Life, 1915-12-30 · page 15 of 41
Life — December 30, 1915 — page 15: what you’re looking at
What you’re looking at
This illustration depicts a social scene where an older man (Uncle John) is being questioned about his 35-year marriage. The scene satirizes attitudes toward marriage and women's roles in what appears to be late 19th or early 20th-century America. The dialogue and surrounding text mock both the questioner's assumptions and the respondent's complacency. A key point of satire emerges in the discussion of a woman's education and independence—the narrator describes his former classmate as remarkably intelligent and well-read, yet expresses surprise she "married" at all, suggesting educated women were expected to remain unmarried. The piece critiques social hypocrisy: how society simultaneously valued women's education while assuming marriage was their inevitable fate, and how men underestimated women's intellectual capabilities.
📄 Transcribed text from this page (OCR, searchable)
Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.
Ht HY Hh NCLE JOHN, HOW LONG HAVE YOU BEEN MARRIED?” was asked, an Engineer of national repu- tation, “Was there a first best girl for you, too?” “Guilty!” he replied. “But my ac- count will sound prosaic after these others. You know, my early days weren't given to expensive summer camps, nor to Washington ballrooms, I made my own way through college, and ‘vacations’ meant the hardest work of the year. But when I was a Senior, all the drudgery was transformed, Paradise wouldn't have been in it with that little co-educa- tional college campus and library and chapel and class-rooms; for I found her. “THIRTY-FIVE YEARS, MY DEAR.” “you poNn’T SHOW 17.” Just a class-mate she was. You tell how your girls dressed; I never noticed how she dressed ; it might have been in shim- mering green and silver, and it might have been in linsey-woolsey, for all I knew. But—she could think, and she could talk! We discussed everything to- gether, from philosophy and the evolu- tion of history, to the affairs of the day. I spent every hour with her that I could, and in all sorts of places. There's a spot in the stackroom of the old library that T always visit yet, when I go back—be- cause of her. I've never known a woman since with such a mind, such breadth and clearness; and it showed in her face— the face of Athena, not Diana or Venus! I believed that with such a companion at my side, to turn to in every perplexity, I could make my life worth while. But she—saw it differently.” “Is she a feminist now?” slyly in- quired the Explorer. “She, too, married, after a while—a fine fellow, but—anything but a student. Ican'thelp . . .” “Mine,” said the fourth, the Socialist, “ will sound least dramatic of all—though I assure you the time was dramatic enough for me. You talk about your god- comicbooks.com