Roald Dahl did not seem especially interested in making a statement about man's (or woman's) capacity for violence. Someone had suggested the idea for a short story in which a woman kills her husband with a frozen leg of lamb and then destroys the murder weapon by roasting it and serving it to the investigating police officers. That was the quirky kind of plot this author liked, and the kind that is associated with Roald Dahl. In order to make the plot work, Dahl had to make it seem plausible that a mousy little woman like Mary Maloney would suddenly change character so drastically that she would succumb to a fit of rage and bash her adored husband Patrick over with the head with the frozen leg of lamb she happened to be holding. The story was not intended to illustrate the idea that man (or woman) had a strong capacity for violence; rather, it had to take this capacity for violence as a fact, a "given." We readers are startled when Mary suddenly hits Patrick over the head, but we do not protest that it is totally out of character.
At that point, Mary Maloney simply walked up behind him and without any pause she swung the big frozen leg of lamb high in the air and brought it down as hard as she could on the back of his head.
She might just as well have hit him with a steel club.
She stepped back a pace, waiting, and the funny thing was that he remained standing there for at least four or five seconds, gently swaying. Then he crashed to the carpet.
Dahl doesn't try to justify her action; he just makes it happen. If we accept this sudden change in Mary's character, we go along with her next act, which is to protect herself from getting arrested by setting up an alibi and destroying the murder weapon. Mary not only becomes more realistic as a character, but she actually becomes more likeable. She is an example of "The worm turns." She was behaving like a slave, a doormat. We respect her more when she displays an independent spirit. She resembles Mrs. Foster in Roald Dahl's story "The Way Up to Heaven," who discovers that her cunning, sadistic husband has been tormenting her for years and is responsible for his death in a stalled private elevator but is never even suspected of the crime.
In both "Lamb to the Slaughter" and "The Way Up to Heaven" the perpetrator gets away with her crime because no one would ever suspect that such meek, martyred women would ever react with such violence. In other words, Dahl is not suggesting that man, or woman, had a great capacity for violence, but that man, or woman, generally does not have a great capacity for violence. So when a meek and mild person commits a violent crime, he or she has a good chance of getting away with it.
The same is true in another well-known and frequently anthologized short story, "The Catbird Seat" by James Thurber. Meek and mild little Erwin Martin wins his conflict with Ulgine Barrows by doing something he would never do. She comes storming into Mr. Fitweiler's office the next morning and creates a scene in which she screams:
"Is the little rat denying it? You can't get away with that! You drank and smoked in my apartment and you know it! You called Mr. Fitweiler an old windbag and said you were going to blow him up when you got coked to the gills on your heroin!....If you weren't such a drab, ordinary little man I'd think you planned it all. Sticking your tongue out, saying you were sitting in the catbird seat, because you thought no one would believe it when I told it! My God, it's really too perfect!....Can't you see how he's tricked up, you old fool? Can't you see his little game?"
"Is the little rat denying it? He can't get away with that! You drank and smoked in my apartment," she bawled at Mr. Martin," and you know it. You called Mr. Fitweiler an old windbag and said you were going to blow him up when you got coked to the gills on your heroin!....If you weren't such a drab, ordinary little man I'd think you'd planned it all. Sg your
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