The Wasp — 1890 — page 243: what you’re looking at

What you’re looking at

The top cartoon depicts a country store scene where a "City Miss" asks a clerk if he has "Browning" but the clerk hasn't heard of it. This is a joke about the delayed reach of popular culture to rural areas—likely referencing either Robert Browning's poetry or a contemporary Browning product/trend that hadn't penetrated remote communities yet. The bottom cartoon shows a clerk instructing a young lady on how to operate a "singing doll" by pressing her—a crude double entendre joke about women's bodies and mechanical novelties. Both cartoons mock the gap between urban sophistication and rural/remote ignorance, and exploit dated gender stereotypes about women's intellect and bodies for comedic effect typical of 1900s satirical magazines.