Women--Social life and customs

At center, fashionably dressed women admire a statue of a horse. Surrounding vignettes show women’s fashions, contrasting an automobile to a horse, the latest in horse fashions, and a horse-owner’s nightmare about failing to win a ribbon. Caption: Fashion’s shrine – horse show week.

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Comments and Context

In the manner of many nominal sporting events before (like America’s Cup competitions) and since, New York’s annual horse show by 1904 had became a place to see and be seen. High-society luminaries — the “400” — communed, competed for attention, and attracted the press and the curious.

At center, a young woman asks Cupid about his flower garden where all the blossoms have male and female faces. Six vignettes show scenes from country and country club life that generally relate to relations between the sexes. A poem called “Cupidculture” is included.

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Comments and Context

A double-page spread by Puck‘s counterpart of Charles Dana Gibson (creator of the Gibson Girl stylish cartoons in Life Magazine) at the time. These are seasonal gags in an issue dated in the middle of April. The poem in the central cartoon was written by Arthur H. Folwell, the editor of the magazine for more than a dozen years, later on the staff of the New York Tribune and writer for The New Yorker, and script writer for the Mr. and Mrs. comic strip.

A devil takes the lid off a box labeled “Society” allowing fumes to escape which show the liberation of women, such as being granted divorces, horseback riding, driving automobiles, gambling, and smoking in social situations.

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Comments and Context

Ehrhart’s Puck cartoon appeared a week before Easter in 1904. While its constituent details seem overtly scolding and of a moralizing nature, this double-page cartoon was really the contemporary cartoonists’ stereotypical theme at every year’s end of the Lenten season. Earthly pleasures and frivolous pastimes, putatively suppressed during Lent, were released after Easter, at least in the minds of editorial cartoonists of the day.

A priest stands on the left holding a paper that states “The steady decline of womanhood from its old ideals.” Puck pulls back a curtain to reveal women in many roles in society, such as doctors, lawyers, school teachers, athletes, artists, nurses, secretaries, “Tenement House Inspectors,” and as members of such organizations as the “S.P.C.A.” Caption: Puck — Do you really think, my clerical friend, that the old ideals were better than these?

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Comments and Context

Through its life as a publication, Puck frequently found fault with clerics and traditional denominations, although not with the Bible itself. Sermons and messages that Puck criticized usually dealt with what it deemed to be excesses, foolish pronouncements, and hypocrisy.

A fashionably dressed woman wearing goggles is taking a drive in an automobile. Through a series of vignettes her slim figure and dress attract considerable attention. However, when she removes her goggles, exposing some blemishes to her looks, the men react with horror.

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Comments and Context

This cartoon is more than a cartoon strip on the cliched idea of an ugly spinster being mistaken as a pretty maid by men she encounters. It is a window into some of the fads and fancies, manners and morals of a forgotten time. There are several distinctive elements that tell us that the turn of the Twentieth Century was a period of peaceful but profound changes in society.

A young woman is accompanied by an elderly matron as they depart a summer resort for the return trip to the city for the winter social season. Included is a brief verse by Arthur H. Folwell describing the scene.

comments and context

Comments and Context

The poem by Puck‘s editor Arthur H. Folwell illustrates the contemporary theme, repeated in countless cartoons and humorous observations of the day, of the “Summer Girl” taking to summer resorts, not so much to exercise or relax, but to seek romance and husbands. Even as she leaves the resort, Ehrhart’s “summer girl” (his pretty girls were Puck‘s counterparts to Life Magazine’s Gibson Girls) reflexively reveals petticoats and an ankle, which was relatively daring in 1902.

Two young Irish women talk at a stand selling “Soda Water” next to a busy city street. Caption: Maggie — He’s going ter buy me an autermobile – dat’s wat! / Katie — An autermobile, eh? An’ where’s he goin’ ter git der dough? / Maggie — Well, he’s goin’ ter watch his chance an’ git run over by one, an’ den sue fer damages!

Collection

Library of Congress Prints and Photographs

Creation Date

1902-08-27

A woman lying in a hammock daydreams of engaging in various social and sport activities with handsome young men. She imagines herself shooting, sailing, dancing, sitting on a beach, golfing, playing ping-pong and badminton, and fencing.

