The Secret History of Wonder Woman in Book Riot's Read Harder Challenge

Jan 20, 2016 Ryan rated it it was amazing

Shelves: borrowed, 2016

Less a history of the character than a history of her creators - which itself is fascinating. Crazy to reflect on what the character has gone through, and how much of her creators' life experiences are inherent in her make-up. ...more

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Feb 06, 2015 Shelley rated it liked it

Shelves: history, 2015

The man who created Wonder Woman had major ties to 1910s feminists, which directly impacted his philosophies as he wrote his comics. He believed that women were superior rulers who needed to be in charge of the world to create peace - but forced his wife to drop her first name, Sadie, and be called Betty (because he also disliked her middle name, Elizabeth). He had lots of contradictions. This book barely touches on Wonder Woman, which he began about 6 years before his death, but does go into de The man who created Wonder Woman had major ties to 1910s feminists, which directly impacted his philosophies as he wrote his comics. He believed that women were superior rulers who needed to be in charge of the world to create peace - but forced his wife to drop her first name, Sadie, and be called Betty (because he also disliked her middle name, Elizabeth). He had lots of contradictions. This book barely touches on Wonder Woman, which he began about 6 years before his death, but does go into detail about William Moulton Marston and his several wives and how their experiences shaped the comics. (In addition to Sadie/Betty, there was his former student Olive and Marjorie Wilkes Huntley, a former colleague. He, Betty and Olive lived together - Betty worked, Olive raised the kids and he moved from job to job as a failure.)

Olive's mother and aunt were Edith Byrne and Margaret Sanger, who fought hard for birth control rights in the '10s and started the Birth Control League/Planned Parenthood. Edith did the first hunger strike (though Margaret fought hard to get her erased from public memory because she was too radical) and both spent time in jail (the judge had ruled that no woman has "the right to copulate with a feeling of security that there will be no conception" and that if she wasn't ready to die in childbirth, she should avoid sex. Amazing how many judges today would still agree with that ruling. Also, the most written about topic in magazines in 1925-26 was about if women could have families and a job and who these modern women are - so much is still the same.

So, the Marstons worked around that. Betty wanted to work (she was a lawyer), and so did Olive - but she was better suited to raising kids than Betty, so she never did finish her PhD because Betty got pregnant. Her wedding bands were wide cuffs just like Wonder Woman's. Meanwhile, William was writing about emotions, dominance, submission, and the normality of being gay or trans. What other people derided as abnormal, he argued as being entirely normal and valid. It didn't go over well. So he moved to Hollywood and tried to apply his emotional studies to films to create the most emotional responses in audiences. He failed, as he constantly did.

He was always out of work and reading comics, and decided to write his own, one that would prepare children for the future world where women would be in charge - because their natures allowed them both to submit and induce submission more pleasantly. Pretty much all his work and his in-law's work fed into the stories he told; while adults freaked out about all the bondage (except the ones who wrote in approvingly), kids just loved the adventures.

See how this review gave a ton of detail about his life and then a tiny little bit about how it influenced the comics? That was the book, too. It got a bit long and dragged and I wondered if we were ever going to learn about the comics themselves. I did like the occasional strips throughout that illustrated something she was talking about in the past. And it was interesting to learn that Olive and Betty kept living together for 50 years after he died. And how the feminists of 1910s influenced the kids in the 40s who grew up to be women in the 70s, like Gloria Steinem and Shirley Chisolm, who in turn tried to bring Wonder Woman back. I wonder if we'll see a renaissance someday - Wonder Woman is still around, though few pay attention to her. ...more

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Dec 06, 2017 Nadine in NY Jones rated it really liked it

Shelves: history, biography, social-issues-social-sciences, era-mid-20th-c, microhistory, era-early-1900s, narrative-nonfiction, womens-history, feminist-stuff

Marston liked to say that Wonder Woman was meant to be “psychological propaganda for the new type of woman who should, I believe, rule the world,” but neither he nor Gaines seem to have given much thought to hiring a woman to draw her.

This was SO GOOD! The first thing to know: this is not all about Wonder Woman. Only about 80 or 90 pages are about the creation of Wonder Woman (and, for me, that was the most boring part). The rest of the book is the story of the evolution of women's place in ...more

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May 11, 2016 Heidi rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: bohemian-etc, nonfiction, memoir-biography, audiobook, politics-history-philosophy, pop-history, microhistory

This is an enjoyable biography of William Moulton Marston, the writer of Wonder Woman, and the women in his life who inspired him. Jill Lepore includes interesting feminist history - figures from the Suffragette movement and early fights, from attending or speaking at a university through what to do once you have that advanced degrees, and Margaret Sanger's fight for the right to birth control. These are all tied together through their influence on Marston's life - and one of his life-partners w ...more

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Jan 02, 2015 Natalie rated it liked it

Shelves: book-on-tape, 2015

I feel like if this had been named the secret history of the CREATOR of wonder woman, it would have been rated higher. It was more about Marsden than wonder woman, which is fine, but not what the title pro-ports. Also, the author shouldn't have narrated. I have this thing where i can't stand it when people hold onto consents too long. "Secccckkks-----ual". It's annoying.

Not a terrible or not-worth-it read, but the title was misleading. ...more

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