The Secret History of Wonder Woman

“The word ‘feminism,’ hardly ever used before 1910, was everywhere by 1913. It meant advocacy of women’s rights and freedoms and a vision of equality markedly different from that embraced by the ‘woman movement’ of the nineteenth century, which, nostalgic for a prehistoric, matriarchal ‘mother-age,’ had been founded less on a principle of equality than on a set of ideas about women’s moral superiority. ‘All feminists are suffragists, but not all suffragists are feminists,’ as one feminist explained. Feminists rejected the idea of women as reformers whose moral authority came from their differentness from men—women were supposedly, by nature, more tender and loving and chaste and pure—and advocated instead women’s full and equal participation in politics, work, and the arts, on the grounds that women were in every way equal to men.”

Here the author explains the difference between women’s rights and feminism. The book deals with both, as do the Wonder Woman comics. Lepore covers the history of the women’s rights movement, spanning most of the 20th century while also drawing upon its 19th-century roots as far back as the 1848 Seneca Falls Convention. As such, it’s important to note the evolution of the movement, and she does that in part here. Marston and Holloway came of age at the same time feminism is emerging, and its principles had a strong influence on their thinking and ultimately the Wonder Woman comics.

“Harvard not only didn’t allow women to speak on campus, it also didn’t admit women as students. But Wonder Woman can’t keep away. She’s like Emmeline Pankhurst, swooping in and stirring everyone up. Much of the action in Wonder Woman comics takes place at ‘Holliday College’: the name’s a mash-up of ‘Holloway’ and ‘Holyoke.’ Once, disguised in a varsity sweater with an H on it—an unmissable allusion to a Harvard varsity sweater—Wonder Woman attends a lecture at Holliday College given by Dr. Hypno. Holliday College is full of sinister professors with names like ‘Professor Manly’ whose chief villainy is their opposition to feminism. Wonder Woman’s arch-nemesis is Dr. Psycho, an evil professor of psychology whose plan is ‘to change the independent status of modern American women back to the days of the sultans and slave markets, clanking chains and abject captivity.’”

This is an example of what Lepore does throughout the book, in effect mining Marston’s past for connections to Wonder Woman. As she relates the events of Marston’s life, she inserts information like the above, which are passages that explain the origins of some details, themes, and story lines found later in the Wonder Woman comics. Here, for instance, the name of the college often used in Wonder Woman comes from the surname of Elizabeth Holloway, then his girlfriend and later his wife, and the name of her college, Mount Holyoke. The fictional college also reflects the atmosphere of the Harvard that Marston knew: antagonistic to the cause of feminism.

“The experiments Münsterberg and Marston conducted together in the Psychological Laboratory in Emerson Hall and on their students at Radcliffe were designed to detect deception. They wanted to tell truth from lies. Marston began conducting a series of ‘reaction-time’ experiments: he wanted to know whether people who are lying hesitate when they speak. Haskins defined the historical method as the discrimination between the trustworthy and untrustworthy; Münsterberg wanted to predict trustworthiness. To understand how the mind works—to discover the physical manifestation of truth and deceit—would be to know whose evidence was to be trusted, not by making a subjective judgment, the way the historian applied to a mass of evidence the intellectual skills of criticism and interpretation, but through observations made and tests developed. Truthfulness—truth itself—was to be established not through discrimination but through observation.” 

Here the author explains the origins of Marston’s involvement with lie detector tests. One of his psychology professors at Harvard, Hugo Münsterberg, was a pioneer in the technique and enlisted Marston’s help as his assistant. As noted in the passage, the goal was to take subjectivity out of the equation in determining truth and be able to rely solely on objective, observable measurements

“‘This study of psycho-physics of deception is going to prove a great help to me when I begin to practice law,’ Marston announced from his couch. He was awesomely cocky. He explained his research. ‘I have tried 100 experiments and every one has come out right. You can see what a valuable thing it will be to me when I cross-examine a witness. A blood pressure machine can be attached to the witness’ arm and by my knowledge of this course I can tell whether I am getting the truth or not.’”

This passage comes from an interview Marston gave while still an undergraduate and after winning the contest for best photoplay. It shows his supreme self-confidence and drive at an early age to follow his chosen path. He was certain his lie detection methods would revolutionize the law. When he was thwarted by the real world, so to speak, it slowed him down but didn’t stop him—he turned his attention to formulating a theory of emotions. Lepore describes his life as a series of experiments: when one failed, he tried another. Each time, however, he was sure he would be successful.

