Printed 111 years ago today in The Tacoma Times. I modified the brightness/contrast, removed artifacts, and cleaned up the text a bit, see the original.
Found on the Library of Congress site.
this post was submitted on 09 Oct 2024
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Everett True Comics
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A place to appreciate the twentieth century comic character Everett True of "The Outbursts of Everett True." Feel free to check out the sticky.
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This one got me thinking:
I'm not sure, does anyone else have an opinion on this?
It's appropriate for the era posted. He is physically big and easily annoyed by other doing wrong. His fragile looking wife does the same to him when he is out of line, hence comedy.
Hitting your partner is of course wrong, but also hitting random people on the street just because they are not polite. This comics theme is "acting like an ass will get your ass kicked" especially if the one doing the wrong is an entitled one. And since at the time, the wife was still pictured as a lesser one, she will not be the target of the (literal) punch lines.
Attitudes were a bit different back in 1905, but yes. That said this is cartoon violence and many of Everett's outbursts would also just be assault these days, so don't take it too seriously.
"One of these days, Alice. Bang! Zoom! Straight to the moon!"
"Wow, I never realized the first astronauts were so fat!"
"That's not an astronaut, it's a TV comedian. And
I think point 3 is a single layer joke without any social commentary. It's just a "Everett true hits everyone but he folds to his wife" kind of joke.
I think him hitting his wife would cross the line further than the former. The former almost empowers women in the sense that her wife has equal say as Everett (in a comical sense), the further is just a large man abusing his wife.
If it's okay for Everett to physically assault people he disagrees with, it's okay for his wife to assault him (given the "take" is correct). It's in poor taste for him to assault his wife.
At least that's how I see it.
Hmmm.... I think you're right. It indeed seems to be an example of the Henpecked Husband trope where the joke is that he terrorises the town but in his own house she is queen. But I think there's also a civilizing element in that it shows Everett being restrained by his wife, who is represented as the responsible center of the family and home. So in a sense, Everett is a good guy because he backs down and does not go against family/home. In the strict male/female role dichotomy of the time, just as Everett outbursts against societal forces that oppress everyday man, so does Mrs True outburst against societal forces (represented by Everett, since he's the center of the strip) that oppress everyday woman.
I'm still a little uneasy about the double standard that women can't be abusers, and the fact that Mrs True is stuck in the gender roles of her time, but at least the strip attempts to consider the perspective of the women who are stuck in those roles.