‘Dutiful Housewife’ Or ‘Murderous Villain’ – How d

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This essay evaluates whether Mary Maloney was a ‘Dutiful house wife’ or ‘murderous villain’. Mary Maloney murders her husband with a frozen leg of lamb after he informs her that the marriage is over. Before this Mrs Maloney is a devoted house wife whose main aim in life is to tend to her husband’s every need. In this novella Roald Dahl shows a two sided perspective of Mrs Maloney, which shall be evaluated below. Until the time of the murder, the writer suggests that Mary Maloney is a kind, calm and loving housewife who often waits for her husband to come home and showers him with affection. She acted cheerfully as this line suggests. 'There was a slow smiling air about her, and about everything she did'. This proves to the reader that Mary Maloney was a dutiful housewife. Therefore it is hard to understand how all this love and joy could turn to hatred and murderous feelings. Mary Maloney is pregnant when her husband Patrick tells her that he is going to leave her for another woman and naturally this disappoints her. She believes that Patrick is destroying her love for him, therefore she no longer cares about him and decides to kill him. This is her motive for killing her husband. It is clear to the reader that Mary Maloney was provoked by her husband when he said... “I’ve already told you don’t make supper for me. I’m going out”. In addition the writer shows that she did not premeditate the murder in the following sentence Roald Dahl states that…”at that point Marry Maloney simply walked up behind him and without any pause she swung the big frozen leg of lamb”. This is additional evidence to support the fact that she was a dutiful wife who was provoked by her husband. Ironically she kills him with a leg of lamb, which she wanted to use to feed him. However Mary’s behaviour after the murder, suggests that she was a cunning and devious character. Following the

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