job.

However, even though the story is focalized through Mary's perspective, nothing her husband says or does could be taken as justification for murder—certainly not legally and almost certainly not morally either. The last line of the story suggests that Mary feels no remorse and is rather amused by her own cleverness in getting away with her crime.

Of course she is guilty. That is why she goes to so much trouble to establish an alibi and to dispose of the murder weapon. She is not guilty of first-degree murder because the murder was not premeditated. If all the cops investigating the case knew she was responsible for her husband's death, they would arrest her and take her to jail. No doubt she would make a full confession and would eventually plead guilty. She would be indicted for something like second-degree murder or manslaughter. It is hard to know what would happen to her unborn baby, but it would undoubtedly be taken away from her. We might expect her to serve eight or ten years because of the extenuating circumstances and also because of the fact that she has a spotless prior record. All the policemen themselves could testify as character witnesses.

As readers we are induced to share in Mary Maloney's guilt because we want to see her get away with her crime. We are in a sense accessories after the fact. If we had the power to tell the investigating cops that Mary killed her husband with a frozen leg of lamb--we probably wouldn't do it. Would we? The story is not to be taken too seriously. Mary didn't really kill Patrick. Patrick wasn't really going to leave her. It is just a story. The idea of killing a man with a leg of lamb and then getting the cops to eat the lamb is ridiculous. Roald Dahl was noted for writing stories like this. His story "The Way Up to Heaven" is a good example. Another man who wrote tongue-and-cheek murder stories was John Collier. Good examples are "The Chaser" and "De Mortuis." Such stories always have a touch of humor to suggest that they are taking place in a sort of Never-Never Land where ordinary laws do not apply.

In Roald Dahl’s “The Lamb to Slaughter,” Mary Maloney reacts with denial, shock, repressed anger, and eerie calmness to news that her husband wants to leave her. A stereotypical 1950s wife, she is portrayed as happily domestic and obediently devoted to her husband. She contentedly awaits his return home from work and then greets him with a kiss and drink. Fussing over him—jumping up to refill his drink and insisting on cooking his dinner instead of going out as planned—Mary relents when he commands her to sit and listen: “It wasn't until then that she began to get frightened.”

Like a docile and intimidated child, she obeys him and keeps her “large, puzzled eyes” glued to him. Her husband quickly delivers the news that he wants to leave her within “four or five minutes at most, and she sat still through it all, watching him with puzzled horror.” Initially, Mary is confused; after all, she has been fulfilling her expected duties as a housewife. To complicate matters further, she is carrying this man’s child. Of course she is horrified; in 1950s America, his leaving her would mean a scandalous divorce and her becoming a single mother.

At first, Mary reacts with denial to this crazy news:

her first instinct was not to believe any of it. She thought that perhaps she'd imagined the whole thing. Perhaps, if she acted as though she had not heard him, she would find out that none of it had ever happened.

She questions her own sanity (“that perhaps she'd imagined the whole thing”) and then behaves the only way she knows how or is expected: as a Stepford-like housewife whose solution is to pretend nothing happened, carry on, and start dinner.

In shock over the news, she loses all feeling expect “a slight sickness.” Without thinking, she automatically looks for food in the basement freezer to cook for supper. She fails to internalize the gravity of the news; after finding a leg of lamb in the freezer she thinks, “All right, then, they would have lamb for supper” and carries it back upstairs. Then she sees her husband standing

with his back to her, and stopped.

"I've already told you," he said. "Don't make supper for me. I'm going out."

At that point, Mary Maloney simply walked up behind him and without any pause, she swung the big frozen leg of lamb high in the air and brought it down as hard as she could on the back of his head. She might as well have hit him with a steel bar.

This passage illustrates her repressed anger and begs the question: is her murder of him briefly premeditated? When she sees him in a vulnerable position, “with his back to her,” she pauses and seems to be observing him, maybe or maybe not plotting. At that moment, what is she thinking? Is his final command what makes her snap? Does she hit him intending just to hurt him but not murder him? In any case, the fact that she “simply walked up behind him” and unhesitatingly winds up the lamb leg before bludgeoning him “as hard as she could” demonstrates volition, determination, and silent rage—traits she does not display as the traditional housewife earlier in the story.

After hitting her husband, Mary just steps back silently and watches him fall to the floor. Only when his crashing fall overturns a table does she come “out of the shock…. feeling cold and surprised” as if she was in a trance. The fact that she is “surprised” suggests that her actions are not premeditated. The wording indicates spontaneous and temporary insanity.

She remains eerily calm while standing over his body; instead of screaming or panicking, she tells herself, “All right… So I've killed him.” With this matter-of-fact statement, Mary may be revealing her belief that he got what he deserved. After all, his destruction of their seemingly perfect marriage—at least to outsiders—and desertion of her would be reprehensible in 1950s American society.

The personality traits of Mary Maloney in "Lamb to the Slaughter" are meekness, passivity, self-effacement, extreme deviousness, and calculation.

On the face of it, it might seem that these characteristics don't sit well together. But as the story progresses, we find that all of them are indeed combined in one person.

When we first meet Mary, we see a mousy, timid housewife, a woman who wouldn't say boo to a goose. Subscribing as she does to traditional gender roles, Mary accepts being subordinate to her husband, to whom she is utterly devoted.

And this is how she would almost certainly have remained had her husband not told Mary that he was leaving her for (what we assume to be) another woman. But as it is, another set of character traits comes to the surface after Patrick drops the fatal bombshell. For once Mary has murdered Patrick by hitting him over the head with a frozen leg of lamb, we see a whole different side to her.

Now we see a devious woman able to cover her tracks and present herself to the investigating police officers as a grieving widow rather than the murderer that she is. In covering her tracks, Mary also shows herself to be cold and calculating, able to come up with a convincing alibi that will keep her out of the frame for the murder that she's just committed.

The answer to this question is, of course, a matter of personal opinion.  I will present arguments for each side of the issue and allow you to make up your own mind.

On the one hand, we can argue that Mary Maloney should not get away with killing her husband in “Lamb to the Slaughter.”  Murder is never an acceptable thing to do.  We are allowed to kill in self-defense or in war.  We are not allowed to kill just because someone provokes us.  When we look at things in this way, there is really no defense for Mary.  She has murdered her husband and should be caught and punished in order for justice to be served.

