Wonder Woman Unbound (8 page)

Men choosing to give up power to women en masse seems as unlikely today as it did in 1942, and Byrne pretended to be incredulous about the idea. Marston replied that men actually wanted to submit to women, because women were “nature-endowed soldiers of Aphrodite, goddess of love and beauty, and theirs is the only conquering army to which men will permanently submit—not only without resentment or resistance or secret desires for revenge, but also with positive willingness and joy!” To Marston, this is what every man wanted deep down, and once women realized their power and took over, men would quickly fall in line.

Marston always described patriarchy in active terms; it was aggressive and forceful and selfish, a whirlwind of men taking what they wanted and leaving destruction in their wake. Marston told Byrne that the success of
Wonder Woman
was a sign that this process of submission, of taming the whirlwind, had already started. He said that “boys, young and old, satisfy their wish thoughts by reading comics. If they go crazy over Wonder Woman, it means they’re longing for a beautiful, exciting girl who’s stronger than they are.” Wonder Woman tapped into “the subconscious, elaborately disguised desire of males to be mastered by a woman who loves them,” and intentionally so.

In a letter to his publisher, Max Gaines, Marston echoed his comments in
Family Circle
and wrote, “The only hope for peace is to teach people who are full of pep and unbound force to enjoy being bound.” This bondage meant giving up selfish, dominant aims in favor of deference. If boys were taught the values of submission instead of the forceful, patriarchal values of other superhero comics, then matriarchy would come about more quickly and smoothly.

The bondage imagery that made up more than a quarter of
Wonder Woman
was actually an elaborate series of metaphors about submission. Different forms of bondage had different meanings, but they all revolved around this theme. Nearly every Amazon activity on Paradise Island involved some form of bondage, even their holiday festivities. At Christmastime, the Amazons celebrated Diana’s Day, a moon goddess festival. Part of the celebration involved chasing down Amazons dressed as deer, hog-tying the ones who were caught, and then pretending to bake the bound Amazons in a massive pie. Once an Amazon was “sliced” out of the pie, Wonder Woman called out a zany task for her to perform and earn her freedom.

Bondage was especially important for women who were new to the island and learning the Amazon lifestyle. In one issue, Wonder Woman brought a group of female athletes to Paradise Island for a competition, and the athletes were surprised to see so many women walking around with their hands and feet chained together. One athlete asked an Amazon initiate if all Amazons had to wear chains, and she enthusiastically replied, “Oh yes, we love it!” Whenever Wonder Woman returned home, the backgrounds of panels regularly featured characters walking around with chains of some sort, usually without comment. It was just an everyday part of life for all Amazons, even Wonder Woman.

Wonder Woman not only directed bondage activity, she accepted it as well. In
Wonder Woman
#13, seven Amazons wrapped all manner of chains and ropes around her, lashing her to a wooden post. Wonder Woman was having a great time and called out, “Bind me as tight as you can, girls, with the biggest ropes and chains you can find!” One of the laughing Amazons replied, “We are, Princess—even you can’t escape these bonds!” Wonder Woman did escape, of course, snapping her bonds with ease.

Bondage was a game to the Amazons, a sport they all played and enjoyed. When Wonder Woman was subduing female guards in Atlantis in
Sensation Comics
#35, she mentioned a few of the Amazon bondage moves by name, like “the kitten hold.” As she quickly bound a guard in her lasso, Wonder Woman said, “On Paradise Island where we play many binding games this is considered the safest method of tying a girl’s arms!” The intent of bondage was never to hurt, ridicule, or shame someone, and there were rules of safety and care.

The Amazons incorporated bondage into their society as an expression of trust to emphasize that their utopia was based on kinship with a hierarchy of submission. All of the Amazons were committed to their patron goddess, Aphrodite; love was their very foundation. Queen Hippolyte would consult Aphrodite directly and ruled the island with the help of her love-based wisdom. They also submitted to Diana, their princess, but through bondage she regularly surrendered to them in return, promoting mutual respect and love.

