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The Secret History of Wonder Woman

Jill Lepore

Start date: February 1, 2017

Finish date: February 28, 2017

Discussion: Nonfiction Group Read

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What Members Thought

Feb 15, 2017 Susanna - Censored by GoodReads rated it really liked it

Actual rating: 3.5 stars.

This is a fascinating read about the creator of Wonder Woman, who was one exceptionally odd man. He seems to have genuinely believed that women would rule the world, but his own home was far from a matriarchy: he had one wife to work twelve hours a day in New York City, supporting the family, and another one (both Margaret Sanger's niece, and a former student) to raise the four children the two women managed to produce with him in the 1930s - when she was not writing puf ...more

18 likes · Like · see review

Sep 30, 2014 El rated it it was ok

Shelves: 21st-centurylit, cultural-studies-and-other, artsy-fartsy, hear-me-roar-and-gender

I've been wanting to read this book at least since 2014 when a couple GR friends pointed me in the direction of this New Yorker article. Wonder Woman! She's bad-ass! I wanted to know her secret history!

I expected this secret history to involve feminism because that's a pretty big deal these days, rightly so, and Wonder Woman was this character that broke a lot of barriers because she was a bad-ass female character when all the other comic book characters of the day were male. There is a history I've been wanting to read this book at least since 2014 when a couple GR friends pointed me in the direction of this New Yorker article. Wonder Woman! She's bad-ass! I wanted to know her secret history!

I expected this secret history to involve feminism because that's a pretty big deal these days, rightly so, and Wonder Woman was this character that broke a lot of barriers because she was a bad-ass female character when all the other comic book characters of the day were male. There is a history there along that line, and Lepore details it very carefully.

But the other part of the secret history is the man who created the character. William Moulton Marston, the inventor of the lie detector test, was inspired to write the Wonder Woman character inspired by a few women in his personal life who all willingly (kinda-sorta-mostly?) participated in an extended relationship. Unusual for its time, they hid this family dynamic for years, including their own children, as it was not likely to be accepted. It's not likely to be accepted today either, since polyamorous relationships still get the shaft as far any sort of rights go - it's like this dark horse of relationships, and it doesn't help that polygamy has gotten a bad rep over the years. But anyway.

Lepore had the opportunity to go through all sorts of juicy Marston papers which led her to writing this book. She has extensive knowledge about the family, the creation and evolution of Wonder Woman, and the history of feminism. But I will say I am disappointed in the final outcome when Lepore put all of those components together.

A book about Marston and his family dynamics would make for an interesting book or study in and of itself. What I was more interested in reading about was how feminism shaped Wonder Woman, and how Wonder Woman shaped the course of feminism. Because both happened, Lepore touches on a bit of it throughout... but then distracts from that by bringing us back to Marston and Co., and how this one thing then led to this other thing in the comics, and I don't know. It actually felt sloppy at times.

It didn't help that while there are extensive illustrations throughout the book (be careful of that if you choose an audio version of this book, by the way, because I think you'd miss out by not seeing some of the panels), the captions were included verbatim throughout the text. So when I would encounter the same phrasing in the body of the text, it would take me a moment as I could remember reading that already and I had to pause to decide if I read it in a caption or if I was rereading whole sections of the book without realizing it. Unfortunately I found this repetition an unnecessary distraction.

I still recommend this to anyone interested in Wonder Woman, Golden Age comics, or the history of feminism. Lepore covers a lot of ground and it's all good details, regardless of how I felt the final execution was. ...more

16 likes · Like · see review

Jan 23, 2017 Dawn rated it really liked it

Shelves: history, non-fiction, individuals, feminism

What a fascinating story.

Wonder Woman and her creator have deep roots in the early feminist/suffragette movement. Marston was either brilliant or demented, I'm not sure what. He was an obsessive personality, keen to make his lie detector test mainstream but coming across as a crank to those he tried to convince, including Hoover.
His personal life was even more bizarre, and I'm not sure how the women in his life put up with him, his antics or each other. But somehow, it seems to have functioned ...more

7 likes · Like · see review