Lady or Tiger (Inside the heart of a woman)

May 14, 2017 Countryman, Features / Columnists

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By Dennis Nichols

It’s Mother’s Day, and love’s finest maternal themes will reign for at least twenty-four hours. Along with flowers and exquisite dinners, mothers and motherhood will be put on a mile-high pedestal, as they should be.

Now this story may come over as a something of a spoiler because, apart from being someone else’s tale paraphrased, it takes (or attempts to take) a peek into that most secret, strange, and unsearchable of all places – a woman’s heart – where you enter at your pleasure, or peril.

A woman’s heart, enfolding the fondest sentiments of human expression, also embraces hidden passions in the arena of love. Ask someone who has been on the receiving end of a tongue-lashing, or worse, from a woman spurned after emotionally committing to a relationship!

That fount of love has an accompanying wellspring of fierce protection and retaliation against the perceived enemy, a trait found in most females in the animal kingdom, and one that may overspill into the arena just mentioned. And when it does the results can be as dire as they are unpredictable.

Although the setting of this story is a foreign locale, many Guyanese, will be able to relate to its gist. The teenaged girl who falls heart over head over heels in love, the jilted ‘lady-in-waiting’, and in both instances the objects of their frustrated affection, are all players in a drama that has been acted out over the centuries.

The author of this one is Frank R. Stockton, an American writer of short stories and humorous fiction (Humour here lies mostly in the author’s style/diction) who gives searing flashes of insight into the heart and mind of a woman as he poses a question at the end that delves into both. So if at the conclusion of the story you feel confused or disappointed, blame FRS for posing the question – the lady or the tiger.

In ancient times a ‘semi-barbaric’ king ruled his kingdom in fanciful fashion. Obviously he would have had a semi-civilized way of thinking and ruling which to his mind, was unquestionable because, well, he was who he was.

Where justice was concerned, he held an inflexible position that it should not be left to the wisdom of human deliberation but to ‘the decrees of an impartial and incorruptible chance’. In this way, a man accused of wrongdoing would either acquit or condemn himself by the choice he made, subject only to the said incorruptible chance; in other words, he held his future in his hands, literally.

Justice was administered in a huge amphitheatre built with secret vaults and passageways hidden from view and known only to a trusted few. An accused, on entering the arena, would be confronted at the opposite end by two closed doors similar in every way except for what lay behind them. One held a ferocious and hungry tiger; beyond the other waited a beautiful young woman. The fate of the accused lay in which door he chose to open. He would either be swiftly and savagely torn to pieces or find himself in the arms of the damsel who, by a king’s decree, he had to marry whether or not he was otherwise committed. Finding himself innocent or guilty, he was rewarded or punished on the spot.

The king had a beautiful and vivacious daughter, a hot-blooded girl who was as intensely passionate as her father. He loved her dearly, but even she could not oppose his commands. She had fallen deeply in love with a handsome and brave young man – a commoner however – who dared return her affection. When the king discovered this ‘wrong’ he immediately had the youth imprisoned. A search was made for the most vicious beast as well as the most attractive and alluring maiden in the kingdom, and an appropriate date was set for the ‘trial’.

The princess faced a predicament, made all the more intriguing by the fact that she knew the young woman whom she felt was a rival for her lover’s affection, and she hated her ‘with all the intensity of the savage blood transmitted to her through long lines of wholly barbaric ancestors’.  Thus riveted by the drama about to unfold she had, through her influence and a bribe of gold, done what no one else had ever attempted; she found out the secret of the doors, and on the day of the trial, knew what lay behind each one. Her plight was obvious. She would watch impotently as her lover was either mauled by the tiger or rapturously embraced by her hated rival.

It’s trial day. The princess sits next to her father. The arena is filled to capacity as spectators prepare to witness a wedding or a slaughter. As the accused walks toward the twin doors he turns to bow at the king but his eyes are fixed on the princess. In his heart, and ‘by that power of quick perception which is given to those whose souls are one’, he immediately senses that she knows the doors’ awesome secrets, and waits for a signal from her. No one else, including the king, notices this silent communication and the youth’s unspoken question “Which?”

The princess, her heart pounding, raises her hand and with an almost undetectable motion, makes a slight movement, pointing to the right. Her lover turns and walks purposefully to the doors as the spectators hold their breath. Without hesitation he goes to the door on the right, and opens it. Here our story ends, and here that ‘unanswerable’ question is asked; who or what came out that door – the lady or the tiger?

When I first read this story many years ago, the ‘obvious’ answer leapt out at me, then quickly leapt back. Surely the young woman would not want to see her lover ripped to a bloody pulp! The thought alone, and then the gory spectacle would certainly drive her insane. But the author forces us to consider the very real possibility of the other option, and it is at this point that the reader must try to understand what playwright William Congreve meant when he wrote ‘Heaven has no rage like love to hatred turned; nor Hell a fury like a woman scorned.’ And although the princess in this story was not scorned in the way the quote suggests, it is a close enough comparison.

In the story, Stockton repeatedly reminds us that the princess has a semi-barbaric streak; a fervent, imperious soul, and that she loved the accused ‘with an ardor that had enough of barbarism in it to make it exceedingly warm and strong. Can such a woman bear to see the object of her affection wed to the beautiful and hated ‘other woman’ knowing how blissfully happy and thankful both would be at this fortuitous blessing? Her soul ‘at a white heat beneath the combined fires of despair and jealousy,’ wouldn’t she rather see her lover die at once and, in the author’s words, “go to wait for her in the blessed regions of semi-barbaric futurity?”  (In any case he was already dead to her, wasn’t he?)

As to the question, Stockton himself notes, “The more we reflect … the harder it is to answer. It involves a study of the human heart which leads us through devious mazes of passion, out of which it is difficult to find our way.”

On this Mother’s Day you may not want to ponder such scheming designs of the heart and mind. But in your quieter moments reader, search your own hearts with honesty and objectivity and then essay an answer – Into whose fateful embrace did that young man step – the lady or the tiger?

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