Life — May 6, 1897 — page 15: what you’re looking at

What you’re looking at

This illustration depicts a romantic rejection scene. A well-dressed man stands anxiously by an ornate desk, while an elegantly dressed woman in fashionable 1890s attire (with characteristic puffy sleeves) turns away from him with an indifferent or dismissive expression. The accompanying verse by Melandburgh Wilson sarcastically comments that though others praise the woman as poetic or admirable ("a poem"), the speaker finds her fundamentally uninterested in him personally—she is "averse" to his romantic advances. The joke is the gap between her supposed qualities and her actual coldness toward this particular suitor. The cartoon satirizes romantic pursuit and the painful reality that admiration alone doesn't create reciprocal affection.