the secret history of wonder woman book review

I feel that rich white people were always up to something strange. “In the end, the judge ruled that no woman has ‘the right to copulate with a feeling of security that there will be no resulting conception’: if a woman isn’t willing to die in childbirth, she shouldn’t have sex.” Yes, I see this argument in facebook arguments daily.Ĭhanging the topic, I have this minor fascination with the turn of the century and some of the kooky stuff that happened pre-Great Depression. I was also saddened that we are often rehashing the same arguments 100 years later. I love that Jill Lepore included prints of the newspapers distributed by birth control advocates and feminists back in the 19-teens. Sanger’s sister (Olive’s mother) was Ethel Byrne who was arrested in 1917 for talking about the fact that pregnancy could be prevented, and whose hunger strike in prison brought the nation’s eyes to this topic.

Olive Byrne was Margaret Sanger’s niece so there was a nice deviation off of the main story about the advent of the birth control movement. She was actually the breadwinner for most of their relationship, which is really saying something considering the family was made of 8 (and a half) people, when one adds live-in mistress Olive Byrne, four children (two from each lover) and a sometime-roommate (and probable lover) who at times lived in the attic. She earned as many degrees as she could, matching her husband one-for-one. His wife, Elizabeth Holloway Marston was an amazing go-getter, especially for the 1920s and 30s. There are many interesting parts to the book, most of which do not concern Marston himself. The book is, actually, a detailed biography of WW creator William Moulton Marston, starting his first year in undergrad at Harvard. Aside from little sneak peeks, illustrations, and clips from comic strips, the creation of Wonder Woman does not happen until almost page 200! My first issue with this book is that the title and cover are misleading.

Shifting from easy fiction to a book like this was a bit of a jolt for me and it look a little while to get my brain back in the academic game. The group chose The Secret History of Wonder Woman by Jill Lepore. What a doozy! Libby, Steph and I nominated three books and then had our new facebook group vote on which to read.

Our group decided to go with a non-fiction book for January, and boy did we pick something unexpected.

The secret history of wonder woman book review