Insanity In 'Lamb To The Slaughter'

One can fight the evil and the good we do in this world as long as we are completely aware and understand the things we are doing. Shakespeare believed that “madness was a disease of the brain, and could be cured by medical means, aided by judicious care and management” (Reiss 2005). They also believed that mental illness “often had a moral ctiology that is, it had roots in environmental, spiritual, or psychological disturbance” (Reiss 2005). “Lamb to the Slaughter,” “She told herself. So I’ve killed him. It was extraordinary” (Dahl). Mary was lost inside of her insanity. She didn’t feel any remorse. Instead, she was already thinking of how to get away with the murder of her husband. Mary Maloney, “makes the transition from housewife to murderer that one wonders about her mental state prior to the day she killed her husband” (Bertonneau 1953).

However, you might say she was in complete control of her sanity when she grabbed the lamb and hit him and started planning how to get away with it. Everyone has ran a stoplight at least once and that is illegal, just like murder is illegal. It doesn’t mean you’re a bad person, it means at the moment, it seemed like the right thing to do not being aware of the consequences that decision brought with it. In Mary Maloney’s head, a woman left pregnant at that time was something horrific and unacceptable. “Physicians insisted that insanity was at root a disease of the brain that called for medical intervention” (Reiss