On the other hand, we can make two arguments in Mary’s favor.  First, we can claim that she was not legally responsible for what she did.  She was in shock and acted automatically, without thinking.  She did not truly mean to kill her husband and therefore should not be punished.  More importantly, we can argue that Mary is not morally culpable.  Mary has been a good wife to her husband.  We see in the story how attentive and solicitous she is towards him even when she is 6 months pregnant.  In return, he is going to leave her while she is pregnant.  Remember also that this story was written in 1953 when women were much more dependent upon husbands than they are now.  He is going to create a situation where it will be hard for her to make her way in life and he is doing so for no apparent reason.  Because of this, he really deserves to die.  She should get away with killing him because he deserves it for what he is doing to her.  (Also, she was so clever in making an alibi that she deserves to go free just for being so inventive.)

Which of these arguments makes more sense to you?

The point of the story is that Mary gets away with the crime of murdering her husband. She does not go to jail. The police think she is innocent, even as they are eating the murder weapon she used, a frozen, and now cooked, leg of lamb.

The title of the story is ironic. A young and devoted wife—and one who also happens to be pregnant—discovers that her husband has been having an affair. He tells her he plans to divorce her. That would make her, Mary, the lamb to the slaughter, for "lamb to the slaughter" is a figurative phrase that describes an innocent victim.

Mary, however, takes a (leg of) lamb and literally uses it to slaughter her husband by hitting him on the back of the head with it. This is the real meaning of the title of the story.

The ending makes it clear that Mary Maloney manages to commit the perfect murder by getting the police officers who visit the property to investigate themselves to dispose of the murder weapon. If you look at the ending, you see that the police officers actually eat the leg of lamb with which Mary killed her husband, and what is even more darkly ironic, they talk about the murder weapon whilst they eat it:

One of them belched.

“Personally, I think it’s right here on the premises.”

“Probably right under our very noses.  What you think, Jack?”

And in the other room, Mary Maloney began to giggle.

This shows that Mary through her cunning has managed to kill her husband and use her knowledge as a policeman's wife to recognise how important it is to get rid of the murder weapon so it cannot be found or linked to her in any way. She has found the perfect way of doing this through cooking the leg of lamb and serving it to the officers. Her innocence and future, and that of her baby, is assured.

Mary Maloney’s preparations to conceal her crime begin as soon as she has killed her husband. She quickly decides to destroy the murder weapon by cooking it. She then leaves the house and goes to the grocery store so it will seem that the crime was committed while she was out and that she discovered it upon her return. While shopping, she behaves normally so that the grocer can testify to her state of mind. When she does return, she calls the police and sounds appropriately shocked. Because Maloney was a policeman, she knows the detectives and correctly anticipates that they will be very sympathetic. That sympathy, together with the tempting aroma of the lamb and promise of a home-cooked meal, combines into the reason that they accept her dinner invitation. Mary plays her role of grieving widow throughout the evening so that they never even suspect her or that the main course was the murder weapon.

Mary successfully manipulates the detectives by putting on such a convincing show of innocence that they hardly seem to think of questioning her role in the affair. It is because they are so unsuspecting of her that they agree to her suggestion that they eat the dinner she has prepared - the leg of lamb that she killed her husband with. In this way she gets rid of the most important piece of evidence.

Mary proves herself extremely resourceful in her bid to escape from justice for the sake of her unborn child. She carefully plans and acts out her assumed role of innocence. In fact we see her actually rehearsing the part, as she practises what she will say to the grocer when she goes out to buy vegetables, just as if it were a normal evening. 

Mary, then, feigns innocence so successfully that the detectives are completely taken in. However, one part she does not have to rehearse is that of feeling grief over her husband's death. When she sees his body after returning home from the shops, she gives way to real tears.

All the old love and longing for him welled up inside her, and she ran over to him, knelt down beside him, and began to cry her heart out. It was easy. No acting was necessary.

However, although she feels genuine sorrow over his death, it is not enough to make her want to turn herself in.

Mary Maloney is the quintessential doting wife. She anticipates her husband's every conceivable notion, desire, and or need. Take a look at the first paragraph.

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 sideboard behind her, two tall glasses, soda water, whiskey. Fresh ice cubes in the Thermos bucket.

Notice that she has the lighting perfectly set for where Patrick is going to sit, and she even has his drinks ready and waiting to be poured. Whatever need of his that she has not anticipated, she is willing to immediately execute once she knows what he wants or needs. Patrick doesn't even have to remove his own coat. She takes it from him, and she hangs it in the closet. Patrick's personal comfort is paramount to her, and she loves sitting down with him and knowing that her actions help to make him happier.

She loved to luxuriate in the presence of this man, and to feel-almost as a sunbather feels the sun-that warm 25 male glow that came out of him to her when they were alone together.

This incredible portrayal of her is what makes her eventual killing of Patrick such a shock to readers.

Everything! It really is quite sickening the way that Mary Maloney panders to her husbands every whim. Just consider the first paragraph of the story and see how it presents her as a wife who is completely devoted to her husband:

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 sideboard behind her, two tall glassess, soda water, whisky. Fresh ice cubes in the Thermos bucket.

Mary Maloney was waiting for her husband to come home from work.

Note how everything is completely ready for her husband's arrival. She has clearly worked hard to do this, and we can infer from her attitude towards her husband that she does this every single day for him as well. I know it was just Valentine's Day yesterday, but please: this is rather exaggerated. Of course, you need to be aware of what Dahl is doing through this. He is clearly setting up her character as a devoted wife, which makes the situational irony of what happens later in the story all the more acute.

The words that you could use to describe Mary Maloney would likely look quite different as you follow her character transformation.

At first, she is devoted. She sits and waits for her husband's return, prepared to spend a wonderful evening with him. When he arrives, she is quick to hang up his coat for him and makes his favorite drink. She allows him space to unwind without talking because she knows this is important to him after work. She admires the shape of his mouth as she quietly waits for him to engage with her.

Not much later, she is confused. The man to whom she devotes herself delivers news that is shocking. Though the details are omitted, it is assumed that Patrick Maloney has been having an affair and is leaving her. Mary is so confused that she simply tries to pretend she's imagining the entire conversation, and she robotically begins preparing their dinner in a desperate state of confusion.

When Patrick insults her once more, telling her that he's already told her not to cook for him because he is "going out," presumably to the other woman, Mary is unflinching. Holding a frozen leg of lamb, she doesn't hesitate as she swings it high and crashes it down into her husband's skull.

As she surveys the scene that follows, Mary is methodical. She immediately begins generating an alibi, calmly washing her hands and thinking quickly about how to remove herself from the scene and simultaneously place herself somewhere with witnesses. Thus, she heads to the neighborhood grocery and strikes up a conversation with the grocer.

In the end, Mary is relieved to the point of giddiness. She's gotten away with murder by feeding the murder weapon to the detectives themselves. As they desperately search for clues, Mary shows no remorse toward her actions. She has saved herself and her unborn child with her own quick thinking and with her careful attention in covering the crime.

