by Jill Lepore
21. Chesler, Woman of Valor, 155; “Mrs. Byrne, Too Weak to Move, Fasts,” New York Tribune, January 27, 1917; Selected Papers of MS, 1:194–5; Reed, Private Vice, Public Virtue, 106–7; Gordon, Moral Property, 156–57; MS, Autobiography, 215–21; and Kennedy, Birth Control in America, 82–88.
22. “Mrs. Byrne Sinking Fast, Sister Warns,” New York Tribune, January 29, 1917. The Tribune got Olive’s brother’s name wrong and also reported that he was a girl. “Two little girls will learn to-day that their mother is in a prison hospital. Olive and Jessie [sic] Byrne are waiting for a letter from Mrs. Ethel Byrne. Instead of their mother’s telling them that she has an apartment home all ready for them, as she had planned, they will be told of the jail sentence and their mother’s refusal to take nourishment.”
23. Baker, Margaret Sanger, 137–38.
24. OBR, “Mary Olive Byrne,” 14–15, and OBR, “My Aunt Margaret,” in “Our Margaret Sanger,” vol. 2, pp. 236–37, MS Papers, Smith College, box 87.
25. “Mrs. Byrne to Have a Feeding Schedule,” New York Times, January 29, 1917; “Hunger Strike Woman Passive: Mrs. Ethel Byrne Receives Food,” Boston Daily Globe, January 29, 1917; “Mrs. Byrne Fed by Tube: Has 2 Meals,” New York Tribune, January 28, 1917; and MS, Autobiography, 228.
26. “For State Inquiry into Birth Control,” New York Times, February 1, 1917.
27. “Mrs. Byrne Pardoned; Pledged to Obey Law,” New York Times, February 2, 1917, and “Mrs. Byrne, Set Free by Pardon, Defiant to End,” New York Tribune, Febru-ary 2, 1917.
28. Lou Rogers’s name begins appearing on the masthead of the Birth Control Review in July 1918, with vol. 2, no. 6.
29. MS, Autobiography, 231.
30. “Guilty Verdict for Mrs. Sanger,” New York Tribune, February 3, 1917.
31. MS to Ethel Byrne, February 14 and February 21, 1917, in Selected Papers of MS, 1:207, 209.
32. MS to Ethel Byrne, February 14, 1917, in Selected Papers of MS, 1: 207.
33. “Mrs. Sanger Is Freed,” Washington Post, March 7, 1917.
34. Editorial note, Selected Papers of MS, 1:194–95. And see, especially, OBR, interview by Jacqueline Van Voris, MS Papers, Smith College, November 25, 1977, box 20, folder 4: “Oh, my mother was always jealous of her. She didn’t like being put out of the birth control movement because she figured she was in it as much as Margaret was to begin with” (p. 21). And see OBR, “Ethel Higgins Byrne,” 26:
In the early days of the Birth Control movement they were close and worked hand in hand putting their efforts into establishing the first public clinic. When Ethel went on the famous hunger strike that brought the movement into the national public eye, Margaret promised the judge who presided over the case that her sister would no longer be associated with Birth Control if he would release Ethel from jail. Ethel was furious with that provision and wanted to go on as before. Margaret refused. The former assumed that Margaret was using that excuse to get rid of her, mainly she often asserted, because Margaret had gone ‘uptown’ with the Movement and had no use for the Village people who started things in the first place. All of this may have been true. The Village people were long on talk and short on cash, and Margaret knew where success came from—money, and the people who have it.
12. WOMAN AND THE NEW RACE
1. See, e.g., the Greenville, Pennsylvania, Record-Argus, July 13, 1917; the Greenville Evening Record, July 13, 1917; the Connesville, Pennsylvania, Daily Courier, June 26, 1917; the Newark (OH) Advocate, October 16, 1917; and the Iola (KS) Register, June 25, 1918. In OBR, “Mary Olive Byrne,” 24, OBR says she wanted to sing in the chorus, but didn’t; however, newspaper accounts of the performances suggest that she did.
2. OBR, “Mary Olive Byrne,” 22–26, 35.
3. MS, Diary, Selected Papers of MS, 1:249–50. Chesler, Woman of Valor, 197, argues that Parker began ghostwriting Sanger’s books only with The Pivot of Civilization, which appeared in 1922, but OBR’s remarks during interviews and in her memoirs suggest otherwise. Interviewer: “After the first clinic was closed did she [Ethel] work with the movement at all after that?” OBR: “No, she worked as a nurse and she lived with Robert Allen Parker who wrote Margaret’s books: he ghost wrote all her books.” From OBR, Van Voris interview, 23. And see OBR, “Ethel Higgins Byrne,” 7.
