by Jill Lepore
Winters v. New York
witnesses
Wittgenstein, Ludwig
Woman and the New Race (Sanger), 12.1, 12.2, 15.1, 28.1
Woman Citizen
Woman Rebel (Sanger), il2.6, 2.1, 11.1, 11.2
Woman’s Dilemma (Parsons)
Woman’s Home Companion
Woman’s Peace Party, 10.1, nts.1
woman suffrage, 1.1, il1.5, 1.2, 2.1, 7.1, il7.1, 8.1, 10.1, 12.1, 13.1, 21.1, 23.1, 23.2, 23.3, 23.4, il23.6, 25.1, 31.1, 31.2, 31.3, nts.1
abolitionists and
feminism and
as “first wave” feminism
at Mount Holyoke, 2.1, 2.2, nts.1
Münsterberg’s opposition to
National Woman’s Party’s protest in support of, 6.1, il6.1, 6.2, 7.1, 11.1
and 1916 election, 5.1, 6.1
Nineteenth Amendment and, 6.1, 6.2, 7.1, 13.1, 30.1
women
as comics artists, 21.1, 23.1, nts.1
education of, 2.1, 2.2, 3.1, 3.2, 24.1, nts.1
history of, 26.1, 30.1
on juries, 8.1, nts.1
Marston’s prediction of world rule by, 21.1, 21.2, 22.1, 26.1, nts.1
moral superiority of, 21.1
PhDs for
postwar push back into the home for
as presidential candidates
work vs. family for, 15.1, 25.1, 30.1
Women in American Life (Scott)
Women’s Army Auxiliary Corps, 25.1, il25.6, 26.1
Women’s Liberation Basement Press
Women’s Social and Political Union, 1.1, 11.1
Women’s Strike for Equality
Wonder Woman (char.), 21.1, 29.1
as allegory
appearance and costume of, 23.1, 23.2, 24.1, 27.1, il27.7, 27.2, 27.3, nts.1, nts.2
attacks on
attempts to censor, 24.1, 27.1
backlash against, 26.1, 28.1
bondage in, il27.1, 27.1, il27.3, 27.2, 27.3, 27.4, 28.1, 28.2, 29.1, 31.3, nts.1, nts.2
bracelets of, 18.1, 23.1, 25.1, 31.3
censoring of
exclamations used by
fascism and
feminism and, 22.1, 23.1, 23.2, 25.1, 25.2, 26.1, 26.2, 26.3, 27.1, 27.2, 28.1, 29.1, 31.1, 30.2, nts.1, nts.2, nts.3
as fighter for social justice
Fox’s depiction of
gagging of
guns hated by, 23.1, 23.2
Huntley’s contributions to
images of chained women in
invisible plane of
in Justice Society of America, 24.1, 24.2, 25.1, 26.1
in Justice Society poll, 24.1, 24.3, 24.2
under Kanigher, 29.1, 29.2, 29.3
language used in
lie detector tests in
McCoy satirized by
Marston revealed as author of
Marston’s conception of
in Ms.
newspaper strip of, xii, 27.1, il27.8, il27.9, 28.1
origins of, 2.1, 10.1, 22.1, 23.1, 26.1
Peter’s drawings of, il10.4, 10.1
popularity of, xi, 24.1, 26.1, 26.2, 27.1, 27.2, 28.1
Sanger’s influence on
secret identity of
superpowers restored to
on TV
and United States, 23.1, 23.2
unknown history of
watering down of character of, 29.1, 31.1
and women in war effort
women’s education and
women’s work in
Wertham’s critique of
Wonder Woman (comic), 26.1, 27.1, 28.1, 31.1
Bender’s support for, 27.1, 27.2
Diana Prince Era of, 31.1, 31.2
first issue of
Hummel’s writing in
“Marriage a la Mode” in
racist depictions in, 25.1, 29.1
“Special! Women’s Lib Issue” of, 288
“Wonder Women of History” feature in, 26.1, 29.1, nts.1, nts.2, nts.3
Wonder Woman: A Ms. Anthology, 31.1, nts.1
Wonder Woman Archives (Marston), 373n
Wonder Woman Chronicles (Marston), nts.1
Wood, Lester, 8.1, 8.2, 9.1, 9.2, 20.1, 26.1n, nts.1, nts.2, nts.3, nts.4
Woodworth, Robert
Woolfolk, Dorothy Roubicek, 26.1, 27.1, il27.7, 27.2, 29.1, 31.1, nts.1, nts.2, nts.3
as Wonder Woman editor, 31.1, 30.2, nts.1
Woolfolk, William, 29.1, nts.1
Woolley, Mary, 2.1, 2.2, 21.1, nts.1, nts.2
World’s Fair of 1939
World War I, 23.1, 27.1
Armistice declared in
U.S. entry into, 5.1, 6.1
World War II, 22.1, 22.2
in comics
Ong’s critique of Wonder Woman and
Planned Parenthood in
U.S. entry into, 23.1, 24.1
women during and after
women in, 25.1, il25.6, 26.1
Yerkes, Robert, 6.1, 6.2, 6.3, 16.1, 16.2
Your Life
Zorbaugh, Harvey
ILLUSTRATION CREDITS
Illustrations on the pages listed appear courtesy of the following:
Boston Public Library: 27.9
Brooklyn College Library Archives: 24.2
California Digital Newspaper Collection, Center for Bibliographic Studies and Research, University of California, Riverside: 23.4
Comic Art Collection, Michigan State University Libraries: pre.3
Corbis Images: 11.1, 13.3
David Levine Ink: post.7
Esquire magazine: 23.8, insert ins.4
Getty Images: 8.2
Harvard College Library: 1.6, 24, 4.3 4.4, 10.5, 20.1, 20.3, 23.3
Harvard University Archives: 3.5
Heritage Auctions: 21.3, 21.4, insert ins.1
The Library of American Comics: pre.2, 2.2, 3.2 3.3, 8.1, 8.4, 9.1, 9.2, 23.1
The Library of Congress, Manuscripts Division: 29.3
The Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division: 1.7, 3.6, 5.3, 6.1, 13.4, 23.7, 25.1, 25.2, 25.4, 29.1, 29.4, post.4, post.5, insert ins.6, insert ins.11, insert ins.17, insert ins.33, ins.33, insert ins.35, ins.36, ins.37, insert ins.38, ins.40
Byrne Marston: 4.1, 6.3, 10.2, 11.2, 13.5, 14.4, 16.1, 18.2, 18.3, 18.5, 19.2, 19.4, 21.2, 22.1, 28.2, post.8
Moulton (Pete) Marston: 1.2, 1.3, 1.4, 2.7, 4.5, 5.1, 5.2, 7.3, 15.1, 17.1, 17.2, 17.3, 18.4, 19.1, 19.3, 28.1, 28.3
Metropolis Comics: 23.9, insert ins.4
Mount Holyoke College Archives and Special Collections: 2.4, 2.5
Northwestern University Archives: 8.3
Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Columbia University: 27.2
The Rogers Family Collection: 10.3
Schlesinger Library, Radcliffe Institute, Harvard University: 10.6, 12.1, post.2, post.3, post.10, insert ins.39
The Smithsonian Institution Libraries, Washington, DC: pre.1, p1.1, 1.5, 1.8, 2.1, 2.3, 3.1, 3.4, 4.2, 6.2, 6.4, 7.2, p2.1, 12.2, 13.2, 14.1, 14.2, 14.3, 15.2, 20.2, 21.1, p3.1, 23.2, 23.10, 24.1, 25.3, 25.5, 25.6 25.7, 26.1, 26.2, 26.2, 26.4, 26.5, 26.6, 26.7, 27.1, 27.3, 27.4, 27.5.27.6,27.7, 27.8, 28.4, 28.5, post.9, insert ins.2, insert ins.5, insert ins.7, ins.8, ins.9, insert ins.10, ins.12, insert ins.13, ins.14, ins.15, insert ins.16, insert ins.18, insert ins.19, ins.20, ins.21, insert ins.22, ins.23, ins.22, insert ins.25, ins.26, ins.27, insert ins.28, ins.29, ins.30, ins.30 (all three), insert ins.34
Sophia Smith Collection, Smith College: 2.6, 7.1, 10.1, post.1, post.6, insert ins.41
Tufts University Digital Collections and Archives: 13.1
University of Michigan Library: 10.4, 23.5, 23.6
Yale University Library: 1.1
A NOTE ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Jill Lepore is the David Woods Kemper ’41 Professor of American History at Harvard University and a staff writer at The New Yorker. Book of Ages, her most recent book, was a finalist for the National Book Award. She lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
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�A great movement [is] now under way—the growth in the power of women,” William Moulton Marston wrote to his editor, Sheldon Mayer, in February 1941, submitting his first script. “Let that theme alone or drop the project.” For an artist, Marston chose Harry G. Peter, who, like Marston, had ties to the Progressive Era suffrage and feminist movements. In 1911, Marston was a freshman at Harvard when the university banned the militant British suffragist Emmeline Pankhurst from speaking on campus. Elizabeth Holloway, whom Marston married in 1915, had been a suffragist at Mount Holyoke College, and Marjorie Wilkes Huntley, a librarian who began living with the Marstons, on and off, around 1918, had taken women to the polls. Olive Byrne, who met Marston in 1925, was the daughter of Ethel Byrne, who, in 1917, was the first woman in the United States to go on a hunger strike, after she and her sister, Margaret Sanger, were arrested for having opened the nation’s first birth control clinic. In the 1910s, Harry G. Peter had contributed illustrations to “The Modern Woman,” the pro-suffrage editorial page of the magazine Judge, where he was a staff artist, along with the feminist cartoonist Lou Rogers, whose work would greatly influence how Peter came to draw Wonder Woman. In 1941, Peter made some sketches and sent them to Marston; Marston liked everything but the shoes. (illustration credit ins.1)
Wonder Woman made a spectacular debut on American newsstands just as the United States entered the Second World War, appearing in All-Star Comics #8 (December 1941–January 1942), and then on the cover of Sensation Comics #1 (January 1942). Both comic books were published by Maxwell Charles Gaines. The stories were credited to “Charles Moulton,” a pseudonym made up of Gaines’s and Marston’s middle names. Wonder Woman appeared in every issue of Sensation Comics as the lead story, and on every cover. In March 1942, the National Organization for Decent Literature put Sensation Comics on its list of “Publications Disapproved for Youth.” Gaines wrote to the bishop in charge of the list and asked why. The bishop wrote back, “Wonder Woman is not sufficiently dressed.” (illustration credit ins.2)
