The Wasp — 1895 — page 693: what you’re looking at

What you’re looking at

This cartoon satirizes the women's suffrage movement through a domestic scene. A man sits relaxed in a chair while a woman gestures dramatically at him. The caption presents her asking about "the right of suffrage," to which he responds dismissively with "Yes!" The joke appears to mock female political ambition by framing suffrage advocacy as nagging domestic complaint—treating a serious political demand as equivalent to trivial household grievances. The woman's "trembling voice" and theatrical posture suggest the cartoonist portrays suffragists as hysterical rather than principled. The title "A Horrible Catastrophe" implies that granting women voting rights represents domestic disaster. This reflects late-19th/early-20th-century anti-suffrage sentiment that positioned women's political participation as threatening to family order and masculine authority.