In the story "Lamb to the Slaughter" by Roald Dahl, Mary Maloney has a very sinister and manipulative character. At the beginning of the story, Mary Maloney was a normal, loving, caring pregnant housewife who loved and cared for her husband, Patrick Maloney, very much. At the beginning of the story we see that Maria was waiting for her husband to come home from work. She has set up the house with two table lights on and plates on the dining table so they can have a very romantic dinner when Patrick comes home. When Patrick returned home, Mary was very excited to see him. He tried to offer him a drink and insisted that he would bring the things he needed into the house so that he wouldn't have to get up alone. The countless times Patrick said no to her offers and helpful acts, she still tried to serve him and make him feel comfortable and relax after work. Towards the middle of the story we see Mary exhibiting her evil and sinister character; her personality and feelings suddenly change when she kills her husband by hitting him in the back of the head with a frozen leg of lamb. After denying all of Mary's helpful acts, Patrick told her to sit down so he could tell her something serious; the story doesn't tell us what he tells her but Mary suddenly changes after he tells her something, her “instinct was not to believe anything” (Dahl 2). He simply responded with “I'll have dinner” (Dahl 2) and felt nothing about his body except nausea and a desire to vomit. He went down to the cellar, opened the freezer, grabbed a frozen leg of lamb, went back upstairs, got behind Patrick and hit the large leg of lamb as hard as he could on the back of his head killing him. Does this sudden act of violence demonstrate how far she has gone... middle of paper... and into the oven?" (Dahl 4) Mary was very manipulative and sinister because she knew exactly what she was doing; she wanted the officers to eat all the lamb so that there was no evidence of the murder weapon he used to kill. As the officers ate all the lamb, Mary was very happy and giggled as she listened to the officers eat the lamb, she was never grieved over the loss of Patrick and only wanted to kill him and hide the evidence so she won't get caught In conclusion, Mary has clearly shown that she has a very manipulative and sinister character because she was a cold blooded killer who had no feelings for her husband when she killed him, and. she made people believe her painful stories to make them feel sorry for her in the end all she wanted was to hide all the evidence so she wouldn't get caught and go to prison.