One of the things that makes “Lamb to the Slaughter” so unlike a typical murder mystery is that it revolves around the murderer, rather than the detective or the victim. This perspective helps with the telling of the murder, making it seem more unexpected. It also emphasises the complete role-reversal between the two characters – you would expect the killer to be Patrick and the victim to be Mary. Would you expect a person who “now and again…would glance up at the clock…merely to please herself with the thought that each minute gone by made it closer to the time when he would come home” (he being the person she is going to kill!). She seems like a loving, caring housewife, waiting for her husband to come home. Hardly capable of murder. Dahl might be writing this story to be anti-stereotypical of the murder mystery that creates a fierce, dark murderer. He describes her as having a “slow smiling air about her and everything she does”. He goes on to describe her more, using phrases like “curiously tranquil”, “her skin had acquired a wonderful translucent quality”. What seems most unusual about her is that she is a pregnant murderer. Completely the opposite of Captain Murderer. She kills her husband because of the bad news he tells her. We never actually find out what the bad news is, but I think it is that he is leaving her: “he went further and further away from her with each word”. She doesn’t want to be caught because she would be executed with the baby inside her, she doesn’t care for herself, “in fact, it would be a relief”, but she doesn’t want the baby to die. This is her motivation for avoiding capture. I do feel slightly sympathetic for her, I think this is Dahl’s intention. She obviously thought she had a perfect life with a good house, a loving husband, and a baby on the way, but all of this was destroyed by Patrick.
At the scene of the crime, there is a very calm and relaxed atmosphere: “the room was warm and clean”. However, this might make it appear a little sinister or suspicious and tension creating. I can understand why her husband wants to leave her, she tries too hard and fusses over him too much. I think that Dahl intends this effect, she does appear a bit obsessive, even though he doesn’t describe her in this way.
The ritual in “Captain Murderer” is quite disturbing, not only his actions, but also his sick and unashamed jokes about what he is doing: “he laughed at his ferocious practical joke in a horrid manner”. The details of the ritual add to the suspense of the story quite significantly. When he marries the dark twin, you are wondering, as you read, how far he is going to get with her before he manages to overthrow him and be victorious.
The way Dahl develops Mary’s character makes her very interesting. She goes from being a loving housewife, to a psychopathic woman wielding a frozen leg of lamb, just about to bring it down on her husbands head, and finally to a very cold and calculating person, covering her tracks perfectly by destroying the evidence and getting an alibi.
The change in character is amazing. Who would have thought that the woman who “at that point…simply walked up behind him and without any pause…swung the frozen leg of lamb in the air and brought it down as hard as she could on the back of his head” was the same woman I described earlier on?
The strange thing about Mary is that instead of reacting to the terrible crime she has committed , she merely says “alright, so I’ve killed him”. the change in her character happens immediately at this point. “it was extraordinary now, how clear her mind became all of a sudden, she began thinking very fast”. She doesn’t even mind that the death penalty is acceptable. This is not the general frame of mind of a loving housewife who just killed her husband. She is either completely in control of the situation, thinking ahead to how she is going to cover it up, or in shock and denial. I think it is a bit of both.
The detectives run a rather disorderly case, and don’t find out who the murderer is. They are pretty sloppy – Mary manipulates them into having some whiskey, which limits their powers of deduction so that when they are eating the murder weapon, they don’t realise it. They don’t base any of their time at the house thinking about the other aspects of a murder case, such as the motive or how the murderer got into the house, they spend all of their time looking for the murder weapon. They also don’t pick up on Mary’s odd, manipulative behaviour.
When the dark twin is suspicious of Captain Murderer, she plans to marry him so that she can get her revenge without being suspect. Dickens deliberately creates a moment of bathos in the story when the dark twin dies. We expect her to do something heroic like killing the Captain putting him into the pie, and feeding it to the blacksmith or something along those lines, but the climax of the story is saved for the very end. The reader would probably feel let down by the death of the twin, but I think that Dickens puts the story together very carefully and thoughtfully, telling it exactly as a child would.
