The Lady, or the Tiger

"The Lady, or the Tiger?" (1882), is about a man sentenced to an unusual punishment for having a romance with a king's beloved daughter. Taken to the public arena, he is faced with two doors, behind one of which is a hungry tiger that will devour him. Behind the other is a beautiful lady-in-waiting, whom he will have to marry, if he opens that door. While the crowd waits anxiously for his decision, he sees the princess among the spectators, who points him to the door on the right. The lover starts to open the door and ... the story ends abruptly there. Did the princess save her love by pointing to the door leading to the lady-in-waiting, or did she prefer to see her lover die rather than see him marry someone else? That quandary has made the story a staple in English classes in American schools, especially since Stockton was careful never to hint at what he thought the ending would be (according to Hiram Collins Haydn in The Thesaurus of Book Digests, ISBN 0-517-00122-5). He also wrote a sequel to the story, "The Discourager of Hesitancy." Odin’s Library Classics is dedicated to bringing the world the best of humankind’s literature from throughout the ages. Carefully selected, each work is unabridged from classic works of fiction, nonfiction, poetry, or drama.