Kelly Thompson and Hayden Sherman’s Absolute Wonder Woman captures the spirit of Wonder Woman better than any major Wonder Woman book in recent years. Thompson and Sherman build on the fundamental themes that have supported their characters’ best adventures.
“Love is transformative.” Diana repeats this maxim in early issues of the series, reminding readers that Wonder Woman is best read when feminist themes are at the center of her stories. Let me do it. Readers will note that in 2011 Brian Azzarello and Cliff Chiang infamously replaced the character’s “made from clay” origin with a more patriarchal “daughter of Zeus” story. You remember. That’s just one example of the changes made to the character that make her feel thematically divided against herself. Such changes threaten the very integrity of the character.
A little-known example of this is the removal of references to the Greek myth of Pygmalion from the Wonder Woman story. This story thread allowed writers to pose and answer the question: “Who is allowed to author femininity and femininity, and therefore who is allowed to determine its value?” . This was introduced by the character’s creators, William Moulton Marston and H.G. Peter, and was brought to attention for readers in Wonder Woman #1. In many ways its use reflected Marston’s radical politics.
As time went on and books moved away from his influence, the character was redefined by comic book legends such as George Perez, who removed the mention entirely. In the aforementioned Absolute Wonder Woman, the reader sees the strength of the story created when the metaphor is reintroduced and understands why this was a poor revision and ultimately damaged the character. You can understand.
Courtesy of DC Comics.
feminism is wonder woman
Wonder Woman is clearly a feminist character for many reasons, but not least because her creator intended her to be that way. Marston brought his radical politics to this book, incorporating all the influences of first-wave feminists. Readers may also be familiar with his well-documented work in psychology and his oft-discussed fascination with BDSM and polyamory. He reportedly said, “Wonder Woman is psychological propaganda for a new type of woman who I believe should rule the world.”
Her other author, Peter, also brings his own political experience to the book. In his youth, he was a political cartoonist supporting the women’s suffrage movement. When he began working on Wonder Woman, his style was inspired by the work of Lou Rogers, one of the most prominent female comic artists of first-wave feminism. They worked together at a progressive, satirical magazine called The Judge.
Gloria Steinem (prominent second-wave feminist and co-founder of Ms. magazine) even chose Wonder Woman for the first cover of her magazine, 30 years after the character was created. . She said, “Wonder Woman represents many of the values of women’s culture that feminists are currently trying to bring into the mainstream.” The United Nations even briefly appointed Wonder Woman as an “Honorary Ambassador for the Empowerment of Women and Girls” in 2016.
While it’s clear that this feminism is part of the character’s DNA, creators often found it difficult to maintain its presence in their interpretations. They often choose to play with the feminism they like and discard the rest. Grant Morrison and Yannick Paquette’s Wonder Woman: Earth One, for example, reintroduces the utopian sci-fi and bondage of Marston’s escapades, but Diana’s powers show that she has no control over her mother’s rapist, Hercules. She has chosen the ultimate revelation that she is derived from being a genetic daughter.
Indeed, Marston and Peter themselves often sacrificed thematic clarity of their feminist beliefs for one reason or another. In hindsight, it is clear that their work was hampered by the context in which they were creating it, displaying all the same flaws that the feminism of the time has since been criticized for. And like many other books of the time, Wonder Woman had a secondary function as American propaganda. In this work, the goddesses Athena and Aphrodite instruct the Amazons, “The freedom and liberty of America must be protected,” and depicts the American military and vicious racism in a bittersweet, cartoon-like manner.
Marston and Peter’s choice to portray a clearly feminist protagonist as a nationalist is questionable at best and deeply problematic at worst. It is said that the main victims of war are women, especially victims of sexual violence committed during the war. During World War II, American military personnel themselves committed large amounts of sexual violence, even against allies. Hugo Award-winning author Ursula K. Le Guin has described the role of war as a “purely masculine movement of displacement,” exporting the effects of male sexual frustration.
Wonder Woman: The Art of Earth One. Courtesy of DC Comics.
Pygmalion myth and Wonder Woman
Marston’s depiction of Wonder Woman’s origins is a subversion of the Greek myth of Pygmalion, who appears in Ovid’s Metamorphoses. This is the story of a sculptor who witnesses women engaged in sex work and begins to hate the “immeasurable flaws that nature has bestowed on women.” He then sculpts a statue of a woman he believes to be perfect, falls in love with it, and sexually abuses it. After this, he prays to Aphrodite, the goddess of love (who, ironically, is also the goddess of sex work in some interpretations) and asks for a wife who resembles his sculpture. Aphrodite brings the sculpture Galatea to life and blesses her with her marriage to Pygmalion. It truly means “happily ever after.”
The stories here are structured to convey something specific about femininity and the value of femininity. Among them, even goddesses feel that they have value only if masculinity and masculinity precede them. It is saying that women are only valuable if men are determined to justify their existence. Men have full authority over women here. She must become scandalous when his morality demands it, yet she must come alive beautifully when his sexual desire demands it. Male authority is a transformative force.
This reflected the politics criticized by birth control activists and suffragists during Marston’s formative years. Throughout the West, women were denied education on how to conceive and prevent unwanted pregnancies because the patriarchal governments of the time did not want women to have this power.
The story of Pygmalion has been adapted into a more modern version of the Audrey Hepburn film My Fair Lady, which tells the story of a phonetics professor who gambles to create a socialite out of a flower seller. There is. The focus here is on how men practice what is acceptable to women in their daily lives. More recently, readers may have seen the same story played out in Yorgos Lanthimos’s The Poor Thing, but here Galatea’s character is given more agency.
Marston subverts the author of Pygmalion’s claims about how femininity and femininity are written about and assigned values. He challenges the power dynamics, the nature of love, and the preciousness of that agency in our stories. In placing Princess Diana’s mother Hippolyta at the center of the story, he challenged claims about where power and change come from. By setting the story beyond the reach of the male world, she allows her characters to experience interiority in a way that only takes into account the female world. There are no men here writing about the everyday practices of femininity.
Marston’s depiction of divine intervention and transformation is a response to motherhood, and depending on the interpretation, to romantic love, and to Pygmalion’s masculinity and the assumed authority it bestows upon him. In contrast to
The question of what is before femininity and femininity is answered here in a different way. Women are depicted as owning themselves and deriving their worth from the experience of being loved, rather than subject to the whims of male authority.
Wonder Woman is depicted as living and growing within this experience, ignoring the eyes and standards of the patriarchy. Marston shows this in Sensation Comics #1 when Diana first arrives in the human world. Everyone who passes by her voices their thoughts on what she is wearing. Some to humiliate her, others to sexualize her. This seems to embarrass her or completely oblivious, and it’s clear that she doesn’t quite understand that Western society’s beauty standards imply violence against those who don’t conform.
Just a utopia for now
Marston’s choice to use the Pygmalion myth in this way was influenced by the genres he was influenced by, such as Inez Haynes Irwin’s Angel Island and Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s Hellland. Inspired by early feminist utopian literature. Because the genre aimed to contrast the present with an ideal or potential future, world-building and progressive political expression often dominated the work over character development and plot. did. Similarly, Marston’s radical politics came to the fore in his work and shaped his use of Greek mythology throughout the series.
Marston and Peter’s choice to center this question of who is allowed to express femininity and femininity as writers seems essential to any interpretation of Wonder Woman. The reader will soon realize that this was not always the case. And we will discuss later what the series loses by not including this important thematic question. This will be the focus of the next installment of this series, before discussing these themes and the reintroduction of the Pygmalion myth in Absolute Wonder Woman.
