Roald Dahl's Lamb To The Slaughter

Lamb to the Slaughter is a short story written by Roald Dahl based in the 1950s, a time period where divorce was rare and usually looked upon by others especially if it dealt with someone high in society. In an overview, Anthony J. and Bernardo, Jr. describe Dahl’s writing strategies to engage the readers, “Dahl, like many modern suspense writers, weaves his stories around trivial, everyday events that suddenly take on frightening aspects revealing the danger and uncertainty that underlies modern life, rather than reviving medieval settings and horrors in the manner of the earlier gothic writers,” (J,Jr.). The plot of the story surrounds itself around the mysterious murder of Mr. Maloney and his wife’s involvement. Mrs. Maloney is a character

Maloney possesses at the resolution part of the plot is manipulation. She is able to manipulate the officers by utilizing the stereotype of a typical housewife and her dead husband. “[...] You must be very hungry by now because it's long past your supper time, and I know that Patrick would never forgive me if I let you stay in the house without offering you anything to eat. Why don't you eat up the lamb in the oven?” (Dahl). In this quote, we can see Mrs. Maloney using hers and her husband’s relationship with the officers to manipulate them to eat the only piece of evidence. She brings up her husband to get them to feel sympathy towards her and that way they can't reject the meal. This also makes it seems like she is just being a good host and providing her guests with a nice meal when in reality she is trying to cover up her husband’s murder. “"Please," she begged. "Personally, I couldn't eat a thing, but it'd be a favor to me if you ate it up[…]”” (Dahl). In this quote, we are able to see Mrs. Maloney’s continuing begging. She is being very persistent in trying to get the officers to eat up the perfectly cooked leg of lamb using her current vulnerable condition. The detectives know that she is currently pregnant so she uses her condition as an advantage to successfully manipulate them.
Mrs. Maloney is a character that through the use of some important traits is able to carry out her husband’s perfect murder. Her constant desire to please her husband in the best possible way contributes to his decision of leaving her, leading to her killing her husband. While her way of manipulating people along with her cleverness are the two main key points that allow her to perfectly carry out her husband’s