The Wasp — 1892 — page 201: what you’re looking at

What you’re looking at

This page features "The Old Maid's Diary," a satirical column illustrated with a drawing of an elderly woman. The text uses the diary format to critique social hypocrisy regarding marriage and gender roles among San Francisco's working and middle classes. The author mocks both religious hypocrisy (clergymen who preach morality while enabling vice) and class pretension (wealthy men who seduce working girls while maintaining respectable facades). The diary entries describe encounters with a moralistic printer and commentary on a young woman who rejected a marriage proposal, sarcastically noting how men expect women to sacrifice themselves while pursuing their own selfish interests. The satire targets double standards in Victorian-era gender relations and the exploitation of working-class women by men of higher social standing.