They’re fixing the gates at Smith College.
Heaven knows they need them. The Grecourt Gates, named for the chateau in Picardy where a band of Smithies labored to repair the damage inflicted upon France by the Great War, have ushered generations of students onto the campus of Sophia Smith’s gift to the world. Tall, wrought from lacy black iron and solid local brick, they have been the symbol of the college for nearly a century of sun, rain, wind, and biting New England cold. It’s a wonder they’ve survived so long with only basic maintenance and the occasional coat of paint, let alone stand so straight and proud.
Alas, even the strongest guardian needs a lift from time to time. That’s why the college will be taking much of the summer to clean and restore the Grecourt Gates to their original glory. Elements lost to years and weather will be remade and replaced, unstable areas strengthened, and pedestrian walkways expanded and upgraded with fine bluestone and a new retaining wall. The Class of 2019 will see the Gates in finer fettle than they’ve been in longer than their parents have been alive, all gleaming black paint and delicate golden details.
It will truly be glorious.
Even more glorious will be what comes next. Neilson Library, the venerable main branch of the campus library system, will be renovated top to bottom. The stacks will be spruced up, some obsolete books moved to off-site archives to make room for new volumes, and old mortar and stone and wood prepared for another century of serving promising young women.
Best of all, the hideous brick additions to the central building that chop the campus in half will be removed or altered under the careful guidance of legendary architect Maya Lin. Lin, daughter of a late 40’s alumna, hopes to restore Frederick Law Olmsted’s original vision of Center Campus as an open sweep of land between the Science and Humanities Quads. I know I’m not the only one of Sophia’s daughters who can’t wait to see the results of her work.
As you’ve probably guessed from the above, I love my alma mater almost to distraction. I’d been a feminist almost since the time I could breathe, and once I learned that two of Second Wave feminism’s greatest lights, Betty Friedan and Gloria Steinem, had both gone to Smith, it was all but inevitable that I’d follow in their footsteps. Faithful readers of these diaries know what happened next, and it shouldn’t surprise anyone that I’ve willed my papers, my research, and whatever property hasn’t been eaten by the GTPOD to the tender care of what its founder called “a perennial blessing to the nation and the world.”
I’m scarcely the first woman, alumna or not, to do this. The Sophia Smith Collection bulges with the papers of hundreds, probably thousands, of women both prominent and obscure. Virginia Woolf’s letters, Sylvia Plath’s poetry – these treasures and many, many more are archived in the old Alumnae Gym. Mine will go there in due time, and if the curators will scratch their heads at receiving boxes of quilt history research, printouts of smutty fanfiction, and a small group of palm-sized action figures of Mr. Spock, Captain America, etc., in the same collection, they’ve probably seen weirder. Whatever secrets I have will come out in due time no matter what, so why even try to pretend that serious scholarship and crazed fangirling aren’t part of my life?
One of the women whose papers repose in the Alumnae Gym would disagree. This woman, a giant of early 20th century feminism, had a most unusual family connection. Her beloved niece, whom she’d all but raised, lived with a married couple (and sometimes a third woman), sharing a house, four children, and the authorship of at least one book with her beloveds. Not only that, the male in the relationship, a Harvard-educated psychologist/inventor/scriptwriter/self-styled expert on emotional health, had created one of the most important, controversial, and beloved superheroes of all time.
The feminist was Margaret Sanger, founder of Planned Parenthood. Her niece, Olive Byrne Richard, was the sometime collaborator and stay at home parent for her spouses, attorney Sadie Elizabeth Holloway Marston and author/psychologist William Moulton Marston. The superhero was Wonder Woman, whose surprising, and surprisingly complicated, history begins with the suffragists in the early 20th century and continues to this day.
Is it any wonder that Margaret Sanger didn’t go out of her way to publicize any of the above?
