Judge — May 27, 1916 — page 3: what you’re looking at

What you’re looking at

This illustration by Robert Ball depicts a street scene on Manhattan's prestigious Fifth Avenue. The cartoon caption presents a brief domestic dialogue: "Stella" asks whether "Flora's and Jack's marriage was a love-match," to which "Reginald" responds skeptically that it must have been—"they'd only known each other a month or so." The satire targets wealthy New York society's hasty marriages among the upper classes. The joke implies that among the affluent, marrying someone after minimal acquaintance was commonplace enough to be unremarkable. The detailed architectural sketch of elegant buildings and well-dressed pedestrians establishes the setting as a place where such frivolous romantic decisions among the privileged would be entirely expected and unsurprising.