A Resolve

Charles Dana Gibson sets two figures in spare, high-contrast pen-and-ink against a bare ground. At left, Cousin Kate—a Gibson Girl in full off-shoulder ball gown, dark upswept hair—sits with composed, slightly downward gaze. At right, Charles, in formal black suit, leans forward on a carved armchair, hands clasped, wearing the eager grin of a man newly flush. The caption gives him the punchline: he will prove himself the exception to the proverb about fools and their money. Gibson's joke cuts both ways—Charles is already performing the fool by boasting of his prudence to a woman who is likely calculating exactly how quickly his money will, in fact, depart. No ethnic caricature is present; the satire here is purely class and gender: the economically ascendant male, transparently outmatched by female social intelligence.