Life — May 12, 1921 — page 12: what you’re looking at

What you’re looking at

# Analysis: "Facts About Wives" (Life Magazine) This page satirizes literary portrayals of wives versus reality. The text criticizes novelists and authors who depict wives as either shrewish (stabbing husbands with knives, running off with lovers) or impossibly perfect. Authors like Jane Austen, Sheridan, and unnamed others are mentioned as examples of exaggerated characterization. The bottom cartoon shows a "Prehistoric Author" surrounded by rejected manuscript pages, with the caption: "There's one consolation. I have almost enough rejected manuscript to build a house with." The joke: even ancient authors faced rejection—a timeless commentary on struggling writers. The cartoon humanizes prehistoric man as a frustrated scribe, making light of universal publishing disappointments while the article above critiques unrealistic female stereotypes in literature.