Insects of the World, Unite!

Anyone else remember “Bringing Up Father”? It was one of the old Sunday cartoon strips. It came up recently in discussion with a friend—as the origin of the Newfoundland traditional meal called “Jiggs’ Dinner,” aka corned beef, boiled potatoes, and cabbage. 

But do you remember that the common theme of the strips was how Maggie bullied Jiggs? Up to and including frequent spousal abuse? She would club him with whatever weapon was at hand, and shout “Insect!” 

Can you imagine a strip showing a man doing that to a woman today? Indeed, can you imagine a strip showing a man doing that to a woman then? Equally unthinkable. Immediate imprisonment; loss of children, house, reputation, income.

Yet such abuse of men was apparently considered common enough, and laughable.

And come to think of it, it wasn’t just Maggie and Jiggs. Remember “Blondie”? Blondie and Dagwood? The original story was that Blondie was a flapper with expensive tastes and no love of housework, and Dagwood was a wage slave trying to keep her happy. She was always rousing him from the couch for chores on his day off. 

Or “L’il Abner”? Do you remember who dominated in the senior Yokum home? It was clearly Mammy. She could wrestle bobcats, and was entirely prepared to slug Pappy too. Men in general were understood as prey; remember “Sadie Hawkins Day”? Marriage existed for the benefit of women.

 

Same theme, for that matter, in “Snuffy Smith” or “Our Boarding House.” The wife was dominant. 

This seems to support the unconventional thesis that, contrary to what feminism has long claimed, family life before the present time was at least as often as not dominated by the wife.

Was this, perhaps, simply a comic reversal of the usual situation?

Perhaps; but surveys consistently show that, in less developed, more traditional countries, women are happier than men. A man’s life is dirty, dull, and dangerous. A woman gets to stay safe and sheltered at home. That happiness gap, and a parallel gap in life expectancy, actually closes for the developed, post-feminist world. 

I can also personally attest that in the case of my grandparents, on both sides, it was indeed the wife who was dominant in the home. She made the rules; the paterfamilias might be required to step out onto the porch if he chose to smoke. The same was true for my great-uncle and his wife. If you visited, he rarely was allowed to talk.

Perhaps the illusion of a former patriarchy is due to most of us not remembering anything before the Second World War. The war and postwar period was a special time, when people were in a party mood and the regular rules did not always apply. In part, I suspect the male of the species gained a good deal of prestige then, for the sacrifices and the heroism of the war. Women could see for a moment the value of men as protector. And as cannot fodder. At the same time, improved modern conveniences made it possible, for the first time, for young men to live comfortably without a woman present. Hugh Hefner claimed he invented the concept of the “bachelor pad” and the bachelor life, in the 1950s. Before that, it was, as the comics also attest, “Our Boarding House.” 

Women, if only briefly, lost or surrendered their traditional power over men. And, in the longer term, there was hell to pay.

Reparations, anyone?