I would say that the majority of your adjectives would need to come from the beginning of the story, because Dahl is very careful to build up a precise nature of Mary's character to prepare us for the massive situational irony that occurs in the middle of the story. The adjectives I would use to describe her would therefore be loving, devoted, subordinate, serving and obsessed. This would be from the way in which she greets her husband and the high level of love that she has for him. Consider the following quote:

She loved to luxuriate in the presence of this man, and to feel--almost as a sunbather feels the sun--that warm male glow that came out of him to her when they were alone together.

Note the way in which the centre of Mary's existence is said to be her husband, and the way that she waits on him and does what he wants without even thinking of her own needs and wants is rather disturbing in its slavish devotion. Of course, all of these qualities makes her shift into a calculated master criminal all the more surprising.

This question is a subjective one, so different readers may respond in different ways. Some readers may feel as if Mary, six months pregnant and abandoned without warning by her beloved husband, has all the reason in the world to act on her emotions so violently, while others may never see murder as understandable, even if it was accidental and while in the throes of emotion. Both readers would be correct in their opinions.

I personally don't think that Mary Maloney was right in murdering her husband, but I do understand that she might say she didn't intend to kill him by hitting him with the frozen leg of lamb. To be betrayed so suddenly while in such a vulnerable position could understandably inspire in Mary, and in others perhaps, a reckless desire to act out in a punishing way towards the man she had trusted and loved so entirely. While Mary's actions and the outcome are not defensible, they might be understood from the perspective of a defender analyzing her violence as a crime of passion.

It is up to you how you want to answer this question.  My opinion is not any more correct than your opinion.  The important thing will be to defend your answer.  

No, I do not think that Mary Maloney was right or justified in what she did.  She killed her husband.  Whether it was intentional or not does not change the fact that she smashed her husband's skull in by smacking him in the head with a blunt object.   She killed her husband plain and simple.  In addition to killing her husband, she deviously found a way to get away with the crime.   Mary figured out a way to give herself an alibi for the crime, and she even managed to destroy the murder weapon when she had the police officers eat it.  I understand that Mary was attempting to guard her unborn child, but that doesn't mean she has a free pass on killing people.  

Mary is a completely devoted wife. She adores Patrick and waits on him like a maid. She is doting, attentive, and effusive. This may be why Patrick decides to leave. We are never given a reason. He may have been having an affair as well. The author never makes this clear. As for Mary, she feels completely comfortable and satisfied with her life with Patrick. She is six months pregnant and it would appear that she has complete faith that their future family will be a happy one as well. She is so happy, dependent upon, and we might even say addicted to Patrick that when he informs her he is leaving, she cannot handle it. 

The author doesn't give a word-for-word dialogue of how Patrick tells Mary he is leaving her. But by the end of it, she knows the marriage is over and there is no hope of reconciliation. She is stunned and then reacts quickly. In her shock (or conscious reaction), she kills him. Immediately after this, she becomes a clear-thinking detective, determined not to be caught. She carries out her plan to perfection. When the detectives eat the evidence, she laughs in the other room. The seemingly perfect, devoted wife reveals a sinister side in this last line. She is a much more complicated and mysterious character than the opening paragraphs would suggest.

Mary Maloney feels nothing "except a slight nausea and a desire to vomit" immediately before she kills her husband. A short while before, she was utterly devoted to him. The murder is obviously unpremeditated: a crime of passion. Her attitude to committing murder is, therefore, far from cool and calculating. She sees a weapon and strikes. There is no reason to think that she considers how much trouble the police will have in identifying and discovering such an unlikely murder weapon.

It is only when she reflects on what she has done that Mary comes out of the shock which has enveloped her ever since her husband announced he was leaving her:

It was extraordinary, now, how clear her mind became all of a sudden. She began thinking very fast.

It seems that, always having subordinated herself to her husband, Mary changes fundamentally when she realizes she must lose him. She becomes numb and helpless, then snaps and commits murder. After this, she is cool, calculating, and even amused. Mary is far from cool or calculating when she commits murder, but she rapidly acquires these qualities when it comes to escaping detection.

After Mary Maloney realizes that she has killed her husband, her reaction is very calm, considering the circumtances.  One might expect her to freak out, to go into hysterics, to weep and sob, to have a panic attack, to pace about, etc.  Instead, she calmly assesses the situation.  Dahl writes of her reaction,

"All right, she told herself.  So I’ve killed him.  It was extraordinary, now, how clear her mind became all of a sudden... What were the laws about murderers with unborn children?...Mary Maloney didn’t know.  And she certainly wasn’t prepared to take a chance."

As she realizes what she has done, she also realizes that her baby might be in danger.  She knew that she needed to cover up the crime to protect the child.  So, being a detective's wife, she realizes that she needs an alibi.  Dahl points out that she is a detective's wife, and that probably aids in her ability to remain calm and to assesss the situation more clearly in terms of what needed to be done.  She goes to the store, concocts a story about Patrick being tired so not wanting to go out.  This establishes an alibit--she was at the store, so couldn't have murdered him.  Also, it leaks information that Patrick is at home, alone--the perfect setup for a murderer to enter.  She even mentions the lamb in the oven, to cover any possible suspicions of it being the weapon.  Then, on the way home, she tries to psych herself out to get in the right mindframe for making the call to the police.  She needs to sound shocked; on the way home she thinks,

"And now, she told herself as she hurried back, all she was doing now, she was returning home to her husband...and if, when she entered the house, she happened to find anything unusual, or tragic, or terrible, then naturally it would be a shock and she’d become frantic with grief and horror. "

This little pep talk works, and as she walks in and sees him on the floor, she actually feels shock.  She has been so calm this entire time, and seeing him there really hits her.  She uses this emotion in the phone call to sound sincerely upset.  After that, it isn't hard--the house is swarming with policemen, asking her questions, and they take the lead.  The last bit of cunning on her part is getting them to eat the evidence; very clever, and it isn't until the cops mention that the weapon is probably "right under our very noses" that she loses it and begins to giggle.  The story ends there, so who knows if she got a grip or lost it completely, but at least through the story, she displays remarkable calm and cleverness.  I hope that those thoughts helped; good luck!

The reader has to feel something for Mary Maloney in order to be engaged. She commits a murder, then finds herself in a tight spot because the house is full of detectives and uniformed cops investigating the crime. Her husband was a cop himself, which explains why the police are taking such an interest.

However, I think "sympathy" is too strong a term. Empathy would be more like it. The author uses several devices to create empathy with his character. Most importantly, he keeps the reader in Mary's point of view (POV) from beginning to end. Whenever we are in a character's point of view, we cannot help but emphasize with that  character--regardless of how good or bad, how likable or unlikable, he or she might be.

