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kaitwalla 's review for:
The Secret History of Wonder Woman
by Jill Lepore
Overall, this is a well-researched book on the history of the creator of Wonder Woman, his crazy-ass family and the very deep feminist theory that undergirds most of the early comics.
The only knock on the book is that it is by no means a complete history of Wonder Woman. It might better have been titled, "The Secret History of Wonder Woman's Creation," or, most accurately, "Wonder Woman and Feminism: The Early Years."
You'll learn about William Marston, the inventor of an early version of the lie-detector test/failed psychologist/failed moviemaker/failed entrepreneur who used his lifelong obsession with women to craft the early tales of the Amazonian Wonder Woman. You'll learn about his wife. And his other wife. And his other other kind-of wife.
You'll be confused by what scholarship/writing should be attributed to whom between the primary threesome. You'll be bewildered by the lengths of the deception that the unofficial wife went to keep Marston's progenitorship a secret from her children. And you'll be slightly weirded out by how closely Margaret Sanger weaves in to all of it.
The book focuses heavily on the early comics (up until Marston's death), then sort of writes off the entire 50+ other years with a "the people who came directly after Marston were chauvinist pigs" which, while not inaccurate, is not exactly meeting the mantle of "history."
That being said, this book is essential for truly understanding Wonder Woman, her origins and her standing/place in the culture at large.
The only knock on the book is that it is by no means a complete history of Wonder Woman. It might better have been titled, "The Secret History of Wonder Woman's Creation," or, most accurately, "Wonder Woman and Feminism: The Early Years."
You'll learn about William Marston, the inventor of an early version of the lie-detector test/failed psychologist/failed moviemaker/failed entrepreneur who used his lifelong obsession with women to craft the early tales of the Amazonian Wonder Woman. You'll learn about his wife. And his other wife. And his other other kind-of wife.
You'll be confused by what scholarship/writing should be attributed to whom between the primary threesome. You'll be bewildered by the lengths of the deception that the unofficial wife went to keep Marston's progenitorship a secret from her children. And you'll be slightly weirded out by how closely Margaret Sanger weaves in to all of it.
The book focuses heavily on the early comics (up until Marston's death), then sort of writes off the entire 50+ other years with a "the people who came directly after Marston were chauvinist pigs" which, while not inaccurate, is not exactly meeting the mantle of "history."
That being said, this book is essential for truly understanding Wonder Woman, her origins and her standing/place in the culture at large.