The Jewels and The Lamb to the Slaughter

The novel ‘The Lamb to the Slaughter’ is about a woman called Mary Maloney who is six months pregnant, with her husband’s baby. She kills her husband Patrick Maloney who is a detective with a frozen lamb leg by striking him on the back of his head because he had said something earlier to shock and upset her, what he said remains a mystery as it was not stated. As soon as Mary has hit Patrick with the leg she snaps out of her trance and realised what she had done and comes up with a plan.

The wife then pretends nothing has happened and she has just come home from the grocers then calls the police saying she thinks that her husband, Detective Patrick Maloney, is dead. The police (who were Patrick’s close friends) then check out the incident suggesting that Patrick has died as someone has struck him with a large metal weapon, e. g. a sledgehammer, large spanner or a metal vase, Mary then says they have none of those items.

She then shows that she is very upset and it gets her off the suspects list, the lamb she has struck Patrick with is eaten by the police because Mary insisted they never continued hungry as Patrick wouldn’t like this, making the police force look like idiotic fools, this is also shown by Mary giggling as they ate the evidence. The novel ‘The Jewels’ is about a man called Monsieur Lantin, who works for the French civil service, who falls in love with a girl who has recently come to Paris from the country. They soon get married.

Everyone who knows the girl thought she would make the perfect wife. Monsieur Lantin is married happily for 6 years. The girl seems to love him and completes his needs. She gets into going to the opera and develops an obsession for more and more jewels, which her husband thinks look like fake jewellery. One night the girl comes home from the opera and is very ill which kills her. Her husband is heart broken. After his wife’s death he finds hard to connect odd ends together, goes bankrupt and it hits him he can get a small sum of money from selling off his wife’s jewels.

When Monsieur Lantin gets to the jewellers and give the man at the desk his wife’s favourite necklace the man says it is work 12-15 thousand francs ends up being sold to the shop keeper for 18,000 francs, as it was brought at his shop, Lantin is shocked and faints. Monsieur Lantin then goes home, after finding out how much it is worth and realises why his wife was so attached to them and goes back to the shop with all his wife’s jewels sells them to the shop keeper. After making all this money from the jewels he quits his job and develops an expensive taste, ending up like his wife, and soon gets married again. Comparison

The first main Detail in both stories is death; death plays an important part in both novels and happens to loved one’s. In ‘The Jewels’ Latains wife comes home from the theatre and is very ill and dies from pneumonia: “One night in winter when she had been to the Opera, she came home shivering with cold. The next morning she had a cough, and a week later she died of pneumonia” The quote is basically telling me, as the reader how Latains wife dies, he explains in not much detail but puts the point across on how she died.

In ‘The Lamb to the Slaughter’ the Husband dies from his own wife hitting him on the head with a frozen, lamb leg: At that point 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 down as hard as she could on the back of his head” The quote tells me, as the reader Mary Maloney has assaulted her husband with a leg of a lamb.

The writer has maybe used a prop as the leg of a lamb to add humour too the novel, as her husband did not want to go out for a take-away and she might not have want to cook. The writer also gets straight to the point in this novel too, a couple of lines explaining the death; this is also similar in both stories. The Lamb to the Slaughter’ uses a defence for Mary Maloney: “The violence of the crash, the small table overturning, helped her bring her out of the shock. ” The writer may have defended Mary to make her look as an upset wife and instead of making her sound like a crazy psycho.

The second Detail in the Stories is Betrayal, this is not a big point in the stories and does go unnoticed but if you read between the lines it plays a big part in both stories. In ‘The Jewels’ the betrayal takes place when Latin sells off the jewels of his dead wife for his own income: “I have… have some other jewels which have come to me from… rom, the same legacy (money left from someone in a will).

