Judge — November 27, 1915 — page 16: what you’re looking at

What you’re looking at

This cartoon satirizes early 20th-century marriage anxieties among wealthy Americans. Two women at an Atlantic City country club discuss romantic rejections: **The joke:** One woman (Bell) says she refused a suitor because she didn't want to become a "golf widow"—a wife neglected while her husband obsesses over golf. Her friend Anne replies that being a "tango divorcée" (a divorced woman associated with scandalous tango dancing) is no better. **The satire:** The cartoon mocks how upper-class women faced limited choices: either accept marriages where husbands ignored them for leisure activities, or risk social shame through divorce and association with questionable dancing crazes. Both options are presented as equally undesirable, highlighting women's constrained agency in marriage during this era. The setting at the exclusive country club emphasizes this is a wealthy-class problem.