The Wasp — 1895 — page 497: what you’re looking at

What you’re looking at

This poem satirizes changing attitudes toward women and modernity through the metaphor of the spinning wheel—traditionally associated with domestic femininity. **Part I** celebrates "bygone days" when women like Kate and Annie sang sweetly while spinning wheels, embodying the idealized domestic woman: modest, patient, confined to the home. **Part II** contrasts this with the "modern Ann," who now wears practical clothing (stockinged calves visible, a "trifle gay" coat and cap) and rides a bicycle—the era's symbol of women's independence and mobility. The "anxious bard" struggles to write about her because she no longer fits traditional molds. The satire mocks both nostalgic men clinging to old ideals and the tension between Victorian domesticity and emerging "New Woman" independence of the early 1900s. The bicycle represents liberation from the spinning wheel.