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Suchergebnisse:
9 October 1964. ( 1964-10-09) Running time. 86 minutes. Country. France. Language. French. Jealous as a Tiger (French: Jaloux comme un tigre) is a 1964 French comedy film directed by Darry Cowl and Maurice Delbez and starring Darry Cowl, Francis Blanche and Jean Poiret.
- Author Biography
- Plot Summary
- Characters
- Themes
- Style
- Historical Context
- Critical Overview
- Criticism
- Sources
- Further Reading
Stockton was one of the most famous American writers of the 1880s and 1890s. Known for his fantastic settings, realistic characters, and sly humor, he has been compared to Mark Twain, Joel Chandler Harris, Edward Eggleston, and Bret Harte as an American humorist. Critically admired in his day, Stockton had many fans who were writers themselves, inc...
“The Lady, or the Tiger?” begins with a description of a “semi-barbaric” king who rules his kingdom with a heavy hand. For punishing criminals, he has built an arena featuring two doors. The criminal must choose his own fate by selecting one of the two closed doors. Behind one door is a hungry tiger that will eat the prisoner alive. Behind the othe...
Courtier
The courtier is a young man whose love affair with the princess results in his imprisonment and trial. Though of lower birth than the princess, he is “handsome and brave to a degree unsurpassed in all this kingdom.” He trusts absolutely in his power to charm the princess, and realizing that she knows what is behind each door, he opens the one she indicates “without the slightest hesitation.”
King
The king is a “semi-barbaric” man with an implacable will. As part of the system of justice he has established in his land, the king sets up a system of choice for criminals. They must enter an arena and pick a door; the door may lead to their freedom or to a terrible death. Furious when he discovers his daughter’s affair with a courtier, the king condemns the young man to the arena, taking great care to select the fiercest tiger to place behind one door and the most respectable marriage cand...
Lady
The lady is a young courtier, picked by the king to be the young man’s bride, should he open the correct door. She is beautiful, charming, and known to both the courtier and the princess. The princess perceives the lady as a rival for the young man’s love, and thus she is an object of the princess’s hatred and jealousy.
Choices and Consequences
The “semi-barbaric” king has set up the arena in such a way that the prisoner’s choice will determine his fate, regardless of his guilt or innocence. Either he will be eaten by a hungry tiger or he will instantly marry a beautiful girl. This element of choice absolves the king from any responsibility in the situation and intrigues the audience, who eagerly anticipate the prisoner’s fate. Not knowing whether they will witness a bloody spectacle or a wedding
Media Adaptations
1. “The Lady, or the Tiger?” was adapted as a three-act operetta on May 7, 1888, in Wallack’s Theatre, New York, with Stockton present in the opening-night audience. Another company in London opened the play that same night at the Elephant and Castle Theatre. Neither production lasted long, though the American version was revived for a short time during the 1890s. 2. “The Lady, or the Tiger?” was adapted for film in 1970 by the Encyclopedia Britannica Educational Corporation. The story was se...
Betrayal
The princess maybetray the man in the arena because she is jealous of the young woman behind the door. Not only does she suspect that her lover may be interested in this attractive female courtier, but she is also deeply troubled by the certainty that their marriage will be compulsory if he chooses the “Fight” door. Whether she will be loyal to her lover or betray him and send him to his death is the main conflict of the story, and one that is not resolved.
Point of View
The story is told in third-person omniscient point of view. This means that the narrator knows the thoughts and actions of all the characters. The narrator sets the story in fairy-tale mode—“In the very olden time”—and then addresses the reader directly, in the first-person mode, after the young man makes his choice. The narrator comments on the story, elaborating on the princess’s role, and challenging the reader to consider wisely, because “it is not for me to presume to set myself up as th...
Setting
The story is set in an imaginary time and place, in a kingdom whose king is “semi-barbaric.” His autocratic style is described in detail, and the narrator comments at length on his splendid arena. It has tiers upon tiers, galleries, and doors at and below ground level, with curtains round them so that no hint of what is behind them is revealed. If the tiger eats the prisoner, mourners await, and if the lady marries the prisoner, priests are ready to perform the marriage ceremony. The setting...
Structure
Written with many conventions of a fairy tale, “The Lady, or the Tiger?” is divided into three parts. The first part presents the background of the princess and the courtier’s particular dilemma, describing the king’s justice system and acclimating the reader to this odd kingdom. The second part of the story concerns the love affair, the king’s discovery of it, and the young man’s sentencing to trial in the arena. In the third part, the narrator focuses on the princess’s decision-making proce...
