Searching for the Amazons

by John Man

  The comic-book boom coincided with the outbreak of the Second World War. Superman suddenly seemed less of a fighter for justice, more like a Nazi Stormtrooper. Besides, some educationalists deplored comics. There was a great deal of violence in them. Some asked, were comics Fascist? A despicable campaign to undermine children’s minds?

  It was Olive Byrne who gave Marston his opening into comic books. In a Family Circle article, she profiled him as the one man who could tell American mothers about the dangers and benefits of comics. Her formula was the same: she was a naïve reporter who had no connection with Marston, he the great psychologist. She quoted him as saying that Superman was an excellent model, developing ‘national might’ to protect ‘innocent peace-loving people’. Comics were fine, he said, as long as they didn’t show torture.

  Max Gaines, or Charlie as he was to some, wanted to counteract the criticisms levelled at comics. He decided that an editorial advisory board would do the job, one member of which would have to be a psychologist. He happened to read Olive Byrne’s Family Circle article and saw a solution to his problem. He offered Marston the position of consultant psychologist on the advisory board of what had just become DC Comics (DC stands for Detective Comics).

  Marston wondered about developing a different sort of superhero, one who conquered not through violence but through love. To which, according to one source,58 Elizabeth Holloway said, ‘Fine. But make her a woman.’ True or not, Marston was in a good position to follow up his Harvard Club announcement three years previously that women would – should – will – rule the world. What was needed, he told Gaines, was a female superhero, a latter-day Amazon.

  He wrote up his experiences and arguments in an article published in the American Scholar a couple of years later, ‘Why 100,000,000 Americans Read Comics’. First, he pointed out the astonishing size of the potential readership: 1.5 billion comic strips in the 2,300 dailies, 2.5 billion in the comic sections of the Sunday papers. ‘They have become a seven-day, morning-afternoon-and-evening mental diet for a vast majority of Americans.’ Critics say comics are for only ‘the most moronic of minds’. No, because comics appeal to something fundamentally human: ‘They rouse the most primitive, but also the most powerful, reverberations in the noisy cranial-box of consciousness . . . Pictures tell any story more effectively than words.’ They always have. With modern printing, comics have evolved way beyond anything comical, and beyond being just adventure strips: ‘Their emotional appeal is wish-fulfillment.’ That’s the appeal of Superman. But there’s a problem with Superman: there is no real drama because he is invincible. Sure, he does good, but might it not be possible to give kids a more constructive model?

  It seemed to me, from a psychological angle, that the comics’ worst offense was their blood-curdling masculinity. A male hero, at best, lacks the qualities of maternal love and tenderness which are as essential to a normal child as the breath of life. Suppose your child’s ideal becomes a superman who uses his extraordinary powers to help the weak. The most important ingredient in the human happiness recipe still is missing – love. It’s smart to be strong. It’s big to be generous. But it’s sissified, according to exclusively masculine rules, to be tender, loving, affectionate, and alluring. ‘Aw, that’s girl’s stuff!’ snorts our young comic reader. ‘Who wants to be a girl?’ And that’s the point; not even girls want to be girls so long as our feminine archetype lacks force, strength, power. Not wanting to be girls, they don’t want to be tender, submissive, peace-loving as good women are. Women’s strong qualities have become despised because of their weak ones. The obvious remedy is to create a feminine character with all the strength of a Superman plus all the allure of a good and beautiful woman.

  Max Gaines was sceptical. There had been heroines in comics, and they hadn’t worked.

  Ah, countered Marston, ‘but they weren’t superwomen – they weren’t superior to men in strength as well as feminine attraction and love-inspiring qualities.’

  ‘Well,’ said Gaines, ‘if a woman hero were stronger than a man, she would be even less appealing.’

  ‘No,’ replied Marston, ‘men actually submit to women now. Give them an alluring woman stronger than themselves to submit to and they’ll be proud to become her willing slaves!’

  Gaines reluctantly agreed to give it a go. ‘Well, Doc, I picked Superman after every syndicate in America turned it down. I’ll take a chance on your Wonder Woman. But you’ll have to write the strip yourself. After six months’ publication, we’ll submit your woman hero to a vote of our comic readers.’