“Despite her MA and her JD, Holloway had a hard time finding work. At the time, less than 2 percent of all lawyers in the United States were women. No one took a woman lawyer seriously, Holloway complained. ‘I have never met a woman who, in those days, actually tried a case before a jury,’ she said. She told this story about when she was clerking: ‘One day I was in Court filing papers when His Honor leaned over the bench and intoned, ‘Young lady, please tell your employer not to send his secretary to court to file papers.’ She bided her time. She liked to say, about men who treated her that way, ‘I didn’t spit in his eye but I would have liked to.’”

A bit about Holloway’s plight is revealed by this passage. Though she was highly educated and qualified, her job prospects in law were quite limited since women still had few opportunities at the time. She eventually turned to editing and writing for a career. This may explain why later, when given Marston’s ultimatum, she accepted the family arrangement he proposed. Her professional position took a lot of persistence and drive to obtain, and she did not want to give it up so easily. Having Olive Byrne at home to do the domestic work solved the problem for Holloway.

“Even though the case never went to trial, the scandal cost Marston the chairmanship of the Psychology Department at American University, the directorship of the only psycho-legal research laboratory in the United States, and his professorship. The charges against him were dropped on January 4, 1924. ‘Studies in Testimony’ appeared in the Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology in May.

In June, Mattingly and Wood were admitted to the Supreme Court bar. It doesn’t seem as though they pursued the appeal to the Supreme Court; or, if they did, the Court refused to hear the case. After Frye, Marston gave up on the study of law, which is what made it possible for him, one day, to create Wonder Woman. For Marston, the end of one experiment always marked the beginning of another.” 

This quotation illustrates in a nutshell a portion of Marston’s career trajectory. He had been a celebrated psychologist until he was accused of fraud in his earlier business failings and, at only age 29, had been made a full professor and chair of the Psychology Department at American University. He lost all his academic appointments even though the fraud charges ultimately did not stick. Instead, he changed tack, giving up his work in law, but as Lepore writes, he always pivoted to some new endeavor after a setback.

“Woman and the New Race placed the birth control movement on the stage of history as a struggle of even greater importance than suffrage. ‘The most far-reaching social development of modern times is the revolt of woman against sex servitude,’ Sanger wrote, promising that contraception would ‘remake the world.’ No freedom was more important: ‘No woman can call herself free who does not own and control her own body.’ And to that revolt against slavery, no one had been more important than her sister: ‘No single act of self-sacrifice in the history of the birth-control movement has done more to awaken the conscience of the public or to arouse the courage of women, than did Ethel Byrne’s deed of uncompromising resentment at the outrage of jailing women who were attempting to disseminate knowledge which would emancipate the motherhood of America,’ Sanger wrote.” 

Sanger’s 1920 book Woman and the New Race was instrumental in the creation of Wonder Woman. It had a big effect on both Marston and Holloway, and later Olive Byrne would tell a new Wonder Woman writer to read it for all she needed to know about the comic strip. Much of the imagery of women throwing off the chains of oppression comes from the book. This quotation is notable too for the praise Sanger has for her sister Ethel Byrne. Lepore writes that later, as she worked to secure her legacy, Sanger would try to distance herself from Byrne and keep the focus on herself.

“Ethel Byrne liked to go to Provincetown, one town over, to visit friends. Truro and Provincetown were refuges for Greenwich Village radicals and a haven for homosexuals. Ethel Byrne and Margaret Sanger believed in free love, which meant they believed in sex outside of marriage, and considered marriage itself a form of oppression. People who believed in free love didn’t necessarily regard homosexuality as simply another form of sexual expression. But Ethel Byrne did.”

This quotation shows where Olive Byrne got some of her radical ideas. Her aunt, Margaret Sanger, had a big influence on her life with her ongoing fight for women’s rights, especially regarding birth control. However, her mother, Ethel Byrne, was even more radical than Sanger in her beliefs and philosophy. Olive later said that she had never met any gay men or women until her mother took her to Provincetown, on Cape Cod. There she met some of Ethel’s friends and observed them acting affectionately with one another. Her ideas about and openness to free love, as practiced with Marston, were thus influenced in part by her mother.

