Short
stories are not just supposed to be brief. They need to have
intriguing titles, an excellent hook, and teach a moral or two—though
this isn’t
always necessary. Titles like “A Very Old Man With Enormous
Wings,” “Hills Like White Elephants,” “The
Nutcracker and the Mouse King,” and “Twenty-six Men and a
Girl” are excellent examples of memorable ones that stand out.
Other
unforgettable short stories that come to mind are Andy Weir’s
“The Egg,” Hans Christian Andersen’s “The
Emperor's New Clothes,” Guy
de Maupassant’s
“The Necklace,” and “The Tell-Tale Heart”by
Edgar
Allan Poe.
If you're a fan of short stories, you’ll find that authors like
Ernest Hemingway, Jeffrey Archer, and Frank Richard Stockton seem to
have mastered not only the art of crafting memorable titles, but
their stories always leave readers in a state of wonder and
reflection.
Stockton,
particularly, is famous for his whimsical and thought-provoking tales
like “The Lady, or the Tiger?” It’s the story of a
handsome and brave young man who has a forbidden affair with the
daughter of a “semi-barbaric king” (Stockton 1884, 9).
Though their love for each other is mutual, upon apprehension, this
young man is scheduled to appear in the king’s arena.
In
this arena, there
are two identical doors. Behind one door is a beautiful lady who
would be married to him should he choose to open that door. Behind
the other door is “a hungry tiger, the fiercest and most cruel
that could be procured” (Stockton 1884, 11). On the appointed
day of judgement, this young man comes into the arena believing that
his ex-lover, the princess, by determined effort, has knowledge of
which door houses a bride.
So
he looks at the
princess, and without hesitation, she signals which door to open. The
accused proceeds to the door and opens it. However, Stockton, at this
point in his narration, expounds on the nature of the princess, who
is “with a soul as fervent and imperious as” her father’s
(Stockton 1884, 14). He also explores “the dilemma which the
princess had had to solve before she gave her signal” (Griffin
1939, 65). He then invites the reader to answer the question, “Which
came out of the opened door—the lady or the tiger?”
(Stockton 1884, 21)
First
Publication The
story had been originally “written
to be read before a literary society of which he was a member.”
However,
it
started an “interesting
discussion,” and
because of that, he submitted it for publication in the monthly
magazine (Stockton 1904, 198). After submission to Century—or
The
Century Illustrated Monthly Magazine (Rosenberg,
1994, 2287)—William Carey, on the editorial staff, felt its
original title wasn't befitting of the tale (Griffin 1939, 64). So he
got permission from Frank Stocktonand
changed it
from “In
the King’s
Arena” to
its presently known title.
The
retitled story
was then published in the November 1882 issue of the magazine (May
1985, 335). Although at first it was slow to catch public attention,
“with rapid acceleration, notices of the strange dilemma
proposed by the story began to reappear in newspapers and critical
reviews” (Griffin 1939, 64). The author’s wife (Mary Anne
Edwards Tuttle) also reported a similar observation when she
recounted that “it had no special announcement there, nor was
it heralded in any way, but it took the public by storm and surprised
both the editor and the author” (Stockton 1904, 198). In 1884,
it was the title story in a collection of twelve stories by Frank
Stockton published by Charles Scribner's Sons.
As
Griffin explains,
“the essence of the popularity of “The Lady or the
Tiger?” lay solely in the unanswered, perhaps unanswerable,
human problem which Stockton propounded” (Griffin 1939, 64).
According to Griffin (1939, 66), because readers desperately wanted
the author’s answer to the dilemma, thousands of letters were
sent to him demanding, even begging for his answer. He had in the
beginning stubbornly refused to comment on their enquiries but “was
forced to make a statement” (Griffin 1939, 67). So he said, “If
you decide which it was—the lady or the tiger—you find
out what kind of a [sic] person you are yourself" (Griffin 1939,
67).
It’s
clear
that even when he had every reason to do so, Stockton didn't really
say anything to answer his readers’ enquiries. His wife wrote
that he “made no attempt to answer the question he had raised”
(Stockton 1904, 199). He only offered valuable advice to unravelling
what came out of the door—the lady or the tiger.
Sequel
To
answer the unending barrage of demands for a solution to the dilemma,
in 1885, Stockton wrote a sequel to “The Lady, or the Tiger?”
titled “The Discourager of Hesitancy” (Griffin 1939, 69).
It was published the same year in The
Century Magazine.It
was again included in an 1886 book titled The
Christmas Wreck and Other Stories. Stockton
subtitled it: A Continuation of “The Lady or the Tiger?”