William Moulton Marston was an unlikely feminist and sexual rebel. Born to a woolen merchant and the scion of a family that traced its descent from the Crusades, he was the family darling almost from birth. His aunts adored him, his parents gave him every possible advantage, and his maternal grandfather had him to dinner at the family home, a Gothic revival pile in Newburyport called “Moulton Castle,” every Sunday afternoon. It’s little wonder that little William, handsome and intelligent, was a star both in the classroom and on the sporting fields of Malden High School, just north of Boston.
From Malden he traveled south to Cambridge, even closer to Boston, where he quickly acquired a BA, an LLB, and a PhD from Harvard University before his 28th birthday. Teaching positions at American University and Tufts quickly followed, as well as a book, The Emotions of Normal People./I> He was even asked to write several articles for the next edition of the Encyclopedia Britannica. It seemed that he had a bright future in academia.
Along the way Marston married his childhood sweetheart, Sadie Holloway. Holloway, born on the Isle of Man, had come to the United States as a child. She and Marston had met and fallen in love as teenagers, and the relationship continued during his years at Harvard and hers at Mount Holyoke. They married a few months after her graduation and she attempted to follow him to law school at Harvard, but John Harvard’s gift to the world refused to admit even the most promising woman so she had to settle for Boston University. She graduated three years later, aced the Massachusetts bar exam, and went on to get yet another advanced degree, this one in psychology from Radcliffe.
Married life agreed with Marston, if not necessarily with his wife; although he’d been active in suffragist circles while in college, when it came to his marriage he wanted what he wanted. Even though he’d known Sadie Holloway for over a decade by the time they married, he had never liked her given name, and her middle name, Elizabeth, didn’t please him either, so he renamed her “Betty.” Holloway wasn’t too happy with this – she liked her names, especially “Sadie” – but she gave in. “I was stuck,” the newly minted Betty Marston commented grimly.
She was stuck in other ways as well. Marston’s great obsession during the 20’s, the major subject of his research, was into the possible connection between blood pressure and human emotions. He’d first become interested in this after Betty had mentioned that she could feel her blood pressure rise whenever she was upset or excited, and he soon made it the subject of his doctoral dissertation. Betty, who still could not matriculate at Harvard, did not receive formal credit for his idea, but functioned as an unofficial laboratory assistant while he worked to develop the modern blood pressure test. This test, which has become a staple of medical practice, was soon incorporated into John Larson’s exciting new invention, the “polygraph,” popularly known as “the lie detector.”
Marston loved the polygraph and blood pressure research nearly as much as he loved his wife. He quickly became convinced that not only was the polygraph an infallible guide to truth (though not justice or the American way), that women were more honest, more reliable, and in many ways psychologically superior to men. That the courts rejected his claims about the polygraph, with disastrous results for the poor defendant, James Frye, who had pinned his hopes of acquittal on Marston’s test, did not change his mind. He was right, the courts were wrong, and he believed to the end of his life that the polygraph would be vindicated in due time.
Alas for Marston, the publicity surrounding the polygraph, and his attempts to commercialize it, did his once-promising academic career no good. Neither did the Frye case, nor a series of legal trouble resulting from repeated (and failed) attempts to go into business. These culminated in a messy lawsuit and arrest for fraud in the 1920’s in connection with the bankruptcy of a dress goods company. He lost his professorship at American University over it, then proved unable to keep a position at either Tufts or Columbia. Word soon spread through the academic community that glitter though his credentials might, William Moulton Marston was not a good choice to teach the impressionable young.
The publication in 1928 of The Emotions of Normal People, which proposed that human behavior fell along two axes (passive/active behavior and attention to the environment, the other whether the environment was favorable or antagonistic), didn’t help. That some of Marston’s conclusions seemed to be based on problematic analyses of whether brunettes or blondes were more truthful didn’t help, nor did rumors that one of his students at Tufts not only had done much of the writing, but had become his mistress as well.
That the rumors about the student, Olive Byrne, were true…well. I think you can guess how well that went over in the late 1920’s.
