Summary
A riveting work of historical detection revealing that the origin of one of the world's most iconic superheroes hides within it a fascinating family story--and a crucial history of twentieth-century feminism
Wonder Woman, created in 1941, is the most popular female superhero of all time. Aside from Superman and Batman, no superhero has lasted as long or commanded so vast and wildly passionate a following. Like every other superhero, Wonder Woman has a secret identity. Unlike every other superhero, she has also has a secret history.
Harvard historian and New Yorker staff writer Jill Lepore has uncovered an astonishing trove of documents, including the never-before-seen private papers of William Moulton Marston, Wonder Woman's creator. Beginning in his undergraduate years at Harvard, Marston was influenced by early suffragists and feminists, starting with Emmeline Pankhurst, who was banned from speaking on campus in 1911, when Marston was a freshman. In the 1920s, Marston and his wife, Sadie Elizabeth Holloway, brought into their home Olive Byrne, the niece of Margaret Sanger, one of the most influential feminists of the twentieth century. The Marston family story is a tale of drama, intrigue, and irony. In the 1930s, Marston and Byrne wrote a regular column for Family Circle celebrating conventional family life, even as they themselves pursued lives of extraordinary nonconformity. Marston, internationally known as an expert on truth--he invented the lie detector test--lived a life of secrets, only to spill them on the pages of Wonder Woman.
The Secret History of Wonder Woman is a tour de force of intellectual and cultural history. Wonder Woman, Lepore argues, is the missing link in the history of the struggle for women's rights--a chain of events that begins with the women's suffrage campaigns of the early 1900s and ends with the troubled place of feminism a century later.
Author Notes
Jill Lepore is the David Woods Kemper '41 Professor of American History at Harvard University and a staff writer at The New Yorker. She has written several books including Book of Ages: The Life and Opinions of Jane Franklin, The Whites of Their Eyes: The Tea Party's Revolution and the Battle over American History, The Secret History of Wonder Woman, Joe Gould's Teeth, and These Truths: A History of the United States.
(Bowker Author Biography)
Kirkus Review
The surprising origins of a 20th-century goddess. Wonder Woman, writes Lepore (History/Harvard Univ.; Book of Ages: The Life and Opinions of Jane Franklin, 2013), "was the product of the suffragist, feminist, and birth control movements of the 1900s and 1910s and became a source of the women's liberation and feminist movements of the 1960s and 1970s." Long-legged, wearing short shorts and knee-high red boots, Wonder Woman burst into comics in 1941, the creation of William Moulton Marston, a Harvard-educated psychologist. Marston, a master at self-promotion, had failed as a college professor; colleagues scorned his publicity stunts. When he tried to market himself as a psychology consultant to the FBI, J. Edgar Hoover opened a file on him. Among the many topics on which Marston expounded was women's power. "Women have twice the emotional development, the ability for love, than man has," he announced. Oddly, he also believed that submission and bondage were intrinsic to women's happiness. "In episode after episode," writes Lepore, "Wonder Woman is chained, bound, gagged, lassoed, tied, fettered and manacled," scenes that Marston described "in careful, intimate detail, with utmost precision," so that the artist who drew the series could get them exactly right. The creation, publishing history and eventual demise of the cartoon character are only part of Lepore's story, which uncovers the secret of Marston's startlingly unconventional family. Married to Elizabeth "Betty" Holloway, who often provided the family's sole support, Marston brought into their home Olive Byrne, the niece of Margaret Sanger. Byrne had been his student, became his mistress, and had two of his children, who were brought up thinking their father had died. Marston had two children with Holloway, as well, whom Byrne raised, freeing Holloway to go to work. After Marston's death in 1947, the two women spent the rest of their lives together. Lepore mines new archival sources to reconstruct Marston's tangled home life and the controversy generated by Wonder Woman. It's an irresistible story, and the author tells it with relish and delight. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Booklist Review
*Starred Review* In her latest compelling book of historical sleuthing and resurrection, Lepore (Book of Ages, 2013) chronicles the creation and assesses the impact of Wonder Woman, the most popular female comic-book superhero of all time. The tiara-wearing amazon burst forth in 1941, the brainchild of Charles Moulton (pen name of William Moulton Marston), a controversial, Harvard-educated polymath and huckster who invented the lie-detector test and lived a life of deception. The first historian granted access to Marston's private papers, Lepore tells a true tale nearly as outlandish as the plots Marston concocted for Wonder Woman. While Marston's schemes led to precedent-setting court cases, he was living a daringly unconventional life with his wife, the diligent attorney Sadie Elizabeth Holloway; his student-turned-lover, Olive Byrne, niece of the great birth-control advocate, Margaret Sanger; and the children he had with each. Lepore thoroughly covers their colorful lives and every aspect of Wonder Woman's persona and adventures, including Marston's penchant for depicting the superhero bound in chains, then breaking triumphantly free. Evidence of a fascination with bondage or a visual metaphor for overcoming the oppression of sexism? Lepore restores Wonder Woman to her rightful place as an essential women's rights icon in this dynamically researched and interpreted, spectacularly illustrated, downright astounding work of discovery that injects new zest into the history of feminism. HIGH-DEMAND BACKSTORY: Vigorous promotion and a cross-country author tour will spread word of intellectual wonder woman Lepore's exciting portrait of a superhero.--Seaman, Donna Copyright 2014 Booklist
