The Lady, or the Tiger?
Chapter 1: Preface
Once upon a time, in the Autumn of 1906, the Murdoch's encountered an entangled mystery. It danced and dodged, its challenges revealing hidden truths about human nature uncloaked by weighty choices and their subsequent consequences, reminding of the fable of "The Lady, or the Tiger?"
In a more barbarous time, a brutal king devised a dastardly means of trial by ordeal, through which one's guilt or innocence was to be decided by chance. The accused is delivered into a public arena and is confronted with a choice between opening one of two indistinguishable doors. Hidden behind one door, the king has chosen the perfect lover for the accused, marital bliss its prize, while sequestered behind the other door is a man-eating tiger, offering a certain and torturous death. But in this fable, it is not the choice that the accused makes which is significant. No, it is the choice made by the accused's lover, whom he knows has come to learn what lies behind each door. It is this choice around which this story dwells, for the accused looks to his trusted lover to aid in his decision, and thus it is she who has the power to give her most cherished lover either to the love of another, or to throw him to an agonous mauling and terrifying death.
In this Murdochian tale, many characters, both old and new, tackle such impossible dilemmas… But I begin by leaving you with the same frustration as did Frank Stockton in 1882, for in Stockton's telling of the story, the outcome of this monumental choice is never revealed.