Life, 1914-10-01 · page 19 of 48
Life — October 1, 1914 — page 19: what you’re looking at
What you’re looking at
This page satirizes the decline of paternal authority in early 20th-century American households. The article, citing feminist Mrs. Vira Norman Whitehouse, declares the traditional father figure obsolete—portrayed as a "tired business man" enslaved by household women and financial demands. The top cartoon jokes about marital dynamics: a husband insists poets are born, not made; his wife agrees, implying he wasn't "made" into a poet (a dig at his mediocrity). The lower cartoons mock the father's powerlessness: he's too ill to see a doctor but well enough to avoid his wife's dinner. The maid's concern for his health contrasts sharply with his actual incapacity to assert authority. The satire targets the shifting power dynamics where women (wives, daughters, servants) control household decisions while men surrender economic and domestic control, becoming figuratively "non-existent" as authority figures.
📄 Transcribed text from this page (OCR, searchable)
Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.
mei Hf Wilt A He: MY DEAR, POETS ARE BORN, NOT MADE “1 KNOW. 1 WAS NOT BLAMING YOU, DEAR” Passing of Father Unmarried women are frequently only guests in their father’s house. . . . It is a remnant of the time when women were chattels.—Mrs. Vira Norman Whitehouse. TH AT seems to dispose, at one swoop, of the American father. He has been posing for some time now as a tired business man, entirely dominated by the women of his household, forced to live beyond his income, a human pack-horse, a slave to the charge system. Good-bye, father of old. While you were with us we pitied you. Whenever we saw a young girl overdressed or heard one talk in contemptuous modern slang of your limitations we pitied you. Now we know that you don’t exist; we rejoice and are exceeding glad. Maid: 11° poctor’s HERE, SIR” “1 CAN'T SEE HIM—TELL HIM I'M SICK” “NO, SIR, | HAVEN'T EATEN YOUR DINNER”