Lamb To The Slaughter

“Lamb to the Slaughter” employs satire and irony to challenge the traditional gender roles ubiquitous in the 1950s. By portraying an archetypal homemaker betrayed by her husband, the story highlights the insidious power imbalance created by a “conventional” marriage. Entirely dependent on her husband, Mary Maloney is stripped of her identity, purpose, and social role by her husband’s intended abandonment of her. Within this context, her extreme reaction of murdering her husband seems not only plausible but inevitable. Patrick Maloney’s murder, and the domestic events preceding the murder, develop the themes of Loyalty and Betrayal and The Imbalance of Traditional Gender Roles. The murder weapon—a leg of lamb—is an important symbol that supports the text’s central themes. The theme of Food, Drink, and Domesticity punctuates the text.

Dahl establishes an atmosphere of peaceful domesticity only to subvert it. The story opens with a setting suggestive of serenity and order. The limited third-person narrator describes an immaculate living room in a comfortable, middle-class home. The