“Emotions of Normal People is, among other things, a defense of homosexuality, transvestitism, fetishism, and sadomasochism. The book argues that forms of sexual expression commonly derided as ‘abnormal’ are, in fact, entirely normal. Marston dedicated the book to five women: his mother, his aunt Claribel, Elizabeth Holloway Marston, Marjorie Wilkes Huntley, and Olive Byrne. Emotions of Normal People appeared in both London and New York, as part of a series called the International Library of Psychology, Philosophy and Scientific Method, edited by the British psychologist C. K. Ogden. It was in some ways a triumph. Authors who contributed to this series include Wittgenstein, Piaget, and Adler.

The book outlines Marston’s theory of the four primary emotions. Its chief argument is that much in emotional life that is generally regarded as abnormal (for example, a sexual appetite for dominance or submission) and is therefore commonly hidden and kept secret is actually not only normal but neuronal: it inheres within the very structure of the nervous system.”

This shows Marston’s acceptance of a wide range of sexual expression, in which he was really ahead of his time. Many kinds of sexual behavior deemed abnormal at the time are now seen as simply one form of human expression and no longer regarded as aberrant by the psychology profession. The book also included Marston’s ideas on dominance and submission that would appear in Wonder Woman as “love bonds.” However, it did not give him the professional recognition he hoped for, as it was largely ignored.

“Marston and Pitkin decided to write a book together. The Art of Sound Pictures was published in November 1929. ‘The talkies are the only art that would attract Leonardo da Vinci were he alive to-day,’ Pitkin and Marston wrote. This art, they explained, ‘is a baby giant, as clumsy as all babies are. […] We don’t know what the baby will be doing and saying when it grows up. But we are sure it will make its mark in the world.’

Much of the book is advice for would-be screenwriters. ‘Probably nine out of ten stories which fail to sell in Hollywood contain some serious defect in emotional handling,’ Marston explained. And, because ‘no successful screen story can contain a universal emotional appeal unless it is highly flavored with erotic passion,’ would-be screenwriters needed to understand the psychology of sex, and to know that every story ought to demonstrate what he described as psychological laws: the facts that ‘woman possesses the superior love power,’ that love always vanquishes force, that ‘passion is predominantly a male emotion, and that submission in love belongs to the man and not to the woman.’”

In this passage, Lepore gives some insight into Marston’s approach to writing stories. Though it is about writing for films, some of the same aspects apply to the comics he later becomes involved in. The “psychology of sex” and his theories about the relationship between men and women all appear in Wonder Woman stories. In addition, just as films with sound were new in 1929, comics were new in the following decade, and the parallels in these new forms of media are striking. Marston would later write an article in the journal American Scholar that incorporated some of the same ideas. He claimed that comics, like movies, were a form of art.

“Olive Byrne married William K. Richard of Los Angeles on November 21, 1928, when she was twenty-four years old. She took his name and became Olive Richard. Their first son, Byrne Holloway Richard, was born on January 12, 1931. Another boy, Donn Richard, was born on September 20, 1932. Shortly after that, she told her sons, their father died. William K. Richard had been a very ill man: he had been gassed in the war and suffered from lung problems, from which he’d never recovered. Oddly, she didn’t have a single photograph of him.

She had no photograph because there was no William K. Richard. ‘Olive Richard’ was a fiction. (From here on out, I’ll call her ‘Olive,’ to avoid confusing her with her son Byrne.) Byrne and Donn’s father was William Moulton Marston. The wedding date, though, wasn’t a lie. In November 1928 Olive Byrne began wearing a pair of close-fitted, wide-banded bracelets. She never took them off. Wonder Woman wears the very same bracelets.”

This is how Lepore presents the way Olive Byrne dealt with the paternity of her two sons. She never wavered from this fiction her entire life, even to Byrne and Donn themselves. (They only learned the truth in the 1960s when Holloway confessed to it.) The passage also shows that Wonder Woman got her bracelets, among other aspects, from Olive. The bracelets served the same function as a wedding band, representing the “love bond” between her and Marston.