New York Review of Books Review
A CALL TO ACTION: Women, Religion, Violence, and Power, by Jimmy Carter. (Simon & Schuster, $16.) President Carter's 28th book surveys global discrimination against women, much of which he attributes to distorted interpretations of major religions and sacred texts. Carter argues that these flawed approaches, exacerbated by the world's "growing tolerance of violence and warfare," need immediate corrective action. SWEETNESS #9, by Stephan Eirik Clark. (Back Bay/Little, Brown, $15.) At the outset of this novel, an eager young flavor chemist, David Leveraux, is testing a promising new sugar substitute when he notes troubling side effects. Years later, the chemical has saturated the American diet, and its insidious effects are everywhere, including David's own family: His heavyset wife flits between fad diets, his son drops verbs from his speech and his unhappy daughter goes vegan in protest. HOW WE LEARN: The Surprising Truth About When, Where, and Why It Happens, by Benedict Carey. (Random House, $16.) Like many other students, Carey, a New York Times science reporter, "grew up believing that learning was all self-discipline." After following research that investigates how learning actually occurs, he reconsiders that belief, presenting strategies to help us study smarter. THE WHEREWITHAL, by Philip Schultz. (Norton, $16.95.) This novel in verse centers on Henryk Stanislaw Wyrzykowski, a man dodging the Vietnam War and translating the journal his mother kept during a massacre in their hometown in 1940s Poland. Steeped in tragedy, the story captures the "strain of finding the wherewithal to face suffering on every human scale," Adam Plunkett wrote here. THE SECRET HISTORY OF WONDER WOMAN, by Jill Lepore. (Vintage, $16.95.) Wonder Woman's back story may begin among the mythic Amazons, but her origins are distinctly American, As it turns out, her "secret history" is due in large part to her eccentric creator, William Moulton Marston, whose fraught feminism and kinky proclivities were evident on the page. (In Lepore's telling, it was no coincidence that the superhero was tied up in virtually every comic.) THE INVENTION OF EXILE, by Vanessa Manko. (Penguin, $16.) A Russian émigré arrives in America in 1913, but after being sent back to Russia and, later, traveling to Mexico, spends a lifetime trying to return. This debut novel tells the story of an "epic love frustrated but never destroyed by political antagonism between nations," our reviewer, Jonathan Dee, wrote.
Choice Review
Though the title of Lepore's latest book suggests simply a history of a superhero, her study of Wonder Woman actually aims at something much more ambitious: a broad, accessible exploration of feminism in American history-an exploration that refuses to accept the widely held idea that such activism has "come [only] in waves." Arguing for an understanding of the "fight for women's rights [as] a river, wending," Lepore (American history, Harvard) seeks to use the Amazonian superhero as a "missing link" that helps readers understand the connections (and disconnections) between women's rights activism in the earlier and later parts of the 20th century. Focusing on the unorthodox lifestyles and reformist politics of Wonder Woman's creators-William Moulton Marston, Sadie Elizabeth Holloway, and Olive Byrne-and at the same time connecting them to a wide range of better-known activists, this exploration of Wonder Woman places the superhero in the broader context of scientific, legal, and political history. Lepore demonstrates the power of exploring popular culture as history, and her readable style, as well as the subject matter, allows her to introduce this more nuanced understanding of a complex past to a wide audience. Summing Up: Highly recommended. All readers. --Allan W. Austin, Misericordia University
Library Journal Review
Lepore (Book of Ages: The Life and Opinions of Jane Franklin) presents a wide-ranging background story of the creation and mission of Wonder Woman (1941), the third longest-running comic book character in the United States. The beginning of the feminist movement, the evolution of comic book publishing, and the mores of the 1940s and 1950s are all discussed. Wonder Woman was created by William Moulton Marston, whose varied callings include academician, psychologist, and inventor of the lie-detector test. Much of the book discloses a profile of Marston that reveals a bizarre, strong-minded individual out of step with his time. The content is interesting and thorough, but the narration is poor. Lepore's voice has only a few ranges: her normal voice for most of the recording and another voice that becomes blustery and cartoonish for males or very high-pitched for females. This production would have greatly benefited from a professional narrator. VERDICT Not recommended. ["Fans interested in the background of the character and readers who appreciate well-written popular history will enjoy this thought-provoking volume," read the much more positive review of the Knopf hc, LJ 9/15/14.]-Deb West, Gannon Univ. Lib., Erie, PA (c) Copyright 2015. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
