Radical feminist theory on Roald Dahl’s lamb to the slaughter

Lai, Kai Lun (2020) Radical feminist theory on Roald Dahl’s lamb to the slaughter. Final Year Project, UTAR.

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Abstract

The portrayal of women in English literature has always been controversial in the same vein as Roald Dahl’s reputation as a writer. Criticisms accumulated against “Lamb to the Slaughter” are primarily to condemn his approach in portraying characters which are argued to be falsely interpreting and demoralizing women. The purposes of this study are to discuss the portrayal of women and the forms of oppressions faced by Mary Maloney in “Lamb to the Slaughter”. Drawing from radical feminist theory, I argue that the representation of women in literature has a direct association with women’s power, equality and rights in society. Consequently, I conducted a textual analysis to disintegrate different components in the story that extensively relied on interpretations of the textual evidences. The portrayals of Mary in the story denoted and proved the presence of oppression against women. I conclude that oppression occurs accordingly due to women’s lack of power, equality and rights in society- which is in line with radical feminism’s perspective on women’s oppression being the most fundamental form of oppression arising from patriarchy. It appears that Dahl’s modification of the story’s paradigm is to address social inequality issues and to ridicule society’s paradigm of the “ideal woman”.

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