The Wasp — 1891 — page 433: what you’re looking at

What you’re looking at

This comic strip satirizes a woman's various organizational activities and her husband's frustration with them. The panels depict her involvement in: domestic duties (Panel 1), the W.C.T.U. (Women's Christian Temperance Union - Panel 2), the Dress Reform Club (Panel 3), and an Amateur Dramatic Society (Panel 4). The final caption states her "only fault" is that her husband "got up with it all until one more society comedy in four acts, and then he sued for a divorce." The satire mocks late-19th/early-20th century women's reform and social movements as excessive disturbances to domestic life. It portrays the husband as a long-suffering victim whose marriage ultimately fails due to his wife's activist commitments—a common misogynistic trope used to discourage women's public participation.