Life, 1914-03-26 · page 19 of 41
Life — March 26, 1914 — page 19: what you’re looking at
What you’re looking at
**The Cartoon:** A large, menacing pig looms over two small, caricatured figures (appearing to be children or dwarfish characters). The pig's caption reads: "Here, my little man, pickle this nice foot for yourself" / "Cry! And my pig, too!"—a darkly humorous reference to the nursery rhyme "Jack and the Beanstalk," suggesting the pig will consume the figures. **The Social Satire:** The cartoon mocks Charlotte Perkins Gilman's proposal for "kitchenless homes" where meals arrive from centralized laboratories, eliminating domestic cooking. The pig represents the absurd, dystopian outcome: children raised on laboratory food become so inhuman they're barely distinguishable from animals—fit only to be consumed themselves. The satirist implies Gilman's vision destroys childhood, family, and humanity. **Context:** This reflects early-1900s anxieties about feminism and women's liberation. Though supporting women's rights generally, Life ridicules Gilman's radical domestic reforms as unnatural and dehumanizing. The secondary editorial discusses Central Park development issues, unrelated to the cartoon's main thrust.
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Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.
“HERE, MY LITTLE MAN, PICKLE THIS NICE FOOT FOR YOURSELF.” “cre! aNp My Pic, Too!” everyone has ideas about women and their place in life, and is an interested critic of everything lively’that is said cer written about it. We are all the debtors of the more excited Feminists for the entertainment they give, and especially, just now, of Mrs. Charlotte Perkins Gilman, who has lately been the greatest entertainer cf them all, quite eclipsing ex-Miss Milholland and the Hon. Alva Belmont. Mrs, Gilman has come out strong for the kitchenless home, and says that the home of the future will have meals delivered in thermos boxes from a laboratory indorsed by doctors and ex- perts. There will be a home, Mrs. Gilman says, and it will have children, but no kitchen, Tut, tut! kitchen! Not even a club can succeed without a kitchen. No kitchen, no children, no home, The only children whom one could imagine subsisting on thermos-box meals from a laboratory 2re the offspring of mothers’ com- mended by Mrs. Florence Wise, who go to the office and leave them to be reared by some one who is better trained, What is home without a* AGAIN it is proposed to take the arsenal site at Fifth Avenue and Sixty-fourth Street for a building where the National Academy of De- signs-on-Central Park, and the other societies of fine arts, can hold their annual exhibitions. Again, of course, it is necessary for the friends of Central Park to make the counter proposal to retain the arsenal site for the park, and again, let us hope, the counter proposal will win. Let us have no more galleries in the park, There is one too many there now ;—a vast mass, hopelessly an- chored, with a lot of pictures in it that ought to be a mile and a half farther south, where more people could get to see them, Putting picture-galleries in the park is like repainting masterpieces. There is no profit in it. What you get is worth far less than what you had. Lut we wish the Academy might have a better building, bigger and better placed. It hasn't room now to hang half the pictures it accepts. If we were the New York Central Railroad we would give the Academy a block on Park Avenue, just above Forty-fifth Street. The Central Road, hy its im- provements, has made a splendid open space of this region that will no doubt be occupied by appropriate buildings. It has about a dozen fine squares that would do for the Academy, and might as well give it one of them before the Uplift and William Hearst's papers and the Public Utilities and Interstate Commerce Commission gobble up the rest of its property. This is a time when the man who has two shirts gives one away to save it from the Uplift. Here is a chance for the New York Central to be forehanded. If it won't, or can’t, won't somebody buy one of these empty blocks for the Academy? They are central, their surroundings are handsome. With Mr. John Alexander prowling around after bites of Central Park, it is almost a Providence that these Park Avenue blocks should be vacant. comichooks.celn)