Collection

Library of Congress Prints and Photographs

Creation Date

1902-07-30

An attractive young woman talks to a handsome young man at the theater. They are discussing the benefits of marriage. Caption: Miss Blossom — But a married man always has some one to share his sorrows, you know! / Jack Bachelor — Not always; – every married man can’t afford to keep a valet and a butler.

Collection

Library of Congress Prints and Photographs

Creation Date

1902-04-02

Several young women wearing their new Easter fashions stand outside a church. Included is a poem titled “The Easter Girls” by Madeline Bridges.

Collection

Library of Congress Prints and Photographs

Creation Date

1902-03-26

The program for the Women’s Congress outlines a four-day series of events that showcase women’s roles and responsibilities in the home, featuring presentations and demonstrations covering various topics.

Collection

Library of Congress Manuscript Division

Creation Date

1911-09-06

A shabbily dressed woman addresses a man who is wearing an apron, holding an infant, and standing at the front door of his home. In the background, a dog with its tail between its legs enters a doghouse to hide. Caption: Dusty Maude–Is dere any lady-folks about de house? Timid Househusband–No-o – no, ma’am; they have all gone to a primary meeting. Dusty Maude–Den set out de best dere is in de pantry, an’ don’t do any screamin’, or I’ll clip yer whiskers!

Collection

Library of Congress Prints and Photographs

Creation Date

1895-03-06

A young woman wearing bloomers says good night to a young man at the front door. The young man’s mother, also wearing bloomers and holding a newspaper or magazine called “The Advanced Woman,” has come down the stairs to ask when the young woman will be leaving. Caption: Stern Parent–Willy, isn’t that Miss Bloomers going soon? – it’s nearly eleven o’clock! / Son–Yes, Mama; she’s just saying good night!

Collection

Library of Congress Prints and Photographs

Creation Date

1895-12-25

A wily, destitute, European noble, with papers extending from his pockets labeled “Laundry Bill, Hotel Bill, Livery Bill, [and] Tailor Bill,” seeks a fortune among young American heiresses, as he “hypnotizes” them with the crown of his nobility and they, in their weakened state, kneel before him offering bags of money, to the chagrin of young, well-to-do, American men.

Collection

Library of Congress Prints and Photographs

Creation Date

1895-10-02

A female figure with wings rises from the flames of summer romances that are burning out as the season comes to an end. She leaves behind many broken-hearted men on the beach at a summer resort. Caption: She rises gayly from the ashes of her season’s conquests, to continue her deadly work as the “Winter Girl” of the near future.

Collection

Library of Congress Prints and Photographs

Creation Date

1895-09-18

Young women dance with older and younger men at a summer resort. None of the “couples” is well matched, because the men of the women’s age are nowhere to be found. Caption: Hops as they now are at our fashionable summer resorts.

Collection

Library of Congress Prints and Photographs

Creation Date

1897-08-18

Two young women ice skate and tow a sleigh in which Puck is riding, holding a Christmas tree.

Collection

Library of Congress Prints and Photographs

Creation Date

1894-12-05

A fashionably dressed young woman dances before a small gathering at a country dance, where one old man, in particular, is mesmerized by her appearance and seems to be making a fool out of himself before the others who look on with chagrin.

Collection

Library of Congress Prints and Photographs

Creation Date

1893-12-06

At center, young women watch a football game. Surrounding vignettes depict William McKinley as triumphant in Ohio, “New Jersey” cleaning up gambling and horse racing, an unidentified man, possibly Whitelaw Reid, eating crow with his turkey, John Y. McKane hiding in a hollow tree labeled “Gravesend” with a dog labeled “Newton” on a chain, families with baby carriages in Brooklyn under Mayor Charles A. “Schieren,” David B. “Hill” in bed nursing a big-head, a tea party in Massachusetts, and Uncle Sam enjoying the Christmas issue of Puck magazine. Poetry accompanies each vignette, describing everything for which Americans ought to be thankful.

Collection

Library of Congress Prints and Photographs

Creation Date

1893-11-29

A large group of well-dressed ladies are gathered for the “First National Congress for the Advancement of the Interests of Boarding-House Keepers.” A woman is speaking at a podium before a large audience of women. Disgruntled tenants are seated in the “Boarder’s Gallery” in the balcony. It is “Resolved that boarders have no rights that we are bound to respect.”

Collection

Library of Congress Prints and Photographs

Creation Date

1897-04-07