Mary Maloney Is A Crime Of Passion

A woman comes home only to find her husband in bed with another woman. She grabs the closest blunt object and brutally attacks both her husband and his lover, killing them both. This is a crime of passion. According to the Legal Information Institute, a Crime of Passion is classified as “A crime committed while in the throes of passion, with no opportunity to reflect on what is happening and what the person is about to do.”(source) What Mary Maloney did was not murder but only a crime of passion. The expected result was not to kill her husband but only to keep him and not lose him to the other woman. This is the natural instinct of a woman who was under the impression that she was in a happy marriage that was soon to be welcoming a new baby.
In the text, it reads since she is the wife of a detective she acts quickly. There is almost no time lost. She runs upstairs fixes herself up and tries to plaster on a smile as if nothing ever happened. While in the film she waits and ponders what has happened. Even sitting down to have a snack. Theses are very different things to have done. One shows that she is calculating and there is no regret and the other shows that she has become pensive, thinking about the brutality she has just committed. Both however, are quite odd reactions, neither showing that she is devastated at the loss. Mary also has entered into a state of psychosis in the text as well. She practices talking to the local shoppe keep, making sure that her voice and smile match to appear that nothing is wrong. Barbara Bel Geddes does not portray her as such the calculating being in the film. In both however, she makes the trip to the grocery pretending to have run out for some extra materials for the supper she is preparing. This all while her husband lay dead on the floor. At this point in time the reader and viewer could get the impression that she is indifferent about her murderess behavior. She has merely accepted what she has done and is now covering her tracks. In her mind she has stopped Patrick from leaving her. Basically, this is an accurate representation of the “if I can’t have him, no one can.” mentality. In the text she comes home and is genuinely in shock. The reality of her actions has hit her. She is there lying over his body sobbing, “no acting was necessary.” (lamb to the slaughter) The film however diverges and this is where Ms. Geddes beings to play up the whole charade of the situation. She comes in and throws her groceries on the floor and proceeds to go around the room and stage a fight around Patricks dead body to throw the cops off. Mary in the text is