The Secret History of Wonder Woman
by Jill Lepore
When my friend Ginna gave me this book (non-fiction), I was a bit mystified.
Not having read comic books as a child, I didn’t know anything about Wonder Woman (Linda Carter notwithstanding), and the synopsis on the back cover of the book was completely unhelpful.
Trusting Ginna’s judgement, however, I read the book and LOVED it. But I still struggle to explain to friends what it’s all about.
Author Jill Lepore is a micro-historian, which as best I can tell means she takes under-served but sleuth-worthy historical figures or events, and brings them back to life as the link to a bigger societal or political story.
In the case of Wonder Woman, the bigger story is the history of feminism.
It all starts with a man (it was ever thus!), William Moulton Marston, the creator of the Amazonian legend in the red bustier.
Born in 1893, Marston was a scholar, professor, filmmaker, lawyer, and the inventor of the first lie detector test. (Irony of this soon to follow)
Marston was also a polygamist. He had four children by two women, and they all lived under one roof.
But these were no ordinary “sister wives.” His legal wife, Elizabeth Holloway, was a graduate of Mount Holyoke and a committed suffragist. His mistress, Olive Byrne, a former student, was the daughter of Ethel Byrne, who in 1917 was the first woman in the Unites States to go on a hunger strike. Ethel’s sister was Margaret Sanger, the birth control advocate. Both woman spent extended periods of time in Marston’s home.
As Wonder Woman would say, “Great Hera!”
How Marston reconciled his feminist views with his unusual personal life is not clear, but his family members’ fingerprints are all over Wonder Woman.
Wonder Woman’s popularity and significance have ebbed and flowed throughout the decades, although she has never been out of print. The Marston family story, not similarly publicized, remained deeply hidden–until now.
Lepore helpfully includes many full color copies of significant strips as well as the iconic Ms. Magazine cover from 1972. Even the (extensive) footnotes, pages 341 to 416, are worth reading!
A fascinating slice of American history.
Who Wrote it
Jill Lepore is the David Woods Kemper ’41 Professor of American History at Harvard University and a staff writer at The New Yorker. Book of Ages, her most recent book, was a finalist for the National Book Award.
What Other Reviewers Say
The Wall Street Journal “Ms. Lepore’s lively, surprising and occasionally salacious history is far more that the story of a comic strip….Her superb narrative brings that history vividly into the present, weaving individual lives into the sweeping changes of the century.”
PS Buy Wonder Woman stamps here!!
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