Summary
"The Lady, or the Tiger?" is set in a kingdom in the "the very olden time," where a half-civilized and half-barbaric king reigns. The king is prone to "exuberant fancy," and as a result of his great power, is able to bring his every fancy to life. He admires the concept of the "public arena," where certain subjects can exhibit their valor before the entire kingdom. He has an amphitheater built where his entire kingdom can gather. Instead of being used for artistic performances or to stage conflict, the amphitheater acts as "an agent of poetic justice."
In the amphitheater, the king tries his subjects and leaves their judgment—and therefore their fate—up to chance. When a subject is accused of a crime, he is taken to the amphitheater. The king, who is seated on his throne on one side of the arena, gives a signal, and the accused subject is released. The subject faces two identical doors. He must choose one of them. Behind one door is a ravenous tiger who will certainly eat the man on trial, and behind the other is an unmarried lady whom the accused will then marry. It does not matter if the man is already married or in love with another—if he opens the door with the lady, then they will be forced to marry right in the amphitheater.
The door that the man chooses decides both his fate and his guilt: in the king's view, the innocent men will choose the door hiding the lady and the guilty will choose the tiger. The king's method of deciding justice depends entirely on chance. Whatever the outcome, the accused person automatically receives his punishment or reward. In other words, "[t]here was no escape from the judgments of the king's arena" (47).
The king has a beautiful daughter who has a similar nature to himself. She is his favorite person in the world. She falls in love with one of the king's courtiers, who is far beneath her in status. When the king finds out about this relationship, he is enraged. He immediately places the youth in prison and sets a day for his trial in the amphitheater. He searches for the most feral and vicious tiger as well as the most beautiful lady in the kingdom for the courtier's punishment or reward. No matter how the trial turns out, the king will be appeased: either way, the courtier will be taken off his hands.
On the day of the courtier's trial, everyone in the kingdom gathers in the amphitheater. The princess's lover is released into the arena. He turns to bow to the king, but his eyes are on the princess, who is sitting next to her father. It is revealed that the princess has obsessed over this exact moment for days. In fact, she had taken the initiative of finding out which door would hide the lady and which door would hide the tiger: "gold, and the power of a woman's will, had brought the secret to the princess" (48). The princess also knows the identity of the lady hiding behind the door; she is one of the fairiest ladies in the entire kingdom. The princess had been jealous of the lady before the trial began: she had seen her and the courtier exchange glances and hold brief conversations in the past. The princess hates her.
When the courtier looks at the princess, their eyes meet. He instantly knows that she knows which door holds the lady and which door holds the tiger. He asks her with a glance which door he should choose. The princess understands him: "[i]t was as plain to her as if he shouted it from where he stood" (49). The princess raises her hand and makes a slight movement towards the door on the right. The courtier chooses that door without hesitation.
The story does not reveal to us what the door on the right holds. Instead, it prompts us to wonder ourselves: "Did the tiger come out of that door, or did the lady?" (50). It also compels us to think about the princess, despairing at losing her lover. She cannot imagine him succumbing to the "cruel fangs of the tiger" (50). Neither can she, however, imagine him marrying another lady in joyous celebration. The princess gave the courtier an answer in an instant, but in fact she spent many days agonizing over the answer. What do you think was waiting behind that door? The lady, or the tiger?
Analysis
Even though it was first published in 1882, Stockton's "The Lady, or the Tiger?" is still widely known today. The short's story's appeal has endured for longer than a century because it leaves readers questioning and invites exciting discussion. In fact, Stockton first wrote "The Lady, or the Tiger?" to spark conversation at a party and only published it after he received resounding praise from his peers. Stockton's central question—whether a heartbroken princess will choose to let her lover marry another or instead send him to his death—has been readapted in many different forms of media throughout the years. The story has been so widely read that "the lady or the tiger" has become an idiomatic phrase that is used to refer to an outcome or resolution to something that is unknowable or unsolvable.
Some of the popular appeal of Stockton's "The Lady, or the Tiger?" is due to the fact that it is written in clear, straightforward language. Stockton does not use many literary flourishes or frequent figurative language in his story. This does not mean that the story is one-dimensional. Instead of having the reader focus on the form of the story, Stockton places great emphasis on the story's message. He leaves the reader puzzling about what the resolution might be—a resolution that is unknowable and which has no definite answer.
