Compare And Contrast Lamb To The Slaughter And A Jury Of Her Peers

In the stories, “Lamb to the Slaughter” by Ronald Dahl and “A Jury of Her Peers” by Susan Glaspell, there are undeniable points of comparison and contrast. The stories both have significant titles and include a female killer; however, the stories are set in different time periods and the murderous women have different motives for murder.

To start, both stories have significant titles. In “Lamb to the Slaughter,” the leg of a lamb was used by Mary Maloney to kill her husband. This is ironic in a way because a lamb that has been taken to the slaughter is used to slaughter a man. Similarly, in “A Jury of Her Peers,” the title is important to the story because, in a sense, Minnie was judged by her peers Mrs. Hale and Mrs. Peters. Despite the different titles, they both foreshadow key parts of the story. In Dahl’s article the murder is foreshadowed and in Glaspell’s article, the fate of Mrs. Wright is foreshadowed.

Adding on, in both stories, the authors had a woman murder her husband. Mary Maloney, Dahl’s main character, was sixth months pregnant when her husband told her he was going to leave her. In Glaspell’s story, Minnie Foster’s husband held no respect for her, killed her love of life, and eventually ripped her apart by killing her bird. Being the weaker sex, both Mary and Minnie were at the mercy of their …show more content…
In “Lamb to the Slaughter,” Mary Maloney’s sudden taste for murder derives from her husband telling her he was going to leave her for another woman. Being six months pregnant, Mrs. Maloney was furious. On the flip side, in “A Jury of Her Peers,” Minnie Foster yearns for vengeance because her husband killed her bird. In a sense, Mr. Wright killed Minnie. Although it does not directly state that Mr. Wright killed the bird, you can infer that he did because he was clearly a terrible husband to Minnie, sucking the life out of