A good example of this is Jack London's "To Build a Fire." The protagonist is not a likable or sympathetic character. He seems like a brutal, ignorant, selfish man--yet we empathize with him because we are confined to his POV up to the time of his death. We also empathize with him because of his motivation, which is simply to stay alive. We can empathize with any human or even with any animal if we are in that character's POV and the character is trying to stay alive.

This is the case with Mary Maloney. She has killed her husband in an explosion of emotion and now she wants to avoid being arrested for murder and possibly executed.

It was extraordinary, now, how clear her mind became all of a sudden. She began thinking very fast. As the wife of a detective, she knew quite well what the penalty would be.

That was fine. It made no difference to her. In fact, it would be a relief. On the other hand, what about the child? What were the laws about murderers with unborn children? Did they kill them both--mother and child? Or did they wait until the tenth month? What did they do?

Roald Dahl has cleverly augmented the reader's empathy by making his character six months pregnant. She is more concerned about her child than she is about herself. We like this in her. She is unselfish. She has the instincts of a mother, and any parent can empathize with her desire to protect her baby. In fact, there could hardly be a better way of engaging identification and concern for Mary Maloney than by making her six months pregnant. In was partly her husband's cold indifference to her condition that made her so bitterly angry in the first place.

Patrick Maloney's cold indifference is another way in which Dahl creates empathy for his wife. She worships him and has been slavishly devoted to him during all their years of marriage. Now she is going to present him with a child, which is the best gift this  humble woman has to offer the man she loves. He picks this time to tell her he wants nothing more to do with her. If she were totally crushed, we might feel sympathetic--but that would be another story, wouldn't it? Instead she reacts with fury and bashes him over the head with a frozen leg of lamb. We empathize with her but do not feel sorry for her. We feel like congratulating her on finally becoming a real person instead of a doormat. We want to see her get away with her crime, and we feel a sense of satisfaction and closure when she manages to do so.

In general, we do not approve of wives killing their husbands; but Dahl characteristically treats the whole episode with a dash of humor which assures us that this is only a story not to be taken too seriouosly. This is another reason why we empathize rather than sympathize with Mary.

Mary Maloney seems like the kind of woman who is often described as a "doormat." She is totally dependent on her husband. She is extremely domestic and content to stay at home and wait for him to return from work. The fact that she is six-months pregnant only makes her seem more domesticated, complacent, and dependent. A woman like this could easily become boring to a husband who had an interesting job in the outside world, such as that of her husband Patrick who is a policeman. She doesn't realize that her love, dependency, submissiveness, attentiveness, and all such other aspects of her domestic character can become intolerable to her husband.

Mary Maloney's character brings to mind the short story "The Chaser" by John Collier. In that story the old shopkeeper tells his young customer that he will eventually get so tired of being the husband of an adoring, possessive wife that he will want to get rid of her.

"She will care intensely. You will be her sole interest in life. . . . She will want to know all you do. . . . All that has happened to you during the day. Every word of it. She will want to know what you are thinking about, why you smile suddenly, why you are looking sad. . . . How carefully she will look after you! She will never allow you to be tired, to sit in a draught, to neglect your food. If you are an hour late, she will be terrrifed. She will think you are killed, or that some siren has caught you."

(John Collier's story is thoroughly discussed in eNotes. See the reference link below.)

Mary Maloney in "Lamb to the Slaughter" has the wrong idea about marriage. She believes that she can retain her husband's love by being his devoted slave. Patrick Maloney seems to be the sort of man who is not in touch with his feelings, but who can come to devastating conclusions after a long period of silent endurance. Instead of feeling more closely bonded to his wife by the baby she is expecting, he feels all the more suffocated by the addition of another emotional burden, another link to his chain.

Mary, too, has not been in touch with her true feelinigs. She is the type of person who represses angry feelings and lets them build up until there is danger of an explosion. She becomes more her genuine self when she realizes that all her love and care have had exactly the opposite effect to what she expected.

"For God's sake," he said, hearing her, but not turning round; "Don't make supper for me. I'm going out." At that point, Mary Maloney simply walked up behind him and without any pause she swung the big frozen leg of lamb high in the air and brought it down as hard as she could on the back of his head.

She becomes a much more interesting character after that reaction. She loses her dependency and starts thinking for herself. We may not approve of wives killing their husbands, but we can still admire her self-sufficiency, which was present all along without her being aware of it. She stalls about calling the police in order to establish an alibi. She puts the frozen leg of lamb into the oven and turns it up to high, then goes to Sam the grocer to establish that she was absent from home when her poor husband was murdered by some intruder. Finally she serves the cooked leg of lamb to the policemen who are searching all over the premises for the murder weapon.

Why do we want to see Mary Maloney get away with murder? Her response to her husband's rejection seems justified, and we enjoy  stories in which "the worm turns."

Mary Malone's character is well-described through direct characterization all throughout the story "Lamb to the Slaughter." This direct characterization occurs each time the author describes Mary physically and in detail. An example of direct characterization is 

Her skin -for this was her sixth month with child-had acquired a wonderful translucent quality, the mouth was soft, and the eyes, with their new placid look, seemed larger darker than before.

To extrapolate character traits, you can use direct characterization as well as indirect characterization.Indirect characterization occurs when the author describes behaviors and reactions in the character. From such behaviors and reactions, the reader can deduct more facts about the character than the author lets on. 

An example of indirect characterization is: 

She knew he didn't want to speak much until the first drink was finished, and she, on her side, was content to sit quietly, enjoying his company after the long hours alone

From this excerpt, you can deduct that Mary is submissive to her husband. This is obvious from the way that Mary waits on her husband, lets him take the lead on things, and in the way that she even feels happy to be taken care of. 

A second character trait you can get from Mary is that she is clever. The way that she was able to figure out how to get away with murder shows someone who thinks quickly and understands how to avoid consequences. 

A third character trait is that she is evidently, at one point, terrified. While her demeanor after the crime shows a woman who has dissociated from what she has just done, it is obvious that part of the reason why she snapped and killed her husband is the fear of being left alone, with a child, and semi-destitute. Obviously, she would have not reacted in such a drastic way if she didn't have a good reason for it. Fear is the biggest reason to react instinctively.

Mary is the young wife in the story "Lamb to the Slaughter" who kills her husband when he threatens to leave her. She is going to get dinner ready and instead bashes him over the head with a lamb shank. When the police come to investigate, they don't find the weapon—something that they think would resemble a steel spanner. The leg of lamb is actually in the oven cooking, and when it is done, she feeds it to the police who eat it while theorizing about who could have killed her husband.

