Clare Briggs / Comics

Kelly Pool At Home

by Clare Briggs · June 22, 2023

Tags: Kelly Pool

Clare Briggs

Clare Briggs is a famous cartoonist who lived from 1875 to 1930. Poems by Wilbur Nesbitt.

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Kolohe says:

June 22, 2023 at 8:06 am

“Is it any crime to drink beer?” – this line is going to land differently in four years.Report
- Jaybird in reply to Kolohe says:
  
  June 22, 2023 at 8:15 am
  
  The fellers are all in evening dress! For a party with beer!Report
  - Kolohe in reply to Jaybird says:
    
    June 22, 2023 at 11:08 pm
    
    I’ve been mulling over this comic and now I’m in an overthinking mood.
    
    So, my impression is that, at the time, billiard games were not that respectable. (reference: Ya Got Trouble from The Music Man, set in 1912). Now, for Briggs (and a lot of his contemporaries, and for that matter other eras), that’s one of the sources of humor – putting people in situations at the edge of respectability, and then seeing them trying to rationalize their way out of it. (usually to the ‘missus’)
    
    But this…isn’t quite that. But it’s not..*not* that either. All these woman are seemingly, unfamiliar with kelly pool, and the joke definitely isn’t the ‘mansplaining.’ But also, no one in the comic is drawn as super young (except the actual kid), everyone seems to be in that ‘settled down’ stage of life.
    
    So my conclusion is this is one of the most ‘feminist’ cartoons that Briggs has done. Woman are being introduced, as peers, into a social setting that is (and really would continue to be) virtually all male spaces.
    
    (The other ‘feminist for the era’ tell is the comment about grapejuice and that middle class women of the era were *very* into temperance, as a rule.)Report
    - Jaybird in reply to Kolohe says:
      
      June 23, 2023 at 8:06 am
      
      Next thing you know, they’ll be putting in a hotel!
      
      I get the feeling that The Music Man was more making fun of the people at the edges who said such things… which is not to say that there weren’t people at the edges who said such things.
      
      But the issue of respectability is also one of cost. Who could afford a billiard table? Well, Certain Establishments and households where they had evening wear in the closets.
      
      Now, to compare this one to the half-dozen Kelly Pool strips we’ve seen before, it’s pretty established that these guys are on their absolute best behavior. The beer is a definite misstep. He’s thinking “we’re inviting the dames to see what we do down here!” and everybody else, even the dame herself, knows that… NO. They’re seeing the family-friendly version and selling it as the real thing.
      
      She’s being a good wingman, she is. He doesn’t appreciate her enough.Report
      - Kolohe in reply to Jaybird says:
        
        June 23, 2023 at 9:48 am
        
        That’s a very good point.Report