
Roald Dahl is a very well-known children’s story writer. His stories became extremely popular due to the dark humor woven throughout; this demented attitude made them attractive and definitely entertaining. His short story, Lamb to the Slaughter, does an excellent job of displaying his cold sense of humor, as well as highlighting many important concepts and lessons that are not very well understood by our society. These lessons conveyed iconic messages such as betrayal in long term relationships and how people react to high stress situations. For instance,  in high stress situations, there is usually a “fight or flight” response that is triggered in order to save the individual’s life. When paired with the betrayal of a long-term relationship, it can often turn hostile because there is an added element of anger and disheartenment involved. Once these two concepts mix, it is a Molotov cocktail of emotions just waiting to go off. In Roald Dahl’s story, Mrs. Maloney is put into a very high stress situation when her husband announces that he is going to leave her. It is a shock at any point to hear this information, but she takes it especially hard considering how attached she is to her husband. Mrs. Maloney is thrust into a very unwanted situation of betrayal which leaves her with an ultimate feeling of stress now wondering what is to become of her life, and what is to be done with their unborn child. Roald Dahl uses his dark sense of humor in order to highlight and explain why Mrs. Maloney acts the way she does when placed in a high stress situation once it is announced that her husband has committed an ultimate betrayal of deciding to leave her. 

The first concept that we need to address is dealing with problems in a high stress situation. In Roald Dahl’s story “lamb to the slaughter, Mrs. Maloney is faced with the horrific news that the love of her life wants to divorce her, all the while with a baby on the way. Arguably the most important part of the receival of this news is how unstable Mrs. Maloney is. It is very apparent in the story the Mr. Maloney is her entire life, and she waits on him hand and foot and we see this when Dahl writes, “she glanced at the clock, but without anxiety: she merely wanted to satisfy herself that each minute that went by made it nearer the time when he would come home” (Dahl 1). This fact is very important when we break down her reaction to the news that her husband is leaving her. Coupled with the fact she is a new mother, her maternal instincts must have also greatly influenced why she reacted so harshly. When she received the news, her reaction was silence. The simple and her announcement that she would prepare dinner. It is a very odd response in this situation because most normal people would scream, yell, or try to argue in order to revive the marriage. Unfortunately for Mr. Maloney there is no talk or discussion, just a blind rage that stems from the sudden stress that has fallen onto the shoulders of Mrs. Maloney. She steps down into the cellar to prepare dinner as an attempt to go back to the way things were. This is a type of coping; she feels that if she just does their normal routine that everything will be fine. Mrs. Maloney is not a stupid woman, and at some point in that decent into the cellar, she realized that no matter what she does, their marriage is permanently severed. Now with her head spinning on account of having so much to worry about, she grabs this large leg of lamb, rock solid from the freezer, and takes it upstairs to prepare. Overtaken by a fit of rage, she takes a baseball swing right at his head. When it hits its mark, the leg of lamb acts as strong as a steel bar and crushes his skull in one fluid motion. Mrs. Maloney is a little shocked at herself when she realizes what she has done. Noting how unstable she is, we cannot ignore that an event such as this was more than likely to happen. She was not able to deal with the stress of the situation and it therefore was converted to a blind rage which lead to the murder of her husband. To understand why she acted the way she did, we must dive into the topic of stress and how people have learned to cope with it. 