Dahl describes Mary's physical characteristics:

Her skin—for this was her sixth month with child—had acquired a wonderful translucent quality, the mouth was soft, and the eyes, with their new placid look, seemed larger darker than before

She is six months pregnant, and, as a result, her skin is taking on the typical "glow." The description of her physical characteristics is interesting because it makes Mary out to be very feminine. She is soft, and her skin has a glow about it like a light. It makes her seem like she could never do anything as violent as killing her husband, and it makes the reader sympathetic to her after her husband callously threatens to abandon her.

Her psychological or inner characteristics are harder to pin down, as they change from the beginning of the story to the end. Mary is at first described as being totally in love with her husband, waiting patiently for him to get home. The story says she:

would glance up at the clock, but without anxiety, merely to please herself with the thought that each minute gone by made it nearer the time when he would come.

It's clear from early in the story that Mary would do anything to please her husband because she loves him dearly. We therefore become more sympathetic to her cause and feel that her husband is wrong to leave her.

However, by the end of the story, Mary becomes bolder, and she is no longer in love with her husband in the same way. Instead, she becomes more resolute in her actions: she kills him, fakes an alibi, and then destroys the murder weapon. At the end of the story, we see Mary relishing her escape from punishment as the men throw out theories about how it could have happened. They do not even suspect her, and:

in the other room, Mary Maloney began to giggle.

Her giggling proves that she is no longer the meek wife who doted on her husband; instead, she is gleeful now that she is free of her marriage. She is looking out for herself and has come to be her own person.

Dahl describes Mary as a loving, loyal, and devoted wife in the story. He tells us that the highlight of Mary's day is her husband's arrival home from his day job as a police officer.

Mary is also described as an amiable, affectionate, and patient woman. Upon first seeing her husband, she takes his coat and then proceeds to make him a drink. She does not talk or try to rush him while he savors his beverage. Mary is content to sit back and watch her husband admiringly.

Unfortunately, Mary's husband does not merit her loyalty nor her adulation. He soon informs her that he is planning to leave her. Mary's response and her subsequent action surprises the reader. At this point in the story, Dahl alerts us to a side of Mary that seems foreign to us: she is by equal measures shrewd, bold, and determined. She puts a plan in place to protect her unborn child and to make sure that her baby will not be bereft of both parents.

When the detectives and forensics officers arrive, Mary plays the part of the grieving wife to perfection. Her keen sense of human nature allows her to leverage her feminine wiles to her advantage. In all, Dahl describes Mary as loyal, devoted, affectionate, amiable, patient, and loving. She is also shrewd, daring, and tenacious. 

In the beginning of Roald Dahl's "Lamb to the Slaughter," Mary Maloney is described as a stereotypical housewife. She is happily pregnant and is happy when it is approaching time for her husband to come home. All of her actions are that of a woman who is blissfully content with her station in life as a dutiful and loving wife. 

There are, however, a few descriptors that serve as forewarning that Mary may not be as stable, calm and loving as she seems. Roald Dahl uses expressions like "curiously tranquil" and noted that her eyes seem "larger, darker than before." It almost suggests that she was in a dreamlike state in the beginning of the story. Whether it was due to the pregnancy or not is impossible to say. If she was in a dreamlike state instead of actually tranquil and steady, it would explain why the shock of her husband's intent to divorce her caused her to act the way she did. It would also explain why now, suddenly awake, she is able to transform from a loving wife into a woman cleverly covering her tracks when the murder itself seemed sudden and accidental. 

At the beginning of the story, Mary is presented as an attentive, loving wife. She waits for her husband to return home from work, and she has a drink waiting for him. Dahl writes that she has a "slow smiling air about her," suggesting that she is also content. We also learn that she is pregnant and that her skin, as a result, has "a wonderful translucent quality." Dahl also describes her as having a "placid look" in her eyes.

When Mary's husband returns home, however, our interpretation of her character changes somewhat. We realize just how much her peace of mind and happiness is dependent upon her husband. Indeed, Dahl writes that she "loved to luxuriate in the presence of this man." We also realize that her husband clearly doesn't feel the same way about her as she does about him. He speaks to her curtly, with brief, perfunctory, monosyllabic responses.

Accordingly, we start to feel pity for Mary. Her happiness, which is so dependent upon her husband, is built upon very precarious foundations. He does not appear to love her, and so her happiness seems unlikely to last much longer.

Mary Maloney is definitely not thinking about murdering her husband at any time. She loves him and believes he loves her. She is just waiting for him to come home and looking forward to seeing him.

For her, this was always a blissful time of day. She knew he didn't want to speak much until the first drink was finished, and she, on her side, was content to sit quietly, enjoying his company after the long hours alone in the house. She loved to luxuriate in the presence of this man, and to feel--almost as a sunbather feels the sun--that warm male glow that came out of him to her when they were alone together.

Tangible proof that she was not thinking about killing her husband is the murder weapon. Who would ever plan to commit a murder with a leg of lamb, frozen or otherwise? The deed was spontaneous, unpremeditated, almost unconscious.

"For God's sake," he said, hearing her, but not turning round; "Don't make supper for me. I'm going out." At that point, Mary Maloney simply walked up behind him and without any pause she swung the big frozen leg of lamb high in the air and brought it down as hard as she could on the back of his head.

Accordinig to the eNotes Introduction in the Study Guide, the story was written in the early 1950s. World War II had ended in 1945, and Americans were on a buying spree because of the nation's prosperity and the fact that there had been little to buy during the war years. The auto makers were not offering new cars to the public. Television had been invented, but the manufacturers were holding back on introducing it to the American public until the war ended.

One of the new items being introduced to the public after the war was big frozen food lockers five or six feet long and about four feet tall. People were buying huge amounts of meat because they could save a lot of money through buying in quantity. These big lockers lost their popularity for several reasons, one being the fact that if there was a power outage all the meat could be ruined and have to be thrown out. Another was that mammoth refrigerators with big freezers also came on the market.

Roald Dahl undoubtedly got the idea for "Lamb to the Slaughter" because of the introduction of these big frozen food lockers, most of which have vanished from the American scene. Other authors thought of stories in which someone kept a dead body frozen, since the lockers were roomy enough to accommodate a corpse. There was a small window of opportunity for stories of this sub-genre. Dahl's perfect-crime tale was not intended to be taken too seriously. Mary Maloney's sudden outrage is understandable, but she does not seem like the kind of woman who would commit a murder regardless of the provocation. That is one of the main reasons all the investigators never suspect her.

It is ironic that Mary is married to a policeman and that his murder brings an unusually large number of fellow officers to his home. Their long search of the premises for a murder weapon is part of the black humor, not only because they would never think of the weapon being a frozen leg of lamb, but also because they become hungry enough to eat the evidence.

