The Secret History of Wonder Woman

Nonfiction | Biography | Adult | Published in 2014

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Summary

Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Part 1, Chapters 1-5

Part 1, Chapters 6-9

Part 2, Chapters 10-15

Part 2, Chapters 16-21

Part 3, Chapters 22-26

Part 3, Chapter 27-Epilogue

Key Figures

Themes

Symbols & Motifs

Important Quotes

Essay Topics

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Discussion Questions

Themes

Women’s Rights and Feminism

A main theme of the book is women’s rights and feminism, which infuses the text from start to finish. The author’s main thesis is that the character of Wonder Woman was based on Progressive Era struggles for women’s rights. The very first chapter sets the tone for this, as biographical information for William Marston shares space with the background of the woman suffrage movement, culminating in Emmeline Pankhurst’s visit to Cambridge to speak to Harvard students when he was an undergraduate there. Lepore then continues to braid these two strands throughout the text.

While excerpts of Wonder Woman comics are used in early chapters to make connections to events in the women’s rights movement, the main section on Wonder Woman doesn’t appear until the third and final section of the book (more than halfway through). The earlier chapters lay the groundwork by focusing on Marston’s early life and the efforts of Margaret Sanger and her sister Ethel Byrne to advance the cause of women’s rights. The author then shows how they intersect in Wonder Woman. As Lepore notes, Sanger’s era is often called “first wave” feminism and the 1960s and 1970s referred to as the “second wave,” but “there was plenty of feminist agitation in the 1940s in the pages of Wonder Woman” (225).

Lepore makes this explicit with in-depth analysis of the ideas behind Marston’s Wonder Woman character. For example, in Chapter 12, she draws a direct line regarding images of chains and bondage from slavery to woman suffrage to Wonder Woman. Likewise, in Chapter 25, she describes several story lines from Wonder Woman and points out the real-life events that inspired them, such as the Milk Swindle and the Lawrence Textile Strike. Lepore notes that Sanger had been involved in the latter, testifying before Congress on the textile industry’s harm to women and children through low wages. (The strike was the result of a pay cut: when a new law was passed to protect workers by limiting the number of hours worked per week, owners had responded by lowering wages.) In the Wonder Woman story, women workers also go on strike to protest their low rate of pay while the owner, Gloria Bullfinch, lives high on the hog. In a feminist twist, Wonder Woman discovers Bullfinch’s fiancé (surnamed “Del Slimo”) is actually the one behind the exploitation of women workers. When she wakes up Bullfinch to this fact, the owner makes amends by doubling the workers’ salaries.

Truth Versus Lies

Another theme running throughout the book is truth versus lies. Lepore plays off one of Marston’s claims to fame in his early work in attempting to establish an accurate lie detector test. He started this work as early as 1912 as an undergraduate at Harvard doing research with Hugo Münsterberg, one of his professors. He continued perfecting it as a graduate student, then tried to interest the army in his services during World War I and later sought (unsuccessfully) to use it as evidence in criminal cases. As Lepore writes, “If he had never created Wonder Woman, William Moulton Marston would be remembered for this experiment. He invented the lie detector test” (36).

The irony of this is how easily and frequently Marston himself and those closest to him lie. Lepore almost makes a game of it early on, scoring “true” or “false” as she relates elements of his biography. At Harvard, he did not play football though he was a top high school player. He attributed this to how busy he was conducting experiments, saying he had to resist strong appeals for him to join the team as a freshman. “This was a lie,” Lepore writes. “Marston didn’t conduct any experiments his freshman year” (40). Even when talking about lie detector tests themselves Marston sometimes lied. He always claimed to have saved James Frye from a worse fate because of the results of his lie detector tests. In fact, the judge did not allow them to be submitted as evidence, but Marston maintained Frye was convicted on the lesser charge of second-degree murder because of them. Again, Lepore corrects the record: “This wasn’t true, either” (163).

The author catches Holloway in some untruths as well. For instance, Holloway claimed that she would have earned a Ph.D. at Harvard but for the fact that she didn’t take the proficiency exam in German; all her other requirements, including writing a thesis, were completed. However, she “was either lying or misremembering. Harvard didn’t admit women to doctoral programs; there was no question of a woman taking a qualifying examination, German or no German” (59). Of course, the biggest lie of all concerned the secret of Marston and Holloway’s living arrangements with Olive Byrne. For many years, none of the four children even knew that Marston was the biological father of Olive Byrne’s sons, and Byrne would never speak of it until the day she died. Perhaps the reason Lepore focuses so much on this theme is the paradox that it presents: the inventor of the lie detector test lived his whole life as a lie, so to speak.

Bondage

A third theme that is prominent in the text is that of bondage. This occurs in both meanings of being unfree or restrained and of tying up a sexual partner. It’s overwhelmingly used in the former sense, but in some places the distinction blurs, making it more difficult to discern which meaning is intended. Early in the book, bondage is part of the discussion of woman’s rights. In the 19th century, the movement was closely aligned with abolition, and the image of shackles from slavery was borrowed to refer to the state of women as well. This continued with the push for woman suffrage during the first two decades of the 20th century. The very first chapter discusses British suffragists who chained themselves to the fence outside the prime minister’s residence to symbolize their plight.

The women’s rights movement was full of images of women in chains, Lepore explains. Marjorie Huntley participated in a suffrage parade at the Republican National Convention in 1916, and Lepore notes that an illustration of that parade shows women with their wrists chained and a heavy ball chained to their ankles. The Wonder Woman comic adopted this symbol, showing the lead character and many other women bound in chains in virtually every story. While this symbolized their restraint at the hands of men, Wonder Woman is always able to break the bonds, illustrating the extent of female power.

At times the meanings blur and the two clash. After describing in detail the bondage-heavy story in one issue, Lepore writes “Quite how this story embraces women’s rights is difficult to figure. It’s feminism as fetish” (236). Such depictions are what get the attention of censors in the 1940s and 1950s. Time and again, critics cite the unnecessary and excessive use of binding women in chains and ropes in the comic. Marston rebuts each charge, claiming that the sadist version of bondage is never intended. Yet the author hints at his dabbling in this in the 1920s. He, Holloway, Byrne, Huntley, and others used to meet at his Aunt Carolyn’s apartment in Boston. Although the details of the meetings are murky, Lepore notes that “Marston’s interests included what he called captivation and Huntley called ‘love binding’: bondage” (120).