This week’s postcard is a little humorous offering from the Great War with a rather scrawny private holding the bump on his head whilst a rather fierce woman glowers at him whilst clutching a rolling pin and the caption reads “No Woman is expected to go for a soldier!”: 

The phrase here can be read as either no woman is expected to go off and fight in place of a (male) soldier (which is humorous due to the size disparity between the two characters) or that no woman is to attack a soldier (have a go at). In an era that poked fun at suffragettes as misandrist men haters, the idea of turning gender expectations on their head and having a weak man being dominated by a large and bullying woman was a common trope in postcard humour in the Edwardian era. It is the very fact that is was so uncommon in real life that made it so much more amusing to those purchasing the cards and the domineering wife would remain a staple of comic seaside postcards into the 1960s.