This document provides an analysis and summary of Roald Dahl's short story "Lamb to the Slaughter". It discusses the plot, where Mary Maloney kills her husband Patrick with a frozen leg of lamb after he tells her he wants to leave her. When the police investigate, Mary serves them the lamb for dinner without their realizing it is the murder weapon. The document also discusses feminist literary criticism and Elaine Showalter's theories of feminist literary phases including feminist critique, gynocriticism, and gender theory, and how these lenses could analyze the story's portrayal of gender roles and patriarchy.

1. AN ANALYSIS OF ‘LAMB TO
SLAUGHTER’

2. SUMMARY
• Mary Maloney, a devoted seemingly obsessed and pregnant
housewife, expects her husband Patrick to return home from
his job as a local police detective.
• When he returns, Mary notices that he is strangely aloof and
assumes that he was tired from work.
• Patrick finally reveals to Mary what is making him act
strangely.
• Dahl does not reveal what is discussed, but it is presumed by
many that Patrick tells Mary that he was going to leave her
for another woman.

3. SUMMARY
•Seemingly in a trance, Mary fetches a large leg of lamb from the
deep-freezer in the cellar to cook for their dinner.
• Patrick angrily tells Mary not to make him any dinner, as he is
going out.
•She strikes Patrick in the back of the head with the frozen lamb
leg, killing him.
•Mary realizes that she has killed Patrick and has to create a story
to tell the detectives.
•She prepares the leg of lamb that she has killed her husband with
and places it in the oven to somewhat destroy the evidence.
•After practicing a cheerful routine, she visits the grocer to
establish an alibi. Upon returning, she enters the room with her
dead husband lying on the floor and calls the police.

4. SUMMARY
• When the police (who are all friends of her husband) arrive, they
ask Mary questions and look at the scene.
• Considering Mary above suspicion the police conclude that
Patrick was killed with a large blunt object, likely made of metal.
• After a fruitless search around the house and surrounding area,
Mary is reminded the leg is cooking, and offers it to the
policemen, which after hesitating they accept.
• During the meal they discuss the murder weapon's possible
location.
• One officer says it is "Probably right under our very noses".
• Mary overhears the last line and begins to giggle.

5. THEORIES FROM PROMINENT WRITER

6. GENDER THEORY
• Elaine Showalter describes the development of Feminist theory as
having a number of phases.
• The first she calls "feminist critique" - where the feminist reader
examines the ideologies behind literary phenomena.
• The second Showalter calls ’Gynocrytics’ - where the "woman is
producer of textual meaning" including "the psychodynamic of
female creativity; linguistics and the problem of a female
language; the trajectory of the individual or collective female
literary career and literary history".
• The last phase she calls "gender theory" - where the "ideological
inscription and the literary effects of the sex/gender system’’ are
explored."

7. SHOWALTER’S VIEWS ON GENDER THEORY
• Lastly and most recently are developments of an over-arching
gender theory, which considers gender, both male and female, as
a social construction upon biological differences.
• Gender theory proposes to explore "ideological inscription and
the literary effects of the sex/gender system," and as many
advantages, opening up the literary theory stage and bringing in
questions of masculinity into feminist theory.
• Also, taking gender as a fundamental analytic category brings
feminist criticism from the margin to the center, though risks
depoliticizing the study of women.

8. FEMINIST CRITICISM
• ‘Lamb to Slaughter’ is written in a manner which deteriorates the values of
women.
• Mary Maloney is a housewife, who is six months pregnant.
• She loves her husband very much. “She sets down her sewing … took his coat
and hung it in the closet” (Dahl 318).
• That is a very descriptive quote about the style if how this story was written.
• It says two things. One that women stay at home and sew all day, which is a
stereotype, and two, that she is there two serve.
• She is always trying to be comforting to Patrick.
• For example, upon reaching Patrick who has just come back form works, she
asks to prepare food for him which he refused repeatedly.
• In relation with what Showalter has said in gender theories, this shows how a
woman IS portrayed to carry the woman roles, socially as a housewife.

9. FEMINIST CRITICISM
• Mary Maloney is a victim of Patrick’s disrespect and verbal abuse.
“For God’s Sake” (Dahl 319) and “Sit Down” (Dahl 319) were
some of the disrespectful things and commands yelled at her.
• Dahl wrote this in a way in which Patrick orders her to do things
when she is being polite and courteous to him.
• Patrick has obviously shows the quality of patriarchy were man
overpowers woman.
• He has little respect for her and snaps at her when she offers him
food and drinks.
• This leads her to kill him because she couldn’t take it anymore.
He just overwhelmed her.

10. FEMINIST CRITICISM
• After she kills him and the investigators come, they were,
“exceptionally nice to her” (Dhal 322) automatically rendering her
and unlikely suspect because she is a woman.
• She, in the minds of the investigators, is to frail or weak to do such a
thing.
• She offers them drinks and food making her less likely than she
already was, which was pretty much innocent, to be the murderer.
• They give her special treatment because she is a woman and don’t
investigate her as much as they would if she was a man.

11. FEMINIST CRITICISM
• This story, “Lamb to the Slaughter”, singles out the
woman making her be regarded as a servant and
inferior, disrespectfully treated and spoken to by her
husband, and unable to commit a crime because she
is a woman, while being given special treatment by
the investigators because of her gender.

12. THE END