Primary Source
The Husband-ist of a Suffragist and Other Parodies
Brooke Kroeger. "The Husband-ist of a Suffragist and Other Parodies." brookekroeger.com.
Era: Post-Suffrage Era | Media: Magazines, Newspapers, Web-based
As popular support for suffrage grew, the subject became ripe for satire. In this post, Brooke Kroeger, the author of The Suffragents: How Women Used Men to Get the Vote, looks at how two publications, the Brooklyn Eagle and American Magazine, deployed satire when covering the suffrage movement.
The Brooklyn Eagle newspaper column made fun of the men who were increasingly coming to support the suffrage movement. Here’s an excerpt from the Eagle‘s “A Smile a Second” column, published on September 7, 1912:
D.T.B. writes: “My wife has been demanding the right to exercise the franchise so vehemently that I named our old horse The Franchise and told her to go exercise it. The temperature of our domicile has been slightly below zero ever since and I burned nine tons of coke last week trying to create a congenial atmosphere. Belonging to the Suffragents is too expensive for a man in my station in life. Please accept my resignation.”
The American Magazine piece poked fun at Chicago socialites who were coming out in support of women’s voting rights.
Digitized versions of both articles are available in the post on Kroeger’s website.
For more on satire and suffrage, check out Puck magazine’s satirical February 1915 issue on suffrage.