Byrne, the brilliant, boyish niece of Margaret Sanger, was a talented, intelligent woman in her own right. Despite early ambitions to become a doctor, she switched her focus to psychology almost as soon as she met Marston in 1925. She was soon collaborating with him, may have been the reason he left Tufts after less than a year, and by 1926 was such an integral part of his life that he gave Betty an ultimatum:
Either bring Olive into their relationship as a full and equal partner, or he would leave her in favor of the younger woman.
In Marston’s defense, such as it is, he and Betty had believed in free love and female psychological (and sexual) dominance over men for several years. They, along with Byrne and another woman, Marjorie Huntley, had been part of a New Age-ish cult that explored the “Aquarian Gospel of Jesus,” psychosexual relationships, and the benefits of gentle, loving submission, bondage, domination, and the denial of orgasm to human mental health. Huntley, William, and Betty had even engaged in an intermittent sexual/romantic relationship, so it wasn’t as if Betty Marston was unfamiliar with the idea of extramarital relationships, or unwilling to engage in the same.
The idea of sharing her husband, in every possible way, in what promised to be a permanent arrangement – that was unexpected. It’s little surprise that Betty’s initial reaction was shock, and a six hour hike through the city as she struggled to reach a decision on something that not only would change her life, but that might well ruin it if word ever got out.
Eventually Betty gave William her answer: yes.
Just why she did so is not entirely clear. Her love for William, which had been part of her life since her early teen years, was surely part of it. She'd come to care for Olive as well, and Olive for her; they were both intelligent, had much in common, and got along well. Jill LePore, author of a recent book on the Marstons and Wonder Woman, believes that Betty’s desire to have a child and keep working was a third factor, since Olive soon gave up her own dreams of a PhD in favor of raising the Betty’s two children with William (as well as her own two, both of whom the Marstons legally adopted).
Regardless of the particulars, William Marston got his way. In effect, he now had two wives (Betty and Olive, who soon took the last name “Richard” and claimed to be a widow to avoid uncomfortable questions about her pregnancies), sometimes three when Marjorie Huntley came to visit. He also no longer had to worry about making a living as an academic, which likely would have been impossible given his living arrangements. He had managed to land a job as a consultant and scriptwriter for Universal Pictures, where he was instrumental in crafting films such as the aptly named Charlatan, not to mention later horror films like Frankenstein and Dracula.
This position did not last long – Marston was fired in a power struggle with yet another polygraph advocate – but by then was Betty making enough money as an editor, then as an attorney, to support the rest of the unusual but loving family. Olive was working, too, as a freelancer for magazines like Family Circle. That many of her articles profiled the distinguished psychologist William Moulton Marston’s theories, and that she never, ever, ever revealed that she was the distinguished Dr. Marston’s second albeit unrecognized wife, somehow never really entered into the equation.
It was an unconventional life they lived, but somehow it worked. Betty worked and paid the bills, Olive raised the children and wrote, Marston stayed at home, allowed himself to be interviewed by Olive, and wrote, and occasional household member Marjorie Huntley came and went as she pleased. Whatever nocturnal activities the adults engaged in were kept strictly private, to the point that the children had no idea that two of them were Olive’s offspring, not Betty’s. Marston’s belief in the power of loving submission also stayed private, which was probably just as well given the age of the children and the standards of the time.
Thanks to Olive’s articles and his own books on self-help topics and (of course) the lie detector he was widely seen as an expert on matters large and small, and he was a minor household name in 1937 when he gave a press conference declaring that someday women would rule the world. An advertisement endorsing Gillette razor blades a year later was less expected, especially since it used the lie detector to “prove” that men preferred Gillette’s products above all others, but he had to earn his keep somehow.
