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What Happens At The End Of 'The Lady Or The Tiger And Other Stories'?

2026-01-05 14:11:23

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3 Answers

Sadie

“The Lady, or the Tiger?” by Frank Stockton is a story that ends in a rather brutal manner. The whole story leads up to the moment when the princess of Powerfort decides whether to send her beloved into the lady’s hasn or the tiger’s den. Her decision will mean life for her beloved or his death at the hands of the ferocious tiger. We feel the princess’s great pain and inner conflict as jealousy is pitted against her great love for her suitor. And then . . . nothing. She opens up the door and the story ends. Whether she has sent her beloved to the lady where he will be her husband or if she has sent him to his death in the tiger’s den is for the reader to decide. We become complicit in the story as we decide for ourselves how the princess has acted. Is she a generous and magnanimous person who would allow her beloved to be another man’s wife or is she a jealous and ruthless person who would send her lover to his death in the tiger’s den? I have read “The Lady, or the Tiger?” so many times, and still I am not sure what the author has decided regarding the fate of the princess’s lover.

Many of the other stories in this collection are quirky and offbeat, sometimes humorous, and occasionally quite dark. But none of them, including a very amusing tale about a very bad ghost, and another about an extraordinary magical journey by train, quite match the effectiveness of ‘The Lady or the Tiger?’. And that is because none of them present quite the same sort of moral puzzle that the title story so memorably presents. Story after story which present moral conundrums are in effect puzzles to be solved, and if one is looking for a collection of stories which offer up such brain teasers and are of adequate quality, then this is a very good choice. However, it must be warned that few of the stories offer up neatly-solved moral conundrums. Most of them, as has been said, are puzzles. And readers looking for an easy read with neat and tidy solutions to the moral crises that are posed will be disappointed. I think that this book is excellent because the title story is a classic which grows with the reader and which, every now and again, one returns to in order to thrash out its mysterious ambiguities with friends.

2026-01-08

Laura

I have a LOVE/HATE relationship with this short story ‘The Lady or the Tiger?’ originally written by Frank Stockton (1850-1924) in 1882 and revised in 1883. I read this in High School and after we finished reading it, the whole class erupted into an argument lasting for hours. This story follows a Princess who is left in limbo between her love for a Prince and her jealousy of him. The readers are left to their own devices in deciding what choice the Princess makes by Stockton handing us the ‘decide for yourself’ that follows us long after reading the short story. There are times when I want to believe that she couldn’t bear to watch him die and therefore sends him to the lady but then again maybe she was just so filled with rage that she did just that.

While other stories in the collection are lightheared and even quirky, such as a really, really bad witch, and a man who outwits fate, The Lady or the Tiger? stands apart. The story is incredibly engaging, and it’s one of those stories where, even years after reading it for the first time, I find myself giving the side of my head to friends who are so sure they know what the lady or the tiger represented that they claim that the princess picked one or the other. But that’s not true. She could have done either. That’s the point of the story.

2026-01-10

Logan

The title story is brilliant in leaving the princess’ decision to us, to save her lover or to condemn him to the tiger. The setup is so masterful in bringing out our biases towards love versus jealousy that you can easily decide to read the story from either angle. The rest of the stories in the collection are also very nice, my favorite has a fun shadow who is sentient. However, none of them have the same psychological weight as the title story, which is brilliant because it is so open to interpretation. In fact, it is just the kind of story that keeps alive in people’s minds as they keep reading the story over and over and decide it in different ways. It sparks endless debate.

2026-01-10

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