Quarter Day from George Cruikshank's Steel Etchings to The Comic Almanacks: 1835-1853 (top left) c. 1844 - 1880

George Cruikshank created this steel etching, "Quarter Day," for "The Comic Almanacks" between 1835 and 1853. The central motif is a tug-of-war, a symbolic struggle of oppositions and tensions, rendered here with the caricatured figures of a woman, a man, and two grotesque animal forms. The tug-of-war isn’t merely a game; it's an ancient symbol of the cosmic battle between opposing forces. We see echoes of this in ancient mythologies, from the Zoroastrian struggle between light and darkness to the tug-of-war between the gods and titans. The comical twist Cruikshank offers, with his exaggerated figures, masks the underlying psychological drama: the eternal conflict between the masculine and feminine, the human and the bestial. The exaggerated forms are not merely humorous, but they reflect a deep-seated anxiety about the instability of these very categories. Like a recurrent dream, the tug-of-war resurfaces across cultures, each time carrying the weight of collective memory and subconscious fears. It reminds us that the essence of human experience lies in the eternal struggle to find balance amidst conflicting forces.