There was even an interview in Family Circle (of course) by Olive (naturally) entitled "Don't Laugh at the Comics." This article seems to have begun a response to American intelligentsia’s fears that muscle bound stars like Superman, Batman, and so on were little more than a way to soften up American youth to accept native-born Fascism, never mind that most of the artists and writers were immigrant Jews. Marston, firmly WASP and very establishment, was just the person to reassure parents that superheroes were benign figures of justice, democracy, and wholesome all-American values. He himself had been reading comics for over a year, and his research had convinced him that the comics had “great educational potential” for the youth of America.
There is no way at this point to determine if Marston actually had done much comic reading; he was well into his 40’s, after all, which was not precisely the target audience back in the day. He had four young children, though, including three sons, and it’s hard to believe he wasn’t at least somewhat familiar with youth culture. If nothing else, he’d read enough to sound like an expert, and that was what mattered when it came to reassuring the nervous parents of the next generation.
It was also enough to reassure the nervous comics publishers catering to the next generation. Comics were widely viewed as violent, dangerous, worthless trash, and an endorsement by a Harvard-educated psychologist was worth its weight in gold. Soon Max Gaines, head of what became DC Comics, offered Marston a position as an educational consultant, charged with making sure that DC’s offerings were not only exciting and action-packed, but psychologically fit for all the little boys and girls glomming down the funny books every month.
Marston wasn’t the only psychologist Gaines recruited, but he was the only one interested not only in consulting, but in actually writing a superhero comic. Not only that, he claimed to have the perfect character in mind to counter all the bad publicity about violent, Fascism, etc. “The obvious remedy is to create a feminine character with all the strength of Superman plus all the allure of a good and beautiful woman,” he said.
DC was not so sanguine. Female superheroes sold poorly, ditto female pulp characters. A female character might sound good on the page, but if her book didn’t sell, DC would not only lose money but would play straight into the hands of the opposition. It took a great deal of persuasion on Marston's part to change this mindset, including hiring his own artist, former adman Harry Peters, to draw what was originally pitched as “Suprema, the Wonder Woman,” but change it he did. “Wonder Woman,” who would be beautiful, strong, intelligent, and compassionate, was greenlit just before the war.
In many ways this proto-Wonder Woman was very similar to the character we all know and love. The beautiful, wise, beloved princess of Paradise Island, all-female utopia of the Amazons, she had a Magic Lasso of Truth that allowed her subdue her enemies without punching them into the middle of next week. She also had bracelets that allowed her to deflect bullets and other missiles, super-strength and speed, and a love of truth and justice. Blessed by the ancient Greek gods with every virtue, Diana, daughter of Hippolyta, was truly a wonder.
She also had an unexpectedly colorful costume: a star-spangled skirt (changed almost immediately to short-shorts to preserve her modesty), a red bustier with a golden eagle over the breasts, a white belt, a tiara with a five-pointed star, and high-heeled red and white boots. If the color scheme sounds suspiciously American, not Greek, give yourself a no-prize and a tip o’ the butterfly henin; the stunning success of rival publisher Timely’s Captain America convinced DC that they, too, should have a patriotic hero during this time of national crisis, and who better than their brand-new heroine?
Thus it was that Wonder Woman debuted early in 1942 wearing something that would not have been out of place as one of Steve Rogers’ backup dancers, never mind that they were owned by separate companies.
And never mind DC’s fears about Wonder Woman being a flop. She was an instant success, bought by boys and girls alike despite the novelty of a female superhero, Harry Peters’ somewhat unusual drawing style, and distinctly feminist touches like a featurette called “Wonder Women of History” that profiled famous women. Diana was a hit, and her creator, who’d been smart enough to retain creative control and royalty rights over the character, was soon busier than ever writing scripts. Many of these had distinctly progressive themes, including Diana running for President, helping a woman get out of a violent marriage, breaking up a price-fixing cartel, and of course taking out the occasional Nazi.
