Life, 1888-03-29 · page 3 of 16
Life — March 29, 1888 — page 3: what you’re looking at
What you’re looking at
# Analysis of "The Enterprising Housewife" This cartoon satirizes aggressive advertising practices of the era. The illustration shows a woman interrupting a man's reading with advertisements, while other women cluster around promoting products. The dialogue parodies common advertising claims: the housewife mentions "Recamier Cream" everywhere and boasts she's written to manufacturers suggesting inferior products be replaced with their brand—treating advertising slogans as conversation. The accompanying poem "Margery" nostalgically contrasts this modern commercial intrusion with simpler times, mentioning specific place names (Lancashire, Bowling Green, India) and lamenting how relentless advertising has invaded domestic life. The satire targets both overeager wives promoting dubious products and manufacturers' invasive marketing tactics that saturate Victorian and early 20th-century households.
📄 Transcribed text from this page (OCR, searchable)
Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.
THE ENTERPRISING HOUSEWIFE, He: HOW THEY DO ADVERTISE THAT RECAMIER CREAM, I SEE IT EVERYWHERF. She: So po I, AND IT MUST BE GooD. I HAVE WRITTEN THE MILKMAN TO SEND IT INSTEAD OF ALDERNEY. MARGERY. PROTEST I am not quite so old as I look, If I judge from the scrawl in the worn parish book ; While humor, remarkably sparkling and dry, Still whims'cally lurks in my merry old eye. It was said that I cut quite a dash in my smalls At dinners, playhouses, at routs and at balls, Ere pinchbeck enthusiasts lauded with glee That modern diversion—the five-o’clock tea. She and I—she and I—'tis my pipe has gone out, Or was it the shudder of Ponto's cold snout? Prodigiously odd how a man of my years Can’t muse without dreaming those fanciful fears ! 'Twas the month when the waits by silver moonlight Sang carols of angels who wandered by night, And downy flakes nestled on Margery’s pane, While whirring winds scattered the exquisite strain. We met at the Berrytons; modestly danced ;— And I galloped homeward so fondly entranced I nigh killed the watch as I pulled up my cob Before ‘‘ The Dun Cow” and belabored the knob! How vainly I courted the pleasures of sleep ! I punished the sack from the cellar full deep ; I longed to be booted and spurred, with the will To ride to her mansion on drear Murray Hill. With scratchy, dull quills I indicted wee lays, Deliciously silly and all in her praise, Or followed her chair, with its tapestried sheen, Amid the gay rabble on bright Bowling Green. She married—some chap of the ‘‘ Lancashire Blues,” Addicted to dice and who dickered with Jews ; His pace, it was whispered, was rapidly run, And finally languished 'neath India’s sun. I see her quite often, in black widow weeds ; She smiles as the pompous young minister reads The text for the week, and her handkerchief plays The same pretty ro/e that it played in old days. But she as a widow whose bells have been tolled, And I as a bachelor, wrinkled and old, Can vouch for the hackneyed, oft-quoted, rare truth, That nought can compare with the loves of our youth. De Witt Sterry, comicbooks.com