At first it appears that the semi-barbaric king is the sole arbiter of law in Frank Stockton's short story "The Lady or the Tiger." His control of government in the kingdom is unquestioned:
He was a man of exuberant fancy, and, withal, of an authority so irresistible that, at his will, he turned his varied fancies into facts.
He establishes the arena to pass judgement on accused criminals and believes the institution to be totally...
At first it appears that the semi-barbaric king is the sole arbiter of law in Frank Stockton's short story "The Lady or the Tiger." His control of government in the kingdom is unquestioned:
He was a man of exuberant fancy, and, withal, of an authority so irresistible that, at his will, he turned his varied fancies into facts.
He establishes the arena to pass judgement on accused criminals and believes the institution to be totally fair in its ability to judge the guilt or innocence of the accused. An accused man enters the arena and has the choice of two doors. Behind one door is a lady, to whom he is promptly married, and behind the other door is a tiger, who promptly kills him. The verdict is based on "impartial and incorruptible chance." The accused has no idea from which door the lady might emerge, or the tiger, and so his fate is totally in his own hands.
The king's law, however, is compromised by his daughter, the princess. When her lover is arrested and set to go on trial in the arena, she is able to discover, "in which of the two rooms, that lay behind those doors, stood the cage of the tiger, with its open front, and in which waited the lady." Her ability to alter the proceedings by knowing the secret of the doors makes her the ultimate lawmaker in this particular case. Of course, if she could find out the secret for this case, she could just as easily know the outcome for any future proceedings, and so the king's justice was really not as "incorruptible" as he had once believed and, as with many things in life, left to the whims of a woman.
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