Life — March 5, 1891 — page 1: what you’re looking at

What you’re looking at

# "Practical" – Life Magazine, March 5, 1891 This cartoon satirizes funeral costs and social pretension. A "newly-made Widow" complains to a friend that her undertaker's charges are exorbitant—she cannot afford an expensive funeral for her husband despite wanting to give him one. The friend's practical suggestion: "Why don't you get a plumber to bury him then?" The joke mocks both the widow's status anxiety (wanting an expensive funeral to appear respectable) and the absurdity of her predicament. By suggesting a plumber instead of an undertaker, the friend highlights the ridiculousness of paying premium prices for funeral services—implying the actual work involved isn't fundamentally different from any tradesman's labor. It's social commentary on class performance and the commercialization of death rituals in the Gilded Age.