“The family arrangement, in which Marston had two wives, one to work and one to raise the children, involved the promotion of Holloway’s career. Olive Byrne had the best possible modern-day psychological training necessary for the modern, scientific management of children. Her staying home with Holloway’s baby allowed Holloway to lead the life of a professional woman, unencumbered by the duties of motherhood. And Holloway’s income supported Olive’s children, when they came. Marston had never been able to hold a job for more than a year. He needed Holloway’s income, too.” 

Here Lepore explains in more detail the family arrangement of Marston, Holloway, and Byrne. It solved the problem that the modern woman faced (and still faces) of simultaneously maintaining a career and raising children. The rise of psychology in the 1920s also put mounting pressure on parents (especially mothers, who were overwhelmingly the providers of childcare) to bring up children using the latest psychological theories of development. The solution in the Marston household took care of all these aspects. Holloway continued working full-time, supporting everyone financially, and Byrne applied her training in psychology (she had a master’s degree and had conducted research with Marston) to child-rearing. 

“Nearly every story Olive Byrne wrote for Family Circle follows this formula. A problem presents itself. Our intrepid reporter decides to visit the world’s most famous consulting psychologist. She takes a train to his house. She spends an hour or two with him, Watson to his Holmes. Then she peppers her account of her time with him with true facts—Marston had four children; Olive’s mother’s name was Ethel—but these are only so many islands of truth in an ocean of lies. I’d mix truth and falsehood and see if he could tell which was which.” 

This passage explains the format commonly used by Olive Byrne in her Family Circle articles. Readers are to assume that she and Marston do not know each other and have no relationship other than that of journalist and expert as depicted in the pieces. It’s an example of the paradox that Lepore points to throughout the text: the inventor of the lie detector test telling lies of his own. The last sentence in italics is a quote from the specific article Lepore writes about in which Marston gives Byrne a lie detector test, instructing her to describe the previous evening, truthfully or not. Lepore plays on the line written by Byrne, hinting that Byrne and Marston did just that in real life.

“Marston’s Lie Detector Test also includes a chapter about James A. Frye. ‘The Frye case proved an opening wedge for the later admission of deception test evidence into court procedure,’ Marston claimed. (Nothing could have been further from the truth; the Frye case closed the door on that evidence.) Marston also claimed that Frye had been convicted of second-degree murder, rather than first-degree murder, as a result of his having been given a lie detector test. ‘As far as Jim Frye was concerned, the test undoubtedly saved his life,’ Marston declared. This wasn’t true, either. Frye had been convicted of the lesser crime not because his lawyers tried and failed to get Marston introduced as an expert witness but because, in his confession, Frye had claimed that the gun with which the murder had been committed had gone off accidentally; nothing at the trial established that the murder had been premeditated, a requirement for conviction of murder in the first degree.” 

This is an example of how Lepore rebuts some of the falsehoods that Marston put forth. This passage is especially ironic since it involves the lie detector test that Marston invented—yet Lepore calls him out on two points that are clearly contradicted by the facts. It represents one of the book’s themes, that of truth versus lies. 

“The year Margaret Sanger won her greatest victory yet and William Moulton Marston held a press conference about Amazonian rule, Olive Byrne was typing his books and raising his children, and Sadie Elizabeth Holloway was supporting him. A matriarchy Cherry Orchard was not.” 

Lepore once again notes the irony of Marston’s stated beliefs when compared to how he actually lived his life. The year she refers to is 1937. Sanger’s victory came in a court case that resulted from her attempt to import diaphragms from abroad; they were seized for violating obscenity laws. An appeals court ruling on the case declared that contraceptives could be imported if prescribed by doctors, striking a blow against the obscenity laws. As for Marston’s press conference—part of promoting a new book—he theatrically declared that women would rule the world in the future in a benevolent matriarchy.

“The Marston children were fiercely loved. Olive doted on them; Holloway was proud of them. Huntley’s incense-filled room in the attic was a place they could go when they needed quiet. Marston made the rules. His diaries and letters are filled with stories of birthday parties, presents, and trips to schools, watching Byrne turn somersaults at the age of six and play the trumpet at age eight. He carried O.A. around on his shoulders. ‘Seven good night hugs OOOOOOO and one good night kiss X,’ Marston wrote, signing off a letter to Byrne, away at summer camp. ‘I’m whispering, I love you.’”

