In third grade, during an all-day reading marathon (I loved my elementary school), all of the students were allowed to bring in pop and snacks and a sleeping bag to hangout and literally read the entire school day. I remember I brought in Matilda by Roald Dahl. The memories of lying under my third-grade teacher’s desk while consuming Dahl’s story of supernatural precociousness is burned into my brain like an intricate etching. At the time, I had no idea that stories like “Lamb to the Slaughter” existed in Dahl’s writings.
Likewise, I would come to discover that Roald Dahl was extremely important in shaping my literary outlook. His monumental impact on movies, books, and my childhood influenced me greatly. Similarly, I would also come to find out that Roald Dahl had a long career as a short story writer, too. Though, it was quite different from his long career as a children’s author. As it stands, Dahl wrote many influential and daring short stories. These include “The Man from the South” to the story I would like to discuss today: “Lamb to the Slaughter.”
Summary
The Incident
To start, “Lamb to the Slaughter” is about Mary Maloney, who is six-months pregnant, and her detective husband. One night after work, Mary’s husband Patrick gets home and tells her that he plans on leaving her. But, he will definitely put her up with some money so there shouldn’t be a big fuss.
“And he told her. It didn’t take long, four or five minutes at most, and she sat very still through it all, watching him with a kind of dazed horror as he went further and further away from her with each word.”
(Lamb to the Slaughter | Roald Dahl)
Furthermore, Mary, seemingly a dotting wife, goes to prepare dinner. She is still in shock at the revelation, and fetches a frozen lamb leg, which she intends to cook. Presumably, in a fit of rage, Mary comes back from the basement and strikes her husband across the back of the head with the lamb leg. The hit was like hitting him “with a steel club.”
The Cover-Up
Mary, realizing that she has murdered her husband, sets about covering up the murder. She heads to the store to get potatoes and peas to serve with the baking lamb. As Mary rationalizes her actions, she believes that it will seem like she was just getting things ready for dinner while somebody else murdered her husband. After returning home, she calls the police. They arrive and investigate. She concludes that since the police just need to find the murder weapon–a spanner, they think. Mary convinces them to eat the lamb, thus eliminating the murder weapon.
The police officers discuss the murder over lamb meal:
“That’s the hell of a big club the gut must’ve used to hit poor Patrick,” one of them was saying. “The doc says his skull was smashed all to pieces just like from a sledgehammer.”
“That’s why it ought to be easy to find.”
“Exactly what I say.”
“Whoever done it, they’re not going to be carrying a thing like that around with them longer than they need.”
One of them belched.
“Personally, I think it’s right here on the premises.”
“Probably right under our very noses. What you think, Jack?”
(Lamb to the Slaughter | Roald Dahl)
In the end, Mary is sitting on the couch in the next room listening to the officers discuss her husband’s death. She begins to giggle, knowing that they are consuming the only piece of evidence tying her to the murder–the lamb’s leg.
Analysis
I love this story as much as I love “The Man from the South” by Dahl. It is a little evil and entirely plausible. It also has strange moments of humanity and realism. For instance, when she sits on her bed and practices how she will talk to the grocer without giving away her crime. Dahl has a way of incorporating very real moments and feelings into stories of violence. “The Landlady” has very natural moments of conversation with sinister undertones.
Other analysis point out the change in the socioeconomic landscape post-World War II created a story that tackles the norms of the time. These norms include the family unit as a whole. The wife’s doting nature seems to imply the expectation of female servitude that was abundant in the culture at the time. However, by standing against her husband, and killing him, she also stands up for herself as an independent person who is deserving of love and respect.
I highly recommend “Lamb to the Slaughter.” If you haven’t already read it in a literature class or in high school, then it will definitely be a delight as a first-time read. But, regardless, you will enjoy it if you are a fan of Dahl’s storytelling, or if you are just a fan of a good story.
Works Cited
Dahl, Roald. “Lamb to the Slaughter.” Collected Short Stories, edited by Jeremy Treglown, Penguin Books, 2006, pp. 131-146.