In order to understand the reasons behind Mrs. Maloney’s reaction, we must look at the term stress reaction. Stress reaction is defined as “the state of physiological or emotional arousal that usually, but not inevitably, results from the perception of stress or demand” (Thoits 54). Now for Mrs. Maloney, her emotional arousal was off the charts. She is a new mother who just received the news that her husband is going to leave her which leaves her shocked and devastated. So this high stress situation warrants a big reaction, and that is exactly what Mrs. Maloney does. There are three main types of stressors that people experience on a day to day basis; “life events, chronic strains, and daily hassles (Thoits 54). Mrs. Maloney’s experience falls into the small category of life events, specifically big ones. Buying a house, looking for a new job, and making large investments are all good examples of big life events that fall into this category. These big life events are definitely some of the most strenuous on one’s mental health. “A number of studies show that negative life events produce significant increases in emotional problems” which shows that Mrs. Maloney had one of the difficult situations thrown at her in an already stressful time of raising a baby (Thoits 55). Now that we have acknowledged that Mrs. Maloney has been thrust into one of the most stressful and hurtful experiences of her life, we must now look at what makes her way of coping with the unfortunate news so poor, and we can look at what she could have done. 

One of the most essential and effective ways to cope with stress is empathetic coping. This type of coping focuses mainly on relationship related stress. What the goal of this is, is that the more empathetic you are, the more prosperous the relationship is going to be (Friedman 148). It is essentially the “walk a mile in someone else’s shoes” idea in order to better understand everything that is happening. Once you see the other person’s perspective, it makes it easier to address the problem in a productive way rather than to scream and yell, and in Mrs. Maloney’s case, kill your significant other. Another key to practice empathetic coping is to read in between the lines of what your significant other is saying. When you look closely at what they are saying, you can see the reason why, as well as what the hidden meaning is. This careful understanding is very important in having a strong and happy relationship. Research shows that using this method of coping to deescalate arguments between spouses leads to an “increase in relationship satisfaction” which in turn, makes everything about the relationship better (Freidman 148). It is essential to recognize that Mrs. Maloney could have used this tactic in order to avoid her heinous crime. Now that we have seen how stress affects Mrs. Maloney, we have to look at how betrayal in a committed relationship can affect a person’s mental health, so much so that it can lead to a fit of rage so great that you kill someone. 

Getting your heart broken is one of the toughest and emotionally straining events of a relationship. A heart break comes in all shapes and sizes, but it all hurts the same whether it is getting dumped or cheated on. When you are cheated on, it hurts at such a deep level because it is a blatant act of betrayal. A very selfish and cruel way to hurt someone, but it always seems to keep its nasty head around throughout time. This type of betrayal is just a lack of self control as well as lack of regard for other individual’s feelings. When you cheat, it’s just out of a selfish want for something you perceive as better. These kinds of people do not recognize that love is an effort and takes time to build and strengthen it. Also, there needs to be a recognition that times will not always be good, and that you need to push through the bad times to get to the good ones. We can see in “Lamb to the Slaughter” that Mr. Maloney has no regard or empathy for his pregnant wife, because he just tells her the news so nonchalantly. Now that we have entered a new age of gathering information and studying ourselves, there is more time to look into emotions of people and see how they are affected by big life events. Now we can look at emotions from a scientific and sometimes numerical stance. Close relationships are some of the most important things that influence our psychological health and Douglas writes that “close relationships are of vital importance to psychological well being and adjustment” (Douglas 964). Since this has such a large affect on our mental health, we can see why Mrs. Maloney committed such an evil crime after learning that her relationship was about to fall apart. In the case of the Maloneys, we can see that neither of them are capable of talking about their relationship like adults and fix their problems. Those who cannot deal with conflict well are often the ones who commit these acts of betrayal. When we draw parallels between these two issues, we often see this. The ability to betray your significant other also stems from the thought that you are superior to them, and that their feelings do not matter. There was an interesting study about relationship violence and abuse in homosexual relationships that showed this feeling superiority coming into play. This study shows that it is not just a heterosexual issue, but an issue that falls over all types of relationships. This study would lead us to believe that Mr. Maloney was an emotionally abusive spouse to his wife which would explain why Mrs. Maloney took such extreme actions after hearing that after all the abuse she had endured, he was just going to drop her and leave her life. This may prove that Mr. Maloney is a bad person, but that does not change the fact the Mrs. Maloney still committed a very evil crime in response to it. The reason Mr. Maloney was able to abuse his wife so easily is because in society we promote a “hierarchy power differential, inequality, and violence” which is why abuse is so prevalent (Kaschak 2). This hierarchy stems from a need to have a leader of the pack. In this case the leader is Mr. Maloney, and we can see this by the way his wife acts like a maid. She sits quietly knitting waiting for him to come home, literally counting down the minutes. Then once he comes home she gets him a drink and asks him if she should start preparing dinner. It is a completely one sided relationship which is really unfortunate for Mrs. Maloney. This lopsided relationship can only ever lead to an end. Mrs. Maloney seems to be the only one trying at all to make it work, although her methods might be the very reason their relationship does not work. She sits very submissive and avoids confrontation at all costs which leads to a big bubble of emotions on both sides that grows until it finally pops with the news from Mr. Maloney. Now that we have covered the two concepts of stress and dealing with it and how betrayal affects people, we now need to look at how Roald Dahl uses his dark humor to highlight these two issues. 

