Love And Jealousy In The Lady Or The Tiger?

What would you do if your love faces the most difficult choice that makes your life change? Would you sacrifice your love for your lover who will marry other people to escape the death, or would you just let him die because of your jealousy? In the myth “The Lady or the Tiger?” Frank R. Stockton tells the story about the feudal dynasty with a contradictory justice system based on the king’s decision. The king is compassionate and patriotic; however, there is another side of him who has opposite behavior, which is barbarous to whom dare to disobey his order. The king expected that his daughter, the pretty princess will marry an aristocratic; nonetheless, he found out that the princess is in love with a commoner. The king was very angry, so he

Jealousy might lead the princess to choose the tiger, but it is not because her love is not strong enough, it is because of the princess’s contempt for the lady. The princess recognizes that the lady is trying to coquet with her lover, and that’s why she hates the lady. The author states, “often had she seen, or imagined that she had seen, this fair creature throwing glances of admiration upon the person of her lover, and sometimes she thought these glances were perceived, and even returned” (3). Thus, the princess’s jealousy might make her choose the tiger because she does not want to lose her lover by a mediocre lady. The author also indicates that “The girl was lovely, but she had dared to raise her eyes to the loved one of the princess; and, with all the intensity of the savage blood transmitted to her through long lines of wholly barbaric ancestors, she hated the woman who blushed and trembled behind that silent door” (3). As a member of noble descent, the reputable princess with all her power would not allow any commoner to be married to her man. Therefore, the princess’s jealousy might lead her to direct her lover to the tiger, because nobody can attempt her possession. She would rather rub salt into her wound’s heart than seeing him happy with other

The other factor that makes people to admit the princess posture with cruel objective. There seems another side of the princess’s behavior that makes her halfway tend toward her father mindset and the cruel justice system. The author also claims, “had it not been for the moiety of barbarism in her nature, it is probable that lady would not have been there; but her intense fervid soul would not allow her to be absent on an occasion in which she was so terribly interested.” (3) The princess may want to enjoy the barbaric event in the arena as her nature of semi-barbaric, or she attends the “trial” to witness a tiger kill her lover. An emotional woman would be scared of barbaric spectacle, especially which is a ferocious execution that her lover is a victim. Nevertheless, this event looks properly what the semi-barbaric princess desires: her lover will be punished, and he will not allow to marry the lady whom the princess contempt. As a respectable princess, she can do anything even if it is assumed that is the hardest thing in her kingdom. Once she wants to get through all of these, they must be done under her control. Although the half side of her compassionate desires that her love can be alive, the other side of her barbaric still justifies her lover’s death to herself. For that reason, the princess might give a wrong signal to the tiger door, which is leading