4. OBR, “Ethel Higgins Byrne,” 6–8.
5. OBR, Van Voris interview, pp. 7, 21.
6. Havelock Ellis, “The Love Rights of Women,” Birth Control Review 2 (June 1919): 3–5, with drawings by Lou Rogers.
7. H. G. Wells, The Secret Places of the Heart (New York: Macmillan, 1922). On the start of their affair, see Chesler, Woman of Valor, 186–92.
8. Gordon, Moral Property, 206–8; Chesler, Woman of Valor, 238.
9. Chesler, Woman of Valor, 192, 198.
10. MS, Woman and the New Race, 1–2, 217–18.
11. Gilman quoted in Cott, Grounding of Modern Feminism, 37.
12. MS, Motherhood in Bondage (New York: Brentano’s, 1928), xi.
13. Cover, Birth Control Review, November 1923.
14. MS, Woman and the New Race, 5, 18, 10–11, 117, 162, 182.
15. Display advertisement, Brentano Books for Autumn, New York Tribune, October 17, 1920. Ellis also wrote the book’s preface.
16. “A Spy in the Office,” Sensation Comics #3, March 1942.
17. JHMK, interview with the author, January 12, 2014.
13. THE BOYETTE
1. On the relationship between free love and feminism, see Passet, Sex Radicals.
2. OBR, “Ethel Higgins Byrne,” 23.
3. OBR, “Mary Olive Byrne,” 48. According to the 1921–1922 Tufts College Catalogue, the first day of regular class exercises in the fall of 1922 was Friday, September 22. On Slee paying for OBR’s education: “Uncle Noah (as I called him) financed several young women through college on the basis that his investment be repaid. After finishing at Jackson I began sending him a monthly check. After four such re-payments he cancelled all my obligations.” OBR, Van Voris interview, p. 13.
4. “OLIVE ABBOTT BYRNE, A O II. ‘Bobby.’ New York, NY. B.S. in English. Mount St. Joseph Academy. Weekly Staff (1); Class Basketball (1); Chairman Social Committee (1), (2), (3); Assistant Manager Basketball (2); Glee Club (1); Class Play (2); Liberal Club; Junior Prom; Asst. Mgr. Basketball (3),” in The 1925 Jumbo Book (Medford, MA: Published by the Senior Class of Tufts College, 1925), 177, Tufts University Archives. Harry Adams Hersey, A History of Music in Tufts College (Medford, MA: Tufts College, 1947), 151; “Liberal Club Forms and States Its Aims,” Tufts Weekly, October 22, 1924, p. 3, Tufts University Archives; and OBR, Van Voris interview, 14–15. “Bobbie Strong” appears in “The Vanishing Mummy,” Wonder Woman #23, May 1947.
5. OBR, “Mary Olive Byrne,” 49–50. Olive Mary Byrne, transcript, Tufts University Archives. Byrne was given an academic warning on November 15, 1922. She was put on probation on December 14, 1922; probation continued in the spring semester of 1923; it expired on May 10, 1923.
6. “Siege of the Rykornians,” Wonder Woman #25, September–October 1947, and “The Vanishing Mummy,” Wonder Woman #23, May 1947. Starvard College is introduced in “The Million Dollar Tennis Game,” Sensation Comics #61, January 1947.
7. “The Greatest Feat of Daring in Human History,” Wonder Woman #1, Summer 1942.
8. Alpha Omicron Pi photographs in the Tufts University Archives. There are three, all taken in June 1923.
9. OBR, “Mary Olive Byrne,” 52, 55.
10. The 1925 Jumbo Book, 177, and Olive Mary Byrne, transcript, Tufts University Archives.
11. Quoted in Chesler, Woman of Valor, 220.
12. “Liberal Club Officers for Next Year Chosen,” Tufts Weekly, May 27, 1925, p. 1. Reviewing the activities of the club’s first year: “It was also instrumental unofficially in having Miss Margaret Sanger speak within reach of the Hill students.” (Tufts’s Medford campus is known as the Hill.) “Some of us formed a club called the Liberal Club. We thought we were ve
ry daring, and all the people with liberal ideas joined up. Margaret came to Boston to speak to some woman’s group and I went over to see her (she stayed at the Copley), and I said, ‘I wish you would come over to school and talk.’ She said, ‘I will.’ She said she was going to be going someplace, and would be back at a certain time if I’d arrange it. Then the college wouldn’t let her come there to speak. Undaunted, we searched around and found a Unitarian minister in Somerville who lent us his church.” OBR, Van Voris interview, 14–15.
13. Cott, Grounding of Modern Feminism, 149–51.
14. OBR, Van Voris interview, 9, 30, 47.
15. “Jumbo Looks Back Again at the Great Class of ′26, 25th Reunion,” Class material, 1922–27, UA039/Classes, 1858-1997, box 7, folder 6, Tufts University Archives.
