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Definition of Setting
Setting is where and when a story or scene takes place. The where can be a real place like the city of New York, or it can be an imagined... read full definition
Setting is where and when a story or scene takes place. The where can be a real place like the city of New York, or... read full definition
Setting is where and when a story or scene takes place. The where can be a real place like the... read full definition
Setting
Explanation and Analysis:
“Lamb to the Slaughter” is set in the mid-20th century, most likely somewhere in the United Kingdom (where Dahl was from and where many of his stories were set). Most of the story takes place inside the Maloney home, apart from one scene at a nearby grocery store. Dahl opens the story with the following passage that sets the scene in the Maloney home:
The room was warm and clean, the curtains drawn, the two table lamps alight—hers and the one by the empty chair opposite. On the sideboard behind her, two tall glasses, soda water, whisky. Fresh ice cubes in the Thermos bucket. Mary Maloney was waiting for her husband to come home from work.
Dahl’s description of the Maloneys' living room here communicates several important elements of the story. First, the room is “warm and clean” with everything in its particular spot, a sign that Mary is a very detail-oriented and tidy housewife. The fact that she has laid out everything her husband Patrick needs for post-work drinks—including putting “fresh ice cubes in the Thermos bucket”—while waiting for him also suggests that she is an attentive and caring partner.
This passage also hints at the ways that rigid gender roles require Mary to tie her happiness to Patrick’s—as seen in the fact that she cannot drink until he comes home from work. Mary’s resentment over her lack of power in her marriage eventually boils over when, in an unplanned act of rage, she kills Patrick with a frozen leg of lamb.
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