The Wasp — 1893 — page 401: what you’re looking at

What you’re looking at

This cartoon satirizes social climbing and marriage for money among San Francisco's wealthy class. An older, apparently wealthy gentleman (labeled "O'Rafferty, Senior") is depicted with a cigar, while a fashionably dressed young woman ("Ophelia O'Rafferty") expresses her ambition to marry "some millionaire's son" rather than accept her father's modest circumstances. The satire targets the superficiality of "San Francisco Model" society women who pursue wealth through advantageous marriages. The dialogue reveals the daughter's mercenary priorities: she refuses to acknowledge her father's station, declaring herself "a girl of ambition" who will pursue a "fashionable Market-street millinery store" lifestyle instead. The cartoon mocks both social pretension and generational conflict over class aspiration in gilded-age San Francisco.