Life — May 10, 1906 — page 9: what you’re looking at

What you’re looking at

# "An Example" Cartoon Analysis This page is primarily **reader letters to Life's editor** about divorce and marriage. The single cartoon titled "An Example" (lower right) illustrates a joke about marital misunderstanding. The cartoon shows a child asking their father "Papa, what is satire?" The father responds by using the mother's prayer-meeting attendance as an example of satire—implying her pious religiosity is false or hypocritical. The joke relies on early 1900s gender stereotypes: wives who attended prayer meetings were culturally expected to be virtuous, yet the cartoon suggests this respectability masks something insincere. It's satirizing both religious hypocrisy and marital discord, using "satire" itself (saying one thing while meaning another) as the humorous device.