September Not Fiction Book Discussions

The Secret History of Wonder Woman by Jill Lepore is another story of secret identities hidden in plain sight, illustrating the trope that things are not always what they seem. The most popular female superhero of all time, Wonder Woman, was created by a man, William Moulton Marston, who "braided together more than a century of women's rights rhetoric, his own very odd brand of psychology, and, inevitably, his peerless hucksterism."

As well as his complicated family life--an advocate of free love and "love bonds," he lived with two and sometimes three women at once, who became the inspiration for the character, yet kept their relationships a secret. What did you make of William Moulton Marston, Sadie Elizabeth Holloway, Olive Byrne, and Marjorie Wilkes Huntley, as individuals and in their relationships with one another? Why do you think they kept their life together a secret even though they advocated for free love?

Marston proclaimed, "Frankly, Wonder Woman is psychological propaganda for the new type of woman who should, I believe, rule the world." He was inspired by the women's suffrage movement and the birth control movement, yet Wonder Woman's appearance was influenced by erotic pin-up art, and she was frequently depicted in bondage that went beyond the allegorical bonds of oppression of women. What did you make of Marston's feminism? Did he have an enlightened view of women, or was it, as portrayed in both his life and his art, "feminism as fetish"? What complexities of gender perception, gender equality, sexuality, and feminism does Wonder Woman embody? What if Holloway and Byrne had taken over the writing of Wonder Woman after Marston died? What kind of story lines do you think they would have written?

Lepore's central historical argument is that "The fight for women's rights hasn't come in waves. Wonder Woman was a product of the suffragist, feminist, and birth control movements of the 1900s and 1910s and became  a source of the women's liberation and feminist movements of the 1960s and 1970s. The fight for women's rights has been a river, wending." What do you think of this argument? Is it accurate? Overstated?

Is it any easier today than in the early days of the women's movement to "have it all"?

We hope you will join the discussion: Tuesday, September 1, at 6:30 p.m. at Main Library; Thursday, September 17, at 11:00 a.m. at West Ashley Branch Library; and here on the blog.