Life, 1921-05-19 · page 10 of 36
Life — May 19, 1921 — page 10: what you’re looking at
What you’re looking at
This satirical piece humorously catalogs domestic grievances that drive wives away. The cartoons depict exaggerated husband behaviors: a man struggling with household tasks (serving dinner), a husband obsessively demanding his wife locate a lost fountain pen, someone creating chaos with interior decoration, and a man manipulating temperature controls while his wife shivers by an open window. The satire targets husbands' obliviousness and selfishness—their inability to manage basic domestic responsibilities, their petty preoccupations, and their disregard for wives' comfort. Williams critiques the expectation that wives tolerate unreasonable behavior in marriage. The humor derives from recognizable domestic friction and the husband's utter bewilderment at why his wife would leave given such "reasonable" demands.
📄 Transcribed text from this page (OCR, searchable)
Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.
They say that a sense of humor is necessary in married life, but Mrs. Tinpenny could get along very well without her husband's His is that stalwart, practical kind, and his favorite jest is to pretend to relinquish his end of the platter before his wife has a firm grip on her end. The only time she enjoyed the joke was when he tried it on his irascible uncle, and in more ways than one spilled the beans. There is no greater desiroyer of an artistic effect in interior decoration, or the serene tem- perament of his e, than a husband like Mr. Siddleboy. To him there is a place for every- thing, but it is not the place that nature or his wife intended for it. Mr. Lymp mislays some- thing about once every five minutes, and he has the fixed idea that his wife, for some obscure reason, is at the root of all the mysterious disap- pearances. At this moment, for example, he is demanding to know what in the world she has done with his foun- tain-pen, which he left on the corner of the table. Life with this type is bearable oniy if you tie all his possessions to him with bits of string. Me < Why Wives Leave Home By GLUYAS WILLIAMS Pity the woman who has mar- ried a potlucker. He is always urging people to share potluck with them; and he expects the pot never to contain less than a four-course dinner, with oysters in season. He can be counted on to say, as the guests seat them- selves, “ By the way, dear, why did you kick me when I asked Jim and Susan to stay to din- ner?” Which gives the meal a perfectly lovely send-off The vote for last place in home wreckers go to the temperature-regulator. This type is co® stitutionally unable to enter a room without e& claiming, “ My, my, it’s much too warm (cool) here,” and flinging open a window (or shuttisg it), After which he departs for bis den. comicbooks.com