Mary Maloney's Insanity

Mary Maloney, a wife, a mother to be, and now a murderer. It was yet another Thursday night in a steady routine the couple had. Mary awaited her husband happily going about her sewing and eager to show him her affection. She had no reason to suspect the news her husband would return home with. The same news that would eventually cost him his life.

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.

Dahl renders Mary Malony to be an extremely naive character, in the terms that her whole life revolves around pleasing one man. Through repetition, Dahl further develops Mary’s attitude towards society, implying that Mary cares more about fitting into society, rather than the marriage itself. Dahl establishes this by indicating that Mary loves, “...that male glow that came out of him... the way he came in the door... the intent, far look in his eyes...” (Dahl lines 23-26). This suggests that Mary only cares about having a husband in her life, rather than having a loving partner, so that she can fit into society; a very childish outlook on the world and its workings. Dahl displays Mary in such a fashion in order to progress towards and foreshadow later events in his story. Dahl utilizes Mary’s adolescent mindset and the fact that she obsessively she conforms to it in order to hint at the murder of Patrick, such that any violent change could completely shatter her reality, and in order to emphasize that the seemingly perfect life in the 1950s wasn’t that perfect at all in terms of the soles of a woman and the extreme sexism they faced day to

Mary has three distinct personalities throughout the story. In the beginning of the short story, “Lamb to the Slaughter” she seems like a devoted wife to her husband, Patrick. For instance, “The room was warm and clean, the curtains drawn, the two table lamps alight-hers and the one by the empty chair opposite. On the

Maloney left her is because he was stressed by work and with a baby on the way, he had to clear his mind; whether that be by leaving his wife (a woman who has always loved him) or to just take a break from everything, no one will ever know. There is too much evidence to prove otherwise, when the argument occurred Mary would’ve done whatever she could’ve done to help him; once Mary heard that he loved another woman, there was no way she could’ve changed his mind. Others may say that she was clingy but according to further research (source 5 13-38) Mary was being a perfect wife, she did everything she could do to make him happy, this includes be a little happier, clear away the clutter, be happy to see him, don’t greet him with complaints, etc. Instead of her being “clingy” she was a model wife, that in this certain time period any man would be ecstatic to have.

Mary Maloney is waiting at home for her husband, who she loves so much, to come home from work. When he gets home, he tells Mary some upsetting about wanting out of the relationship. Mary is very upset and confused by the news and reacts by killing her husband by striking him on the back of the head with a frozen leg of lamb. Mary is not guilty of first-degree murder, but instead suffers from diminished capacity. She does not commit first-degree murder because she does not premeditate the murder, she suffers from many overwhelming emotions causing her to not think clearly, and she is unable to determine right from wrong.

The conflict in “Lamb to the Slaughter” is, that Mary. Maloney, a devoted housewife, six months pregnant, kills her husband with a leg of lamb after he tells her that he is planning on leaving her. In the very beginning, the atmosphere is very calm. Mary Maloney is peacefully sewing in her living room waiting for her husband, a police officer, to come home from work. After his arrival, they silently sit in the living room drinking whisky. Mrs. Maloney watches her husband very carefully but after he swallows his whisky very quickly and gets another stronger drink, the reader notices that something is unusual. Before she wants to fix something for supper, her husband stops her and tells her, even though it isn’t exactly conveyed to the reader, that he

Mary was put on Morphine by her doctor and was addicted because of the exposure to the drug, but it’s she who decided to lie and lash out on her family, turning them against each other. She would do anything to protect herself even if it meant pitting her family members against one another, which is shown when she told Jamie to “stop sneering,” (O’Neill 63) at his father whilst a little while later she is yelling at Tyrone for making her believe that he felt “distrust and spying and suspicion,” in her (O’Neill 71). She alternates sides with the family members whenever it seems beneficial to her. She also use lies to disguise the fact she was taking Morphine when she says she needs to go upstairs or that she can’t find her glasses. She would even divert blame onto her family members for the disintegration of the family structure to avoid suspicion of her addiction. She goes to the extent of blaming Edmund for the lack of vivacity in her life - when she claims that she was “so healthy before Edmund was born,” (O’Neill 89)- rather than taking accountability for her continued drug abuse. In Brustein’s analysis he says, “no individual character trait is

In conclusion, we see that Mary Maloney is a dynamic character because, throughout the story, she changes from a loving wife to an

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

One striking way the character Mary Maloney shows clear-headedness after the crime is by going through the trouble of creating an alibi for herself. She does this cleverly, pretending that she knows nothing about Patrick’s death when she goes to the market to get dinner for her husband, saying he is “tired and doesn’t want to eat out tonight.” (Dahl, ph. 382). She continues to lie to the store clerk, asking him what he thinks Patrick would like to eat and if he thinks

Firstly, Mary during the crime loses awareness of what is happening and snaps which can clearly be seen in the text where it says, “She couldn’t feel anything at all- except a slight nausea and desire to vomit. Everything was automatic now….” (Dahl Mary goes into a state of shock after her husband tells her that he is planning on leaving her and cannot be held accountable legally for what she did in a state of insanity and mental unawareness. This quote really shows what kind of effect this news has on Mary's character and how it completely diminishes her mental capability during this time. Others might say that “just because she goes into shock does not give her the right to kill her husband” which can be true in some cases, but truly traumatic shock, like Mary’s husband saying he was leaving her during a time

The defendant, Mrs. Mary Maloney seems like your typical housewife that stays home and cares for her husband, you would think right? Well in this case she is not the typical housewife she seems to be. She stands at 5’6 and has light brown hair with hazel eyes. She wore a long yellow dress with a white button up sweater. She was last seen by Mr. George Hilton, who will now come up to the stand.

You see the story starts off with Mrs. Maloney waiting for her husband to come home. It also says “Now and again she glanced at the clock, but without anxiety.” This proves that this woman knows that her husband will come home to her safe and sound. In the text It also says that Mrs. Maloney is expecting a baby. Throughout the story their is no mention of any other children letting us know that this is Mary's first child ,and usually women have their first born when their young ,say their early or mid twenties. What we can infer is that Mary is a young wife expecting

In the story, Mary Maloney starts out with a strong and almost obsessive kind of love for her angel husband. She knows the time that he gets home, loves the sound of his feet on the gravel, and is almost a maid to his every need when he is home. She appreciates his company more than an average person would and this sets her up for the catastrophic bomb. When she is describing what she loves about him she states, “She knew that he wouldn’t want to speak much until after the first drink was finished, and she, on her side, was content to sit quietly, enjoying his presence after the long hours alone in the house” (Dahl 1). In this excerpt, Dahl says that she was happy to even be around him and that all day she would long for him to get home. He is the honey to her bee at this point