Cute, Fuzzy Lambs

Let me guess. You’re here because you saw the cute lamb picture. A word of warning: if you like lambs, please turn away now.

(SPOILER ALERT) *This probably doesn’t even apply because all of you have definitely read this short story before. If I realized that I read it before in 8th grade I wouldn’t have picked it. Kudos to my forgetful brain, now we have a blog about it.

Lamb to the Slaughter by Roald Dahl is about a wife killing her husband after she learns that he’s divorcing her. Morbid right. What’s funny is that the police come and none of them suspect her. They even eat the murder weapon(leg of lamb) as Mary laughs next door. 

Interestingly, Lamb to the Slaughter is far from the only story where Dahl incorporates black comedy. He’s known for it, in fact. His most famous work to use it, James and the Giant Peach, became a massively successful children’s story. Dahl uses it to bring humor to dark issues such as death, drugs, and divorce – topics that still were taboo in the 1950’s when this story was published.

Actually the 1950’s were an interesting time in American culture; this post-WW2 era saw a regression of women’s roles in society back to more familial roles as soldiers reasserted their “superior” place in society after coming back from the war. Dahl strengthens these expectations by examining the subservient relationship between Mary and her husband and then subverts them through her deadly transition. 

Before this transition point, Patrick(the husband) was literally a god to Mary. Once her husband finally comes home, Mary is characterized as someone who “loved 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…”(23). Her description as a “sunbather” emphasizes how she completely relies on the source of power within the home, the “sun” and also shows foreshadows the husband’s complete lack of compassion when he asks for a divorce as a sunbather doesn’t mean anything to the sun, who has millions of them. 

A critical paper titled Feminism in Roald Dahl’s Lamb to a Slaughter, likewise agrees with the lopsided dynamic between Mary and Patrick. There are two main interactions that highlight this. One is when her husband first comes home, Mary stops everything she’s doing and serves her husband’s every needs. “She laid aside her sewing, stood up, and went forward to kiss him as he came in”(13-14). “She took his coat and hung it in the closet. Then she walked over and made the drinks, a strongish one for him, a weak one for herself”(17-18). If we didn’t already know of the husband/wife relationship, we might’ve assumed that Mary was a maid serving her master.

Perhaps it would’ve been better if the relationship were that way as Patrick wouldn’t have the chance to devastate her life by suggesting a divorce while Mary was still pregnant! And, his inability to empathize with a person who he considers below himself is on full display when he robs Mary of her only coping mechanism: her routine. Going back to her routine is her way of maintaining deniability while her reality was falling apart. She goes to the cellar and grabs a leg of lamb to prepare a meal for him like she always had and when Patrick says he’s going out, that’s the final straw for Mary. She brings the leg of lamb hard on his head, instantly killing him, while also transforming into a calculated, intelligent person by planning out her alibi, getting rid of the murder weapon, and manipulating the police. Dahl suggests through this transition that women have more potential than they are given credit for, in this case, to Mary’s advantage. 

I’ll briefly interrupt the feminism narrative by talking about the most important symbol in this story. The lamb of course! I mean c’mon, Lamb to the Slaughter? You could already go in several directions with that, the lamb a symbol of innocence, ironically, as the murder weapon, Mary seen as an innocent, grieving wife and so overlooked along with the leg of lamb which the police eat, and finally, Patrick, the unsuspecting victim, being led to his slaughter. Roald Dahl was dark but boy was he a genius. 

After the murder is where Mary shines. She first taps into her ability to exist in two different realities, one where she’s still the loving wife of Patrick, as a show for the grocery man to create her alibi. The description from the grocery man is key to absolving Mary from suspicion as her cheerful persona made it “impossible” for her to have murdered Patrick (206). Then, she coerces the police to drink on the job(diminishing their judgment) and her biggest achievement, having the police eat the murder weapon. Of course, the complete exclusion of Mary being considered as a suspect isn’t all her doing. Based on what females were seemingly capable of in the 50’s and Mary’s characterization in the beginning of the story, the police were right to dismiss the possibility. So, they had no chance of finding the murderer when they were looking for the weapon to reveal who the “man” was (226).

Interestingly, I find that Dahl created Mary to be more relatable than any other character in the story. I’m not justifying her murder or anything, but she was a 6-month pregnant wife who had her life shattered by an ungrateful husband. She would’ve actually accepted the death penalty but chose to live on for her unborn child. As Dahl does best, he provides social commentary on the hypocrisy of women’s roles in society with a murder that galvanizes everyone’s attention. Women were expected to be subservient yet, I believe that is the exact reason Patrick chooses to leave her because she is uninteresting. Ironically, she develops into a full personality after she sacrifices(a euphemism for murders) her husband, a reversal of roles for the lamb and women. 

The short movie released in 1979 is more apt at providing evidence for this theory.

I bet you won’t see lamb in the same way again.