Judge, 1889-02-23 · page 16 of 18
Judge — February 23, 1889 — page 16: what you’re looking at
What you’re looking at
This page satirizes America's permissive divorce laws through multiple cartoons. The central theme, titled "Our Elastic Divorce Laws," critiques how easily marriages dissolve. **Key cartoons:** 1. **Top image**: An actress uses her appearance/form as "advertising" to profit—likely suggesting women weaponize beauty or scandal for publicity, which divorce cases provided. 2. **Main cartoon**: A clergyman conducts a wedding while children cheerfully ask "to whom do we belong?" since their parents are "just going down to the Divorce Court." This satirizes how divorce has become so routine and normalized that even children expect it. The satire targets the contradiction between marriage vows ("till death do us part") and the reality of easy divorce. The humor comes from children treating parental divorce as inevitable and ordinary, exposing how the "elastic" (flexible/expandable) divorce laws have made marriage contracts meaningless. This reflects Progressive-era social anxiety about deteriorating family structures.
📄 Transcribed text from this page (OCR, searchable)
Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.
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