A Man's Love for Women Created a Superhero : The Story of Wonder Woman
When you think of the ultimate woman, who comes to mind? If you said Wonder Woman, me too. Although she is a fictional character, she represents an idea of woman that is just beginning to flourish 78 years after her first appearance. As a little girl, she was the first woman that I saw that did not need a man to save her. She is the first woman that never had children and never got married, yet still fought for the rights of others. She is also the first woman to fight masterfully while wearing bold jewelry, boots and showing a little thigh.
Wonder Woman was first featured in All Star Comics, which would later become DC Comics in January 1942. Her origin story states that she was sculpted from clay by her mother and was given superhuman powers as gifts by the Greek gods. Her homeland, the fictional island nation of Themyscira, has only female warrior inhabitants known as Amazons. She possesses an arsenal of advanced technology, including the Lasso of Truth, a pair of indestructible bracelets, a tiara which serves as a projectile and during my era, and invisible plane.
Did you know that Wonder Woman was created by two men? Her creators were American psychologist and writer William Moulton Marston and artist Harry G. Peter. Marston and Peter were peers and supporters of the suffragettes and feminists of the early 20th century. Marston often wrote, lectured, and taught in favor of equality for women. He once stated that he felt the intention of the earlier feminist work was a “psychological propaganda for the new type of woman who, he believe, should rule the world”.
William Marston loved women so much he lived a poly amorous lifestyle. Marston's wife, Elizabeth, and their life partner, Olive Byrne are credited as being his inspiration for the character's appearance. Both women were ahead of their time. Their lifestyle and way of thinking was and is uncommon by many women’s standards today. When many people of a polygamous relationships they think of a situation that involves weak and dependent women. However, both women were scholars and contributed to many of Marston’s works. Each woman was self-reliant and looked at William as a partner and not a superior.
Elizabeth Marston had a long and productive career. She indexed the documents of the first fourteen Congresses, lectured on law, ethics, and psychology at several American universities, and served as an editor for Encyclopedia Britannica and McCall's. She co-wrote a textbook, Integrative Psychology, with her husband and C. Daly King. In 1933, she became the assistant to the chief executive at Metropolitan Life Insurance. Not to mention, the unaccredited work she assisted her husband on including, the invention of the systolic blood pressure test.
Their life partner Olive was the daughter of Ethel Byrne and the niece of Margaret Sanger, the first women to open a birth control clinic and the major proponents for women’s right to vote in the turn of the 20th century. Olive had an estranged relationship with her popular mother. She was raised by her father’s parents until their deaths. She then lived in a Catholic orphanage before reuniting with her mother at age 16. After reuniting with her mother, she became exposed to her Aunt’s ideas about voluntary motherhood and sexual freedom. Through her mother’s insistence she attended Tuft University for medicine where she met William Marston.
The environment Wonder Woman was created in was a direct violation of two federal laws. The Edmunds–Tucker Act focused on restricting practices of polygamy. Not only did Marston share a resident with his wife and mistress, he had two children with each woman and raised all four of them together. Marston’s earlier depictions of Wonder Woman included a lot of bondage and images of BDSM. This was a direct violation of the Comstock Laws, a set of laws that prohibited obscenity and sexually suggestive images in print publication. Thinking back on the conservative tone of the United States in 1940’s, Wonder Woman’s costume alone was reason for censorship.
Gloria Steinem once wrote, "Wonder Woman symbolizes many of the values of the women's culture that Feminists are now trying to introduce into the mainstream: strength and self-reliance for women; sisterhood and mutual support among women; peacefulness and esteem for human life; a diminishment both of 'masculine' aggression and of the belief that violence is the only way of solving conflicts."
William Marston was a rare entity. His anti-patriarchal attitude was unheard during his lifetime. He believed that if men knew how to be as submissive as they expected women to be, the world would be a less violent place. He is quoted as saying, not even girls want to be girls so long as our feminine archetype lacks force, strength, and power. Some may look at his poly amorous lifestyle as the typical man having access to two women, but if you take a closer look at his life, you would see he created an unconventional family that lived with each and supported each other until death did them apart. The love he had for and between the women in his life created the first female Superhero.