American Humorists in the Nineteenth Century
Popular American literature in the decades preceding the twentieth century included plenty of adventure novels, like those of Robert Louis Stevenson, and humorous works, like the novels of Mark Twain, which often parodied the emerging American culture. Another popular form was the simple short story with a trick ending, like O. Henry’s “The Gift of the Magi,” in which a young couple’s good intentions result in a debacle of Christmas gift-giving. Stockton was considered a humorist, and his sto...
The Pre-Raphaelites Influence Literature
The Pre-Raphaelites were a group of British artists, led by Gabriel Dante Rossetti and Edward Burne-Jones, who gained influence during the 1850s. Their paintings were known for their fairy-tale-like settings that were often influenced by literature—especially poetry—and music. The Pre-Raphaelites’ name was intended to display their preference for the idealized art reminiscent of the era before Raphael, an Italian master of the High Renaissance. Their paintings often depicted beautiful women i...
Shortly after Stockton published “The Lady, or the Tiger?,” he and his wife left on an extended European vacation. Thus, he missed much of the initial debate that swirled around his story. Martin Griffin in his 1939 biography of Stockton said that “notices
Tanya Gardiner-Scott
Gardiner-Scott is an associate professor of English at Mount Ida College in Newton, Massachusetts. Her areas of special academic interest include fantasy and science fiction, the British novel, gothic and medieval literature, and women’s fiction. In the following essay, she provides a general introduction to “The Lady, or the Tiger?” When critics today think of American humorists of the nineteenth century, Mark Twain readily comes to mind. But one of his prolific contemporaries was Frank R. S...
What Do I Read Next?
1. Stockton wrote “The Discourager of Hesitancy” in 1885, in response to questions about “The Lady, or the Tiger?” The story begins in the arena of the earlier story, with one of the audience members leaving just as the young man opens the right-hand door. The departing spectator then poses another open-ended question to the readers. 2. “The Knife That Killed Po Hancy” is a story published by Stockton in 1889 about a lawyer who cuts himself with a knife that had earlier killed a Burmese bandi...
Sarah Madsen Hardy
Madsen Hardy has a doctorate in English literature. In the following essay, she discusses Stockton’s satirical revision of the traditional fairytale form as a rebellion against the cultural dominance of European literature in the turn-of-the-century United States. One of the most useful questions that a student reader can ask is: “What kind of expectations do I have for this work?” When one starts to read, one cannot help but bring certain assumptions and expectations to the experience. Autho...
Golemba, Henry L. “Frank R. Stockton,” in Dictionary of Literary Biography, Vol. 74: American Short-Story Writers Before 1880,Gale, 1988, pp. 341-47. Pattee, Fred Lewis. The Development of the American Short Story: An Historical Survey,Harper & Bros., 1923, pp. 296-98. Quiller-Couch, Sir Arthur. “Mr. Stockton,” in Adventures in Criticism,Putnam, 19...
Golemba, Henry L. Frank R. Stockton,Twayne, 1981, pp. 144-46. Howells, William Dean. “Stockton’s Stories,” in The Atlantic Monthly,Vol. LIX, No. 351, January, 1887, pp. 130-32. Howells, William Dean. “Fiction, New and Old,” in The Atlantic Monthly,Vol. LXXXVII, No. 69, January, 1901, pp. 136-38. May, Jill P. “Frank R. Stockton,” in Dictionary of Li...
It is in the hands of the princess to deliver the young man to the lady or the tiger. She is ill-tempered, since either outcome means that she has lost her lover, and her tendencies toward rampant jealousy mix with her despair into a potentially deadly cocktail of strong emotion.
Quick answer: The first major conflict in "The Lady, or the Tiger?" is a person-versus-self conflict that focuses on the princess's decision to kill her lover or allow him to marry the maiden....
After discovering the truth, the princess is jealous of the other woman and her relationship with the young man. This ignites a fiery hatred of the woman. However, the young man remains steadfast in his love for the princess. Even on the day of his judgment at the arena, he loves and trusts her.
Approved by eNotes Editorial. Get an answer for 'How is jealousy a pervasive theme in "The Lady, or the Tiger?"' and find homework help for other The Lady, or the Tiger? questions at eNotes.
The Overwhelming Influence of Jealousy. Toward the end of the story, jealousy plays a major thematic role in the actions of the princess. When her lover is on trial, the princess learns which door holds the tiger and which holds the lady, but this does not necessarily mean she wishes to save his life.
