Ethel: Before the Bar

This Sunday page from *Ethel* presents six comic vignettes lampooning women in legal practice through exaggerated scenarios: a lawyer juggling fabric swatches alongside courtroom briefs, a defendant undergoing cross-examination via hairpin removal, a witness in checkered suit gesticulating wildly, a lawyer issuing confession and avoidance, a magistrate surrounded by female litigants, and a woman fleeing with legal papers. The strip employs the visual conventions established by newspaper comics of the era—sequential panels, captioned gags, character acting through gesture—to satirize gender roles in the judiciary. *Ethel* occupied the space where daily strips and Sunday comics built their lexicon: recurring protagonists, speech balloons, sight gags anchored in social observation. The strip's humor rested on contemporary anxieties surrounding women's entry into professional spheres.