The Wasp — 1896 — page 285: what you’re looking at

What you’re looking at

This page is primarily **advertising** for San Francisco businesses (breweries, banks, typewriters, flour), with one small cartoon titled "Sympathy on Pacific Heights." The cartoon depicts a well-dressed woman comforting another woman, illustrating a brief dialogue. The caption suggests social commentary about marriage and domestic life among the wealthy. The hostess's husband "must be a perfect brave" for tolerating his wife's desires to study foreign languages without financial support. The joke appears to mock upper-class women's dependency and genteel boredom, while satirizing husbands' patience with their wives' intellectual aspirations—a typical late 19th/early 20th-century domestic satire theme mocking both gender roles and class pretension.