Wonder Woman Unbound

by Hanley, Tim

  It’s interesting to note that when the golden lasso was used in the examined issues, it involved Wonder Woman tying up someone else only 52 percent of the time. The other 48 percent of the time, Wonder Woman was tied up in her own lasso. So really, the golden lasso that symbolized women’s power was almost as much a hassle as it was a help.

  Amazons played lots of bondage games on Paradise Island, which could explain all of this female bondage, but the numbers don’t back it up. Bound Amazons accounted for less than 10 percent of Wonder Woman’s total bondage. Paradise Island was an important metaphor for female rule, but it wasn’t in the book all that much.

  While most of the bondage took place in the world of men, Wonder Woman always escaped and, according to Marston, was never actually suffering. One would assume that getting tied up in the world of men must have been a joke for Wonder Woman, since she could just snap her bonds and defeat the bad guys with ease. She wasn’t smiling much, though. Of the 341 panels where Wonder Woman was bound, she was smiling, laughing, or shown to be happy/amused through the art or text in only fourteen panels. Bondage was only demonstrably fun for Wonder Woman 4 percent of the time.

  For the other 96 percent of her bondage panels, Wonder Woman was not at all pleased. She was frustrated because she couldn’t help her friends, crying because she was helpless, trying very hard not to die, or having her spirit ripped from her body. These unpleasant panels outnumbered the pleasant ones 24 to 1. Wonder Woman was Marston’s champion of female power and superiority, but in her bondage panels the pleasant, loving aspects of submission were completely overshadowed by cruel dominance.

  If you look at the bondage imagery as elaborate metaphors for Marston’s theories, the metaphors do hold up. Paradise Island is a utopia, criminals get rehabilitated on Reform Island, and the world of men is a terrible, terrible place for everyone. Clearly, Wonder Woman shows that things are better with women in charge.

  However, when we look closer we can see that there were fixations. Marston’s metaphors weren’t evenly presented. Instead, a lot of the book focused on one specific component: women bound in an unpleasant manner. These panels represented Marston’s critique of patriarchal society, but in the comics they were shown ridiculously disproportionately to the rest of his theories. All of the pleasant, positive aspects of submitting to women were shorted. Instead, readers were presented with a lot of very unhappy, very tied-up women.

  Marston acknowledged that the book would inspire erotic fantasies, that it was “swell” readers got turned on by the bondage in Wonder Woman. But what was ultimately presented was a children’s comic book, full of images of unhappily bound women, meant to excite male readers. That suggests that there may have been some sadistic fetishism at play, where female characters were dominated for the reader’s erotic pleasure.

  Taking a look at the series as a whole, though, while Marston illustrated his theories by having Wonder Woman tied up in all manner of painful, unpleasant, and arguably sadistic scenarios, the series was never overtly sexual. Marston acknowledged the erotic nature of bondage, but there was nothing in the comics themselves that directly tied bondage to sex or sadistic fetishism. Wonder Woman was fiction for children, and because of its G-rated content we can only take our sadistic fetishism concerns so far.

  But Marston also wrote fiction for adults.

  Venus with Us, Marston’s Ancient Roman Sex Romp

  While Marston couldn’t delve into the sexual aspects of bondage and submission with Wonder Woman, he definitely did with Venus with Us. By taking a look at his novel, we can see how his metaphors played out in a more adult setting and then apply this knowledge to Wonder Woman.

  Venus with Us told the life story of Julius Caesar, the first emperor of Rome, with a very Marston twist. The description on its first edition in 1932 read, “The title is from the Latin ‘Venus nobiscum,’ which was Julius Caesar’s battle cry and motto. He maintained all his life that women controlled the world; that men lived, fought and ruled, that nations grew; changed and disappeared under the stimulus of women. Each step in his own career, in his judgment, decided by a woman.”

  The novel detailed all of the events of Caesar’s life that one would expect, adding that each of his achievements was motivated by women. For example, according to Marston, Caesar went to Egypt not to defeat Pompey and become the sole ruler of Rome but to rescue his kidnapped granddaughter, Gaia, and his lover, a British slave named Ursula. That he defeated Pompey and found another lover in Cleopatra were bonuses, it seemed.

