Dahl’s “a Lamb to the Slaughter” and Glaspell’s “a Jury of Her Peers”: Twisted Housewives

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man that she “loved to luxuriate in the presence [of]”(Dahl, 131). Also after committing the crime, she has to find away to make this situation look like she didn’t know it happened because “she [isn’t] expecting to find any of it”(Dahl, 133). So she makes sure she’s “[d]o[ing] everything right and natural ... [so] there’ll be no need for any acting at all (Dahl, 133). This expressing how Mary Maloney is making sure that she’s crisp with every move so she doesn’t get caught by using her intelligence. Just like Mary, the author observes how Mrs.Peter and Mrs.Hale bond together to dispose of the evidence tying Minnie Foster to the crime. For all the women within the stories to actually get away with the crime, they’ll have it surpass the standard of living given to women during the time period. During the 1950’s, before the women’s right movement, women are expected to be co-dependent of the only working figure in the house, the husband. Wives during the time have to stay with their husband no matter how bad the actions committed by them were. It is in this society of women oppression that was similar to that in “Jury”, where women are located in an isolated area in which they are lonely and or have the neighbor to interact with. It was these molds that both Mary Maloney, Mrs.Hale, Mrs.Peters, and Minnie Foster had to break in order to commit the perfect crime underneath the noses of the men. Overall, eluding the fact that women rain above men in conflict because of smart they are and by sticking with their own gender.

“A Lamb to the Slaughter” and “A Jury of Her Peers,” reveals how the author uses symbols to challenge the females in both short stories causing motivation to group together and or use necessary actions of intelligence. “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 back down as hard as she could on the back of his head,” it is after this swing that lamb symbolized a murder weapon but also dinner and a domestication of an animal as she throws the lamb into the oven after using it to kill her husband then come to the time to destroy the facts, the other police officers arrive and eat the food she originally made for husband (Dahl,132). Another appearance of a domesticated animal is shown in Minnie Foster’s canary that she got representing her life of Minnie Foster and not Mrs.Wright but also it represents the lively change in her life that caused her to kill her husband, Mr,Wright. Minnie Foster is described to be this young girl that wore “pretty clothes” and be “one of the town girls, singing in the choir”(Glaspell,123). To now a women that is left with dirty towels, a husband that doesn’t want her to have a phone, terrible old clothing and the lose of her singing ability. Both short stories also are written from a limited omnition view leading to the deeper understanding of every move of the housewife. The housewife, however, is dangerous and mis-read as they are co-dependent at first but end up breaking the law in various types of ways in groups together or with their wit. Thus concluding how the symbols motive the females to overcome the disadvantage in the stories with their smarts and numbers.

Each story shows the under value give to the women specifically in the life of crime and through irony, women show that they are higher than the standard given by society. his wife of the cop, Mary Maloney, is seen by the reader to be a loving and typical housewife that waits for her husband at the front door and is ready to accommodate every request. During this representation of situational irony, the reader doesn’t expect a pregnant lady to strike her husband in an amusing fashion. Then pretend to not realize the act that she commits and comes up with the perfect alibi, the trip to the supermarket. In this story, the reader also is confronted with dramatic irony in which they know the actions Mary committed but now read to see how and what she does to get away with the perfect crime. Meanwhile, Mrs.Peters and Mrs.Hale are also thrown into dramatic irony as they find the motive to the murder of Mr.Wright but knowing how Mrs.Peter acts and we the reader question if Martha Hale could be enough for them to help a fellow female not get convicted of this crime. While the men look everywhere but the kitchen for the evidence against Minnie Foster and downgrade the search for anything in the kitchen because of it’s soul purpose and usage is ironic because they find themselves always above the females and kitchen looking for evidence and in the society given by the author the men are easily overpowered compared to the opposite sex. Which leds them to fall into allowing the females to get away with the crime and surpassing so called men. Mary Maloney did it with having the man feel comfortable by giving them drinks and insisting that they eat the murder weapon. While Mrs.Peters and Mrs.Hale have them unknot the knot and hardly disregard what is in the basket heading to Minnie Foster. Thus showing how irony is used to help increase how females are thought of in the outside world.

Throughout the usage of elements of fiction , both authors show how the women can subdue the advantages that man have in the given community. “The expression “lamb to the slaughter” is used to describe an innocent or naive person led into danger or failure,” illustrate how the comportment of the husband, Mr.Maloney, dynamically changes his wife, who throughout the story was sensitive to the actions of her husband, transform into a felony by committing the acts of manslaughter (Bertonneau,133). Which leads to her using her perception on her husband’s co-workers to disingenuously brainwash them to dispose of the evidence. Correspondingly, in “A Jury of Her Peers,” Mrs.Wright can also be descripted as a ‘lamb to the slaughter’ due to changes from immaculateness to precarious killer. In all respects, it is Mrs.Peter and Martha Hale that have themselves sympathizing with this felony over female relations, leading to the clearance of Minnie Foster’s name as the clues against her have been demolished.