Wonder Woman’s wonder women

Unlike Wonder Woman’s famous Lasso of Truth, the invention Marston contributed to remains of questionable utility. In fact, many things about Marston and his original Wonder Woman stories were controversial: although he considered women superior to men in many ways (for example, in terms of honesty and the speed/accuracy of their work), when his depictions of people tying up or otherwise restraining each other raised a few eyebrows, he claimed that “women are exciting for this one reason – it is the secret of women’s allure – women enjoy submission”.

‘Submission’ as a behavioural trait was part of Marston’s DISC theory of personality, outlined in his 1928 book ‘Emotions of Normal People’. To him, submission was a noble practice that women were more capable of. He stated, “only when the control of self by others is more pleasant than the unbound assertion of self in human relationships can we hope for a stable, peaceful human society.” Additionally, any eroticism inferred by readers about the bondage trope in Wonder Woman was justified too, as Marston felt that only by seeing submission as something pleasurable would people understand its benefits.

Interestingly, the early stories written by Marston often showed Wonder Woman losing her Amazonian strength if she was chained up by a man, then freeing herself from those chains “to signify her emancipation from men”. Chains, of course, played an important role in the suffrage movement Marston witnessed first hand.

Wonder Woman was imbued with both the suffragism and feminism Marston encountered in the women who touched his life in various ways. This can be traced back to 1911, when he was a freshman in Harvard. He heard British suffragist Emily Pankhurst (who had been invited by the Harvard Men’s League for Women’s Suffrage) speaking at a dance hall next to campus, as she was banned from speaking on the campus itself.

And it was Marston’s wife, Elizabeth Holloway, who was partly responsible for the creation of Wonder Woman herself. As a counterpoint to the glut of (all-male) superheroes in the 1940s, Marston wanted to create a hero who, instead of using brute strength or outlandish gadgets, conquered his foes with love. Holloway liked the concept, but insisted the hero be a woman.

An icon for everyone

Feeling that “even girls don’t want to be girls” because they weren’t interested in being tender, sensitive and peaceful, Marston created Wonder Woman as an example of how he thought modern women should act and behave: he wanted to show her as strong and powerful, a competent leader who was also feminine and beautiful. By creating a character with the qualities he thought girls admired (strength) and qualities he thought made women special (peace-loving and submissive), he hoped to create an icon everyone could look up to.

The influence important women had over Marston’s work is clear. In those early days, Wonder Woman was surrounded by her sisters at the Holliday College (led by her sidekick Etta Candy), who would tag along on her various adventures and offer support. The Holliday girls wore sweaters bearing an H logo, which fused Holloway (Elizabeth’s surname) and Mount Holyoke, the first US women’s college, a suffragist hub and Elizabeth Holloway’s school. Holloway studied psychology and law, and she was an editor for 'Encyclopaedia Britannica'. Her favourite book was about Sappho and her poetry.

The couple’s unorthodox private life further inspired Marston’s work. In 1926, Marston gave Holloway an ultimatum: either his androgynous research assistant, Olive Byrne, would live with them, or he would leave. The couple had been part of a threesome before: according to Holloway “no one knows more about the production of Wonder Woman than Marjorie W Huntley”. Huntley was a suffragist librarian who was part of the couple’s first threesome, and remained a regular visitor to their home.

Polyamory and practicality

Holloway faced the choice between motherhood and professional life, so Byrne’s arrival suited everyone: Byrne would raise her own and Elizabeth’s children by Marston, and Elizabeth would provide for the family of eight while Marston looked for permanent employment.

While Byrne is often thought to have inspired Wonder Woman’s physical appearance (there is a clear resemblance), Marston himself only ever said that the pair of bracelets she regularly wore made it into his comic, eventually becoming Wonder Woman’s bullet-deflecting gauntlets. When Marston died in 1947, Byrne and Holloway continued to live together afterwards.

Marston’s close ties to women involved in various feminist movements only added to the Wonder Woman character he created. Olive Byrne once said that to know about Wonder Woman all you had to do was read ‘Woman and the New Race’ by her aunt, Margaret Sanger. Margaret’s sister (Byrne’s mother) Ethel was the first woman to go on a hunger strike when she and her sister were arrested for opening America’s first birth-control clinic; Ethel and Margaret eventually went on to found Planned Parenthood.

With each decade that followed, Wonder Woman has evolved to reflect and absorb the gender constructions of the times as different writers have taken over her stories: from the patriotic 1940s through to the plain-clothes spy years in the 1970s, and on to the more overtly feminist and queer themes of the late 1980s and 2000s.

Wonder Woman’s ongoing mission for peace, love and equality is still strongly connected to Margaret Sanger’s philosophy that “love is the greatest force of the universe”. It might sound cheesy, but even in 2017, in her first big-screen outing (75 years after her comic book debut), it’s her own capacity to love (and the love she sees in others) that inspires Wonder Woman to fulfil her potential. And the success of the film itself reflects Wonder Woman’s Amazonian strength: its director Patty Jenkins holds the record for the highest-grossing movie directed by a woman.