  The cover of the 1932 edition was simple with an orange color scheme, and it showed Julius Caesar battling a gladiator in an arena, about to deliver the decisive blow with his cape billowing behind him like an ancient superhero. As heroic as Caesar looked on the cover, the real stars of the book were the women who influenced his life. Clearly, Marston provided another example of the benefits of submitting to the loving authority of women, this time through the guise of a serious novel for adults.

  There is, however, a second edition. In 1953, after Marston’s death, the book was reprinted as The Private Life of Julius Caesar, with a new description and cover. The back cover of this edition read: “Here is the whole bold panorama of Roman times—the debauchery, the wars, the barbaric revels and cruelties, the old pagan rites on the altar of Venus.” The description went on to exclaim that “from Egypt to England, from Greece to Gaul, he came, he saw, he conquered. But slave girl and vestal virgin, courtesan and queen, each in turn conquered Caesar!” So it had quite a different vibe; the original didn’t mention anything about debauchery or conquering.

  On the new front cover, Caesar reached for a woman who lay back on a bed and gazed at him suggestively, while a nude female slave knelt at his feet. In the background, several nude women were being whipped. The back cover had a series of images that included a naked woman being crucified, and even more nudity with another unclothed woman pouring water over Caesar as he reached up the dress of, you guessed it, yet another woman.

  This edition also kept some sketchy company. There were several other pulp novels advertised in the back, like Paprika, a tale of “the lurid life of an uninhibited Gypsy lass”; His Majesty O’Keefe, the “epic saga of the white man who became master of a South Seas island and its golden women”; and two books in one, Dope Doll and The Bigamy Kiss. Marston had no control over this edition of the book, but it’s clear what the publishers thought of it. Comparing the two, the 1953 edition’s cover and description more accurately reflected the novel. It was a lurid, suggestive sex romp.

  There was no sex whatsoever in Wonder Woman comics, just a lot of reading between the lines, but in Venus with Us, blatant sexual content was regularly discussed in terms of Marston’s theories. Marston rephrased his ideas in Roman terms; instead of talking about “submission” and “dominance” there were “servants of Venus” and “servants of Eros.” This described submission/dominance in sexual terms where Venus, the female goddess, represented submissive love while Eros, the male god, represented dominant lust.

  When a former Vestal virgin named Metala tried to seduce Caesar, he rebuffed her and said, “Is it possible that you do not understand the difference between worshiping Eros and submitting to Venus? The pleasure of Eros may rightly be enjoyed only when Venus commands.” He added that “love without pleasure is a dreary occupation; but pleasure without love is death to body and soul.” For Marston’s Caesar, sex was about submission.

  Marston did slip into his psychological vocabulary occasionally. Speaking to Alda, a Gallic slave who was his lover throughout the novel, Caesar commented, “I have a notion it’s really rather good for people to be compelled to submit to others.” Just like Paradise Island demonstrated the ideal form of submission in Wonder Woman, Caesar and his circle of women did the same in Venus with Us. And did so with bondage, of course.

  Caesar’s female associates willingly became each other’s slaves throughout the novel, regularly donning chains and clothing that reflec
ted their slave status. In one scene, Gaia and Ursula made a wager over a fencing competition in which the loser of the bet had to be the other’s slave for a month. Ursula lost, and much tickling and spanking ensued as she served Gaia. Bondage and submission were fun games for Marston’s Roman women, just as they were for his Amazons. There was mutual love and trust all around, and it was pleasant for everyone involved, though Venus with Us added a sexual dimension to this pleasure. While a slave, Ursula stated, “I love to call you Mistress … it gives me a thrill every time I say it.”

  It was Caesar who got the most thrills. He had several sexual relationships, and submitted to all of the women gladly, most notably the vestal virgin Florentia, his first love. The novel stated that for them “it was the girl who ruled, and it was the man who submitted.” Caesar’s total submission was described in this somewhat risqué paragraph:

  She made him boast himself her slave—weeping, pleading, imploring. She made him hers so utterly that even she could never grant him freedom. She enveloped him in bonds of herself whose softness was unbreakable.*

  Florentia ruled Caesar entirely, and all of the women in his life had a similar role. Just like Wonder Woman had incomparable strength and power in the world of men, Caesar was unrivaled by his peers and accomplished great things, all because of submission to the loving authority of women.

