To be or not to be?
In
his short story, “The Lady or the Tiger”, Frank R. Stockton tells a story that
brings up some good points but has no tangible ending. It is an ending left up
to the dear reader, and I’m here to tell you: she chose the tiger. On the
surface, it is a story of a princess who falls for a “young man of that
fineness of blood and lowness of station common to the conventional heroes of
romance who love royal maidens”. In reality, this is a story about the ways and
means of a person’s heart and the endless afflictions of love and jealousy. Her
father is known for his “semi-barbarianism”, and the princess herself is known
to have “a soul as fervent and imperious” as the king’s. The semi-barbaric king
invented a trial for wrongdoers of his kingdom: in a public arena, the accused
was faced with a choice between two doors: one holds a tiger, “the fiercest and
most cruel that could be procured” – a self-imposed guilty verdict. The
defendant was killed on the spot. The other door held a lady, “the most
suitable . . . that his majesty could select among his fair subjects” –
salvation. The defendant was married on the spot.
It
was against the law for a man of such low station to court the princess, and
the young man was put to what passed for a trial. The princess had discovered
which door held which outcome, and the knowledge haunted her in the days
leading up to her lover’s trial. The princess’s choices were these: let the
love of her life be viciously devoured on the spot, or let him marry a woman
who had been throwing lavacious looks at her lover. Indeed, she knew the woman
who was waiting behind that door for the young man, and she had more than once
felt the jealousy that rises up in any of us whenever we feel our love is being
encroached upon. What to do? Chances are, she would hear for the rest of her
life his screams as the tiger tore him apart. She would miss him in her heart
and her arms and the time that she now spent without him. But after a time, her
memories would fade from guilt to tenderness; undoubtedly, there would be a war
or a plague or a famine that she would be glad he wasn’t subject to. She would
consider it quite a kindness to the young man that his heart and soul didn’t
have to go through the pain and anguish of the what the world had become; here
she was, fearing the outcome of a war or the migration of a plague or the
impending riots of crop-less farmers, and there he was, resting in peace and
oblivious to her plight. She would remember him always as he was: young, handsome,
happy, and hers. Essentially, since she possessed the same semi-barbarianism as
her father, she would get over it.
On
the other hand, she could spend the rest of her life hearing about him and his
new wife, the one who was always “throwing glances of admiration” at her lover.
She could catch glimpses of him the crowd, she could hear about the beautiful
children they were having and the happy home they had made. While she was stuck
in a marriage of political convenience, her love was off frolicking with that
woman who, all those years ago, was making eyes at her man. The question could
be posed that after the princess indicated that the young man should go to the
door on the right, he knew her heart well enough to know what she was thinking
and went for the door on the left. However, in paragraph 18, “without the
slightest hesitation, he went to the door on the right and opened it,” which
leaves us with little room for speculation. The other possible deviation from
my theory would be that princess knew that the king had planned to have the
youth disposed of, no matter the outcome of the trial. In that case, it might
have been better to have him choose the lady, and let the young man’s death be
on her father’s hands. However, if she knew that her father would have him
killed anyway, she likely would not have anguished over her decision for four
paragraphs.
Indeed,
I think paragraph twenty tells us all we need to know about the princess’s
decision: “Think of [that question]…upon that hot-blooded, semi-barbaric princess,
her soul at a white heat beneath the combined fires of despair and jealousy.
She had lost him, but who should have him?” The word barbaric is used in
describing the nature of our heroine at least half a dozen times in this story.
In considering sending him to the tiger, the question is posed: “Would it not
be better for him to die at once, and go wait for her in the blessed regions of
semi-barbaric futurity?” Even in the afterlife, she could be found with
barbarism. Also, in paragraphs twenty-one and twenty-two, she is weighing the
pros and cons of each outcome. According to paragraph twenty-two, she had
panicked at the thought of him going to the lady more often than she had felt
trepidation at the thought of him going to the tiger. It could be surmised that
the thought of her love marrying someone else weighed on her barbaric mind more
heavily than the thought of her love being torn to shreds by a tiger. When she
made her choice, her hand moved to the right. The argument could be made that
this was some sort of allegory of doing the right thing. However, people tend
to do what they think is right, not what is actually the right thing to do.
According to the description of the princess and her anguish in making her
decision, she might well have thought that feeding him to the tiger was the
right thing to do. I’ve spoken with half a dozen people about this story and
its possible outcome, and the answers are usually split down the middle about
which door was chosen. One can only speculate about the number of discussions
that this story has sparked and the number of times Mr. Stockton was cornered
at parties and required to give an ending. “The Discourager of Hesitancy,” a
sort of sequel to “The Lady or the Tiger”, was eventually published. What a
great marketing concept: finishing the story you started to tell three years
before! Unfortunately, the sequel offered no insight into the fate of the young
man. In fact, it only gave the reader another somewhat less infuriating
question to ponder.
I
think that there are enough clues (her barbarism, her jealousy, and the fact
that since she couldn’t have him back anyway, she would have no reason to keep
him alive) to indicate that she chose the lion.
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