  Wonder Woman made her debut in All Star Comics Issue 8, in December 1941, with Marston credited as consulting psychologist and writer (under a partial pseudonym, Charles Moulton). ‘Introducing Wonder Woman’ opens with a sprinting figure dressed in a sporty, star-spangled skirt, as if made from an American flag. She has bracelets on her wrists and a tiara holding her dark, curly hair. The opening text, in easy-to-read capitals (and many exclamation marks!), joins past and present, hinting at her links with Greek gods, ignoring the fact that in Greek legends the Amazons were not Greeks or Greek allies, but enemies:

  AT LAST, IN A WORLD TORN BY THE HATREDS AND WARS OF MEN, APPEARS A WOMAN TO WHOM THE PROBLEMS AND FEATS OF MEN ARE MERE CHILD’S PLAY . . . WITH A HUNDRED TIMES THE AGILITY AND STRENGTH OF OUR BEST MALE ATHLETES AND STRONGEST WRESTLERS, SHE APPEARS AS THOUGH FROM NOWHERE . . . AS LOVELY AS APHRODITE – AS WISE AS ATHENA – WITH THE SPEED OF MERCURY AND THE STRENGTH OF HERCULES, SHE IS KNOWN ONLY AS WONDER WOMAN.

  She lives on uncharted Paradise Island, peopled only by women. A plane crashes. A princess and her friend pick up the injured pilot and take him to hospital. The queen, Hippolyte (spelled in the Greek style), arrives to ask what’s going on. Papers on the man identify him as Steven Trevor, US Intelligence. The princess tends him and falls in love with him. The queen tells her why this is wrong, AND THIS IS THE STARTLING STORY UNFOLDED BY HLPPOLYTE, QUEEN OF THE AMAZONS, TO THE PRINCESS, HER DAUGHTER! The text continues in regular format, because there’s a lot to cram in.

  ‘In the days of Ancient Greece, many centuries ago, we Amazons were the foremost nation on earth. In Amazonia, women ruled and all was well,’ until Hercules arrived. Hippolyte challenged him, knowing that she could not lose, because she had a magic girdle given her by Aphrodite, goddess of love. She won, but Hercules tricked the girdle from her and enslaved the Amazons, chaining them in manacles. Aphrodite helped Hippolyte regain the girdle. The Amazons freed themselves and left by ship to find a new home. But they all had to wear bracelets to recall the man-forged manacles, remind them ‘always to keep aloof from men’ and act as shields that can deflect bullets. They found Paradise Island, where there is ‘no want, no illness, no hatreds, no wars.’ The girdle gives them all eternal life.

  Because of the deal with Aphrodite, the American must go home. A Magic Sphere reveals his world, for ‘we are not only stronger and wiser than men – but our weapons are better – our flying machines are more advanced!’ With it, the princess, as yet unnamed, has been taught ‘all the arts and sciences and languages of modern as well as ancient times’. What Hippolyte sees in the Magic Sphere is that Steve Trevor was the victim of a German plot, managed by the evil von Storm, whose accomplice praises his boss with the classic line: ‘The malignance of your ideas is refreshing, mein Herr.’ What to do? Hippolyte consults Aphrodite and Athena. They tell her the world is in a mess and that ‘American liberty and freedom must be preserved’. Steve Trevor must be sent back, and with him ‘your strongest and wisest Amazon – the finest of your Wonder Women!’ Races and competitions reveal the princess as the one. Hippolyte sends her off in – of all ridiculous things – an invisible plane, with a suitable American-style costume and a name at last: ‘Let yourself be known as Diana, after your godmother, the goddess of the Moon!’

  AND SO DIANA, THE WONDER WOMAN, GIVING UP HER HERITAGE AND HER RIGHT TO ETERNAL LIFE, LEAVES PARADISE ISLAND TO TAKE THE MAN SHE LOVES BACK TO AMERICA – THE
LAND SHE LEARNS TO LOVE AND PROTECT, AND ADOPTS AS HER OWN!