Here Lepore describes the Marston household not in terms of its unorthodox arrangement but in terms of how the children were cared for. It’s clear from the passage that all four kids were loved and well cared for by the four adults in their lives. Marston, despite his other qualities that Lepore finds fault with, was an affectionate father deeply involved in his children’s lives. 

“In June 1940, Germany conquered France. Much of the comic-book trouble had to do, by then, with Superman, who’d begun to look to a lot of people like a fascist. Comic books would ‘spawn only a generation of Storm Troopers,’ the poet Stanley Kunitz predicted in Library Journal. In September 1940, the New Republic published an essay called ‘The Coming of Superman’ by the novelist Slater Brown. ‘Superman, handsome as Apollo, strong as Hercules, chivalrous as Launcelot, swift as Hermes, embodies all the traditional attributes of a Hero God,’ Brown wrote, but in Germany, ‘it is not the children who have embraced a vulgarized myth of Superman so enthusiastically; it has been their elders.’ Time magazine would eventually ask the question Kunitz and Brown had circled around: ‘Are Comics Fascist?’”  

This quotation shows some of the criticism comic books received at the time of World War II. They had already been questioned for their influence on children, mostly regarding their “pulp” or low-brow nature. Now the war put superheroes, especially Superman, in a new light. With the Nazi’s theories about a “pure” race of Aryans, superheroes seemed to have fascist undertones. The nature of it changed over time, but criticism in some form was a constant, and Marston regularly rebutted charges that Wonder Woman was harmful. It eventually got so bad the industry adopted a code to self-censor itself.

“Marston wanted his comic book’s ‘under-meaning,’ about ‘a great movement now under way—the growth in the power of women,’ to be embodied in the way Wonder Woman carried herself, how she dressed, and what powers she wielded. She had to be strong, and she had to be independent. Everyone agreed about the bracelets (inspired by Olive Byrne’s): it helped Gaines with his public relations problem that she could stop bullets with them; that was good for the gun problem. Also, this new superhero had to be uncommonly beautiful; she’d wear a tiara, like the crown awarded at the Miss America pageant. Marston wanted her to be opposed to war, but she had to be willing to fight for democracy. In fact, she had to be superpatriotic. Captain America wore an American flag: blue tights, red gloves, red boots, and, on his torso, red and white stripes and a white star. Like Captain America—because of Captain America—Wonder Woman would have to wear red, white, and blue, too. But, ideally, she’d also wear very little. To sell magazines, Gaines wanted his superwoman to be as naked as he could get away with.

Peter got his instructions: draw a woman who’s as powerful as Superman, as sexy as Miss Fury, as scantily clad as Sheena the jungle queen, and as patriotic as Captain America.” 

This illustrates some of the factors—and yet more paradoxes—involved in creating the Wonder Woman comic. The publisher Charlie Gaines was concerned about some of the criticisms of comics in general (the “public relations problem” referred to), but also wanted to depict the character wearing as little as possible in a blatant attempt to use sex appeal to sell magazines. This didn’t quite jibe with Marston’s underlying message of equality for women, and Wonder Woman’s skimpy clothing proved to be a longstanding criticism of the comic.

“In Wonder Woman, Marston created a character to answer every one of the comic-book critics’ objections. She’s strong, but she’s not a bully: ‘At last, in a world torn by the hatreds and wars of men, appears a woman to whom the problems and feats of men are mere child’s play.’ She hates guns: ‘Bullets never solved a human problem yet!’ She’s relentless, but she always spares her victims. ‘Wonder Woman never kills!’ Above all, she believes in the United States: ‘America, the last citadel of democracy, and of equal rights for women!’ Wonder Woman left Paradise Island to fight fascism with feminism.”

Here the author shows how Marston tried to deflect criticism of comics in Wonder Woman. In the early years of World War II, comics were considered by some to be fascist and overly violent in their depiction of guns, to name but two points. Other female characters were seen as too masculine, adopting the violent ways of men. Marston tried to counter these issues in Wonder Woman, but it didn’t work; the comic was still criticized over the years for many reasons.

“Wonder Woman had not one secret identity, in this episode, but two. She was Diana Prince, working woman, and also Diana White, her look-alike, wife and mother: Elizabeth Holloway and Olive Byrne, both. Marston went on record, more than once, advocating employment for women. ‘The truest kindness to any woman,’ he wrote in Tomorrow magazine in 1942, ‘is to provide her with an opportunity for self-expression in some constructive field: to work, not at home with cook-stove and scrubbing brush, but outside, independently, in the world of men and affairs.’”

