Jenna Mason

Composition 1
Mr. Salyers
April 17, 2016
ARGUMENT ESSAY DRAFT
500 WORDS/ TWO PAGES
While she is a female, Wonder Woman should not be considered
a feminist hero due to her role as a representative of
patriarchal desires as they changed throughout history as
exemplified by her appearances in comic books and descriptions by
her original author, unless one is to completely rewrite her
story and her current portrayal.
Wonder Woman began as the brain child of William Moulton
Marston, a psychologist who created the heroine as a response to
what he saw as the bloodcurdling masculinity of comics at the
time. After several failed attempts at other occupations
(including lawyer, businessman, professor, and book author), he
finally found his niche in the comic book industry, after being
hired in 1940 to defend the arguments against comic books and
their dangers to children.

Marston was an odd mix of feminist and chauvinist, believing

women morally superior to men, yet he was very controlling of the
women in his life. While he was married to Elizabeth Holloway, he
acquired a girlfriend, Olive Byrne, the niece of Margaret Sanger,
proponent of contraceptives and abortions. When Elizabeth
initially rejected the idea of a permanent affair, Marston
threatened to abandon her if she did not accept the continuation
of her rival. While portraying as a hero a woman who challenged
mens dictates and proved her strength, he then required his own
woman to submissively succumb to his demands. He described good
women as tender, submissive, peace-loving and created Wonder
Woman to be a feminine character with all the strength of
Superman plus all the allure of a good and beautiful woman. So a
woman should be a strong and defiant woman, just make sure she
also looks good and obeys men.
Maxwell Charles Gaines, the head of Sensation Comics (what
was to become DC Comics), was interested in the concept of a
female superhero, and thus allowed Marston, under the pen name
Charles Moulton, to present to the world the very first Wonder
Woman in 1941, as drawn by H. G. Peter in the All Star Comics #8.
Gifted with a costume designed by her mother (which she deems
lovely), Princess Diana of Themyscira dons the star-spangled
skirt, red and gold eagle emblazoned top, and scarlet and gold
boots for the task of returning Steve Trevor back to America

under the name Diana Prince after she disguises herself and
proves herself more worthy of such a quest than the other
Amazonian women on her island.
While Wonder Woman became a popular figure in the comic
book storyline, complaints were quickly issued concerning what
seemed to be a reoccurring fixture in her tales. Marston himself
was a proponent of the BDSM (bondage, domination, sadism, and
masochism) lifestyle, which he propounded in his 1928 book,
Emotions of Normal People, and then included in his accounts of
Wonder Woman. She often found herself chained or tied up, as
Marston later stated,
Sadism consists in the enjoyment of other peoples actual
suffering Since binding and chaining are the one harmless,
painless way of subjecting the heroine to menace and making drama
of it, I have developed elaborate ways of having Wonder Woman and
other characters confined.