The Lamb

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.