If this doesn’t sound the usual superhero smashup, give yourself another no-prize and a tip of the floppy chaperon. Diana was much more concerned with political causes and advancing the place of women than with defeating bad guys. She was also basically a force for peace as opposed to super-soldier Captain America, which meant that instead of knocking people senseless with a colorful metal disk, she would tie up her opponents with the Lasso of Truth, make them submit, and then force them to tell the truth.
The parallels to the lives and characters of Betty Marston (who might have suggested a female superhero in the first place) and Olive Richard (whose interview had brought Marston to the attention of DC) were not a coincidence. Neither was Diana’s supporting cast including “Etta Candy,” a student at all-female Holliday College, who bore a striking resemblance to one of Betty’s buddies from all-female Mount Holyoke. There’s no actual group marriage – it was the 40’s, after all – but given the singular lack of men on Paradise Island, complaints that Wonder Woman was a thinly disguised paean to lesbianism probably wasn’t far off.
It was all quite glorious, with the same lovely naivete that allowed Batman to adopt Robin and Cap to spank Bucky without the editors thinking “Hm, this is just a little weird.” Even though some of the other writers at DC didn’t like Wonder Woman (notably the writer of the Justice Society, who reduced Diana to team secretary even though she probably could have drop-kicked Superman all the way back to Krypton), she was so popular that Marston could basically do what he liked.
Alas, all good things must end, and so it was with William Moulton Marston and his most memorable creation. He contracted polio in 1944 and never fully recovered his strength or mobility. Post-war conservatism led to a series of attacks on Wonder Woman from church leaders and child advocates, who’d finally twigged to just how unusual (and political) some of Diana’s adventures were. Marston himself soon was diagnosed with skin cancer and died in 1947, unaware that he was dying thanks to the old taboo against telling cancer patients they were terminal. Betty, who had inherited her husband’s ownership of Wonder Woman, was shut out completely by DC, and soon Diana was depowered, depoliticized, and longing for marriage to her wartime boyfriend Steve Trevor instead of hoping to change the world.
Betty and Olive, crushed by the death of their beloved, nonetheless persevered. Both continued to work, raise their children, and live together (sometimes with Marjorie Huntley) until Olive’s death in 1990. Betty followed her three years later, a century old and fiery to the end. Betty in particular had been thrilled by the emergence of Second Wave feminism in the 1960’s and had been thrilled by Ms. magazine’s adoption of Wonder Woman as a feminist symbol. Her obituary claimed she was the inspiration for the character, and if one remembers that no one except the immediate family knew that Olive Richard was involved as well, it’s not a bad way to be remembered.
As for Wonder Woman herself…like feminism itself, she’s had her ups and downs. The backlash against women after V-E was only the first in a series of insults and degradations by misogynist writers at DC who kept Wonder Woman in print so the rights to her wouldn’t revert to Betty Marston. Frederic Wertham’s McCarthy-era crusade against comic books included a swipe at Diana as obsessed with bondage (which was true) and feminism (also true), and thus unwholesome trash (????). The nadir came in the late 1960’s when the mighty Amazon gave up her powers to save the life of Steve Trevor, becoming a pale imitation of superspies like Emma Peel, Modesty Blaise, and Natasha Romanoff.
It wasn’t until Ms. featured Wonder Woman on its first cover that DC changed its mind, and even then a series of feminist stories by Samuel R. Delaney was ditched as too controversial. The 1970’s TV series began the restoration of the character by sending her back to her 1940’s roots, and subsequent writers like George Perez and Gail Simone have done much to restore Wonder Woman to the front ranks of superheroes. Her current writing is occasionally problematic – a romance with Superman? Really? Really? - but at heart she’s still the wise, beautiful, compassionate character William Moulton Marston created so many years ago.
Now, if only DC could get its act together long enough to make a decent movie…..
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Did you ever read Wonder Woman? Watch the TV series? Is there a copy of The Emotions of Normal People in your knotty pine rumpus room? Come and speak, no lassos allowed....
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