  For a mass-market comic, that’s quite a back-story (though since then revamps, relaunches and re-boots, all recorded in mind-numbing detail by comic-book historians, have added many other elements, one of which was to rename Paradise Island Themiscyra, as the Amazon homeland was known in Greek legend). It is a mish-mash of much of Marston’s whole life, and there would be more of it in the adventures to come. The Greek connection has its origins in Huntley’s love of Greek language and literature, in particular Sappho. The Eden-like bliss of Paradise Island recalls the perfections of female-only society in Gilman’s Herland. Most crucial of all is the influence of those feminists, particularly Margaret Sanger, fighting for equality, birth control and sexual liberation – not that Marston could make much of that explicit. It was enough to create a rule that, as an Amazon, Wonder Woman cannot marry. Marston had seen that it was hard for Holloway to earn a living and raise a child, so hard that he organized Olive Byrne to do it for her. That would not have been possible in a traditional marriage. Marriage enslaves, he thought, as Hercules enslaved the Amazons. Diana’s bracelets, an idea he got from Olive Byrne’s habit of wearing similar ones, play several roles: they symbolize a memory of male oppression, they protect her, and they represent weakness, because if they are chained together – yet more bondage, please note – she loses her strength. The bracelets are one of her attributes, for Greek characters, whether divine or human, usually had features that acted as character traits, like Cupid’s bow, Athena’s owl (for wisdom) or Aphrodite’s dove (for peace). Another attribute is her Golden Lasso, or Lasso of Truth, which has the magical ability to force those whom she catches with it to submit to her and tell the truth. It was in effect a lie detector, rather more effective than the one Marston spent much of his life developing, and a form of bondage, in which he maintained his obsessive interest.

  Traditionally, damsels in comics were constantly being made into damsels in distress by evil characters tying them up; this damsel does the tying and induces submission with her Lasso of Truth. Truth, or rather its absence, was a major factor in the lives of Marston and his women. He was happy to distort the truth to promote himself; the four of them lived a secret life to hide their unconventional ways, and Byrne’s work on Family Circle was possible only because she hid the fact that she was the mother of Marston’s children. Wonder Woman, too, has a secret life: as Olive Byrne became Olive Richard by ‘marrying’ the spurious William Richard, so Wonder Woman must hide her identity. Her aim is to look after Steve Trevor in hospital, so she buys credentials from a nurse and works under the nurse’s name as Diana Prince.

  Many details come from the lives of Marston and his women. Elizabeth Holloway told DC Comics that a suitable exclamation for a woman from an island of women was ‘Suffering Sappho!’ Like Olive Byrne, Diana Prince/Wonder Woman has a fat friend called Candy, who loves candies.

  The themes and details were probably simply the result of a writer grabbing what he could from his memory and his unconscious to make a story. But there was also an undercover agenda. Marston wanted Wonder Woman to be ‘psychological propaganda for the new type of woman who should, I believe, rule the world.’ First, of course, there were bonds to be broken, an aim made explicit by an opening cartoon for his article, harking back to the days of Woolley and Sanger:

  Wonder Woman was a hit. After five months, Gaines did indeed ask his readers for their opinion, comparing her against seven male characters. She came out ahead 40 to 1 over her nearest rival, taking 80 per cent of all votes. As Marston wrote, ‘They were saying with their votes, “We love a girl who is stronger than men, who uses her strength to help others, and who allures us with the love appeal of a true woman!’” In January 1942, she became the lead character, and thus became the third superhero, along with Superman and Batman, to have their own series. She’s never been out of print since.59

  To see her influence, fast-forward twenty years. Forget the 1950s, a bit of a wilderness for women’s rights, and for Wonder Woman, who spent much of that time as the subwonderful Diana Prince. But in the 1960s, feminists came out fighting. A powerful sisterhood of thinkers and activists – Shulamith Firestone, Betty Friedan, Gloria Steinem, Bella Abzug, Shirley Chisholm – demanded equality, liberation, abortion rights, nothing less than a political and social revolution. The Equal Rights Amendment, first introduced to Congress forty years previously (drafted by Alice Paul, a hunger-striker back in 1917, still going strong in her eighties), finally passed into law in June 1972. Wonder Woman played her part. In July, with Shirley Chisholm (the first black woman in Congress) still in hopeful-but-hopeless contention for the Democratic presidential nomination, Wonder Woman was on the cover of Ms magazine, on the march down Main Street under the slogan ‘WONDER WOMAN FOR PRESIDENT’. Inside was a pull-out reprint of the original ‘Introducing Wonder Woman’ comic book. It was a heady moment, but a moment only. Conservatives fought back, feminists fought each other. Even as women’s history boomed in academia, feminism stalled. Radicals accused moderates of conspiring to sabotage the cause. Embedded in the rage, as Jill Lepore points out, there was a point about Wonder Woman: ‘Who needs consciousness raising and equal pay when you’re an Amazon with an invisible plane?’