16. See Laura Doan, “Passing Fashions: Reading Female Masculinities in the 1920s,” Feminist Studies 24 (1998): 663–770; the quotation from the Daily Mail is from p. 673.
17. Olive Mary Byrne, transcript, Tufts University Archives.
14. THE BABY PARTY
1. Cott, Grounding of Modern Feminism, 153–55.
2. WMM, “Sex Characteristics of Systolic Blood Pressure Behavior,” Journal of Experimental Psychology 6 (1923): 387–419.
3. “On the Hill,” Tufts College Graduate, September–November 1925, p. 44, Tufts University Archives. The announcement continued: “Much of his time has been spent at Harvard with Münsterberg and Langfeld, his degrees being A.B. in ’15, LL.B. in ’18, and Ph.D. in ’21. He has taught at Radcliffe, and comes to Tufts after working with the National Committee on Mental Hygiene on two surveys, one on The Schools of Staten Island and the other on The Texas Prisons.” No mention was made of his professorship at American University.
4. WMM is listed as Assistant Professor of Philosophy and Psychology, living at 440 Newbury Street, Boston, in Catalogue of Tufts College, 1925–1926 (Medford, MA: Tufts University, 1925), 22. In this catalog, Marston is named as teaching a slew of courses: 16-3, Applied Psychology; 16-4, Applied Psychology; 16-5, Experimental Psychology; 16-6, Abnormal Psychology; 16-7, Comparative Psychology; 16-8, History of Psychology; and 16-9, Seminar in Psychology. He is also said to be co-teaching 16-1, Psychology of Human Behavior (pp. 102–3). Marston is not listed in the Catalogue of Tufts College, 1925–1926 (Medford, MA: Tufts University, 1925).
5. On the date EHM started at Child Study, see, in EHM’s alumni files, a clipping dated April 1926, Mount Holyoke College Archives. The first issue of the first volume of Federation for Child Study Bulletin appeared in January 1924 (the journal’s name was abbreviated to Child Study in February 1925, with vol. 2, no. 3). “Elizabeth H. Marston” is listed as managing editor on the masthead of Child Study through the end of volume 3. Josette Frank’s name appears as an editor beginning in March 1924 (1:4). “Elizabeth H. Marston” is first listed among the journal’s editors (not as managing editor but as editor) in January 1926 (3:1); this continued for February 1926 (3:2), and March 1926 (3:3). She is listed as managing editor in April 1926 (3:4), and May 1926 (3:5). And then she disappears. Josette Frank has returned as an editor by October 1926, by which time EHM is no longer working for the magazine. It may be that Marston and Frank were not compatible. On Josette Frank, see also “Josette Frank, 96, Dies; Children’s Book Expert,” New York Times, September 14, 1989. The Children’s Book Award, founded in 1943, was renamed the Josette Frank Award in 1997, in her honor.
6. On the parent-education movement, see Jill Lepore, “Confessions of an Amateur Mother,” in The Mansion of Happiness, chapter 7. And see Cott, Grounding of Modern Feminism, 167–71.
7. Faderman, Odd Girls and Twilight Lovers, 63–67.
8. “The Fun Foundation,” Sensation Comics #27, March 1944.
9. “The Malice of the Green Imps,” Sensation Comics #28, April 1944.
10. OBR, transcript, Tufts University Archives. These are the courses Olive Byrne took with Marston during her senior year: Applied Psychology: “A continuation of 16-3, with special emphasis upon vocational guidance and mental health problems. Prerequisite, 16-3”; Experimental Psychology: “An introductory course in methods of experimentation upon human subjects. Each student will act, in turn, as experimenter and subject, investigating vision, audition, temperature, pressure and other sensations of the human body. Brief experimental studies of higher thought processes such as memory, association, and imagination will also be undertaken”; Abnormal Psychology: “A study of the chief types of mental deficiency, with special reference to social maladjustment”; Seminar in Psychology: “Advanced work, theoretical or experimental, especially for graduate students. Individual experimental problems will be assigned to students who have satisfactorily passed in 16-5. Prerequisite, except by special permission, 12 credits in psychology.” (Olive Byrne did not have twelve credits in psychology.)
11. WMM, Emotions of Normal People (London: K. Paul, Trench, Trubner; New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1928), 113–15, 249.
12. Ibid., 107–9, 299–301.
13. Ibid., 300.
14. Ibid., 299.
15. Seventieth Annual Commencement of Tufts College, June 14, 1926 (Medford, MA: Tufts University, 1926).
16. MSML, interview with the author, July 9, 2013.
15. HAPPINESS IN MARRIAGE
1. Years later, OBR was asked in an interview, “What happened to your medical training? You were going to college and thought of going to medical school.” “I got di-verted,” she said. “I went into psychology instead.” OBR, Van Voris interview, p. 29.