In “Lamb to the Slaughter”, Mary gets away with murdering her husband, but I don’t find this unsatisfying. The ending is untypical of a murder mystery on the surface, because the murderer gets away with it, but if you think about it, the story is based around the murderer – we become accustomed to her character and might even like her. In the end, she comes out on top, just like a normal story. The only difference is that she is the murderer, not the detective. Dahl has engineered the story to make the reader feel as if nothing is missing, whereas the main element of a murder mystery – justice – is absent. However, justice could have taken form in the murder, depending on what her husband told her.
In “Captain Murderer”, there is what is known as “poetic justice”, when the murderer is put to justice without a court of law enforcing it. It is a little disappointing that the dark twin dies, but I suppose that if there wasn’t a bit of a twist in the tale, the story would have been rather boring. This isn’t usually what happens in a murder mystery. I don’t particularly like murder mysteries to end in a typical way – the culprit is put to justice and everyone else lives happily ever after. It is a bit too regimented and predictable.
The most exciting part of “Lamb to the Slaughter” is from just after she kills Patrick onwards. This is a very long climax, all the way thorough it, the reader is wondering whether the detectives will be able to find out whether it was her. Dahl creates a very tense atmosphere, filled with suspense. This makes it very different to the traditional murder mystery because in a traditional murder mystery, the atmosphere of suspense is about who actually committed the murder, not really about whether the detectives will find them out or not. When she says “that’s the way…do everything right and natural. Keep things absolutely natural and there’ll be no need for acting at all”, this creates an atmosphere of tension because we are wondering if she will be able to do this.
Another tense moment in the story is when Mary offers Sergeant Noonan a drink. One would think that he would have clocked on to this blatant attempt to get him tipsy, “why don’t you have one yourself? Please do. You’ve been very good to me”, but he doesn’t become suspicious and accepts the drink.
“Captain Murderer” also has its moments of tension. The most prominent is when Dickens begins to describe what happens to the Captain after he ate the dark twin. “but before she began to roll out the paste, she had taken a deadly poison of the most awful character” was a particular point which made me want to carry on reading. Another exciting part is just before the dark twin gets killed, the reader is expecting her to do something heroic and kill the Captain. “And that day month, she rolled the pie crust out…” but Dickens then creates an anticlimax – “and Captain Murderer cut her head off, and chopped her in pieces”. Dickens makes up for this anti-climax, however, in the next paragraph.
The fact that high society in Captain Murderer were often married “in a coach and twelve” gives us a clear indication that it was set in Victorian times. We can tell that “Lamb to the Slaughter” was set in the ‘50’s because they had a thermos bucket, something which was common in this sort of time period. I think that the women in the two stories behave in a way that is fairly typical of their time. Mary Maloney hasn’t got a job and stays at home, waiting for her husband to return from work. She acts almost like a servant for him “darling, shall I get your slippers?” and “Darling , would you like me to get you some cheese?”
The women in “Captain Murderer” are also quite typical of their time. They all marry him for his wealth and are expected to know how to make pies. “and if she couldn’t, by nature or education, she was taught.”
To conclude, there are many similarities in the two stories. They are both untypical murder mysteries: in each, the wife kills the husband because of his cruel intentions; food plays a very dark and sinister role; both have what might be interpreted as a subtle, feminist subtext; there is a ritualistic element; both murderers get away with it; and both are written by authors writing differently to their normal style, and, particularly, context. There are also many differences between the two: one is a mock fairytale, told as though a child was reciting it. The other involves policemen trying to solve the case, which makes it more realistic. One features just one murder whereas the other has several. The heroine sacrifices herself in “Captain Murderer”, whereas Mary is a more conniving character, and manages to evade capture. The murder she carries out happens on the spur of the moment, and may have been caused by a temporary loss of mental stability. In “Captain Murderer”, the killing is done through a disturbing ritual, by a complete madman who undergoes no change in character. Descriptions of atmosphere, characters, and feeling are much more prominent in “Lamb to the Slaughter”, whereas the main focus of “Captain Murderer” is on the story line and description of the ritual.
