One thing that is similar in both of the stories is the fact that the wife killed the husband. In “Lamb to the Slaughter” Mrs. Maloney kills her husband with a frozen lamb leg. Mr. Maloney had been drinking that night and was being very weird. He had taken the whole bottle of whiskey and drank from it. While doing that Mrs. Maloney was starting to make dinner and was asking her husband what he would like. He didn’t respond, he just stood there and looked out the window. She started to feel uneasy, so she went downstairs and “got dinner.” When she got back upstairs, he told her that he wanted a divorce probably because he had been with another woman. She had had enough, she heaved the lamb leg up and swung it connecting it with Mr. Maloney’s head. In “A Jury of Her …show more content…
Both wives kill their husbands and then get away with it. However, Mrs. Maloney gets away it it by playing it like she came home to him dead, while Minnie get away with it because someone covers up for her. BLANK and BLANK say that there is no evidence to be found here and no one in the book takes blame or is arrested. Both of these murders are examples of dramatic irony because the reader knows what has happened, meaning the reader knows exactly who has killed the other person and the characters in the story don’t know what has happened. For instance, before Mr. Maloney was killed he took a whole glass of whiskey and drank from it, later in the story when the police are at the house Mrs. Maloney offers them a drink. Only the reader and Mrs. Maloney know that he had been drinking that exact same whiskey before he died.
One thing that is different between the books is why the wife kills the husband. In “Lamb to the Slaughter” Mr. Maloney kills Mr. Maloney because he had just told her that he wanted a divorce. The author doesn’t directly state this, but this can be inferred. In “In A Jury of Her