The Secret History of Wonder Woman

A terrific book. I knew nothing about Wonder Woman, really–never read the comics or watched the TV series–but the story behind her creation and creator is fascinating. It involves Margaret Sanger, early feminist endeavors, polyamory, and much more. Sobering to read that in the late 1930s, there was a firm belief among feminists that there would be a female president with 10-15 years. Then the 1950s happened, and it has taken us much longer to get there.

Only been trying to read this book for probably a decade now. I love WW, and her backstory is fascinating, but keeping track of several different names, sets of initials, kids and who their parents are, gets confusing after a while, and I've always gotten bogged down trying to get through it. Had to give in and buy a copy just so I could take my time and get through a bit here and there! I did very much enjoy it, however, and I'm glad I've finally gotten through it.

Some quotes:
“In 1914, Greenwich Village feminist Margaret Sanger founded a magazine called the Women Rebel. The “basis of feminism,” Sanger said, had to be a woman's control over her own body, “the right to be a mother regardless of church or state.” ~ p 21

“In Angel Island and Herland, men have to be taught that if they want to live with women - if they want to marry them and have children with them - they will be allowed to do so only on terms of equality. And for this to happen, there has got to be a way for men and women to have sex, but without the women getting pregnant all the time. The women in Gilman's utopia practice what at the time was called “voluntary motherhood,” a subject Gilman approaches with a certain primness. “You see they were Mothers, not in our sense of helpless, involuntary fecundity, forced to fill and overfill the land, every land, and then see their children suffer, sin, and die, fighting horribly with one another,” Gilman wrote, “but in the sense of Conscious Makers of People.” ~p86

“IT BEGAN WITH A GUN. On September 1, 1939, the German army invaded Poland. Two days later, Britain and France declared war on Germany. In the October 1939 issue of Detective Comics, Batman killed a vampire by shooting silver bullets into his heart. In the next issue, Batman fired a gun at two evil henchmen. When Whitney Ellsworth, DC's editorial director, got a first look at a draft of the next installment, Batman was shooting again. Ellsworth shook his head and said, Take the gun out.
Batman had debuted in Detective Comics in May 1939, the same month that the U.S. Supreme Court issued a ruling in United States v. Miller, a landmark gun-control case. It concerned the constitutionality of the 1934 National Firearms Act and the 1938 Federal Firearms Act, which effectively banned machine guns through prohibitive taxation, and regulated handgun ownership by introducing licensing, waiting period, and permit requirements. The National Rifle Association supported the legislation (at the time, the NRA was a sportsman's organization). But gun manufacturers challenged it on the grounds that federal control of gun ownership violated the Second Amendment. FDR's solicitor general said the Second Amendment had nothing to do with an individual right to own a gun; it had to do with the common defense. The court agreed, unanimously.”~ p 183-4

“With war devastating Europe, the disarming of the dark knight was Detective Comics' deferral to a cherished American idea about the division between civilian and military life. Superheroes weren't soldiers; they were private citizens. And so, late in 1939, one of Batman's writers drafted a new origin story for him: When Bruce Wayne was a boy, his parents had been killed before his eyes, shot to death. Not only did Batman not own a gun; Batman hated guns.” ~p184

Overall, this is a well-researched book on the history of the creator of Wonder Woman, his crazy-ass family and the very deep feminist theory that undergirds most of the early comics.

The only knock on the book is that it is by no means a complete history of Wonder Woman. It might better have been titled, “The Secret History of Wonder Woman's Creation,” or, most accurately, “Wonder Woman and Feminism: The Early Years.”

You'll learn about William Marston, the inventor of an early version of the lie-detector test/failed psychologist/failed moviemaker/failed entrepreneur who used his lifelong obsession with women to craft the early tales of the Amazonian Wonder Woman. You'll learn about his wife. And his other wife. And his other other kind-of wife.

You'll be confused by what scholarship/writing should be attributed to whom between the primary threesome. You'll be bewildered by the lengths of the deception that the unofficial wife went to keep Marston's progenitorship a secret from her children. And you'll be slightly weirded out by how closely Margaret Sanger weaves in to all of it.

The book focuses heavily on the early comics (up until Marston's death), then sort of writes off the entire 50+ other years with a “the people who came directly after Marston were chauvinist pigs” which, while not inaccurate, is not exactly meeting the mantle of “history.”

That being said, this book is essential for truly understanding Wonder Woman, her origins and her standing/place in the culture at large.

This book is enthralling and reveals so many influential aspects surrounding woman's suffrage, birth control, women's equality, etc. that went into the creation of Wonder Woman. Women going from WW2-era Rosie the Riveter to trapped in the feminine sphere of hearth, home, and babies again was frustrating to read but necessary to understand for the 1970s women's lib movement.

This book is a captivating odyssey into the origin story of Wonder Woman from the complicated professor of psychology (and creator of the lie detector test), who was supportive of a women's lib in the 1920s through 1940s during the Hollywood Hays Code era (even a woman president depicted in Wonder Woman comics), and inclusive of the women that inspired her: Maraget Sanger (suffuragist badass), Olive Byrne (literary wit), and Elizabeth Holloway (lauded academic).

I can't say enough good things about this book! And I can't wait to read Jill Lepore's other works.

If you have any interest in Wonder Woman (obviously), comics (again, duh), feminism history, the birth control movement, sex and gender politics, women's history... you should read this book. I can't remember the last time I read something that was able to encapsulate such a complex human being, showing both sides without trying to sway the audience who they really are. Marston (the creator of WW) certainly could be easily idealized or villainized depending on who read this book... And there are details and stories that we'll never know that might've filled in the picture.