Most comic book superheroes (I don’t use ‘superheroines,’ as I believe it to be an outdated term—the girls can stand toe-to-toe with the boys just fine) have relatively simple origins. A writer, an artist someone who is both, or a team of both or even several sit back and think ‘What if…’ and then shape an idea. The details of the character may gel in a single day—or at least seem to—or, as in most cases, the process requires days, weeks, even years before he or she is fleshed out enough to appear on the four-color page.
But some characters are special: they’re spawned directly by by ideals, political and/or cultural climates, and so on. And then there are those who are even more special than that.
Wonder Woman is one of the last type. So far as I know, she may be the only superhero in the Golden Age, at least, dreamed up to embody and demonstrate a particular set of psychological theories.
To explain what I mean, I first have to provide some short bios of her creators.
William Moulton Marston (1893 –1947), who actually wrote the early Wonder Woman comics under the name Charles Moulton, was an interesting fellow to say the least. He was a Harvard-educated lawyer and PhD Psychologist who taught at American University in Washington, D.C., Tufts, and the University of Southern California; a successful scriptwriter who also worked for a brief time as Director of Public Service for Universal Studios; an inventor (something I’ll come back to); a writer of self-help books and pop psychology articles; a champion of women’s abilities and causes; and a model for ads.
Marston’s personal life was also interesting, first because he was married to Elizabeth Holloway Marston, a woman of formidable accomplishments herself. Holloway had a B.A. in psychology from Mount Holyoke College and received her LLB from the Boston University School of Law in 1918, one of only three women to graduate thusly from BUSoL in that year. Holloway went on to index the documents of the first fourteen Congresses, lecture on law, ethics, and psychology at several American universities, serve as an editor for Encyclopædia Britannica and McCall’s, and coauthor a textbook, Integrative Psychology, with her husband and C. Daly King. In 1933, she became the assistant to the chief executive at Metropolitan Life Insurance. That may not sound like much, but even in the 30’s, Metropolitan Life was huge; the company insured one of every five men, women, and children in the United States and Canada. That meant that in her position, Holloway was easily the chief breadwinner of the family.
Which she needed to be, because she and Marston also took on a domestic partner, Olive Byrne in 1925. Byrne herself was a woman of no mean intellect and accomplishments, as should be expected of the daughter of Ethel Higgins Byrne and niece of Margaret Sanger, the feminist activists who opened the United States first birth control clinic in Brooklyn in October 1916. Byrne met Marston when he taught at Tufts and at some point during her time as his research assistant became more personally acquainted with Marston and his wife. After graduating, she moved in with Marston and Holloway, dropping out of a doctoral program in psychology to care for Holloway’s first child. Byrne subsequently ‘married’ both Marston and Holloway, becoming the ‘domestic’ partner of the marriage. Byre stayed home to care for both her two and Holloway’s two children by Marston, although Byrne did not completely stop working; under the name Olive Richards, she became a writer of magazine articles for publications such as Family Circle. All evidence indicates the three had a true marriage: Byrne, like Holloway, had two children by Marston, and after Marston’s death in 1947 Byrne would continue to live with Holloway until her own death in 1985, with Holloway surviving her last spouse by eight years.
Although their lives as ‘liberated’ women may seem antiquated by modern standards, both women embodied the feminism of their day and, more importantly for our purposes, helped shift Marston towards similar views (or perhaps strengthened his beliefs; I’m not clear on that). Together, the trio made a formidable team.
As a psychologist, Marston had a unique theory of Human Behavior which, of course, his wives fully collaborated with him in developing. In 1928 he published a book, Emotions of Normal People, much of which was based on Byrne’s research for her doctorate. In it Marston mounted a defense of many sexual taboos, but more importantly, he elaborated on a human emotional and behavioral theory now called DISC that centers on four different personality traits:
| Dominance | Direct, Decisive; Strong ego; Problem Solver; Risk-taker with high initiative |
| Influence | Enthusiastic; Trusting, Optimistic, Persuasive, Impulsive |
| Steadiness | Reliable and dependable; Loyal; Steady; Understanding, Friendly; Conflict Resolver |
| Conscientiousness | Accurate, Analytical; Conscientious and even tempered; Precise, Thorough; Systematic; Critical Thinker |
Marston’s (and Byrne and Holloway’s) theory was later developed into the DISC behavioral assessment tool, which is still widely used today. For our purposes, however, DISC is important because it shows up constantly in the early Wonder Woman stories. However, to be clear, Marston’s theory didn’t use precisely either the labels or the definitions I list in the table above: I simply thought it might be more helpful. You can dip a toe into Marston’s actual theory, which involves moving along behavioral axes, by reading the Wikipedia article on him, or you can take a deeper dive than that by consulting any of various texts on the subject, but I think the table above gives you enough to understand the points I plan to make.
First, though, a little more on Marston. I mentioned that he was an inventor, and that also has an important role to play. You see, again collaborating with his wives, this time mainly Holloway, he created the systolic blood pressure test, an invention that would later become a part of the modern polygraph, or ‘lie detector,’ testing machine. If you’re familiar with Wonder Woman, then you know where this is headed. If not, hang on, because I will get to it soon.
The last thing you need to know about Marston before I go forward is a little more… interesting. You see, instead of the modern names for the behavioral categories, William Marston’s original DISC system used the traits Dominance, Inducement, Submission, and Compliance. If you’re at all familiar with BDSM, I think you’ll see where this going, too. If not, click the link (WARNING: NSFW images).
Yes, William Marston was into Bondage. However, he did not see it simply as a sexual outlet, something I understand Marston shares with many of the more serious participants in that culture. However, Marston took his ideas a step further: he saw Bondage as a means of transforming the world.
You see, Marston asserted that male ideas of freedom were archaic and, worse, toxic as a basis for current human behavior; on the other hand, he posited that women embodied an ideal he labeled ‘Love Allure’ through which they could lead humanity into an ideal state of submission to loving authority that he felt to be more in step with the needs of living in a modern civilization.
But how did a teaching psychologist make the leap from that profession to comic book writer? Once again, this came about because of the women in Marston’s wife. Olivia Byrne interviewed Marston on the subject of comic books, then published the result under her professional name, Olivia Richards, in the magazine Family Circle. In the article, “Don’t Laugh at the Comics,” Marston opined that there was ‘great educational potential’ in comics. Comics pioneer Max Gaines happened to read the article. A former educator himself, Gaines was then co-publisher of All-American Publications, which in turn linked him to National Allied Publications, the company that would later become DC Comics. He hired Marston as an educational consultant for both companies.
Marston suddenly saw great possibilities open before him. He’d gotten into entertainment in the first place to publicize John Augustus Larson’s version of the polygraph. Larson’s machine fully realized the ideas of Marston’s own systolic blood pressure test together with others to create a true ‘lie detector,’ and Marston, now styling himself the ‘Father of the Polygraph’ (which he was not, strictly speaking, since others before and alongside him had done work on the subject), became its evangelist.
But now Marston saw an even greater opportunity: to create a superhero who would embody the positive aspects of DISC and who conquered not with raw power, but with love, and to broadcast that message through the new educational medium of comics, reaching thousands of young minds, especially those of girls. Legend has it that he was nudged in the right direction by Elizabeth Holloway.
“Fine,” Holloway said, “but make her a woman.”
Thus was born Wonder Woman.
In my next blog, I’ll discuss exactly how Wonder Woman fits into Marston’s vision. See you then!
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