  As a counter to the benefits of submitting to women, there had to be a dark side that critiqued patriarchal society. Outside of Caesar’s circle, bondage wasn’t fun at all. In fact, it became sinister. The most notable instance involved poor Florentia. Metala was jealous and had her pirate lover, Alcibiades, kidnap Florentia. Metala kept her as a slave, humiliating the proud servant of Venus. But slavery wasn’t enough, and Metala demanded that Florentia be crucified in the most painful way possible. Caesar quickly tried to buy back Florentia from Alcibiades, but he didn’t have enough money with him. The pirate, who had cut down Florentia from the cross to sell her to Caesar, “drove his sword savagely into Florentia’s side and kicked her body over the cliff.” She landed on the deck of Caesar’s ship “with a soft, hollow thud,” and died. Metala and Alcibiades were like an ancient Roman version of Cheetah and Dr. Psycho, the villains who so often captured Wonder Woman and showed the evils of dominance.

  Venus with Us and Wonder Woman both included a select group that demonstrated the benefits of submitting to the loving authority of superior women, and in both this submission was perverted outside of the core group by dominance and cruelty. Where the comics had Wonder Woman, Venus with Us had Caesar. Both characters espoused Marston’s theories and lived them out to their benefit, but there was something more with Caesar.

  Early in the novel, Caesar was confronted by Roman troops trying to arrest him, “but Caesar, with a natural gift for psychology, detected an undercurrent of query, of calculation,” and used his psychological knowledge to escape. Caesar espoused Marston’s theories, was interested in psychology, and lived a polyamorous lifestyle with several women. In many ways, Caesar was an analogue of Marston, so it stands to reason that when we read Caesar’s thoughts on bondage and submission, these words reflect what Marston thought were acceptable, enlightened practices.

  Early in the novel, Caesar stormed the palace of Mides, a rich island ruler, to rescue Alda, one of his many lovers. There he found a room with several small, gilded cages. Inside each was a nude slave girl with a golden chain tied around her ankle; the girls were described as “human pets,” and the chain was called “a golden leash.” After entering, “Julius glanced about the room and laughed appreciatively. His beauty-loving soul approved Mides’ idea. It did not disturb his enjoyment to think that several of these girls had been stolen from his own villa. On the contrary, he felt relieved to discover that their new master was a true esthete, capable of enjoying the girls’ beauty in such an ingenious fashion.” This wasn’t fun bondage games in the style of Paradise Island. This was a man who stripped woman, put them in small cages, and thought of them as pets for his own enjoyment. That Caesar approved of this is problematic for Marston’s arguments.

  Later, when Caesar was in Egypt, Cleopatra built him a barge with a quartz floor so he could see the rowers below. These rowers were all nude slave women, masked and chained together at the wrists and ankles, forced to row the barge. When he saw this, Caesar called it “the prettiest sight I have ever seen,” “the most marvelous spectacle ever prepared for a love-starved Roman,” and “poetry of motion.” During his time touring the Nile on the barge, the novel states that “Caesar had not felt so well for twenty years. […] He felt relaxed, satisfied, rejuvenated.” Caesar enjoyed the arduous forced labor of women that was prepared specifically for his erotic pleasure. These women didn’t willingly submit to this onerous and degrading task; they were made to do it against their will.

  While Caesar wasn’t the dominant force behind these scenarios created by Mides and Cleopatra, he did enjoy them. He loved them, even, and they turned him on sexually. Marston described sadism as a dominant action that reduced people to objects. Forced labor and imprisonment were obviously dominant actions, and the captured and bound women enjoyed by Caesar weren’t viewed as people with their own wills but rather as objects meant for male pleasure. By his own definition, Marston’s hero enjoyed dominant, sadistic bondage.

