Skip to main content

How is Mary misjudged in "Lamb to the Slaughter" by Roald Dahl?

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...” 


Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Is there a word/phrase for "unperformant"?

As a software engineer, I need to sometimes describe a piece of code as something that lacks performance or was not written with performance in mind. Example: This kind of coding style leads to unmaintainable and unperformant code. Based on my Google searches, this isn't a real word. What is the correct way to describe this? EDIT My usage of "performance" here is in regard to speed and efficiency. For example, the better the performance of code the faster the application runs. My question and example target the negative definition, which is in reference to preventing inefficient coding practices. Answer This kind of coding style leads to unmaintainable and unperformant code. In my opinion, reads more easily as: This coding style leads to unmaintainable and poorly performing code. The key to well-written documentation and reports lies in ease of understanding. Adding poorly understood words such as performant decreases that ease. In addressing the use of such a poorly ...

Is 'efficate' a word in English?

I routinely hear the word "efficate" being used. For example, "The most powerful way to efficate a change in the system is to participate." I do not find entries for this word in common English dictionaries, but I do not have an unabridged dictionary. I have checked the OED (I'm not sure if it is considered unabridged), and it has no entry for "efficate". It does have an entry for "efficiate", which is used in the same way. Wordnik has an entry for "efficate" with over 1800 hits, thus providing some evidence for the frequency of use. I personally like the word and find the meaning very clear and obvious when others use it. If it's not currently an "officially documented" word, perhaps its continued use will result in it being better documented.