The Wasp, 1913 · page 140 of 364
The Wasp — 1913 — page 140: what you’re looking at
What you’re looking at
This page presents a cruel monologue by a character named Burnham, attempting to dissuade a woman named Kitty from marrying "Percy." The satire targets class-conscious Victorian society attitudes about marriage and social rank. Burnham argues that Percy—whose parents are wealthy—will be financially abandoned by his family upon learning he's marrying "the wench of the tailor of Wantage" (a working-class woman whose father makes corsets and breeches). Burnham dismisses Percy as a weak coward dependent on parental money, mocking the idea that two tradespeople could marry someone of supposedly superior social standing. The satire ridicules both the rigid class hierarchies of the period and the mercenary attitudes of the wealthy toward marriage. Kitty's emotional collapse suggests the real human cost of such social prejudice. *The Wasp* uses this scene to mock fashionable society's obsession with "sameness of degree"—the notion that people should only marry within their social class.
📄 Transcribed text from this page (OCR, searchable)
Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.
THE WASP 137 said. “He loves me. He will marry me, come _ what may of it!” “Not he, the sluggish sot,” sneered Burnham. “Marry you? It may be so; but you'll get lean cheer of that. The fellow is a coward. When his precious parents take him in hand you'll find him a rare, fine husband—a champion to be proud of. They’ll strip him of the corset maker’s fortune, I tell you, the moment they get wind of the marriage. They think they can buy a daughter of some fam- ily of condition for him; and what think you they'll say when they find him held in matrimonial leash by the wench of the tailor of Wantage? Corset maker and breeches maker. There is too much a sameness of degree there for either one to mend the other in the eyes of the fashionable world.” Kitty’s shoulders drooped and trembled with ill- suppressed sobs. “Picture your bold Percy with empty pockets,” continued Burnham heartlessly. “Picture that flabby, befuddled fool with his bread to win by his own hand and a wife to feed. Use your wits, my Comichooks.com