While Paradise Island was the end result of submission, the goal of Reform Island was to teach villains to give up their own egocentric desires and learn submission. Most of them were rather committed to their criminal lifestyles and incredulous that they would be in any way changed by Reform Island. Tigra Tropica, a felonious tiger trainer, was nabbed by Wonder Woman and told that on Reform Island she’d learn to “obey loving authority.” The infuriated Tigra replied with her exotic accent, “You weel regret zis! I weel get revenge!” But even a simpleton like Steve Trevor knew how effective Amazon rehabilitation was, and exclaimed, “Horsefeathers! You’ll end up loving
Wonder Woman
like all the rest of us!” And most of the inmates did. When Wonder Woman visited Reform Island in
Sensation Comics
#22, a reformed criminal ran up to her and proclaimed, “These bonds feel wonderful! Keep me here in Amazon prison and train me to control my evil self!”

On the all-female Amazon islands, bondage was practiced in its purest forms. It was pleasant and instructive, and the result was a utopian society where even the most evil villain learned to love peace. Things were a lot more difficult out in the world of men, but Wonder Woman carried the power of submission with her in her golden lasso. The lasso was crafted from the girdle of Hippolyte, the symbol of the queen’s power and the Amazon matriarchy.

While interrogating a suspected Nazi spy, Wonder Woman bound the woman in the lasso, saying, “I shall
make
you tell the truth—while bound with the golden rope you
must
obey me!” The lasso gave Wonder Woman complete control over whomever she tied up. A lot has been written about the links between the lasso and Marston’s work developing the lie detector test, but while there’s certainly some connection, the lasso was much more than just a magical polygraph. Marston told Byrne that he created Wonder Woman as a “dramatized symbol of her sex. She’s true to life—true to the universal characteristics of women everywhere. Her magic lasso is merely a symbol of feminine charm, allure, oomph, attraction every woman uses.” Every woman could be a Wonder Woman and every woman had her own lasso. It wasn’t a lie detector test; it was her sexuality.

When Byrne again feigned doubt about the power of women, Marston replied that “woman’s charm is the one bond that can be made strong enough to hold a man against all logic, common sense, or counterattack.” Just like getting ensnared in an actual lasso, a woman could capture a man with her feminine wiles and get him to submit to her. And, because they were women and women were inherently loving, they used these powers for good.

Wonder Woman could do anything she wanted with her lasso, and she chose to use it to fight crime and help others. While villains occasionally stole the lasso and used it for nefarious purposes, in the hands of Wonder Woman it was only used for good. Even in the world of men, with one lone lasso against all of the forces of patriarchy, the power of submission was extremely effective and beneficial.

Although Marston depicted his theories in an unusual way, the underlying message of his bondage imagery was consistent and progressive. There weren’t many other people, much less men, advocating that women should be in charge in the 1940s. Paradise Island, Reform Island, and the golden lasso illustrated the strength and power of women.

However, in the world of men Marston showed a different type of bondage, where women were kept down.

While bondage among the Amazons was empowering, in the world of men, bondage had the opposite effect. Because men were cruel and dominant, being bound took what made women most powerful—the benefits of submission—and twisted it, leaving women literally, physically powerless.

The first time Wonder Woman had her bracelets chained together by a man, her mother appeared to her and said, “Daughter, if any man welds chains on your bracelets, you will become weak as we Amazons were when we surrendered to Hercules.” All of Wonder Woman’s superpowers that came from her Amazon upbringing disappeared once a man had power over her. Wonder Woman was even reduced to tears in one instance as her captor taunted her, saying, “Aye weep, captive girl! Behold yourself helpless!” She sobbed as she gazed forlornly at her bonds.