Dahl might have considered having Mary plan the murder ahead of time, but it was the fact that it was not planned that kept her from being suspected. If she had planned to murder her husband, she would never have thought of using a frozen leg of lamb. Who would think of such an idea except Roald Dahl?

Mary is portrayed as a Madonna-like and innocent angel of the home as the story opens. She has a calm, composed, "slow smiling air" about her. She is six months pregnant and has a "soft" mouth, "translucent" skin, and "large" eyes. Her soft, gentle looks appear to be a mirror of a gentle, nurturing personality. She hangs her husband's coat and pours him a drink, wanting to serve him cheese and crackers. It is a "blissful" point in her day when he comes home from work.

In every way, Mary seems to be a loving, caring wife who wraps her life around her husband and his needs.

However, after her husband tells her he is going to divorce her and doesn't want her to make a fuss, we see a different side of Mary's character, one that is not all sweetness and light. She is in shock and feels "slight nausea and a desire to vomit."

At this point, a more decisive and murderous side to Mary comes into play. She whacks her husband on the back of the head with a frozen lamb chop, killing him.

The new Mary is still calm and composed, but she cleverly uses her seeming innocence and domesticity to hide her crime. Not only does she show quick-thinking resourcefulness in killing her husband with the weapon at hand, she is quick thinking and resourceful in serving the police the murder weapon for dinner. Mary, we discover, is a person who, beneath the facade, will look out for herself and solve problems in her own way.

The story is illustrating that appearances can be deceiving.

In the first part of "Lamb to the Slaughter," Dahl portrays Mary Maloney as the perfect, doting wife. He describes in detail, for example, how she prepares the home ahead of her husband's arrival from work and how she lovingly mixes his drink when he arrives. This ritualistic behavior emphasizes that she is a very capable housekeeper, as well as being totally committed to her husband.

When her husband breaks up with her, however, Mary's portrayal changes. Dahl switches his portrayal from a doting wife to a woman victimized by her husband. Her world is shattered by her husband's news (which Dahl does not reveal to the reader) and she is described as being nauseous, as though the whole thing is a bad dream or not quite real.

Once Mary kills her husband with the leg of lamb, her portrayal changes once again. This time, Dahl emphasizes her cunning as she makes her plans to cover up her role in his death. Her cunning is shown, for instance, by her ability to redo her hair and to go to the grocer's shop, acting as though her husband is safe and well.

By the final line of the story, Dahl has transformed Mary into an experienced murderess. As the detectives eat the leg of lamb, Mary can be found "giggling," delighting in the fact that she has literally gotten away with murder.

At the scene of the crime, it is unlikely that the police would have found any additional evidence to incriminate and use against Mary Maloney.  Her alibi checked out, and the police ate the murder weapon.  It's likely, though, that today's law enforcement agencies would have Patrick's body autopsied by a medical examiner.  The main reason would be so that the medical examiner could closely examine Patrick's head wound.  The hope would be that the medical examiner could tell the police exactly what the murder weapon was shaped like.  Chances are, the frozen leg of lamb would have transferred cellular content to Patrick's head.  Scrapings and microscopy work would reveal that Patrick's head wound contained a foreign substance.  DNA testing or a chromosome analysis would show that the foreign substance was lamb.  I would assume that an astute detective could piece it together from there.  

Mary's behavior depends on which part of the story you are referring to.  

When the story begins, Dahl describes Mary's behavior as an example of what an over-the-top doting wife might behave like.  Mary worships the very ground that Patrick walks upon.  She excitedly waits for him to get home.  She serves him his drink when he enters the house, and she doesn't want him to have to get up to get another.  

"She merely wanted to satisfy herself that each minute that went by made it nearer the time when he would come home. . .  He got up and went slowly to get himself another drink. "I'll get it!" she cried, jumping up."

Mary Maloney is essentially one of the Stepford Wives.  

After Patrick tells Mary that he is leaving her, Mary's behavior changes.  She operates as if she is in a daze.  She's on automatic.  

"Her first instinct was not to believe any of it. She thought that perhaps she'd imagined the whole thing. Perhaps, if she acted as though she had not heard him, she would find out that none of it had ever happened. "I'll fix some supper," she whispered. When she walked across the room, she couldn't feel her feet touching the floor. She couldn't feel anything except a slight sickness. She did everything without thinking. She went downstairs to the freezer and took hold of the first object she found."

Mary is in her dazed state until Patrick's dead body hits the floor.  Then Mary comes to and starts operating with cold, hard logic.  

"The violence of the crash, the noise, the small table overturning, helped to bring her out of the shock. She came out slowly, feeling cold and surprised, and she stood for a few minutes, looking at the body, still holding the piece of meat tightly with both hands. All right, she told herself. So I've killed him. It was extraordinary, now, how clear her mind became all of a sudden. She began thinking very fast."

Her mind is clear, and her actions are deliberate.  She sets a plan in motion that gives her an alibi and gets rid of the murder weapon.  And at the end of the day, Mary has successfully gotten away with killing her husband.  

Mary is described over and over again as peaceful.  Although Dahl will suggest in some parts that she is happy, and in others that she is shocked or sorrowful, overall Mary is peaceful woman, hard to ruffle.  She is calm when she kills her husband, calm when ordering groceries, calm when the police arrive.  She is not overally affected by the world around her, which makes us wonder is she exceptionally well-adjusted or just exceptionally disturbed.  Here are Dahl's own words:

There was a slow smiling air about her, and about everything she did.  The drop of a head as she bent over her sewing was curiously tranquil.  Her skin -for this was her sixth month with child-had acquired a wonderful translucent quality, the mouth was soft, and the eyes, with their new placid look, seemed larger darker than before.

And then, after she kills him, she barely reacts except to plan ahead:

The violence of the crash, the noise, the small table overturning, helped bring her out of he shock.  She came out slowly, feeling cold and surprised, and she stood for a while blinking at the body, still holding the ridiculous piece of meat tight with both hands.

All right, she told herself.  So I’ve killed him.

It was extraordinary, now, how clear her mind became all of a sudden. 

The reader learns several things about Mary Maloney in the early parts of the story.  If you are referring to something very concrete about her that the reader learns, then I believe the most important detail is the fact that Mary is six months pregnant.  It's a key detail to the story, because after she kills Patrick, Mary is perfectly willing to take the punishment.  But she doesn't know what will happen to the baby, so she decides to cover up the killing for the sake of her unborn child. 

