The Discourager of Hesitancy by Frank R. Stockton
Quick answer: The Discourager of Hesitancy by Frank R. Stockton, summarised with the ending: the sequel to The Lady, or the Tiger?, the smile or frown riddle, themes and craft.
Five strangers arrive at the court of the semi-barbaric king with one request: their whole nation has been arguing about the affair of the lady and the tiger, and they have travelled far to learn, at last, what came out of that door. The high officer who receives them does not refuse. He offers them a trade, and tells them a second story. The Discourager of Hesitancy appeared in 1885, three years after The Lady, or the Tiger? had made Frank R. Stockton the most pestered author in America.
It is that rarest of things, a sequel whose entire purpose is to decline to be one, and it should be read immediately after its parent story, since its comedy and its cruelty both depend on the itch it promises to scratch. As a piece of design it may be even more elegant than the original: a riddle offered as the price of a riddle.
The story in brief, ending included, twice withheld
The visitors state their business, and the high officer explains the court's position: the answer exists, but it must be earned. He then recounts what happened when a certain prince came to this same kingdom to find a wife. Received courteously, the prince is startled to be told he will be married the next day, before he has seen or chosen anyone. During the ceremony a tall, broad-shouldered figure stands close behind him: a court functionary bearing a great scimitar, the Discourager of Hesitancy, whose office is exactly what his title implies. Prompted by that presence, the prince says his vows promptly and firmly to a veiled bride, and only afterwards, alone with her, does he lift the veil: she is beautiful, and he is delighted. But the king is not finished. The next day the prince is led into a hall where forty ladies stand, dressed identically, each as lovely as the next, and is informed that his wife of one day is among them. He must claim her, now, and without hesitating; the Discourager stands behind him with the scimitar loosened. If he takes the wrong woman by the hand, matters will go very badly.
The prince walks down the line in an agony of attention. Then he remembers, and the story turns on the remembered detail: at the ceremony, through the veil, and in their evening together, he had known his bride two ways, one lady in that line, seeing him approach, smiled at him; another, at the same moment, frowned. One of those two is his wife, and her expression is the cipher: a bride might smile to guide her husband, or frown because he needed guiding; might smile with love, or frown with the fear of losing him. The prince read the faces, made his choice, took a lady by the hand, and, the officer reports, chose correctly, to general rejoicing. The tale done, the officer turns to the visitors with the court's offer: tell us which lady was the prince's wife, the one who smiled or the one who frowned, and when you have answered that, we will tell you what came out of the door, the lady or the tiger. The strangers have not yet answered. Neither, Stockton is confident, will you.
The cast of the counter-riddle
Stockton reuses his fable machinery with the dials moved from terror toward comedy.
Themes: decision, deadline and the economy of answers
The themes run close to the parent story but shift register. Where the arena weighed love against jealousy, this tale weighs judgement against time: every trial the prince faces is a decision demanded before knowledge is complete, which is, Stockton implies, what every real decision is. The Discourager literalises the cost of dithering, and the forty identical ladies stage the terror of choosing among options that refuse to differentiate themselves.
The sharper reading: the story is about the market price of certainty. The visitors treat the first riddle's answer as a commodity they can travel to and collect; the court replies that answers are not given but exchanged, and the exchange rate is another act of judgement. Stockton's deep joke is that people who demand the ending of a story are asking someone else to do their deciding, and the kingdom, quite reasonably, charges for that.
The craft: the riddle that guards a riddle
As architecture, the story is a lock built onto a lock. Stockton takes the complaint his first ending generated, you owe us an answer, and converts the complaint itself into a second story with the same structure: complete facts, one unreadable heart, a forced choice. The nested tale also upgrades the stakes of interpretation, since the prince succeeds precisely where the reader keeps failing, by committing to a reading of an ambiguous face under deadline. He is the audience Stockton wishes he had.
The stealable techniques: answer a demand for resolution with a rhyming structure rather than information, and personify your deadline, since a pressure with a face and a title generates both menace and comedy. Note also the frame's bargain construction, which lets a sequel refuse its duty while appearing to be perfectly helpful; that is tone doing structural work.
What poets can take from this
- For exams, present this as Stockton's structural reply to his readers: a riddle set as the price of a riddle.
- Explain the smile-or-frown cipher fully; each expression supports both a loving and a warning reading, mirroring the lady-tiger balance.
- Use the Discourager himself for questions on personification: deadline and consequence given a title and a blade.
- When imitating Stockton, meet demands for answers with structure, not information.
- Give your protagonist a forced choice among indistinguishable options and let one remembered detail split them.
- If you write a sequel, make it argue with its original rather than extend it.
Try it yourself
Write a story in which someone travels a great distance to demand the answer to a famous unresolved question, and the keeper of the answer, entirely courteous, sets a new dilemma whose structure secretly mirrors the old one. End with the exchange still open, and both questions armed.
Questions
Does The Discourager of Hesitancy reveal the answer to The Lady, or the Tiger?
No. The court promises the visitors the answer only after they solve a second riddle, whether the prince's bride was the lady who smiled or the one who frowned. Since that riddle is equally balanced, the original question remains permanently unanswered.
Who is the Discourager of Hesitancy?
He is a court functionary who stands behind people facing decisions, carrying a great scimitar, and his title is his job: he makes hesitation more dangerous than choice. He embodies deadline and consequence, and supplies the story's dark comedy.
How does the prince identify his bride?
Walking the line of forty identical ladies, he recalls that one smiled and one frowned as he approached. Interpreting what a wife's smile or frown would mean under the circumstances, he commits, takes a lady's hand, and proves correct. Stockton never tells us which expression he trusted.
By the Writory editorial team, reviewed by working poets. Updated July 2026.
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