The Lamb

Ruth is the antagonist of the novel. She got married at 17 to Margot’s father and became a mother soon after, which implies that she is no older than 30 in the main timeline. Seen through Margot’s eyes, Ruth is tall and beautiful, with long blonde hair. However, Ruth is bothered by her teeth, which she considers misshapen. She often applies thick red lipstick to distract from her teeth, claiming that “[p]eople don’t trust women who have bad teeth” (15). Ruth often wears church dresses that are buttoned in the front, especially after Eden moves in. Margot notes that Ruth also tends to dress in the clothes and accessories she collects from strays she has killed, such as purple nail paint from a bottle Ruth took from a young woman. In Margot’s estimation, Ruth wears these clothes in an attempt to fill a void within her.

Ruth is very strongly identified with the text’s motifs of appetite and hunger. Often shown eating, pining for food, and butchering her prey, Ruth embodies an extreme form of selfishness that both literally and figuratively “consumes” others without remorse. Driven only by the need to quench her appetite, Ruth sees almost all the people around her—including, ultimately, Margot—as meat. She later confesses to Margot that she even killed and ate Margot’s father once he objected to her violent ways, tormenting Margot with the knowledge that Margot, too, once ate her own father.

Ruth’s emotional and physical abuse of Margot embody The Problem of Parental Domination in the text. She constantly belittles her daughter, claiming that Margot has a small brain or a bad memory. With Eden’s arrival, Ruth grows even more aggressive and cruel, starving Margot even more often and openly isolating her even within the home. Her murder of Margot is her ultimate act of cruelty, which in turn leads to her own downfall. Ruth is a static character in the novel as she does not evolve, unwilling to accept the fact that Margot is a person in her own right.

The third main character of the novel, Eden embodies the narrative device of the outsider who comes into a setting and changes everything. Though she is technically a stray, Margot can instantly sense that Eden is not a stranger. She and Ruth are “Kindred. Like they knew each other from another life” (44). Margot describes Eden as beautiful, with curly, silver-streaked blonde hair and sharp, freckled features. Like Ruth, Eden has purple stretch marks from pregnancy around her belly. Eden shares her name with the river, a linkage that establishes that she is both nurturing and dangerous, like nature itself. The biblical echoes of her name perform a similar function: She represents a brief idyll, like the Garden of Eden, but the idyll cannot last.

As Eden quickly falls in love with Ruth, she is seen in constant proximity with her. To Margot, the women appear to be touching each other to the extent that they are blending. Eden, who arrives at the cottage with little personal effects, even wears Ruth’s clothes most of the time, though the clothes are loose on her. The proximity and similarities between the women position them as foils and doppelgangers. Margot notes that Ruth sometimes speaks to her with words she has learned from Eden. They differ in their approach toward hunting strays: Eden wants Ruth to hunt sparingly to avoid attention, while Ruth is angered by any restraint. 

Eden’s attitude toward motherhood is also different from Ruth’s. While Ruth simply does not want to be a mother, Eden claims, “Being a mama is what we’re supposed to be” (286). Eden’s constant references to wanting a family with Ruth are in stark contrast to Ruth’s desire for freedom. Eden’s complex views on motherhood are linked with her own experience. She became pregnant at 15 and wanted to terminate the pregnancy, but was forced to give birth by her conservative father. Eden claims she then “ate” her baby—possibly a metaphor for erasing him from memory—to avoid giving him up for adoption to a staid, boring couple. Eden claims to believe that children are safest when frozen in time and in the mother’s memory. This is why she insists that Ruth sketch Margot before killing her. 

As the story about “eating” her baby shows, Eden often adapts narratives to her worldview. For instance, she changes the ending of the rabbit woman story to make Margot believe that the woman turned her ire upon her mothers and sisters. Her constant references to Margot’s killing being a kind act that will ensure Margot’s safety is another example of Eden twisting the truth. A static character, Eden too wants to trap Margot in childhood, unable to deal with her evolution, and subject her to constant control. Her death alongside Ruth’s brings an end to the violent threat she represents to others.

One of the important minor characters in the text, Steve is the driver of the school bus on Margot’s route. Steve is a middle-aged father with a heavily wrinkled face and a smoker’s voice. Margot often notes that Steve looks tired and glassy-eyed. 

Steve is distinguished by his kindness and empathy: He is the opposite of Ruth and Eden by seeking to nurture Margot instead of controlling or abusing her. A father figure for Margot, Steve is also the most morally upright grown-up in the text. Unlike most other adults, who look away from the domestic abuse to which Margot is subjected, Steve takes an active interest in her life. Referring to Margot as “Youngen,” Steve makes her sit next to his seat every day and asks her about her home life. Since Steve can sense something off about Margot’s situation, he is a perceptive, intelligent character.

Steve often plays music on his recorder and sings folk songs. For Margot, the music is a sanctuary from the bullying she faces on the bus, at school, and at home. Not only does she imagine her lost father looking like Steve, she refers to Steve as being like “A church. Calm, wise, and quiet” (233). Steve loves his part of Cumbria deeply, telling Margot he moved to the countryside from Carlisle because here he can hear his own thoughts. 

Steve represents hope and righteousness in the novel. Though he is unable to rescue Margot in the end, reaching the homestead a few days too late, he does provide her with courage and a moral compass, reminding her that she will be fine if she stays “[o]n the straight and narrow” (126). In successfully defeating Ruth and Eden, Margot proves that she has taken Steve’s lesson to heart.

Abbie is Margot’s closest friend and the daughter of the local gamekeeper, Mark Greene. Pretty with blonde hair worn in a green ribbon, Abbie signifies compassion in the novel. While most of Margot’s schoolmates think of her as an oddity, ignoring or bullying her, Abbie tells Margot, “I like that you’re weird” (27). Abbie’s admission shows an unconditional acceptance of Margot. 

In many ways, the Abbie-Margot relationship parallels that of Eden and Ruth. Much as Eden accepts the darkest parts of Ruth, Abbie too loves everything about Margot, as far as Abbie knows. Abbie’s friendship constitutes a safe space for Margot to explore her own romantic desire: She tells Abbie that she imagines being with her the way girls and boys are supposed to be.

Abbie is described as stoic and loyal. Even though she is distraught at her father’s disappearance, Margot notes that she refuses to cry, determined instead to keep searching for the gamekeeper. Further, Abbie stands by Margot even though her own mother deems Margot bad company. Abbie’s mother attempts to force her heteronormative standards on Abbie, encouraging her to date a boy, but Abbie says no to going out with Patrick. Like the bus driver, Abbie provides light in Margot’s grim world, showing Margot humans are worth redeeming.

Margot’s unnamed father represents her longing for a truly nurturing parental figure. Though Margot remembers hardly anything about her father, she looks at his pictures all the time, imagining that he will come back to her. Hidden in this ritual is Margot’s desire for her father to save her. She uses pieces from the men she knows—the bus driver, the gamekeeper—to imagine her father as an older man. Margot’s father also represents repressed memory: Though it is implied from the very beginning that there is more to his disappearance than Margot knows, Margot continues to believe that her father abandoned their family. She deliberately refuses to consider the very real possibility that her father was killed by Ruth.

Though Margot idolizes her absent father, even she admits that he did not like it when Ruth was too loud. Ruth complains that he had a short temper and liked her to be perfect, quiet, and compliant, but also admits that she killed him when he objected to her disturbing behavior. Ruth then uses the story of feeding Margot’s father to Margot to torment Margot further later in the novel.