Her Past Unchained: ‘The Secret History of Wonder Woman’

The New York Times
Her Past Unchained
‘The Secret History of Wonder Woman,’ by Jill Lepore
OCT. 23, 2014

Jill Lepore’s new book, “The Secret History of Wonder Woman,” is a long, strange thing to chew on.

On the one hand, the story it relates has more uplift than Wonder Woman’s invisible airplane or her eagle-encrusted red bustier. It’s a yea-saying tale about how this comic book character, created in 1941, remade American feminism and had her roots in the ideas and activism of Margaret Sanger, the founder of Planned Parenthood.

On the other hand, “The Secret History of Wonder Woman” is fundamentally a biography of Wonder Woman’s larger-than-life and vaguely creepy male creator, William Moulton Marston (1893-1947). He was a Harvard graduate, a feminist and a psychologist who invented the lie detector test. He was also a huckster, a polyamorist (one and sometimes two other women lived with him and his wife), a serial liar and a bondage super-enthusiast.

How into fettering was Marston? Allow Ms. Lepore to count the ways, in a long but fascinating passage that shows off her neatnik prose style.... MORE at http://www.nytimes.com/2014/10/24/books/the-secret-history-of-wonder-woman-by-jill-lepore.html