The
story is set a
year after the events in the “semi-barbaric” king’s
arena. It follows five men of renown who travel to the monarch’s
palace. A high officer of the court receives them. They tell him a
countryman of theirs was present on the day of the young man’s
trial but, being “a man of supersensitive feelings,” left
before seeing the outcome (Stockton 1886, 186).
They
implore the
high officer to tell them whether it was the lady or the tiger that
came out of the door. The high officer instead tells them a story of
a prince who had come to the kingdom in search of a wife. The king
fulfils the prince’s request, and he is married to a beautiful
woman, albeit while blindfolded.
Immediately
after
the wedding, the prince is ushered into another room where he has to
choose his newlywed wife from a group of forty women. Failure to make
the right choice means an immediate execution.
An
attendant who had
identified himself as the “Discourager of Hesitancy” had
been instructed to kill him if he was unable to make prompt
decisions. This attendant is always standing very close to him and
had been present even when he was getting married.
The
prince is able
to choose correctly between a lady that frowns at him and another
that smiles at him and thus escapes execution. The high officer then
tells the five esteemed travellers that if they are able to tell him
which of the ladies the prince chose, he’ll tell them what came
out of the door.
Stockton
then
explains that the five men have not yet decided on which lady the
prince chose. Griffin (1939, 69) advances that the sequel “is
in many ways as ingenious a problem as” its predecessor. In
offering help to his readership, perhaps Stockton had unintentionally
refuelled the confusion—that is, the lady or the tiger!
Spin-off
The
editor, Ellery
Queen, in an introductory section to a spin-off of the Stockton
puzzler, asserted that Stockton, tongue in cheek, had ended the
sequel he wrote with an equally ambiguous ending. Queen believed that
the spin-off was not only a “literary miracle” but
offered such a compelling answer that Stockton would have approved.
Published
in September 1948 in Ellery
Queen’s Mystery Magazine,
the short story titled “The
Lady and the Tiger” by
American author and screenwriter Jack Moffitt is very descriptive of
a well-deserved spin-off to Stockton’s puzzler. The short story
is also published in Otto Penzler’s 2006 book titled Uncertain
Endings: Literature’s Greatest Unsolved Mystery Stories.
Penzler
is in agreement with Queen when he writes that “Jack Moffett
set himself the Herculean task of producing a resolution to ‘The
Lady, or the Tiger?’ that
was superior to the author’s
own” (Penzler 2006, 13).
These
claims are
only bold assertions because, although Moffitt gives an answer to the
puzzler, it is shrouded in speculation and forcefully linked to
biblical anecdotes. This spin-off is too ambitious in its attempt. It
assumes that the events in the original story happened in the eastern
Mediterranean and at the same time as Jesus’ ministry.
Moffitt’s
story identifies the “semi-barbaric” king as King Herod.
The princess is Herod’s stepdaughter by the name Salome. The
accused young man goes by the name Jason, although his real name is
“Gestos” (also spelled Gestas in apocryphal literature).
He is later identified in the story as the unrepentant “thief”
who was crucified to the left of Jesus (Moffitt 1948, 62).
The
lady behind one
of the twin doors goes by the name Miriam. She is the daughter of a
“stubborn” high priest called Caiaphas. There are
mentions of Matthew and other disciples of Jesus. There are mostly
mentions of characters and some popular events in the four gospels.
Even John the Baptist gets mentioned.
Although
the story
is daring, and maybe believable or unbelievable depending, of course,
on the reader, it’s undeniable that it makes a great attempt to
answer Stockton’s puzzle. Unlike the original, it has a clear
resolution—the young man survives because the tiger kills the
lady instead. The young man, as mentioned earlier, dies by
crucifixion later on in the story. This spin-off establishes that the
tiger is indeed behind the door on the right.
Yet
it goes further
to show that the young man survives the arena only because he quickly
opens the left door after initially opening the one on the right. The
story is creative and bold, but unfortunately, it doesn't do justice
to Stockton’s question. It felt like the author was only trying
to bask in the fame and glory that is “The Lady or the Tiger?”
Verdict
The
answer might lie
in the title. After all, it warranted changing, didn't it? The author
also didn't have to tell readers that the princess had pointed to the
door on the right. The title is “The Lady, or the Tiger?”
It could have been “The Tiger, or the Lady?” It could be
said that for alphabetical order purposes, “Lady” had to
come first. However, the editorial might have decided that since that
was the answer, it should be in plain sight. So the door on the right
housed the tiger.