As the wife of a detective, she knew what the punishment would be. It made no difference to her. In fact, it would be a relief. On the other hand, what about the baby? What were the laws about murderers with unborn children? Did they kill them both -- mother and child? Did they wait until the baby was born? What did they do? Mary Maloney didn't know and she wasn't prepared to take a chance.

The reader also learns that she is desperately in love with Patrick.  She's practically a "Stepford Wife."  Mary is the quintessential doting wife.  She is sitting in the front room eagerly awaiting the arrival of her husband.  He is the reason for her existence.  

The room was warm, the curtains were closed, the two table lamps were lit. On the cupboard behind her there were two glasses and some drinks. Mary Maloney was waiting for her husband to come home from work. Now and again she glanced at the clock, but without anxiety: She merely wanted to satisfy herself that each minute that went by made it nearer the time when he would come home.

Whichever the laws of her particular state, Mary Maloney would still have had a really bleak future had she been found guilty of murdering her husband in Lamb to the Slaughter.

First, she not only killed her husband, but her husband happened to be a police officer. That alone is a huge deal because she would be categorized immediately as a "cop killer" and the punishment that is applied for attacking (let alone KILLING) an officer of the law is twice as harsh.

Second, she concealed evidence. If any of the police officers that were eating the lamb that night had even suspected that the lamb was the murder weapon- and came forward with proof- Mary would have to also face charges for that as well.

Mary would have to go through the horrors of delivering her long-awaited baby in prison, perhaps never get out of prison, and she would have to find a trusted source to give her child under custody.

She would probably never see her child grow up, and her pretty and comfortable home would now be a cold prison cell surrounded by dangerous females that could be cold-hearted and mean to her.

Even worse, Mary could have ended up in death row and really NEVER even have the privilege of any visits from her child. Her family will probably shun her and she would have been all alone and eventually die unhappily.

When you think about it, you almost can understand why she had to come up with a plan.

Mary is the protagonist of "Lamb to the Slaughter" because she is the central character that the story revolves around. While I might be able to argue that Patrick drives the early events of the story, Mary is the character who moves the story toward its climax. Patrick simply isn't alive long enough to be considered a protagonist in the story. The other characters, in addition to getting very little page time, react to Mary and her plan. They do not drive the action of the story. From the point where she clubs Patrick to death with the leg of lamb, Mary is in control of the events that follow. She comes up with, executes, and she gets away with her plan.  

It's also common for a story's protagonist to be someone a reader would root for. Deep down, I think most readers know Mary is getting away with murder/ manslaughter. She's getting away with it through deception, too, although that probably doesn't bother readers as much, if at all. Mary is a protagonist because we are secretly cheering for her and her plan. Every time I read this story, I still hope Mary gets away with it. I sympathize with her and her situation, and I don't want to see her punished for what she did. She's the "good guy," and good guys are usually protagonists. Bad guys are antagonists.

I think the part that I find so fascinating about Mary Maloney's transition from the doting-wife protagonist to the murder-covering antagonist is that the transition is so understandable.  Her entire world revolves around Patrick, and his announcement hits her hard.  It's a completely unexpected blow.  And Mary sits there and takes it.  She even decides to cook dinner for the guy.  No yelling.  No slap to the face.  No walking out of the house to vent to a girlfriend.  Nothing.  

But anybody who has ever had some pent up aggression and/or frustration knows it has to come out somehow, sometime, and somewhere. Patrick's announcement that he isn't hungry is the last straw for Mary.  This time she delivers the unexpected blow . . . literally.  I still don't think of her as a bad guy at this point, though.  Her action doesn't seem out of place.  The following actions, though, get more and more devious and antagonistic.  She's immediately plotting how to get away with the murder.  She cooks the lamb, goes to the store to establish an alibi, comes home, acts shocked to find a dead body, and calls the police.  Still, at this point I'm not totally disgusted with Mary.  I'm horrified, though, at the end.  She feeds the murder weapon to the police and laughs at the fact that the murder weapon will never be found.  Her laugh is either a giggle of joy or a sinister chuckle.  Either way, she's got no remorse in my opinion, which makes her transition to antagonist complete.  

"That's a big bar the murderer must have used to hit poor Patrick. The doctor says the back of his head was broken to pieces.
"That's why the weapon should be easy to find." "Exactly what I say."
"Whoever did it, he can't carry a weapon that big around with him."
"Personally, I think the weapon is somewhere near the house."
"It's probably right under our noses. What do you think, Jack?"
And in the other room, Mary Maloney began to laugh.

This is a super fun question, because imagination is your only limit.  

Let's start with the highly unlikely.  Mary could have been caught, if she confessed to her crime in front of the police.  That's not completely impossible.  After all, that's what happened to the narrator in the "Tell-Tale Heart."  His guilty conscience got the better of him, and he confessed.  Mary might have felt the same way and confessed her crime.  It's not likely though since she was giggling at the fact that the detectives were eating the murder weapon.  

"It's probably right under our noses. What do you think, Jack?" And in the other room, Mary Maloney began to laugh.

I think a more likely possibility for her capture though is a thorough medical examiner combined with a nosy neighbor.  The medical examiner would be able to narrow down the time of death to a small window. A nosy neighbor might have seen Mary leave the house to go to the store and marked the time.  The detectives would then be able to combine those two facts, and they would realize that Mary had to be home at the time of Patrick's death.  In fact, a nosy neighbor isn't completely necessary.  The detectives could check out Mary's alibi and get a rough timing of the situation and realize that Mary was likely home when Patrick was killed.  

Mary Maloney is a happy, contented woman who feels secure and confident in her life.  Roald Dahl describes,

"There was a slow smiling air about her, and about everything she did."

She has a husband that she loves, a routine that she can trust and count on, and joy in the coming baby.  She feels this way because as long as she has been married, the routine has been the same, and she takes comfort in it.  She figures that if that routine exists, all must be well.  She takes the routine as evidence of her happy life and marriage.  So, imagine that you were perfectly content, and confident in the happy life that you lead, and the person you love and worship most in the world, drops a bomb on you by saying they don't love you anymore and are leaving you.  Leaving you, and the baby, to be abandoned and dejected.  This would be totally unexpected, and a complete shock.  So shocking in fact, that it might jar you right out of your normal personality, and bring forth your survival instincts.  Mary reacts without thinking, from the shock, and ends up with a dead husband on her hands.  She realizes what she has done, and is willing to accept the consequences, but, she worries about the child:

"As the wife of a detective, she knew quite well what the penalty would be.  That was fine.  It made no difference to her.  In fact, it would be a relief.  On the other hand, what about the child? "

So, she uses what she has learned from being a detective's wife, and sets up the perfect escape from the crime.  She, in defense of her child, does what she has to do.  So, she changes from a rather passive, contented woman to an active woman who takes charge to protect her own, and the circumstances are what prompted that change.  I hope those thoughts help; good luck!