2. OBR to J. Noah Slee, September 5, 1926, MS Papers, Smith College, box 33, folder 4.
3. “The Brand of Madness,” Sensation Comics #52, April 1946.
4. OBR to J. Noah Slee, September 18 and September 5, 1926, MS Papers, Smith College, box 33, folder 4.
5. Sheldon Mayer, 1975 DC Convention: Wonder Woman Panel, transcript in the DC Comics Archives.
6. MSML, interview with the author, July 9, 2013.
7. EHM to BHRM and Donn Marston, March 14, 1963, in the possession of BHRM.
8. BHRM, e-mail to the author, June 18, 2013. BHRM, interview with the author, July 14, 2013. Carolyn Marston was married to Robert J. Keatley; they are listed as living in Boston in the 1930 and 1940 U.S. censuses. In 1930, Robert Keatley was still living and the two of them are listed as living together, with no other occupants. United States of America, Bureau of the Census, Fifteenth Census of the United States, 1930 (Washington, DC: National Archives and Records Administration, 1930), as made available by Ancestry.com, 1930 United States Federal Census (Provo, UT: Ancestry.com, 2002). In 1940, Carolyn Marston Keatley was sixty-eight and listed as the head of the household at 166 Pilgrim Road, Boston, a property she rented; presumably her husband had died. She was still working full-time at the hospital. She was living with a sixty-five-year-old woman named Anne Shea. United States of America, Bureau of the Census, Sixteenth Census of the United States, 1940 (Washington, DC: National Archives and Records Administration, 1940), as made available by Ancestry.com. 1940 United States Federal Census (Provo, UT: Ancestry.com, 2012).
9. Keatley’s copy of Levi Dowling, The Aquarian Gospel of Jesus the Christ (1907; repr., Los Angeles, 1928), marked, “Return to Mrs. Carolyn Marston Keatley,” is in the possession of MM.
10. “Wonder Woman: The Message of Love Binding,” typescript, dated April 5, 1943, but containing notes with dates given, in handwriting, from 1925 to 1926. This ninety-five-page, single-spaced document appears to have been typed by MWH in around 1970, from notes taken at meetings held in 1925 and 1926. Meeting dates are added in pencil; apparently, the group met on October 26, November 15, 18, 20, and December 13 and 17 in 1925, and on January 7, 17, 24, 28; February 14, 18, 21; March 1, 14, 16, 21; April 4; and May 9 and 26 in 1926. The typescript is unpaginated but divided into sections with titles like “What Is Wisdom?,” “Messengership,” “Love and Love Organs,” “Dominance and Submission,” “Adaptation,” “The Difference Between Love Submis
sion and Force Submission,” “The Way in Which Love Binds Force or Power Under the Operation of the Divine or Eternal Love Law,” and “Creation.” I believe this manuscript is the document EHM refers to in a letter to Donn Marston and BHRM in 1963, in which she says everything is explained in a box of documents stored in a closet of Huntley’s home in Charlestown, Rhode Island. O.A.’s daughter, Sue Grupposo, believes that Huntley destroyed this box. Grupposo told me, “Yaya had, in Charlestown, in the upstairs closet, in a hallway, a whole treasure. On a rainy day, we’d go visit and look at everything.… It was a lot of things of a spiritual nature, the spiritual stuff they were discussing. Much of it was based on Emotions of Normal People. She would have burned that box. ‘The world isn’t ready for this, and I have to destroy it,’ she told me.” Sue Grupposo, interview with the author, July 15, 2013. But I believe the ninety-five-page typescript of notes taken during the meetings in 1925 and 1926 may be from that box. A photocopy of the typescript is housed at the DC Comics Archives.
11. MWH to JE, Steinem Papers, Smith College, box 213, folder 5.
12. “Mystery of the Crimson Flame,” Comic Cavalcade #5, Winter 1943. In another story, Wonder Woman destroys a “fiendish cult” led by a “purple priestess” who is duping women. Cries the priestess, “She has ruined my racket now, but someday I shall have my revenge!” From “The Judgment of Goddess Vultura,” Wonder Woman #25, September–October 1947.
13. EHM to BHRM and Donn Marston, March 21, 1963, in the possession of BHRM. I have wondered whether, when EHM said, in 1963, that the meetings in 1925 and 1926 were held at the apartment of Aunt Carolyn—Marston’s father’s sister—whether she was misremembering and that she in fact meant Aunt Claribel—Marston’s mother’s sister, who is listed among the five women to whom Marston dedicated Emotions of Normal People. There seems no way to be certain. As for her family arrangements: “The answers to all these relationships can be expressed mathematically,” she wrote. “No mysteries, no fairy tales, just exact science.” EHM to BHRM and Donn Marston, March 15, 1963, in the possession of BHRM.