70 pages • 2-hour read
The Lamb
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Themes
The Problem of Parental Domination
Throughout The Lamb, Margot is forced to contend with her isolated, claustrophobic life under her mother’s strict control. While she initially regards Ruth as beautiful and longs for her love, as the narrative progress, she learns to recognize Ruth as the selfish and dangerous individual she is. Through Ruth and Margot’s dynamic, the novel explores the problem of parental control.
As the novel opens, Margot and Ruth exist in a close bubble, the world shrunk to a child and their parent. The terms they use for each other—Mama and Little One—are archetypal, illustrating their immersion in each other. This seeming intimacy, however, has a dark side, as Ruth demonstrates her possessive control over Margot even in moments of apparent affection: Margot recalls that Ruth refers to her as a “sweet ammonite fossil […] only hers to unearth” (14, emphasis added). When Ruth calls Margot a fossil, she is already comparing her daughter to a dead, buried object. The fact that she wants to be the only one to “unearth” Margot shows her desire to isolate her daughter. Margot, meanwhile, initially idolizes her mother to an unhealthy degree, accepting her mother’s version of the outside world as a place she needs to hide from.
Margot’s feelings toward Ruth are, however, quickly complicated by Margot’s growing awareness that Ruth is not the loving, nurturing figure she should be. Ruth abuses Margot both physically and emotionally. She refuses to allow Margot to express any emotions, even when in pain, and insists that Margot is entirely obedient to Ruth’s will. Margot notes that, even before Eden arrives, Margot routinely goes hungry because Ruth keeps most of the food for herself. Ruth also hits and beats Margot, then tries to present her abuse as normal by calling the bruises “special kisses.” Once Eden appears, Ruth’s cruelty becomes even more excessive, and she deliberately and openly excludes Margot whenever possible as a means of favoring Eden.
The novel culminates in Ruth’s ultimate act of cruelty and control when she and Eden murder and eat Margot. Margot, however, has finally freed herself from her mother’s influence by seeing her as she truly is: When she denounces her mother as “evil” and poisons her own flesh to ensure Ruth’s death, she shows that she has finally recognized that Ruth has never truly loved her or behaved as a proper mother—instead, she is a dangerous individual who must be resisted at all costs.
Nature as Both Refuge and Danger
In The Lamb, the woods serve as both the novel’s main setting and as an important embodiment of one of the novel’s key themes: nature as both refuge and danger. While the woods and Ruth and Margot’s cottage may appear idyllic at first glance, they also hide dark secrets.
The dual nature of the woods is explored in how the forest offers both a beautiful retreat from the pressures of urbanization while hiding unexpected hazards. Steve, the bus driver, praises the natural beauty and serenity of the region, saying that it soothes him and enables him to feel in tune with his own emotions and thoughts. Margot notes how most of Ruth’s strays are people who come to the woods for recreational purposes, such as hikers, which once again suggests that the woods are an attractive place to visit for walks. Margot herself enjoys various aspects of her life in the woods, as reflected in her visits to the nearby stream and her early sense that her isolated life in the woods provides her with a safe refuge from the rest of the world.
The reality is that the woods also represent lethal dangers, both to Margot and to others. Ruth entraps some of her strays when hikers get lost in the woods, leading them to turn to her for help or directions out of desperation. Ruth uses the isolation and anonymity of the woods to her advantage, committing her crimes far from the eyes of the wider community and more easily covering up what she has done. Ruth and Margot’s cottage likewise reflects this tension between refuge and danger: While the cottage appears welcoming and quaint from the outside, seeming like an ordinary and even cozy home, the interior is filthy, full of insects, mold, and, most disturbingly of all, the bloody traces of Ruth’s crimes. Instead of serving as a rural retreat, it is thus a site of imprisonment and violence.
Margot herself experiences the dual nature of the woods to a greater extent as the novel progresses. Her early childhood ideas of the woods as her haven gradually transform into an awareness that she herself is trapped with her dangerous mother. Her attempted escape toward the novel’s end ends in failure, depriving her of her last hope for safety when Ruth and Eden pursue her through the woods and drag her back to the cottage. Thus, the novel suggests that even in the most seemingly peaceful locations, not all may be as it first appears.
The Importance of Breaking the Cycle of Abuse and Violence
While The Lamb is often described as a work of feminist-horror, author Lucy Rose emphasizes in an interview that at its heart, the book is also the story “about someone experiencing child abuse” (Davidson, Helena and Rose, Lucy. “The Lamb: Interview with Lucy Rose.” New Writing North, 13 December 2024). The book’s hyperbolic motif of cannibalism is a metaphor for how abusive and controlling people “consume” others for their own power and gratification, just as Ruth abuses Margot and murders the strays. However, through Margot’s personal and moral development, the novel spotlights the importance of breaking cycles of abuse and violence instead of perpetuating them.
At the outset of the novel, Margot largely accepts what Ruth tells her as true, regarding her mother as someone beautiful and the violence that surrounds her as normal. Despite Ruth’s violent abuse, Margot still longs for her love and, in the absence of other social ties, does not understand that this is not what a healthy home environment should look like. She even initially assumes that she, too, will eagerly trap and murder strays as she grows up, just as Ruth does. In the early chapters, it thus appears that Margot may turn into another violent abuser like Ruth, continuing the cycle of violence and harm.
However, Margot begins to question her abusive home environment the more she connects with people who offer her love and support, such as Steve the bus driver and Abbie. As her friendship with both figures develops, she begins to feel more empathy for the strays Ruth murders and becomes more skeptical of the validity of what Ruth says and does. For example, after Ruth murders Abbie’s father, Margot begins to feel a strong and persistent sense of guilt, realizing that Abbie has now been deprived of someone she loved. Similarly, the bus driver’s teachings about the importance of doing good in the world and the sincere concern he shows for her well-being provide Margot with an alternative—and highly significant—worldview, one in which humans can care and nurture each other instead of seeking to dominate and harm.
As the novel draws to a close, Margot begins to rebel against Ruth’s violent creed openly, seeing her abuse for what it truly is and rejecting her mother as “evil.” While Margot is a traumatized and abused child, she asserts her agency and performs a heroic feat, poisoning herself to ensure her mother and Eden’s deaths. By directing her own rage against the abusers, Margot saves Abbie, Steve, and many other innocents who would otherwise fall in the path of the monsters. Margot’s resourcefulness and embrace of humane ethics thus shows how the cycle of abuse can be broken.
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