Compare And Contrast Lamb To The Slaughter

“Lamb to the Slaughter” & “Jury of her Peers”

Thesis Statement - The two short stories “Lamb to the Slaughter” and “Jury of her Peers” share many similarities like the women killing their husbands as well as the theme which is women are under underestimated. The two stories also share differences like how important the motive of the murder of the husbands and how they each mean something in their own story.

One of the major key parts in each of the stories is when the wife or main character brutally murders her husband. Both wives were described as an ordinary lady of their time period at one point or another in the story. Both kind, sweet, and very friendly to neighbors as well as friends. In “Lambs to the Slaughter”, Mary Maloney is described and seen as

Both the men in each story take their wives for granted and nothing else. They see their wives not being good for anything other than cooking and being an ordinary housewife. In both stories, the women prove their husbands completely wrong in their own way. In the short story “Lamb to the Slaughter”, Mrs. Maloney was an ordinary wife expecting a baby but when her husband comes home a bears horrible news, she grows furious and kills him. Patrick Maloney came home to bear the bad news not expecting her to beat him over the head with a frozen leg of lamb. A similar theme is described in the short story “Jury of her Peers.” The men investigating the murder head upstairs while ordering their wives to stay downstairs explaining that they cannot help them because they don’t have the skill nor the common sense to find needed evidence. What they don’t realize is that while the women stay downstairs, Mrs. Hale and Mrs Peters find enough evidence to piece together the entire untold side of the story. But to pay their husbands back, they keep it to themselves to protect Mrs. Wright because they have sympathy for the