63 pages • 2-hour read
The Secret History of Wonder Woman
A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Symbols & Motifs
Chains
Chains are a ubiquitous motif in the book, used as a sign of oppression. As a symbol borrowed from slavery, they were used by early proponents of women’s rights to mean the same thing they meant to African Americans: slavery (in this case to men), lack of freedom, and suppression of rights. Lepore points to their use throughout feminist literature, and the book reproduces a number of examples drawn by artists like Lou Rogers. Margaret Sanger uses their image to represent the enslavement of women who are forced to bear children, writing that “[b]irth control could unlock those chains” (102). Likewise, Marston adopts chains in Wonder Woman to show the plight of women everywhere kept down by man’s domination. Some would argue he overdoes it, as bondage of some form is everywhere in the pages of the comic, leaving him open to the criticism that it actually represents sadism. At one point his publisher, Charlie Gaines, suggested reducing the use of chains in the comic by up to 75%, arguing it wouldn’t “at all interfer[e] with the excitement of the story or the sales of the books” (242).
Wonder Woman’s Bracelets
The bracelets Wonder Woman wears were inspired by Olive Byrne, who wore them for the same reason people wear wedding bands: to represent their love through marriage to their spouse. Byrne and Marston held a ceremony in 1928 that functioned as a wedding, binding them in commitment to each other. Marston uses the same style bracelets for Wonder Woman as a symbol of women’s power. According to Wonder Woman’s origin story, the Greek goddess Aphrodite helped women escape bondage in Greece. They had become slaves of men after Hercules stole Hippolyte’s magic girdle, without which she lost her unparalleled power. After they escaped to Paradise Island, Aphrodite told them they must continue wearing the wrist bands (bracelets) that had been part of their shackles to remind them what happened and to stay away from men. As bands without chains, the bracelets represent women’s great power and have a magical function of their own: stopping bullets. However, if one of the Amazon women allowed a man to weld chains to her bracelets, she would lose all her powers. In that sense, they function a bit like kryptonite does for Superman.
Wonder Woman’s Lasso
The magic lasso Wonder Woman carries mostly serves to compel anyone tied up in it to tell the truth. It also has another function for someone bound by it, which is hypnosis. In the story about Gloria Bullfinch, the owner of a department store that pays women too little, Wonder Woman ties up Gloria in the lasso to hypnotize her into adopting the identity of a worker, so she can work in the store and see firsthand the exploitation taking place. Lepore says little about the lasso besides these two points, but it’s clear that, in a sense, it symbolizes Marston’s lie detector test. By forcing someone to tell the truth, it allows Wonder Woman to discern truth from lies—just as Marston believed he could do through his testing methods.
Unlock the meaning behind every key symbol & motif
See how recurring imagery, objects, and ideas shape the narrative.
- Explore how the author builds meaning through symbolism
- Understand what symbols & motifs represent in the text
- Connect recurring ideas to themes, characters, and events