Mary Maloney In 'Lamb To The Slaughter'

Lamb to the Slaughter
1. My first impression of Mary Maloney was that she loves her husband, is easily frightened, sometimes acts before thinking, doesn’t like to take chances and is an in-labouring woman.

2. I know that Mary is happy in her husband’s presence because she waits for him every day to get home from work.

3. Mary enjoys Patrick’s company after the long hours alone in the house, his warmth that came out of him when they were alone together, the shape of his mouth and the way he didn’t complain about being tired.

The list above tells that Mary likes to be alone and close to her husband.

4. Some points in the story build up the idea of a comfortable routine and a genuinely looking forward to Patrick’s return. Some examples are

Mary’s reaction was moving uneasily in her chair when her husband said that he doesn’t want to go out for dinner.

7. Patrick wanting to talk to Mary was what made Mary finally frightened.

8. I think that the news that Patrick told Mary was that he is leaving her because he said that he will give her money and make sure that she is well-taken care of.

9. After Patrick told her the news, her first instinct was to not believe any of it. Then, she watched her husband with puzzled horror.

10. No, I don’t think that Mary planned to kill her husband with a leg of lamb. She acted before thinking because she was probably caught up in the news, got mad and murdered her husband as a way to get rid of her anger.

11. An example of what is said and why I think that she did not murder her husband on purpose is when Mary thought, “: All right. So I’ve killed him.” Before it had said that she did all without thinking, therefore, she could not have purposely murdered her husband.

12. Mary decides to cover up the murder when she thought about the punishment for killing her husband.

13. She put in the meat in a pan, turned on the oven, and put the pan inside. To make herself temporally forget what she has done, she went to the grocer’s for vegetables. When she came back, she forgot about how she murdered her husband and acted if it was a normal night and Patrick was still

Mary is clever enough to not use a literal weapon and then hide it by cooking the weapon.

15. When the police arrived, they asked Mary what happened, searched the house, spoke gently to her, told her that Patrick was killed by a blow to the back of his head, ate the lamb and had a drink.

16. You can tell that the police are completely taken in by Mary because Mary offers them food and a drink for helping her catch the criminal.

17. The crying while talking shows that Mary is sad and the dried blood on the back of Patrick’s head helps to confirm Mary’s story. The sadness of Mary helps because she is showing that she cares for Patrick and it seems less suspicious if she murders her husband.

18. I felt that the ending was perfect because the police never found out that the murder weapon was the lamb.

19. An advantage in Mary’s case is doing the cooking as women work because she could murder her husband. If she didn’t cook dinner, she wouldn’t have gone to get the frozen leg of lamb and Patrick would have been suspicious of her holding a frozen leg of