William Moulton Marston, creator of Wonder Woman, never revealed where Paradise Island was during his run as Wonder Woman writer. He simply said, “on the shores of an uncharted isle set in the midst of a vast expanse of ocean.”[1]
The Wonder Woman TV pilot movie in 1975 explicitly located Bermuda Triangle[2] and the comic book Wonder Woman #224 (June-July 1976)[3] repeated this.
Why name Wonder Woman’s home Paradise Island?
While Marston was already obsessing with mythology and tackling woman suffrage in high school in 1910[4], the appearance of Child of the Amazons and Other Poems by Max Eastman in 1913 nailed down Marston’s image of an Amazon as a fictional vehicle to advance how he saw women – since Marston also saw his non-fictional wife Elizabeth Holloway as an Amazon before then[5]. From Elizabeth to Thyone (pronounced thigh o nee, looks like Taiwan to me) of Child of the Amazons to Gaia in the 1932 novel Venus with Us to Diana.
In Child of the Amazons, the Amazon Thyone falls in love with a man – this is Diana and Steve Trevor in Wonder Woman comics.
In 1914, Inez Haynes Gillmore (later Inez Haynes Irvin) published Angel Island. American men were shipwrecked on an island of women, not Amazons but winged women. This apparently inspired Paradise Island. The book mentions “South Pacific Islander”[6], so I expect this refers to the Pacific Islands (Polynesia, Melanesia, and Micronesia) and not the Philippines. We have islands and locations in the Philippines called “paradise” and “paraiso.”
Eastman and Gillmore were both suffragists. They worked together as shown by the editorial masthead of The Masses where their names appear as contributing editors[7]. Marston was a member of Harvard Men’s League for Woman Suffrage[8].
In 1915, Charlotte Perkins Gilman published a 12-part serial novel, Herland, in her self-published magazine called The Forerunner.
Herland is about a race of women, isolated from the world, who give birth without men – parthenogenesis. There is no island in Herland, but the women are thousands of years old. Marston’s Amazons remain immortal (thousands of years old and non-aging physically) on Paradise Island.
“The women of Herland have no fear of men. Why should they have? They are not timid in any sense. They are not weak; and they all have strong trained athletic bodies.”[9] Strong trained athletic bodies – very Wonder Woman comics.
In 1915, Marston began his research on the lie detector and published his findings in 1917. The lie detector is known as the predecessor of Wonder Woman’s golden lasso.
Marston was born (in 1893) at a time when suffragists and early feminists were celebrated and caricatured as Amazons – and was raised by strong women – so he absorbed the image of the “new woman” archetype early in his life (see Lepore’s Secret History and/or surf the Net for late 1800s and early 1900s history and resources to get a better feel of the milieu in which Marston grew up).
Conceptually, Wonder Woman began in the 1900s, going through iterations like Gaia in 1932 before settling as Diana in 1937[10], and finally as Diana (Prince) in the 1940s Wonder Woman comics.
So, why Paradise Island? Because of the Amazons and the suffragists that inspired them.
Notes
[1]Charles Moulton (w), Harry G. Peter (a). “Introducing Wonder Woman.” All-Star Comics #8 (Dec. 1941-Jan.1942), All-American Comics, Inc. [DC Comics]. p. 1. <Panels that follow this revelation are numbered 2 and 3; the following page is numbered 2; pages 3 and 4 are not paginated, while the rest are paginated.>
[2]“The New Original Wonder Woman.” Pilot TV movie. Wonder Woman. Written by Stanley Ralph Ross. Dir. John Erman. ABC. 7 Nov. 1975. Television.
[3]Martin Pasko (w), Curt Swan and Vince Colletta (a). Wonder Woman #224 (June-July 1976), National Periodical Publications, Inc. [DC Comics]. N. pag. <Bermuda Triangle is revealed in the story and on the letters page called Wonder Words.>
[4]Jill Lepore. The Secret History of Wonder Woman. New York: Vintage Books, 2015. pp. 6 and 343.
[5]Lepore p. 17.
[6]Inez Haynes Gillmore. Angel Island. New York: Henry Holt and Company, 1914. p. 37.
[7]The Masses 4.3 (1912): 2.
[8]Lepore p. 326. <This page shows Harvard University Archives as Lepore’s source.>
[9]Charlotte Perkins Gilman. “Herland” The Forerunner 6 (1915): 293.
[10]Trina Robbins. The Great Women Superheroes. Northampton, MA: Kitchen Sink Press, 1996. pp. 3-4.
References
Eastman, Max. Child of the Amazons and Other Poems. New York: Mitchell Kennerley, 1913.
Marston, William M. “Systolic Blood Pressure Symptoms of Deception.” Journal of Experimental Psychology 2.2 (1917): 117-163.
Marston, William. The Private Life of Julius Caesar (Venus with Us). New York: Universal Publishing, 1953. Rpt. of Venus with Us: A Tale of the Caesar. New York: Sears Publishing Co., 1932.
