Mary Maloney starts the story as a kindly, passionate woman who knows nothing more than to love her husband, Patrick Maloney, and live her humble lifestyle; but, as the story progresses, she slowly becomes increasingly sadistic. She soon discovers Patrick has been cheating on her and is leaving her for another woman. This sends her into a sort of trance where she then kills her husband. This affects her character and personality because Mary fears she will eventually be caught for her atrocious deed, which, in turn, causes her to begin a curious plan. She practices what she’s going to say to Sam, the grocer. This is meant to be her alibi. She planned on going to the grocery store, buying her husband’s favorite meal while pretending he was still alive, and that she didn’t just kill him.
Her ability to immediately spring into action and put a plan into action after her hysteria speaks to the fact that there’s more than what meets the eye with this woman. When she gets home, she frantically calls the police while acting hysterically. When the police arrived, she had “no need for acting”. This means, that though she was furious at him for leaving her, she still loved him; this is a wonderful presentation of her passion and ability to love. She loved him so much in fact, even after she killed him she still cried for him. Not only is she passionate but, she’s also smart and manipulative; Mary’s ability to trick the police into eating the lamb leg she killed him with and trick them into thinking a random man murdered Patrick and ran off is almost sadistic. Mary’s character is dynamic, as it slowly changes as the story progresses. She goes from an innocent, kindly pregnant woman to frantic, to manipulative.
Some examples of foreshadowing and symbolism are how at the beginning of the story, Mary talks about how much she loves her husband. The amount of love she feels for Patrick becomes one of the main parts of her character. Additionally, the fact she spends so long talking about how much she loves him, the more we, the reader, can begin to suspect something sinister will happen between these two characters. This can be further proven by how when Patrick gets home, he tells Mary to stop being so energetic and happy and to sit down. He says this quite sternly, which leads us to believe he’s about to deliver unfortunate news. An amazing example of symbolism is Mary’s lipstick. She’s described as having very deep red lips which are likely the product of some sort of lipstick; this could symbolize blood or, rather, love and passion.
127 our experts are availableright now
