The Wasp — 1895 — page 357: what you’re looking at

What you’re looking at

This page is predominantly **advertising** for San Francisco businesses (banks, insurance companies, merchants). The cartoon titled "Feminine Sympathy" occupies the center-top of the page. The illustration shows three women in Victorian dress admiring a man in a cage or enclosure. The accompanying joke—about a woman who married a millionaire but forgot her "other name"—suggests satire on **mercenary marriages** and women's economic dependence on husbands. Below, "Strange, Isn't It?" contrasts a hardworking man whose shirt falls off with a wealthy man whose shirt never gets soiled, satirizing the **irony of labor**: physical work brings poverty, idleness brings wealth. The humor targets **class disparities and gender economics** in late 19th-century America.