Sam is the grocery store worker in the story.  The first thing to remember about Sam is that he has no reason to suspect anything is wrong about Mary.  I'm sure it is quite obvious to everybody that knows Mary and Patrick that Mary is absolutely infatuated with her husband, so Mary's run to the store for Patrick makes sense.   

Now and again she glanced at the clock, but without anxiety: She merely wanted to satisfy herself that each minute that went by made it nearer the time when he would come home.

The author makes it clear that Sam knows Mary.  He greets her by name.  The author also makes it clear that Sam knows Patrick, because Sam knows that Patrick likes cake.  

Mary's story about why she is at the store is quite ordinary and mundane.  She and Patrick normally go out, but he didn't feel like it tonight, so she needs some groceries.  She buys things that she would normally buy and acts perfectly cordial the entire time.  

Mary is able to act this way because that's exactly what she is doing -- acting.  Mary spent some time at home making sure her make up was correct and practicing the lines that she would say to Sam.  To answer your question in the simplest way possible, Mary manipulates Sam because she rehearsed the entire scene beforehand.  

Mary shows her observant nature throughout the entire storyline.  We see it first in how she notices that her husband is behaving strangely; he chugs his entire cup of whiskey.  She is so observant that Dahl writes:

"She wasn’t really watching him, but she knew what he had done because she heard the ice cubes falling back against the bottom of the empty glass when he lowered his arm."

Not even looking at her husband, she knows he has downed his drink, which, she notes, is "unusual."  She continues to watch him through the conversation, becoming more alarmed.

Her observant nature continues until the end of the story.  Even as she is sobbing out her story about coming home to discover her husband dead, she takes note of what the detectives say about what the grocer said.  Dahl states that despite "her sobbing she heard a few of the whispered phrases" of the detectives, confirming her alibi and whether they believe it.  As the search for the weapon commences,  she sits in the front room, but listens carefully, and can tell that there were cops everywhere because she could "hear their footsteps."  She even notices as it gets late that the policemen were "growing weary, and a trifle exasperated."  And, as they eat, she listens to their words.  So, she is very observant, from beginning to end.

Her calculating nature comes out more after she commits the crime.  She immediately concocts a plan to cover her tracks, brings the cops into the house, listens to them carefully, and then when they are getting restless, she very carefully manipulates them into taking a drink, and eating the lamb.  Her calculating up through the end of the story works out perfectly, and it is the cops themselves that eat the evidence of the crime.

I hope that those thoughts help; good luck!

I would say that Mary is misjudged in a few ways. 

First, the reader and Patrick believe and accept Mary as a completely mild-mannered and docile individual.  She is portrayed as the perfect doting wife who loves merely to sit in the presence of her husband and see to his every need.  Patrick assumes that he can tell her that he is leaving her for good, and Mary will do nothing about it other than politely accept her lot in life.  Patrick misjudges her capability to become angry enough to kill him.  

The reader misjudges her inner strength and resolve.  At no point in the first half of the story would I have guessed that Mary was capable of not only killing her husband, but also establishing an alibi.  Furthermore, I didn't think she had it in her to get rid of the murder weapon by feeding it to people.  

Lastly, I know the investigating officers misjudge Mary.  I know that she killed Patrick, and I know that she is lying.  The officers do not know those details, and Mary's alibi and docile nature fully convince the officers that she had nothing to do with Patrick's death.  

In fifteen minutes he was back with a page of notes, and there was more whispering, and through her sobbing she heard a few of the whispered phrases – “...acted quite normal...very cheerful...wanted to give him a good supper… peas... cheesecake... impossible that she...” 

Should is a very different verb from will. The end of this excellent short story makes it very clear that Mary Maloney has managed to get away with the murder, as she involves the policemen in hiding the murder weapon for her permanently as they eat the leg of lamb that she has just roasted and given them to eat.

However, if you are looking at the evidence from the reader's point of view, I think there is very definitely a case for her getting off with temporary insanity or something like that. Note how the actual murder is described:

At that point Mary Maloney simply walked up behind him and without any pause she swung the big frozen leg of lamb high in the air and brought it down as hard as she could on the back of his head.

It is clear that this was unpremeditated, and was brought around by the shock of discovering that he was going to leave her. We are also told that she was in "shock" with what she did. Clearly, her position as a pregnant wife who has just found out that her husband is probably having an affair and leaving her for another woman would have enabled her to get off in the hands of a good lawyer. But remember - the beauty of this darkly humorous story is that she is able to provide the perfect alibi for herself and destroy the murder weapon.

In this excellent and darkly humorous short story, Mary Maloney is without a doubt the most interesting character. This story is most frequently taught at college because it is as an excellent example of the use of irony, and what is absolutely key to this is how Dahl builds up his picture of Mary as a loving wife. Consider how she is first introduced:

Now and again she would glance up at the clock, but without anxiety, merely to please herself with the thought that each minute gone by made it nearer the time when he could come. There was a slow smiling air about her, and about everything she did.

Note too how her actions are stereotypical of a loving wife: she greets her husband with a kiss, takes his coat, makes him a drink. Note how Dahl continues to develop this image of her as a loving, perfect wife:

She loved to luxuriate in the presence of this man, and to feel - almost as a sunbather feels the sun - that warm male glow that came out of him to her when they were alone together. She loved him for the way he sat loosely in a chair, for the way he came in a door, or moved slowly across the room with long strides.

This is almost an obsessed kind of love but it serves to set the stage for the situational irony of what is to come. When Patrick Maloney tells her that he is leaving him, she strikes him on the head with a leg of lamb and then shrewdly engineers the removal of the murder weapon and thus all evidence of her crime. Such an act is unexpected and at variance with the image of her that we are led to believe at the beginning of the story, and perhaps suggests the darker message of the story - that love and hate are not so strictly separated after all and that a thin dividing line is all that separates them. Watch out, husbands!

A protagonist is simply a main character in a story, which usually means the character who appears the most often and who is the most integral to the plot. A protagonist also usually needs, and is defined by their relationship with, an antagonist. The antagonist usually wants the opposite of what the protagonist wants.

The protagonist in the short story "Lamb to the Slaughter" is Mary Maloney. She is present throughout the story and is integral to the plot. Indeed, it is her decision to hit her husband across the head with a frozen leg of lamb that creates the dramatic suspense and tension for the rest of the story.

The antagonist to Mary Maloney is Jack Noonan, the sergeant who threatens to uncover the truth about the death of Mary's husband. He, as the antagonist, wants to discover the truth, and Mary, as the protagonist, wants the truth to remain hidden.