Life, 1913-07-10 · page 28 of 44
Life — July 10, 1913 — page 28: what you’re looking at
What you’re looking at
This 1913 article satirizes **Emmeline Pankhurst** and the British suffragette movement by imagining them establishing an all-female society on a fictional island called "Eugenia." The satire mocks several targets: 1. **Pankhurst's authority**: She's depicted as authoritarianly establishing a government with comically improvised infrastructure (a papier-mâché palace held together with safety pins). 2. **Female competence claims**: American women's club presidents supposedly draft the constitution, yet the throne comes from a *Ladies' Home Journal* recipe, undercutting intellectual seriousness. 3. **Labor contradictions**: The all-female utopia immediately requires 2,000 vacuum cleaners and 200 cooks (who flee after seeing the island), exposing the gap between feminist ideals and practical dependence on domestic service. 4. **"Hysterics" ministry**: Mrs. O.H.P. Belmont's role as "Secretary of Hysterics" relies on period misogyny stereotyping women as emotionally unstable. The cartoon at bottom references Anglo-American relations, separate from the main satire. The piece ridicules suffragettes' vision of female independence as naive and impractical.
📄 Transcribed text from this page (OCR, searchable)
Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.
ge el) a oe Setting Up a Government Mrs. Pankhurst and Followers Reach Eugenia and Take the Preliminary Steps Toward Accomplishing an Ideal Society—Some Slight Embarrassment in the Beginning (Special Correspondence to Life) Eucenta, July 8. LL here at last. The first twenty- four hours were spent in putting up an impromptu palace for Mrs. Pankhurst. It is made out of papier- maché with a tar roof and held to- gether with safety pins. The throne is made from a recipe given to Mrs. Pankhurst by a lady whose cousin lives in Philadelphia and has been a regular subscriber for many years to the Ladies’ Home Journal. “This recipe for a throne,” she writes, “I got out of my favorite paper and feel sure that you cannot do better. Any child can make it.” Fortunately, when Mrs. Pankhurst was deported there were several presi- dents of American Women's Clubs on hand who volunteered tu go along and start a constitution, otherwise there would have been no competent person to do this necessary work. These British Lion: HUNDRED YEARS! American Eagle: CENTENARY | BULLY FOR BOTH OF US, JOHN! BY THE BY, MIGHTY SORRY TO LOSE BRYCE. ladies have been working over this document for several hours, and it is expected it will be ratified to-morrow noon, In the meantime Mrs. Pank- hurst has set up a provisional gov- ernment. Several milliners and dressmakers in a special ship accompanied the expedi- tion, but this morning they sailed back home. One of them said: “There being no men on the island we don't think it would pay us to stay.” Mrs. O. H. P. Belmont accompanied the expedition. It is understood that she will be Secretary of Hysterics. This important branch of the govern- ment will be described later. Mrs. Pankhurst issued the following an- nouncement at eight o'clock last night: “Sisters! We have at last reached the ideal of human perfection. In the course of a few weeks we shall have established a society which will be the envy and admiration of poster- 1 SAY, JONATHAN, WE HAVEN'T HAD A FIGHT FOR A LeT’s HAVE A —From Picture Poiitics, London. A SUMMER DEITY ity. The Island of Eugenia has been given to us to furnish an example of government to the entire world. No base man shall put foot upon these sacred shores. All menial labor will be performed by ladies attached to the court. In fact I expect to do quite a little of it myself.” There is already a great demand for labor-saving machines, an order having been sent for two thousand vacuum cleaners, not to mention carpet sweepers, patent cooking ranges and other well-known devices to save time and work. Two hundred cooks who were induced to leave England and join the expedition went back to-night in a steamer, They took a look over the island and said they didn’t like it. Mrs. Pankhurst, however, was not dis- mayed. “We shall prove,” she said, “that the ideal woman can he evolved only through a certain measure of domes- tic service united with her other lofty intellectual attainments.” (To be Continued in Our Next Issue) comicbooks.com