Judge — January 25, 1902 — page 3: what you’re looking at

What you’re looking at

# Explanation This illustration, credited to Penrhyn Stanlaws (a prominent magazine illustrator), depicts two fashionable women in an early 20th-century interior. The cartoon's humor relies on the dialogue below: Mrs. Jones asks about a silk smoking jacket she gave to Mrs. Smith's husband as a birthday gift. Mrs. Smith replies that she converted it into a sofa pillow because her husband wanted to "sit around and smoke in it." The satire mocks gender dynamics and marital authority of the era—specifically, the wife's power to repurpose (or reject) her husband's leisure preferences and possessions. The joke assumes readers will find it amusing that a wife would transform an indulgent gift into household furnishings rather than allow her husband the implied pleasure of smoking and lounging. It reflects period attitudes about domestic control and masculinity.