Patrick for arresting and sending him to jail. There was also no evidence of a murder weapon. There were also no fingerprints on the body. Mary couldn’t have killed him with her own bare fists. Without a weapon, what would she have killed him

Lamb to the Slaughter is a suspense short story which seems realistic to me. The plot is about a wife killing her husband because he was going to leave and she tried to cover the crime. Sounded like the news we see every day on TV and newspaper. Love can easily transform into hatred when we lose our senses. The author describes the setting very well.

For our first piece of evidence is Patrick leaving Mary for another women. When Patrick got home that day it was no surprise that Mary was waiting for him. She automatically knew he was acting strange. He then said “I’ve got something

At first glance, the woman on trial today seems caring, but looks can be deceiving. Mrs. Maloney’s demeanor portrays innocence, but this woman is maniacal. I bet the jury is wondering why and how an frail, sweet, and seemingly loving housewife could kill the love of her life. The death of Mr.Maloney only has one logical explanation. The vile housewife went to the store after she killed Patrick, even though she claims she went to the store and then found her husband dead.

Mary Maloney is a vicious murderer who killed her husband, Patrick Maloney, in cold blood. This woman is guilty of second degree murder. The murder was intentional, it was not premeditated. Some would say because she is pregnant and how Patrick treated her when she was pregnant she should get a second chance because of her hormones. This doesn’t give her an excuse at all she should at least get sent to jail.

Firstly, Mary Maloney’s way of drawing attention away from the crime to herself while still in a manner of not being too suspicious, she draws attention by being very well spoken so she can get the upper hand and the cops will not during the investigation. In the story she asks for a drink for herself and then offers the cop a drink stating “why don’t you have one yourself,” then goes on saying “you must be awfully tired. Please do. You’ve been very good to me.” She does this because she

“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 is head.” First she killed her husband in their house, pregnant I think with his son. . Second she killed a person and that’s not right I think everybody knows that Family is every important part of our life. By killing someone you are making the other person’s life more

Not thinking, she went and picked up the first thing that came in her hand out of the freezer. This was a leg of lamb. She then goes back upstairs and goes straight into the living room and notices Patrick with his body turned to face the other direction and not towards her. (2). With his actions, we can tell he is unsatisfied and hurt for telling his wife what he told her. Mary ends up going behind his back and hitting him with the leg of lamb she got out of the freezer. She ends up killing Patrick. She went from a sweet loving wife to a cold, blooded murderer. Once she gets out of the no thinking zone, she realizes that the truth was told. She just killed her husband. Mary starts to become supostitious of how she would be going to jail if anyone found out. She even thought about the baby and she doesn’t want anything bad to happen to her baby. She then thinks of a way to convince people she did not kill her husband. This was going down to the grocery so it seems as if she was just a victim and it happened while she was

“ I had a good reason to kill him though. He was gonna leave me after he got me pregnant and I would have had to take care of her by myself. So i went downstairs to the freezer and got a frozen leg of lamb. I came up behind him with one good whack and he was dead. I went to the store, came back home, and fed the lamb leg to the police so they couldn’t find the weapon. They said it was probably right under their noses and they heard me laugh in the other room and i gave up acting and told the truth.” Mary said sadly.

Mary Maloney was six months pregnant which could have maybe swayed her mental state. She also loved her husband so much to the point where she wouldn’t even think of leaving him. So when Patrick told her how he feels of course she would be shocked by the news. Don’t forget, she was also with child when the whole ordeal went down. As she stated, she was nauseous and lightheaded when she pulled the lamb leg from the freezer. Since she couldn’t make him stay what else was she to do in her dazed

One reason why Mary Maloney is guilty is through premeditating and intentionally killing her husband. According to the Legal Information Institute (Cornell University), premeditation is the beforehand thought process before acting upon something. However, there is no time frame set for how long the thought process must occur in order to be considered as premeditation. This is applied when after hearing the terrible news her husband had for her, Mary’s once cheerful thoughts quickly died down and her entire attitude changed as a whole. At this moment, “She couldn’t feel anything at all-- except a slight nausea and a dire to vomit. Everything was automatic now--”(Dahl 381). During this state of shock moment, she had enough time to know how much hatred she held toward her husband. He was going to leave her during her most vulnerable stage as a pregnant woman. When realizing this, Mary may have developed murderous thoughts toward her unloving husband. However, one may argue that the quote shows a mental break in Mary Maloney, and she simply could not fathom her planned future actions. Although, during this short moment, the description of Mary feeling sick could have made her realize that Patrick was the one to cause the mess. Patrick and his terrible news may have helped Mary’s feelings of hatred toward her husband grow even more which ultimately led to the confirmation of her desire to kill Patrick. Her desire to murder her very own husband