The Secret History of Wonder Woman

Im' not a comic book fan (which greatly limits my movie going at the moment). Wonder woman has an extra impediment. I can't erase my memories of the cheesy, cartoon-but-serious Lynda Carter series. My cousin loved it (and would strip down to her Wonder Woman Underoos in public, at least partially to embarrass me), but even at 7 or 8, I was more of an art house movie girl. I also didn't see the connection to feminism.

Gal Gadot's Wonder Woman reclaimed the character's feminist roots, which had been buried since shortly after World War II. Created by William Moulton Marston, a psychologist better at self promotion than keeping a job, Wonder Woman was a strong, independent woman behind the kinky costume and frequent bondage references. He based her on his wives, Sadie Elizabeth Holloway (Betty Marston) and Olive Byrne.

Yes, wives. He was "married" to two women who supported him, Betty Financially and Olive by running the unconventional household. Both were intelligent and educated (Betty met Marston at age 13 and held an LLB and an MA in psychology; Olive was one of his grad students who dropped out of her Ph.D program to raise their children - two by each wife), and yet they spent decades catering to a man who claimed to be a feminist. It makes me wonder (as does Wonder Woman's outfit) how deep his views went, and whether they only existed as much as they could serve his interests.

Everything, though, Marston did was to his advantage, and Lepore's research couldn't untangle all the lies he told about himself. Some stories turned out to be true (he had written a few silent movies), but even then the reasons were unclear (did he need tuition money because his father's business was in trouble, or because he had gambling debts?). Marston's serial failures (businesses that lasted a few months, a decade-long slip down the academic ladder, a fraud conviction) and perpetual self-promotion don't lend themselves to a coherent story and it shows in the first half of the book. People appear and disappear, as I'm sure they did in Marston's life, leading to a disjointed narrative. Lenore's attempts to tie in Margaret Sanger's life (she was Olive's aunt) feel like padding and could have been handled in occasional paragraphs rather than chapters. Lenore also includes Marston's other claim to fame - his "invention" of a lie detector (using only blood pressure), bolstered by (probably) rigged tests gave us the Frye tests which says that scientific evidence hast o be "generally accepted" before it can be used in court.  A test which the later invented polygraph fails. To his death, he touted his invention, which, if accurate, he'd never pass.

So what about Wonder Woman? As interesting as Lepore's explanation of her creator's life was, I'd rather read about her history and influence. She was the first, and most lasting, female superhero. In  the bro culture that permeates the genre, we need her, and a better book about he.