July 2016: A Secret History of Wonder Woman (Lepore)

Post date: Jul 24, 2016 2:27:1 PM

A group of eight of us gathered at Sherrill’s house to discuss Jill Lepore’s book The Secret History of Wonder Woman. For the most part, the book is a biography of William Moulton Marston, the comic strip’s creator. However, it includes a good deal of historical detail and social commentary on the feminist movements of the first half of the 20th century, the development of the field of psychology, and the birth of comic books as a popular entertainment. There are also a liberal amount of historical photographs and reprints of early Wonder Woman comic strips distributed throughout the book.

The members of the group all seem to enjoy the book. Most of us found William Marston to be a complicated, controversial and yet ultimately sympathetic character. He was a feminist and promoter of women’s rights from an early age, and certainly he surrounded himself with amazing and talented women. However, his beliefs about women and their “morally superior” and “angelic” natures, his polygamous relationship with at least three women, and his apparent obsession with female bondage (which shaped many early Wonder Woman plots) gave us pause. Ultimately, though, most of us liked Marston. He was definitely ahead of his time, the people in his unconventional family clearly loved him and cared for each other, and he managed to imbue the early Wonder Woman comic strips with an often blatant feminist and progressive agenda.

Although feelings about Marston were somewhat mixed, we had pretty positive reactions to the two main women in his life: Elizabeth Holloway and Olive Byrne. Elizabeth Holloway Marston was a gifted academic, editor and executive assistant, who became the main financial support of the family, as Marston drifted from job to job. Olive Byrne, was a former student of Marston’s and the niece of Margaret Sanger, the early feminist and proponent of birth control. Byrne originally entered the family to care for Holloway and Marston’s two children, though she went on to have two children of her own with Marston (though they kept his identity as their father a secret). Our group’s discussion about Olive Byrne’s decision to stay home and care for the four children, even though she was a talented writer in her own right, lead to an interesting conversation about the changing attitudes within the feminist and progressive movements towards childrearing and how those attitudes shape women’s lives and choices today. This wide-ranging discussion of the connection between politics, popular culture and individual lives seemed a fitting testament to the value of reading Lepore’s fascinating and surprising history of Wonder Woman.

Write-up by Karen Bardsley