Edwardian Valentine Greeting Card: Lady with Rose & Butterfly

Despite this card's earnest celebration of refined feminine dignity and romantic sentiment, it features a woman whose wide-brimmed dark hat is piled with an aggressively voluminous green feathered arrangement that somehow manages to be both a fashion statement and a small ecosystem. Clad in a striped dress cinched with a teal ribbon, wearing elbow-length gray gloves, she holds a single long-stemmed red rose with the solemn gravitas of someone accepting a Nobel Prize, while a butterfly perches on the hat brim as if also confused by what it has landed on. The profile pose, the formal gloves, the romantically presented rose — it's all very 'I am a serious woman delivering a Valentine's message,' yet the hat looks like it lost a fight with a topiary, which somewhat undercuts the dignity of the whole enterprise.