Throughout the years, literary analysts have wondered whether the princess chose the door hiding the lady or the tiger. Some readers hypothesize that Stockton's emphasis on the princess's barbarism in the final part of the story suggests that she chose the door with the tiger. For example, the narrator calls upon the reader to think about the princess's nature, specifically emphasizing the barbaric side of her: "Think of it, fair reader, not as if the decision of the question depended upon yourself, but upon the 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?" (50). In this passage, the narrator chooses to ignore the princess's love for the youth—a love which might be able to spare him—and instead emphasizes the intensity of her emotion. The fire-related figurative language in these lines ("hot-blooded," "white heat," and "combined fires") suggest an uncontrollable emotion that consumes the princess, much in the same way that fire consumes everything that it touches. In fact, there is only one line that suggests the princess's hesitation at the thought of sending her lover to his death: "And yet, that awful tiger, those shrieks, that blood" (50). In this line, the youth himself is absent—instead of focusing on his death, the princess's mind is on the spectacle that his murder would cause. This also seems to suggest that the princess might have succumbed to her barbaric nature and chosen the door with the tiger. However, the succinctness of the line above also carries a powerful weight. It does not need to be a long paragraph, because in that short line Stockton conveys the true horror that the princess will have to grapple with at seeing her lover mauled by a tiger.
Stockton emphasizes that the reader cannot find the solution to this puzzle by asking themself what they would do. Rather, they must study the princess's psychology, since the decision is entirely in her hands. However, there is another solution to this story that is hidden within Stockton's text. The princess's lover is equipped with a power of his own that Stockton emphasizes—the power of being in love. In fact, this gives the youth the ability to understand the princess with a mere glance in her direction: "When her lover turned and looked at her, and his eye met hers as she sat there, paler and whiter than any one in that vast ocean of anxious faces about her, he saw, by that power of quick perception which is given to those whose souls are one, that she knew behind which door crouched the tiger, and behind which stood the lady" (49). In fact, the narrator emphasizes, the princess's lover "understood her nature" (49). The relationship between the princess and the courtier is not superficial; it has resulted in a union of their souls. Is his knowledge of the princess what causes him to follow her direction blindly with full confidence? Does he know what the reader does not, that she will spare his life out of love for him? Some readers believe this to be the case. The fact that the princess' barbarism increases her love for the youth ("she loved him with an ardor that had enough of barbarism in it to make it exceedingly warm and strong," 47) supports this hypothesis.
Stockton never gave a public solution to the problem posed by his story. Instead, he famously suggested that the decision that the reader thought the lady takes says something about the reader themself. Stockton's biographer, Martin IJ Griffon, quotes Stockton as saying the following: "If you decide which it was—the lady, or the tiger—you find out which kind of person you are yourself." In his biography, Griffon lauds Stockton's refusal to give a definitive solution to the story. However, he himself hypothesizes that, thanks to the language at the end of the story, Stockton unconsciously favored the tiger hypothesis.
In his 1997 article about "The Lady, or the Tiger?" literary analyst Fred Abrams poses a different solution. He writes, "I should like to propose that Stockton may have consciously concealed his own specific solution to the lady-tiger enigma in the concluding lines of the story." The final lines of the story are the following: "The question of her decision is one not to be lightly considered, and it is not for me to presume to set myself up as the one person able to answer it. And so I leave it with all of you: Which came out of the opened door,—the lady, or the tiger?" (50). According to Abrams, these final words are the largest clue to the answer of the dilemma. As he explains, if you take the words THE LADY OR THE TIGER, you "can rearrange them with the added letter 'H' to yield TO THE RIGHT: LADY (H)ERE." According to Abrams, this is the correct reading of the story because it "provides clarification of another interesting point": why Stockton chose a tiger rather than, say, a lion or another beast. This is because "in TIGER there are found four of the five letters necessary for the formation of the word RIGHT in the anagram.
The fact that Abrams's article was published more than one hundred years after "The Lady, or the Tiger?" first came into print communicates the continued fascination that readers hold about this problem. Ultimately, the question remains up for interpretation, as Stockton always intended it. The best arguments as to which door the princess chose are supported by the text; the beauty and power of Stockton's text is that it allows for multiple interpretations.
