The American New Woman Revisited: A Reader, 1894-1930

“Ise Gwine ter Give You Gals What Straddle,” Edward Kemble

80 “Ise Gwine ter Give You Gals What Straddle” Edward Kemble R Compared with the humor magazines Puck and Judge, which were larger, color filled, and raucous, John Ames Mitchell’s Life offered Americans a more genteel chuckle. Despite a shaky beginning in 1883, Mitchell’s Life became “the most influential cartoon and literary humor magazine of its time,” largely because of the popularity of its black-and-white illustrations by Charles Dana Gibson and other prominent artists.Yet its initial commitment to black-and-white line drawings , rather than the new trend of color, coupled with its insistence on charging the same ten-cent price as its rivals,led many to wonder about the new magazine’s viability. Contributor Edward W. Kemble recalled in 1930 that Life’s“appearance caused the know-it-alls to stick their tongues in their cheeks and, holding the small publication at arm’s length,exclaim,‘Ten cents for that?What gall!’”Instead of using woodblock engravings, Mitchell decided to reproduce line drawings directly using a zinc etching process, and so it was as a “picture paper” that Life gained its success. By the 1890s, halftones and wash drawings were common. Having received acclaim for his illustrations of Mark Twain’s The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1884), Kemble became America’s foremost racist caricaturist of black Americans and a frequent contributor to Life. Charles Dana Gibson sold his first drawing to the magazine in 1886,and the statuesque Gibson Girl appeared regularly in its pages shortly thereafter. Kemble’s images, meanwhile, often satirized black women as failed imitators of the Gibson Girl. Although the Gibson Girl’s vanity was to be indulged, Kemble’s black mammies primping before the mirror prompted knowing derision. By the time John Kendrick Bangs arrived at Life, Sept. 8, 1899, 255. the magazine as literary editor in 1884,Life was beginning to flourish.Around the time that Bangs resigned in 1888, Edward S. Martin started writing editorials and other pieces for the magazine, which, according to Mitchell, had a“civilizing influence” on the publication. Corruption, populists, monopolies, immigrants, Jews, imperialism, Booker T.Washington, and women’s suffrage were all subjects for Life’s satire. By 1890, circulation had reached a profitable 50,000. By 1902, circulation exceeded 65,000.1 defining the new woman 81 “‘Ise Gwine ter Give You Gals What Straddle dem Wheels a Good Talkin’ to at Nex’ Sunday’s Meetin.’‘Indeed! What you call it, de Sermon on de Mount?’” ...