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The Box-Social And The Lady Or The Tiger

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Even though Frank Stockton’s “The Lady or The Tiger” and James Reaney’s “The Box-Social” have extremely different settings and themes, they have many similarities. Both these works of literature possess similar characters and elements of suspense and satire. The main characters in “The Lady or The Tiger” and “The Box-Social” are very alike in several ways. Their characteristics mirror each other and have similar effects on the story. The princess in “The Lady or The Tiger” is a beautiful, semi-barbaric woman who is very passionately in love with a lowly courier of her fathers. She is very possessive of her lover and is jealous of anyone that she sees as threat to their relationship. This is shown when the princess thinks …show more content…

The princess from “The Lady or The Tiger” has a burdensome decision to make, but she allows her abhorrence for the woman to drive her. The princess positively considers sending her lover to his death over marrying another woman. The princess is no longer thinking about what is best for her lover, but what will satisfy her need for revenge. She loves the man and hates the woman so passionately that her ethics are no longer what are important. She cannot help but let her emotions control her thoughts in every waking hour. In “The Lady or The Tiger”, the reader is not told whether the princess tells her love to open the door with the lady or the tiger, but throughout the story it is insinuated that her semi-barbaric heart will lead her in the direction of revenge. In “The Box-Social”, anger also leads Sylvia down a path of revenge. In the story, it is implied that not all in the relationship between Sylvia and him was fully consented to. When Sylvia falls pregnant from an encounter that readerswe assume was unwanted, she becomes resentful of him, especially after he leaves her. It also becomes apparent at the end of the story that he may not have known about the pregnancy at all. All the anger she was feeling towards him may have been solved through conversation, but Sylvia is ashamed by what happened and felt that she had no other choice than to abort the baby. The stress of the pregnancy causes Sylvia to go to extreme measures to ensure that she has her revenge. Putting a stillborn child in a box and presenting it to the father is a sadistic way to reveal such news and is something that would only be done by a person who was driven to the brink of madness. By getting her revenge on him, Sylvia also reveals that she is incapable of dealing with her emotions. Both the princess and Sylvia are

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