There are several other ideological questions that are being worked through in the short pages that comprise "The Lady, or the Tiger?" As discussed in the "Themes" section of this guide, Stockton is concerned with the question of barbarism vs civilization in this story. The king's "barbaric" nature is painted in a negative light throughout the story, as it is what contributes to his "florid" and "untrammeled" behavior (45). By using the terms "barbarism" and "civilization," Stockton is invoking a stereotype that is often yielded against non-Western societies. A "barbarian" is someone who is considered uncivilized. Throughout history, tribal or nomadic societies have been labeled "barbarian" and have therefore been seen as "lesser" compared to their "civilized" counterparts. The fact that Stockton alludes to the kingdom's "Latin" neighbors suggests that he is adding to this trend, since Western societies that speak a language descended from Latin are seen as more advanced than societies that do not trace their roots to the Roman Empire. Rather than push back against this stereotyped way of thinking, Stockton uses it as a device within his story.
The narrator distances himself and the rest of "civilized" society from the king and the practices in his kingdom by assigning him the label of "semi-barbaric." As a result, the kind of justice system that the king has dreamed up—one which is based entirely on chance and which has a 50% chance of resulting in gruesome and violent death—is made "believable" thanks to the king's "semibarbaric" nature. This furthers the perception that "barbaric" or "primitive" societies are more violent and less cultured than "civilized" societies. Social scientists such as anthropologists and sociologists have discredited this idea many years ago, but it still reflects biases from Stockton's time, almost a century and a half ago.
It must be noted that barbarism is not necessarily portrayed in a wholly negative light in Stockton's story. In fact, Stockton does not suggest that every "barbaric" quality that the king or princess displays is inherently bad. For example, the princess's love for the courtier is intensified thanks to her barbarism, causing her to "love him with an ardor . . . that was exceedingly warm and strong" (47). It is exactly the princess's passion and love for the lover which makes her decision so difficult at the end of the story. Perhaps a non-barbaric princess would not feel such an intense love for the courtier and easily send him to his death so as to not have to share him with a beautiful lady who she despises.
Another ideological question that Stockton grapples with in "The Lady, or the Tiger?" is that of justice. In the story, the narrator emphasizes that the king's method of justice depends upon an "impartial and incorruptible chance" (46). Not only does chance decide the fate of the prisoner, but it also decides how the prisoner is viewed by the rest of the kingdom. If he chooses the door with the lady, the prisoner's slate is cleared and he is declared to be innocent. If, on the other hand, he chooses the door with the tiger, he is unquestionably deemed a criminal and is punished as such: "If he opened the one, there came out of it a hungry tiger, the fiercest and most cruel that could be procured, which immediately sprang upon him, and tore him to pieces, as a punishment for his guilt. The moment that case of the criminal was thus decided, doleful iron bells were clanged" (46). In the end, it does not matter whether or not the prisoner committed the crime of which he is accused. All that matters is which door he chooses; what comes out of his door will decide his fate.
The story calls this method of justice "perfect fairness" and "poetic justice" (46-7). Is this right? It seems that Stockton himself complicates the narrator's assertion that this justice system is perfect. While everyone assumes that the fate of the prisoners is decided by chance—and is therefore incorruptible and unbiased—Stockton shows us that an individual with enough power can corrupt this "perfect" system. Because her lover is on trial, the princess does something which no one in the kingdom has done before: she finds out what each door is hiding. As a result, she completely transforms what is happening in the arena. The prisoner's fate depends not on luck but on the princess's character. She has the absolute power to decide whether he lives or dies. It is an enormous choice. Her status within the world of the story has made her the most powerful person in the entire kingdom while her lover is on trial.
Perhaps Stockton's demonstration about how easily justice can be corrupted in the world of his story can be applied to our own conceptions of justice in the real world. It seems as if Stockton is warning the reader against placing too much trust in "impartial" justice and instead emphasizing that those with power seem to always have a way to exert their biases. We must be careful, within the world of the story and the real world, to see the situation for what it is: one where those with great power hold the lives of the less fortunate in their hands. In Stockton's story, and in the real world, absolute power corrupts. One must be careful to determine where justice truly lies and whether there are some larger, unseen forces at play.