Peter made this drawing of an alternate costume for Wonder Woman, much influenced by the drawings of Alberto Vargas, whose “Varga girls” appeared every month in Esquire magazine and were clipped by readers as pin-ups. This drawing of Peter’s seems to have been inspired by a patriotically dressed Varga girl who appeared in Esquire for the Fourth of July 1942. A note, apparently from Marston, points out that the collar on her halter top would look dated quickly. Wonder Woman did adopt the high-heeled red boots and tight shorts, abandoning her earlier skirt. But this design was for the most part abandoned. (illustration credit ins.4)
“Noted Psychologist Revealed as Author of Best-Selling ‘Wonder Woman,’ ” Marston wrote in a press release in the summer of 1942, announcing the debut of Wonder Woman. “The only hope for civilization is the greater freedom, development and equality of women in all fields of human activity,” Marston wrote, explaining that he intended Wonder Woman “to set up a standard among children and young people of strong, free, courageous womanhood; and to combat the idea that women are inferior to men, and to ins7pire girls to self-confidence and achievement in athletics, occupations and professions monopolized by men.” Wonder Woman was the first female superhero to have her own magazine. (illustration credit ins.5)
In April 1942, Gaines conducted a poll, asking readers, “Should WONDER WOMAN be allowed, even though a woman, to become a member of the Justice Society?” Of the first 1,801 questionnaires returned, 1,265 boys and 333 girls said “Yes”; 197 boys and just 6 girls said “No.” Wonder Woman joined the Justice Society in the August–September 1942 issue of All-Star Comics. The stories, though, were written not by Marston but by Gardner Fox, who relegated Wonder Woman to the role of secretary, as in this story from All-Star Comics #14 (December 1942–January 1943). (illustration credit ins.6)
Even as Gardner Fox limited Wonder Woman’s role to answering the mail and taking the meeting minutes, Marston, in the stories he wrote, railed agains10t what he called “domestic slavery,” as in this story, “The Return of Diana Prince,” Sensation Comics #9 (September 1942). The theme, as well as the iconography, is taken directly from the suffrage and feminist writers and illustrators of the 1910s who had so powerfully influenced both Marston and Peter. (illustration credit ins.7)
Elizabeth Holloway played field hockey in college; Olive Byrne played basketball. Between 1942 and 1944, the associate editor of Wonder Woman was Alice Marble, a tennis champion. Marston exhibited Wonder Woman’s athleticism on every possible occasion. Here, in “The Earl of Greed,” Wonder Woman #2 (Fall 1942), she plays baseball. In other Marston stories, she plays ice hockey and tennis; she swims and dives. She even founds a chain of fitness clubs. (illustration credit ins.8)
Marston also used Wonder Woman to feature his long-standing work, dating to his junior year of college, on the detection of deception, the subject of his 1921 doctoral dissertation in Harvard’s Psychology Department. As early as 1923, newspapers referred to Marston as the “Lie Meter Inventor.” In 1938, Marston published a book called The Lie Detector Test, staking his claim in the invention of what became the polygraph. In “The Duke of Deception,” Wonder Woman #2 (Fall 1942), Wonder Woman uses her magic lasso to compel a villain to tell the truth. Like her bracelets, the magic lasso was given to Wonder Woman on Paradise Island, before she left the land of the Amazons to journey to “America, the last citadel of democracy, and of equal rights for women!” (illustration credit ins.9)
Aside from Superman and Batman, none of DC Comics’ superheroes was anywhere near as popular as Wonder Woman. She was the lead feature in Sensation Comics; she appeared regularly in All-Star Comics; and in Comic Cavalcade, a quarterly, she was, far and away, the star: she was on every cover, and hers was the lead story in every issue, including this one, the first, Comic Cavalcade #1 (December 1942–January 1943). (illustration credit ins.10)
The Justice Society of America held its first meeting in the winter of 1940. “Each of them is a hero in his own right, but when the Justice Society calls, they are only members, sworn to uphold honor and justice!” Fans who joined a special Junior Justice Society were mailed membership certificates, signed by Wonder Woman. From All-Star Comics #14 (December 1942–January 1943). (illustration credit ins.11)
