I grew up watching reruns of the Lynda Carter Wonder Woman series. I was obsessed, I'll admit it. She was beautiful and strong and took care of problems her way, and she wore some pretty great boots while doing it. I'd run around the house in my Wonder Woman Underoos and red knee-socks, fighting crime and protecting the innocent. So yeah, I was pretty excited to hear about Jill Lepore's The Secret History of Wonder Woman.
It's quite the story. Wonder Woman's creator, William Moulton Marston, was also the inventor of the first lie detector test, a Harvard alum, an ardent feminist, and an incorrigible huckster. He lived with his wife, his mistress, (occasionally) his other mistress, and their combined four children. One of his mistresses was the niece of Margaret Sanger, the feminist and birth control crusader whose organization morphed into Planned Parenthood. After his death, the three women continued to live together in some fashion or another for the rest of their lives.
Lepore skillfully juggles a number of plot points and influences while managing to create a sympathetic (if not entirely likable) portrait of a man with dearly held beliefs, beliefs he held to devoutly despite a world that refused to accept them. Lepore takes his beliefs and, after a few twists and turns, shows us how they became Wonder Woman, and how Wonder Woman later became the face of feminism in the 1960s and 70s. It's a remarkable narrative even without the scintillating bits; part biography, part history of suffrage and feminism, part history on comic books' relevance and impact on children, centered on one character in particular. My only real criticism is with Lepore's writing, which jerks and judders on several occasions. She also drops details into the middle of an otherwise unrelated paragraph on the most tenuous of connections. Still, it's quite the read for anyone who grew up idolizing Wonder Woman or anyone interested in the meandering course of feminism from the 1900s to the present.
Title: The Secret History of Wonder Woman
Author: Jill Lepore
Star Rating: 4 out of 5
Buy, Borrow, Skip: Buy
Bonus: Aphrodite's Shield! Wonder Woman herself is the bonus!
It's quite the story. Wonder Woman's creator, William Moulton Marston, was also the inventor of the first lie detector test, a Harvard alum, an ardent feminist, and an incorrigible huckster. He lived with his wife, his mistress, (occasionally) his other mistress, and their combined four children. One of his mistresses was the niece of Margaret Sanger, the feminist and birth control crusader whose organization morphed into Planned Parenthood. After his death, the three women continued to live together in some fashion or another for the rest of their lives.
Lepore skillfully juggles a number of plot points and influences while managing to create a sympathetic (if not entirely likable) portrait of a man with dearly held beliefs, beliefs he held to devoutly despite a world that refused to accept them. Lepore takes his beliefs and, after a few twists and turns, shows us how they became Wonder Woman, and how Wonder Woman later became the face of feminism in the 1960s and 70s. It's a remarkable narrative even without the scintillating bits; part biography, part history of suffrage and feminism, part history on comic books' relevance and impact on children, centered on one character in particular. My only real criticism is with Lepore's writing, which jerks and judders on several occasions. She also drops details into the middle of an otherwise unrelated paragraph on the most tenuous of connections. Still, it's quite the read for anyone who grew up idolizing Wonder Woman or anyone interested in the meandering course of feminism from the 1900s to the present.
Title: The Secret History of Wonder Woman
Author: Jill Lepore
Star Rating: 4 out of 5
Buy, Borrow, Skip: Buy
Bonus: Aphrodite's Shield! Wonder Woman herself is the bonus!