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.
Mary Maloney is portrayed at the beginning of the story as a quintessential doting housewife. She exists to make sure her husband's every need is met. Readers can see evidence of this through the fact that she is patiently waiting for Patrick to come home from work. Once he is home, Mary springs into action. She gets Patrick his drink, and then she sits down to patiently wait for Patrick's next need or comment. We are told that this time spent with Patrick is one of her favorite things to do because she gets to luxuriate in his presence. It's actually somewhat gag-worthy that she can be so completely enamored with Patrick. Mary seems to exist to serve her husband, and that paints her as selfless but also as weak-willed. Her desires come secondary.
This initial portrayal of Mary is absolutely critical to her overall characterization because it makes her change that much more drastic. After she kills Patrick, readers see that she is both cunning and creative. Mary figures out a way to establish an alibi and dispose of the murder weapon. We see her thinking in a cold and logical manner that is free of any kind of emotional swooning that we might expect her to do. She is doing all of this for her own freedom as well as the protection of her unborn child, and readers see that she is capable of becoming that fierce and protective mother. She digs out strength reserves that readers were not made aware of in the story's initial paragraphs.
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.
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