Would you care to buy them from me too? ” This quote tells me, as the reader, that Monsieur Lantin would rather have money to pay off people he owes money too, than keep the jewellery as a remembrance of his dead wife. In ‘The Lamb to the Slaughter’ the betrayal takes place when Mary kill’s her husband, Patrick, with a frozen lamb leg (hence the name of the novel): “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 down as hard as she could on the back of his head”

This quote tells me, as the reader, that Mary killed her husband and didn’t really care for what she was doing but only because she was upset because of when Patrick had said earlier to her. Suspicion Suspicion occurs on both of the novels. In ‘The Jewels’ the Jeweller thinks that Monsieur Lantin may have stolen the jewels from wife: “I couldn’t buy it unless you told me where it came from” This shows me that the jeweller is suspecting Monsieur Lantin of steeling his wife’s jewels. Even though Monsieur Lantin is in debt and is trying to pay them off.

In ‘The Lamb to the Slaughter’ the police think that Mary killed her husband (we must keep in mind that she did kill Detective Patrick Maloney, her husband). “The detectives kept asking her a lot of questions. She told her story again, this time right from the beginning, when Patrick had come in, and she was sewing, and he was tired, so tired he hadn’t wanted to go out for supper. She told how she’d put the meat in the oven- “it’s there now, cooking” – and how she’d popped out to the grocer for vegetables, and come back to find him lying on the floor. ”

The quote above shows that the detectives questioned her several times to get her whole story because the detectives think that Mary Maloney has actually killed her husband maybe because of Revenge she then continues with her story ” “Which grocer? ” one of the detectives asked. She told him, and he turned and whispered something to the other detective who immediately went outside into the street. In fifteen minutes he was back with a page of notes. There was more whispering, and through their sobbing she heard a few of the whispered phrases- “… acted quite normal… very cheerful… wanted to give him a good supper… peas… heesecake… impossible that she… “”

The quote above shows that the detectives never trusted her at the beginning and wanted to investigate further so went to the grocers and got the grocers view and didn’t find any proof that she killed Patrick so decided that she never killed Patrick, this is shown by: “impossible that she… “. Affairs The Affairs in the novels also go unnoticed but again if you read between the lines there is slightly a little affair occurring in both stories. In ‘Lamb to the slaughter’ Patrick may be having an affair with some other woman this maybe the reason why he breaks up with Mary: “And he told her.

It didn’t take long, four or five minutes at most, and she sat very still through it all, watching him with a kind of dazed horror as he went further and further away from her with each word. ” “So there it is,” he added. “And I know its kind of a bad time telling you but there simply wasn’t any other way. Of course I’ll give you money and see you’re looked after. ” These two quotes are basically explaining that Patrick Maloney is leaving Mary Maloney the first image that struck to my mind was Patrick was having an affair with another lady and the reason Mary might have struck Patrick was so no one else can have her husband.

The conversation is left mysterious between the two characters but I read between the lines and believe this is why Mary hit Patrick with a lamb of a leg. In ‘The Jewels’ Lantin may think that his wife was having an affair since she was bringing home priceless jewels when she came from the opera, as she told her husband that she had only brought fake jewels as she preferred them more to real ones: “But in that case was it a present! A present! But a present from whom? And why is it given to her? ”

This quote tell me, as the reader that Lantin feels shocked and is suspecting that his wife was having an affair with a richer person than him. And she might not have been going to the theatre but to see a richer man who she might have been having an affair with and getting expensive presents from. Conclusion The main comparison I found between both of the stories is death, they both revolve around a dramatic setting on both deaths, which makes the reader feel sorry for the characters who died. Both deaths are extremely different.

Latains wife dies of a natural death where Patrick Maloney is struck on the head by a lamb leg. In my opinion I found the lamb to a slaughter killing more interesting although the author wrote very little lines the author made the story more to my entertainment using a humour based text. . In ‘Lamb to the Slaughter’ the police are also very unprofessional. In ‘The Jewels’ it has a dramatic sense too it which is basically a man who loves his wife and looses here because of her interests to go to the theatre no matter what the weather is like.