William Moulton Marston's Connection to Margaret Sanger

William Moulton Marston, primary creator of Wonder Woman, lived in a polyamorous relationship with his wife Elizabeth Holloway and former student Olive Byrne a.k.a. Olive Byrne Richard and Olive Richard, niece of birth control pioneer Margaret Sanger.

Jill Lepore wrote a book about Wonder Woman’s origins and highlighted the connection (that Olive Byrne is Sanger’s niece) between Marston and Sanger.  In my blog post “Wonder Woman’s Origins and Other Occurrences,” I stated, “This piece of information first came to light, for a mainstream readership, in Jill Lepore’s The Secret History of Wonder Woman.”  The inclusion of kind of readership opens the statement to interpretation.

A number of books have mentioned – and scholars have known – the connection before Lepore’s book got published in 2014.  However, not one of these books generated as much buzz as Lepore’s book has, so the mainstream crowd learned the fact from Lepore.  Also, Lepore focused her lens on the inspirations for Wonder Woman’s beginnings with the intended impact of readers remembering a sensational lifestyle, the feminist movement, and Margaret Sanger.  The media had a field day.

In his book Do the Gods Wear Capes? Spirituality, Fantasy, and Superheroes published in 2011, Ben Saunders wrote, “Olive Byrne was herself well-acquainted with sexual controversy, as the devoted niece of birth-control pioneer Margaret Sanger.”¹

Saunders’ book was reviewed in Comix-Scholars List Serve,² among other places.  It (Saunders’ book) employs critical theory which may not be palatable to readers who prefer narrative history.  Don’t knock it until you’ve tried (read) it.

In her book Margaret Sanger’s Eugenic Legacy: The Control of Female Fertility published in 2005, Angela Franks mentioned “niece”³ (referring to Olive Byrne Richard) a number of times and Margaret Sanger Marston.⁴

In Margaret Sanger: A Life of Passion published in 2011, Jean Baker mentioned Olive Byrne Richards⁵ [sic] and Margaret Sanger Marston Lampe,⁶ who can also be found in Lepore’s book.

Peter Engelman’s A History of the Birth Control Movement in America (published in 2011) has for its cover a photo that can be found in Lepore’s The Secret History of Wonder Woman.⁷  Engelman did not mention Olive Byrne or William Moulton Marston.

Not all books chronicling the birth control movement acknowledge Olive Byrne and/or Marston, just as comic-book history books may or may not refer to Margaret Sanger (even with the inclusion of Wonder Woman’s herstory in the particular book).

Gerard Jones’ Men of Tomorrow: Geeks, Gangsters and the Birth of the Comic Book linked Sanger (not to Marston but) to Harry Donenfeld who, before becoming the head honcho of DC Comics, distributed Sanger’s contraceptive devices.⁸  Donenfeld interacted with Sanger purely for business reasons.

And finally, in Wonder Woman Unbound: The Curious History of the World’s Most Famous Heroine published in April 2014 (predating Lepore’s book by months), Tim Hanley mentioned, “Olive’s aunt, Margaret Sanger, birth control’s most famous advocate.”⁹

Hanley may have not intended it, but his book endowed my memory emporium with the charts and stats of Captain Marvel a.k.a. Shazam and Wonder Woman in bondage.  Hanley’s and Lepore’s books have a lot in common (content-wise).  The impact (to me, at least) differs.

Hanley, within 2 weeks from his book’s publication, wrote an article about DC Comics’ Wonder Woman: The Amazon Princess Archives Volume 1 where he stated, “Byrne was Sanger’s niece.  Her mother, Ethel Higgins Byrne, was Sanger’s sister.”¹⁰

There are other reading materials that link Sanger to Marston.  Jill Lepore’s book is arguably the most famous one.

Notes

¹Ben Saunders.  Do the Gods Wear Capes? Spirituality, Fantasy, and Superheroes.  New York: Continuum International Publishing Group, 2011.  42.

²Greg Steirer.  "Review of Do the Gods Wear Capes?: Spirituality, Fantasy, and Superheroes."  ImageTexT: Interdisciplinary Comics Studies. 6.2 (2012): N. pag.  Department of English, University of Florida.  Web.  5 Feb. 2017.  <www.english.ufl.edu/imagetext/archives/v6_2/steirer/?print>.

³Angela Franks.  Margaret Sanger’s Eugenic Legacy: The Control of Female Fertility.  Jefferson, NC: McFarland & Company, 2005.  16; 37; 39; 261.

⁴Franks 309.

⁵Jean H. Baker.  Margaret Sanger: A Life of Passion.  New York: Hill and Wang, 2011.  181.

⁶Baker 306.

⁷Book Cover Photo.  A History of the Birth Control Movement in America.  By Peter C. Engelman.  Santa Barbara, CA: Praeger, 2011.

Jill Lepore.  The Secret History of Wonder Woman.  New York:  Vintage Books, 2015.  91.  [This is the revised edition.  The first edition was published in October 2014 by Alfred A. Knopf.]

The cover photo of A History of the Birth Control Movement in America can be found on page 91 of The Secret History of Wonder Woman.

⁸Gerard Jones.  Men of Tomorrow: Geeks, Gangsters and the Birth of the Comic Book.  New York: Basic Books, 2004.  56-57.

⁹Tim Hanley.  Wonder Woman Unbound: The Curious History of the World’s Most Famous Heroine.  Chicago, IL: Chicago Review Press, 2014.  12.

¹⁰Tim Hanley.  “America’s Silver Age.”  Comics; Gender & Sexuality.  Los Angeles Review of Books, 12 Apr. 2014.  Web.  5 Feb. 2017.  <lareviewofbooks.org/article/americas-silver-age/>.

===

This piece is supposed to be a part of the Notes of “Wonder Woman’s Origins and Other Occurrences” posted on 5 February 2017.  <robertbaytan.blogspot.com/2017/02/wonder-womans-origins-and-other.html>.