In “Lamb to the Slaughter” Dahl uses his twisted sense of humor to show how stress and betrayal affect us by illustrating us a very extreme example of how people react to these big life changing events. In an attempt to cover up the murder of her husband, Mrs. Maloney formulates a very simple plan in order to give herself an airtight alibi. She fixes herself up and practices her lines to say to the grocery store clerk and makes sure to put the murder weapon in the oven before she leaves. While at the store she talks to the clerk for a decent amount of time, making small talk as to make sure that there is no doubt he will remember her being there. Once she establishes her alibi, she gets home and makes herself believe that her husband was killed by someone else and she cries true tears when she “finds him” lying on the floor with his skull bashed in. She calls down to the station and police are at her house in a flash. While they are investigating, Dahl makes sure that they mention how they cannot find the murder weapon anywhere and that they comment it had to have been a very large and hard object. After she tells the officers the story about how she found him dead in their house after she went to the store, she offers them all a nice stiff drink in an attempt to keep them from making any unwanted connections. Where Dahl uses his dark humor comes up when she feeds the murder weapon to the police. This is the cherry on top of the murder sundae that Mrs. Maloney has made. While they sit and discuss what and where the murder weapon, it is literally under their noses and they are destroying the evidence they are looking for. It is so dark that one cannot help but find this comical because of how ridiculous the situation is. The exchanges are hilarious because they all come to the conclusion that the weapon has to be on the premises and it had to be big so there is no way that they could not find it. All this while Mrs. Maloney is in the other room giggling at how these men are eating the murder weapon and in turn helping her get away with murder. This is where we find that Mrs. Maloney really is a very dark person because she is laughing at the fact she is literally getting away with murder. 

“Lamb to the Slaughter” is a very dark story that is written in order to show an extreme case of what happens in times of high stress and the news of betrayal. Roald Dahl uses his twisted humor with a “shock and awe” type tactic to drive home how much betrayal hurts people, and once they are betrayed, the stress and reactions that come from it. Mary Maloney had a massive fit of anger stemming from the betrayal of her husband. She was so used to being pushed around by her husband who acted as if he was the dictator of their home. She finally got tired of his abuse and took a stand to defend herself, by murdering him. While this is definitely not the answer to fix one’s problems, Dahl uses Mary Maloney to be an extreme example for literary purposes. We can see that she is an extreme case because she obviously is an unstable individual already by the way she put up with all of Mr. Maloney’s abuse. We can also see how unstable she is when she starts laughing about the police officers eating the murder weapon. This is what makes the story so dark is that they are probably eating some brain matter because the leg of lamb crushed his skull. In high stress situations people are often brought to do crazy things because their fight or flight reaction is called into play, but Mary Maloney lost all control because of how high her stress levels were and took the life of her soon to be ex husband. She now can live the rest of her life with the delusion that he was murdered and was not able to leave her so he could remarry. In effect, she declared that if she could not have him, no one could with that one fatal swing of a leg of lamb. 