  Yet she endured. A TV series in the 1970s made Lynda Carter a star. Several attempts to resurrect her for TV series and feature films failed, but she was still enough of an icon to be named by the UN as an honorary ambassador for the Empowerment of Women and Girls in 2016, the seventy-fifth anniversary of her first appearance; and enough of a symbol of a man-made, large-breasted, scantily clad Stars-and-Stripes pin-up to inspire protests. But Wonder Woman is bigger than any appointment or protest. Lynda Carter herself spoke up for her ever-youthful alter-ego, calling her a non-predatory symbol of ‘the beauty and the strength and the loving kindness and the wisdom of women’ – as much of a role model now as she was when she first arrived from Themiscyra and her Amazonian past. That same year she made it on to the big screen, with a brief appearance in Batman v. Superman, a warm-up for her starring role in the 2017 blockbuster bearing her name. As I write, her future seems secure, and so do her pseudo-Greek origins as Diana, princess of Amazons.

  54 The Secret History of Wonder Woman, on which this chapter is largely based. See Bibliography and Acknowledgements.

  55 Many to the ‘Seven Sisters’: Mount Holyoke (the first, founded in 1837), Barnard, Bryn Mawr, Radcliffe, Smith, Vassar and Wellesley.

  56 Marston, ‘Systolic Blood Pressure Symptoms of Deception’, 2 J. Exper. Psychol., 117 (1917).

  57 These twelve ‘ages’ follow each other as the Earth’s axis of spin rotates, or precesses, like a child’s spinning top. All twelve signs of the zodiac appear in sequence behind the Sun at dawn at the autumnal equinox, or would do if you could see them. The whole cycle takes about 26,000 years. Astrologers read meaning into this. A new age starts when one constellation gives way to another, every 2,500 years or so. There is no agreement on the borders, so astrologers argue about whether we are in the new age or not. But they generally agree that Aquarius is better than its warlike predecessor, Pisces. It presages, among other things, peace, idealism and nonconformity.

  58 Marguerite Lamb, ‘Who was Wonder Woman?’, Bostonia magazine, Fall 2001.

  59 William Marston developed polio, and died in 1947. Marjorie Huntley died in 1986. Olive Byrne and Elizabeth Holloway lived together for the rest of their lives. Byrne died in 1990, Holloway in 1993. The secret of their lives together, and of their roles in Wonder Woman’s creation, remained veiled until revealed by Jill Lepore’s research in 2014.

  Epilogue

  HALFWAY TO AMAZONIA

  I WONDERED IF THERE ARE STILL AMAZONS TODAY. A QUICK online search suggested there are – Kurdish women warriors fighting Islamic State in Syria and Iraq. The media interest in these young women seemed a little sensationalist, but maybe it was worth learning more. Luckily, near where I live in London there is a K
urdish Community Centre. In a large hall, where bearded men in work-clothes play billiards, two charming young Kurds, Arzu and Aladdin, offered help in making contact. After discussing how to arrange a phone call to the bitter battlegrounds of Kurdistan, we realized that Skype would serve our purpose.

  By then, I knew it would be worth it, because Aladdin had said, ‘Why don’t you just go? We can arrange for someone to meet you.’

  ‘Well,’ I hesitated, ‘time is short, and besides, it’s winter.’

  ‘For Kurdish women fighters,’ he said, ‘there is no winter.’

  That was good enough for me. These women, as individuals and as a group, seemed to combine the toughness of the Scythian mounted archers with the solidarity of Penthesilea’s legendary band. It sounded as if they were as close to modern Amazons as I could hope to find.