That
may be the
answer, except there are other considerations. For example, Stockton
tells readers that the accused is “handsome and brave to a
degree unsurpassed in all” of the kingdom (Stockton 1884, 14).
He was so handsome that the crowd gathered at the arena was surprised
there could be someone so grand.
As
regards his boldness, the line, “never before had a subject
dared to love the daughter of a king,” exemplifies the bravery
of the young lover (Stockton 1884, 14). He dared to have an affair
with her,and
it could have been because he was just foolhardy.
However,
Stockton,
who seems to have left no stone unturned in order to aid readers in
finding an accurate answer, is unlikely to forget mentioning this.
The accused might have always known what would befall him should the
ungodly affair be discovered, so surely it wasn’t blind
boldness. It could have been that upon apprehension, he knew she
would save him. That explains why he doesn't hesitate the slightest
when she points to the door on the right.
Yet
the young man
could have been wrong about her. His blind confidence prevents him
from fully grasping the princess' complex nature, which the author
explores in greater detail. Stockton writes that the princess “sat
there paler and whiter than anyone” (Stockton 1884, 18). If she
were about to point to the door that housed the bride, she wouldn't
have looked that way. It was only because she had decided to betray
his trust.
In
“The Discourager of Hesitancy,” even without the danger
of opening a door to a tiger, the danger of death is still eminent.
So she knows that both the lady and the tiger are the finality of
what she has with her lover. Thus, whatever the decision, it will be
painful for her. However, by choosing the tiger, her pain would be
short-lived. By choosing the lady, she will be reminded every day of
what she lost to someone she disliked. Knowing the young man’s
nature, she was sure he wouldn’t
fear death; come rain or shine, he wouldn’t
mind.
Obviously,
most
readers would wish that the young man received a bride, but they are
not looking at things through her lenses. So the verdict is that it
was the tiger that came out of the door. Yet for her, there was no
difference between the lady and the tiger.
Conclusion
From
its first
publication to the sequel authored by Stockton himself and the
spin-offs by authors like Jack Moffitt and other creatives in other
totally different genres, the mystery remains. Even this article only
raises questions beyond what it set out to solve. There will indeed
be no confident answer to Frank Stockton’s puzzle. That may be
the situation because it serves a purpose.
Readers
and writers
alike will always be fascinated by “The Lady, or the Tiger?”
because of the puzzle it poses. Without the mystery, it won’t
be as intriguing. There will never be a correct answer because even
the creator of the dilemma didn’t provide one. The author’s
answer would have had more credibility and would have offered the
best explanation.
Who
are we, therefore, to institute a solution if its author didn’t?
It’s akin to the observation, “You say octopi; I say
octopuses. But in the end, what an octopus would say is what
matters.” So the struggle continues—“Which
came out of the opened door—the lady, or the tiger?”
Works
cited Griffin,
I. J. Martin. 1939. Frank
R. Stockton: A Critical Biography.
Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.
May,
Jill P. 1985. "Frank R. Stockton." In Dictionary
of Literary Biography, Vol. 42: American Writers for Children Before
1900,
edited by Glenn E. Estes, 332-38. Detroit: Gale Research Company.
Moffitt,
Jack. 1948. "The Lady and the Tiger." Ellery
Queen’s
Mystery Magazine12(58):
39-62. New York: The American Mercury, Inc.
Rosenberg,
Ruth.
1994. "Frank R. Stockton." In Critical
Survey of Short Fiction, Vol. 6,
edited by Frank N. Magill, 2287-90. New Jersey: Salem Press Inc.
Stockton,
E. Marian. 1904. "A Memorial Sketch of Mr. Stockton." In
The
Novels and Stories of Frank R. Stockton, Vol. XXIII: A Bicycle of
Cathay with A Memorial Sketch of Mr. Stockton and A Bibliography of
His Works,
189-206. New York: Charles Scribner’s
Sons.
Stockton,
Frank R. 1884. The
Lady, or the Tiger? And Other Stories.
Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.
Stockton,
Frank R. 1886. The
Christmas Wreck and Other Stories.
New York: Charles Scribner’s
Sons.
Teddy Yoofi
Biney is a Ghanaian writer, poet, songwriter, online marketer, music
educator,
guitarist,
entrepreneur,and
an avid gym enthusiast. Yoofi has a flair for storytelling. He blends
humour, personal reflections, and cultural insights into his work.
His writing, found on Mediumand
Substack, addresses themes of identity, societal expectations, and
personal growth. Yoofi has not been previously published through
traditional outlets.