  Reading Caesar as Marston’s representative, these scenes are essentially an endorsement of finding sexual pleasure in dominance. Venus with Us doesn’t disapprove of Caesar’s enjoyment. Instead, it celebrates it, describing the scenarios and Caesar’s pleasure in detailed, glowing terms. Bondage imagery was supposed to make men want to submit to women, but here the message was that it was pleasant for men to dominate women. Dominant bondage was supposed to be a critique, but here it was a celebration.

  If it was acceptable for Caesar to be aroused by Mides’s caged women or Cleopatra’s chained rowers, then it would translate that it was OK for a reader to be turned on by a bound and powerless Wonder Woman, subjected to the sadistic whims of her villainous captors. Because Wonder Woman was tied up in such a fashion for the vast majority of her bondage panels, her comic books have a new dimension. There were messages of female empowerment, but there was also imagery that would rile up dominant men and their sadistic fetishes. According to Marston, that was totally fine.

  William Moulton Marston, Bondage Connoisseur

  With Venus with Us, we see that bondage took a dark turn. It’s difficult to talk about how Marston felt about bondage outside of his psychological theories, because that’s the only way he discussed it. We know he used bondage as a metaphor, and we know this metaphor becomes strained when examined closely. But was the bondage a limited metaphor that crumbles when dug into, or was it a fetish that Marston shoehorned into his fiction with a psychological cover?

  In Wonder Woman #6, dated Fall 1943, Wonder Woman appeared at a charity function to benefit the women and children of Europe affected by the war. The main event was a Houdini-like escape, where Wonder Woman was chained up and submerged in a tank of water. It was one of the rare instances outside of Paradise Island where Wonder Woman was willingly bound. Of course, everything went wrong; the Cheetah added the golden lasso to Wonder Woman’s bonds and she barely got out of the tank alive. Nonetheless, escaping from a tank of water was a fairly pedestrian use of bondage.

  Except that Marston gave the scene an extra twist. Before Wonder Woman entered the tank, two panels described the various types of restraint that were used. The emcee said, “This is the famous ‘brank’—a leather mask worn by women prisoners in St. Lazare prison, France. It covers the entire face and muffles a prisoner’s voice! The wide iron collar on Wonder Woman’s neck comes from Tibet—it prevents the prisoner from bending his head. This ancient Greek manacle clamps the ankles firmly together.” Also added was a pile of chains and, secretly, the golden lasso. Now this is ridiculously elaborate. It wasn’t enough to have chains and masks and manacles, they had to be fancy too. They were foreign or
ancient or infamous, and Marston took up a lot of space to describe them. The items were specific, and Marston knew what he was talking about.*

  A brank, also known as a scold’s bridle, was an iron mask that resembled a Hannibal Lecter-style muzzle. The goal was to cover the mouth, not the whole head. Inside the mask was a long bridle bit that went in the mouth so that the wearer’s voice was muffled. Sometimes this bit had spikes on the bottom, to discourage any attempt at talking. Basically, it was a torture device, and it was used mainly on women to silence them.

  In certain areas of Europe from the sixteenth to the early nineteenth century, if a woman was suspected of being a witch, wearing the brank was one of the punishments she might receive. It was also used on wives who were gossips or nagged or talked back to their husbands. If a wife was considered impertinent, her husband could drag her to the local judge where she’d be sentenced to wear the brank. Usually a chain and a bell were attached and she would be paraded through the streets where people could throw things at her and beat her. It was a degrading and humiliating punishment.

  An interpretation of the brank, neck collar, leg manacles, chains, and interwoven lasso on a female form. KATE LETH

  However, the brank in Wonder Woman was slightly different. It was a leather mask that covered the entire head and was unique to St. Lazare’s prison, an actual place. Formerly a hospital, St. Lazare’s became a prison during the French Revolution, then exclusively a women’s prison in 1896 that housed mainly murderers and prostitutes before it was closed down in 1935. The leather brank was used on dangerous female prisoners when they had visitors. The mask prevented the guest from transferring notes, poisons, or small metal files to the prisoner via a kiss. The brank was used at St. Lazare’s as late as the 1920s. Interestingly, one of the prison’s most famous inmates during the French Revolution was the Marquis de Sade, the libertine torture enthusiast from whom we get the term “sadism.”