Marston took the metaphor even further in
Wonder Woman
#5. Not only did the fiendish Dr. Psycho capture Wonder Woman and lock her in a cage, he then used a special device to rip her spirit from her body. As Wonder Woman’s body slumped lifelessly in its cage, Dr. Psycho chained her spirit to the wall. Wonder Woman tried desperately to send out a mental distress call to the Holliday Girls, but it was no use; she couldn’t do anything without her body. It wasn’t a subtle message, but it was certainly evocative: don’t let men have control or they will steal your spirit and render you a powerless shell of your true self.

The brutality of the bondage of women by men was meant to critique patriarchal society and illustrate the political and social oppression of women. When Byrne expressed concerns that patriarchy was too powerful for women to overcome, Marston offered a ray of hope, stating, “My Wonder Woman often lets herself be tied into a bundle with chains as big as your arm. But in the end she easily snaps the chains. Women can do lots of things by letting men think they’re fettered when they’re not.” Even with Dr. Psycho, eventually Wonder Woman’s spirit escaped its bonds, jumped back into her body, and defeated him. The dominant patriarchal society was strict, but in the end it could never keep a strong woman down.

The Bondage Battle

Soon after All-American Publications began publishing
Wonder Woman, Sensation Comics,
and
Comic Cavalcade,
Max Gaines received several concerned letters from the company’s editorial advisory board. Josette Frank, the staff advisor of the Children’s Book Committee at the Child Study Association of America, wrote to Gaines that “this feature does lay you open to considerable criticism from any such group as ours, partly on the basis of the woman’s costume (or lack of it), and partly on the basis of sadistic bits showing women chained, tortured, etc.” Frank advised Gaines to take her criticisms “very seriously” because she’d heard a lot of concerns about the bondage imagery.

W. W. D. Sones, a professor of education and director of curriculum study at the University of Pittsburgh, agreed and wrote, “My impressions confirmed those of Miss Frank that there was a considerable amount of chains and bonds, so much so that the bondage idea seemed to dominate the story.” Responding to Marston’s claims about submission and metaphors, Sones was unconvinced and stated, “I could not help but feel that such subtle and almost mystic purposes were a business and social risk.”

Assistant editor Dorothy Roubicek was given the job of sorting out these complaints. She sent Marston some sketches of less revealing costumes Wonder Woman could wear, and suggested that Wonder Woman avoid Paradise Island, which was obviously a hub for bondage imagery. Marston refused to make any changes; he replied to Gaines with lengthy letters arguing against Frank and Sones’s comments. After months of acting as a go-between for Marston and the advisory board’s letters, Gaines was weary of all the psychological mumbo jumbo and was about to drop the issue when he received another letter that he found very unsettling.

It was a fan letter addressed to Marston that had arrived at the All-American offices, from an US Army sergeant who wrote, “I am one of those odd, perhaps unfortunate men who derive an extreme erotic pleasure from the mere thought of a beautiful girl, chained or bound, or masked, or wearing extreme high-heels or high-laced boots—in fact, any sort of constriction or strain whatsoever. […] Have you the same interest in bonds and fetters that I have?” The sergeant also said that he was a big fan of William Seabrook, the traveler and occultist, who wrote a lot about “chained women.”
*

This didn’t go over well with Gaines at all. Psychological squabbling was one thing, but a reader aroused by the bondage imagery was far more troubling. Gaines was the man behind
Picture Stories from the Bible,
after all. He wrote to Marston right away, stating that “this is one of the things I’ve been afraid of (without quite being able to put my finger on it).”

Gaines was so concerned that he got Roubicek to quickly come up with some alternatives to bondage, and included them in his letter to Marston. Gaines wrote, “Miss Roubicek hastily dashed off this morning the enclosed list of methods which can be used to keep women confined or enclosed without the use of chains. Each one of these can be varied in many ways—enabling us, as I told you in our conference last week, to cut down the use of chains by at least 50 to 75% without at all interfering with the excitement of the story or the sales of the books.”

Marston, on the other hand, couldn’t have cared less.