Lepore’s analysis here points to both Holloway and Byrne being models for Wonder Woman. It refers to a story line that takes on the issue of women in the workplace. Olive Byrne is clearly a model with her bracelets, among other things, but Lepore makes it clear that Holloway is as well. Her decision to pursue a profession is a result of the long struggle for women’s equality. The ability to choose a career—just like men can—is part of the feminism of the Progressive Era, which had a profound effect on both Marston and Holloway.

“Wonder Woman was a form of feminist propaganda, Marston insisted: ‘Wonder Woman’ was conceived by Dr. Marston to set up a standard among children and young people of strong, free, courageous womanhood; and to combat the idea that women are inferior to men, and to inspire girls to self-confidence and achievement in athletics, occupations and professions monopolized by men.’ She wasn’t meant to be a superwoman; she was meant to be an everywoman.”

The quoted passage after the colon comes from Marston’s press release in 1942, revealing that he—“internationally famous psychologist and inventor of the widely-publicized ‘Lie Detector’ test”—was the real writer of Wonder Woman. He had previously written the comic under the pen name Charles Moulton. Here he makes explicit his purpose for writing the comic and what he hoped to achieve by it. Lepore’s conclusion is insightful: Wonder Woman is meant to be every woman, not just one endowed with superhuman powers.

“For Wertham, Wonder Woman was quite possibly the worst comic-book character of all. She could be vicious; her comic books were racist; she was a lesbian Batman, and the Holliday College girls were ‘gay.’ Bender had written that Wonder Woman comic books display ‘a strikingly advanced concept of femininity and masculinity’ and ‘women in these stories are placed on an equal footing with men and indulge in the same type of activities.’ Wertham found the feminism in Wonder Woman repulsive. ‘As to the ‘advanced femininity,’ what are the activities in comic books which women ‘indulge in on an equal footing with men’? They do not work. They are not homemakers. They do not bring up a family. Mother-love is entirely absent […]. Even when Wonder Woman adopts a girl there are Lesbian overtones.’” 

This refers to Fredric Wertham, a psychiatrist whose attacks on the comics focused on several aspects, including their supposed “sexual perversion.” Batman and Robin promoted same-sex attraction, he claimed, and Wonder Woman promoted lesbianism. Wertham also objected to what he thought was a lack of feminine qualities in Wonder Woman; in particular, marriage and motherhood are absent, which he thought would have a harmful effect on the minds of youngsters. His articles and books were part of the pressure that led the comics industry to adopt an internal code to sanitize comic books.

“In the 1950s, Wonder Woman followed the hundreds of thousands of American women who had worked during the war only to be told, when peace came, that not only was their labor no longer needed but it threatened the stability of the nation, by undermining men. By the end of the Second World War, the number of American women working outside the home had grown by 60 percent; three-quarters of these women were married, and one-third were mothers of young children. Women’s work had been crucial during wartime. ‘There are practically no unmarried women left to draw upon,’ Fortune magazine had reported in 1943. ‘This leaves, as the next potential source of industrial workers, the housewives.’ At the end of the war, three-quarters of working women hoped to keep their jobs; very few were able to. They were told to quit, to make room for men returning from military service. Women’s pay was cut. Factories that had provided child care during the war cut those services. Unmarried women were told to marry; married women were told to have children. Working women went to the altar and to the maternity ward.

Wonder Woman became a babysitter, a fashion model, and a movie star. She wanted, desperately, to marry Steve. She gave advice to the lovelorn, as the author of a lonely-hearts newspaper advice column. In 1950, Kanigher killed off Etta Candy. (‘Etta Candy! Jesus Christ!’ he said.) He also abandoned ‘Wonder Women of History’; he replaced it with a series about weddings, called ‘Marriage a la Mode.’”

This passage tells what happened to Wonder Woman after Marston died and Robert Kanigher took over the writing. As connected as Wonder Woman was to women’s history, it’s illustrative to note their parallel fates after World War II. Wonder Woman and real women both took heroic roles during the war, and both became tamer and more domestic as the United States turned inward in the 1950s. Marston’s vision for Wonder Woman, as Lepore shows here, was compromised.