“Frankly, Wonder Woman is psychological propaganda for the new type of woman who, I believe, should rule the world,” Marston wrote. He got that message across in a story from Wonder Woman #7 (Winter 1943), in which Diana Prince becomes president of the United States. A League for a Woman President had been founded in 1935, in hopes of getting the first woman to the White House by 1940. In 1937, Marston held a press conference at which he announced that women would one day rule the world. “Women have twice the emotional development, the ability for love, than man has,” he explained. “And as they develop as much ability for worldly success as they already have ability for love, they will clearly come to rule business and the Nation and the world.” Marston thought the reign of women would usher in an age of peace, an argument that suffragists had used in attempting to secure for women the right to vote. (illustration credit ins.12)
Wonder Woman’s athleticism most often manifested itself in the many ways she escaped from bonds of chain and rope, as in “A Spy on Paradise Island,” Wonder Woman #3 (February–March 1943). Depicting women in chains17 was ubiquitous in suffrage cartoons from the 1910s, in which women sought to be emancipated by gaining the right to vote. (illustration credit ins.13)
Secret identities lie at the heart of all superhero comics, but for Marston, who had worked for U.S. military intelligence during the First World War, Wonder Woman’s secret identity as Diana Prince, a secretary for U.S. military intelligence, takes on a special cast. Marston kept a lie detector in his house, and he liked to administer tests to his guests. Here, in “Victory at Sea,” Sensation Comics #15 (March 1943), Steve Trevor proposes administering a lie detector test to Diana Prince. (illustration credit ins.14)
Wonder Woman is bound in a
lmost every one of her adventures, usually in chains20. The bondage in Wonder Woman comics raised hackles with Gaines’s editorial advisory board, but Marston insisted that Wonder Woman had to be chained or tied so that she could free herself—and, symbolically, emancipate herself. “My woman’s power returns again!” she cries, here, in “The Rubber Barons,” Wonder Woman #4 (April–May 1943). (illustration credit ins.15)
In 1943, Gaines asked one of his editors, Dorothy Roubicek, to propose a solution that might answer the members of the editorial advisory board who were troubled by the bondage in Wonder Woman comics, while also accommodating Marston, who ins22isted on the importance of this theme to his feminist argument. After meeting with Roubicek, Gaines sent Marston Roubicek’s proposed “list of methods which can be used to keep women confined or enclosed without the use of chains.” Marston was unmoved. “Please thank Miss Roubicek for the list of menaces,” he wrote Gaines, drily. Nevertheless, in “Victory at Sea,” Sensation Comics #15 (March 1943), Wonder Woman is wrapped in a straitjacket and locked in a jail—the kind of menace Roubicek preferred. (illustration credit ins.16)
By the spring of 1943, Wonder Woman was reaching millions of readers and, in spite of being only the Justice Society’s secretary, she was featured prominently on the cover of each of the comic books in which she appeared, including All-Star Comics #16 (April–May 1943), with art by Frank Harry. She remained the only woman. (illustration credit ins.17)
In “Battle for Womanhood,” Wonder Woman #5 (June–July 1943), Wonder Woman faces her arch-nemesis, Dr. Psycho, who was both a fascist (here, a three-headed monster of Mussolini, Hitler, and Hirohito) and, notably, an opponent of women’s rights. Dr. Psycho was ins25pired by Marston’s Harvard mentor, the psychologist Hugo Münsterberg, with whom Marston studied from 1912 to 1916. Münsterberg, who directed Harvard’s Psychological Laboratory, opposed women’s suffrage, believing that decent, moral women had too much to do at home to vote, and that any women who would show up at the polls would be easily corrupted, with the result that “the political machines would win new and disgusting strength from the feebleness of these women to resist political pressure.” Not to mention that “politics might bring about differences between husband and wife.” Wonder Woman’s “Battle for Womanhood,” against Dr. Psycho, is Marston’s battle against Münsterberg. (illustration credit ins.18)