The Wasp — 1892 — page 515: what you’re looking at

What you’re looking at

This page contains a serialized fictional column rather than political satire. The illustration depicts an elderly woman in Victorian dress labeled "The Old Maid's Diary." The text describes a gossipy narrator observing her acquaintance Mrs. Fastleigh—a woman whose husband frequents San Francisco while maintaining a separate establishment. The column satirizes marital infidelity and female domestic entrapment of the era, with the narrator critiquing both Mr. Fastleigh's behavior and the social hypocrisy surrounding it. The humor targets the scandal and pretense of respectable married life among San Francisco's upper classes, particularly how wives tolerate absent or unfaithful husbands. The final section, "Fun Enough," contains unrelated domestic humor about a child's party attendance.