The Wasp — 1896 — page 31: what you’re looking at

What you’re looking at

This page is primarily advertising with a small satirical dialogue titled "A Page from the Slang Dictionary: Taking a tumble to herself." The cartoon depicts a brief comic exchange between a college-bound woman and a man, illustrating period slang usage. The woman asks what she'll do when leaving college; the man responds she'll "live on [his] income." She retorts she'd rather do "something to prove [her] cleverness," and he dismissively suggests living on his income would prove her one of "the cleverest financiers of the age." The satire mocks contemporary attitudes about women's education and independence—suggesting that despite education, women's expected role was financial dependence through marriage. The joke relies on sarcastic subversion of conventional gender expectations of the era. The rest of the page contains San Francisco business advertisements.