Life — November 20, 1913 — page 9: what you’re looking at

What you’re looking at

# Analysis of Life Magazine Page 865 This page satirizes early 20th-century gender politics through two main pieces: **"If Chaucer Had but Known"** (by Anne Sherman) is a poem mocking an educated "suffragette" living near a university. She's depicted as bookish and intellectual but vain, proud, and condemning of other women. The satire suggests such women are hypocritical—they demand equality and education while judging less-ambitious women harshly. The concluding couplet undercuts feminist arguments by reducing the suffragette to "Woman's but woman, though a suffragette." **The cartoons below** illustrate domestic/military absurdities: a young couple's quarrel, and the question of childcare when both parents serve in the military—poking fun at women's new public roles during wartime. The overall message is anti-suffrage, portraying educated women activists as self-righteous and their aspirations as fundamentally at odds with traditional family life.