William Moulton Marston

William Moulton Marston
(l to r) William Moulton Marston, H. G. Peter, Sheldon Mayer, Max Gaines (1942)
Born	May 9, 1893(1893-05-09) Cliftondale, Massachusetts
Died	May 2, 1947(1947-05-02) (aged 53) Rye, New York
Cause of death	skin cancer
Nationality	American
Other names	Charles Moulton
Education	Harvard University B.A. 1915 L.L.B 1918 Ph.D. 1921 (Psychology)
Occupation	Psychologist Writer
Employer	American University Tufts University
Known for	Systolic blood-pressure test Creator of Wonder Woman
Successor	Robert Kanigher
Spouse	Elizabeth Holloway Marston
Partner	Olive Byrne
Children	(Elizabeth's children): Pete & Olive Ann (Olive's children): Byrne & Donn

Dr. William Moulton Marston (May 9, 1893 – May 2, 1947), also known by the pen name Charles Moulton, was an American psychologist, feminist theorist, inventor and comic book writer who created the character Wonder Woman. Two women, his wife Elizabeth Holloway Marston and Olive Byrne (who lived with the couple in a polyamorous relationship), served as exemplars for the character and greatly influenced her creation.^[1][2]

He was inducted into the Comic Book Hall of Fame in 2006.

Biography

Early life and career

Born in Saugus, Massachusetts, William Marston was educated at Harvard University, receiving his B.A. in 1915, an L.L.B. in 1918, and a Ph.D. in Psychology in 1921. After teaching at American University in Washington D.C. and Tufts University in Medford MA, Marston traveled to Universal Studios in California in 1929, where he spent a year as Director of Public Services.

Psychologist and inventor

Marston is credited as the creator of the systolic blood pressure test used in an attempt to detect deception, which became one component of the modern polygraph. According to their son, Marston's wife Elizabeth Holloway Marston was also involved in the development of the systolic blood-pressure test: "According to Marston’s son, it was his mother Elizabeth, Marston’s wife, who suggested to him that "When she got mad or excited, her blood pressure seemed to climb" (Lamb, 2001). Although Elizabeth is not listed as Marston’s collaborator in his early work, Lamb, Matte (1996), and others refer directly and indirectly to Elizabeth’s work on her husband’s deception research. She also appears in a picture taken in his polygraph laboratory in the 1920s (reproduced in Marston, 1938).^[3][4] Some have linked this device to Wonder Woman's Lasso of Truth, but a direct connection is difficult to demonstrate.

From this work, Marston had been convinced that women were more honest and reliable than men, and could work faster and more accurately. During his lifetime, Marston championed the causes of women of the day.

Marston was also a writer of essays in popular psychology. In 1928, he published Emotions of Normal People, which elaborated the DISC Theory. Marston viewed people behaving along two axes, with their attention being either passive or active, depending on the individual's perception of his or her environment as either favorable or antagonistic. By placing the axes at right angles, four quadrants form with each describing a behavioral pattern:

• Dominance produces activity in an antagonistic environment
• Inducement produces activity in a favourable environment
• Submission produces passivity in a favourable environment
• Compliance produces passivity in an antagonistic environment.

Marston posited that there is a male notion of freedom that is inherently anarchic and violent, and an opposing female notion based on "Love Allure" that leads to an ideal state of submission to loving authority.

Wonder Woman

Creation

In an October 25, 1940, interview conducted by former student Olive Byrne (under the pseudonym 'Olive Richard') and published in Family Circle, titled "Don't Laugh at the Comics", Marston described what he saw as the great educational potential of comic books (a follow-up article was published two years later in 1942.^[5] This article caught the attention of comics publisher Max Gaines, who hired Marston as an educational consultant for National Periodicals and All-American Publications, two of the companies that would merge to form the future DC Comics.

In the early 1940s, the DC line was dominated by superpowered male characters such as the Green Lantern and its flagship character, Superman, as well as the gadget-based Batman. According to the Fall 2001 issue of the Boston University alumni magazine, it was his wife Elizabeth's idea to create a female superhero: "William Moulton Marston, a psychologist already famous for inventing the polygraph (forerunner to the magic lasso), struck upon an idea for a new kind of superhero, one who would triumph not with fists or firepower, but with love. 'Fine,' said Elizabeth. 'But make her a woman.'"^[1]

Marston introduced the idea to Max Gaines, co-founder with Jack Liebowitz of All-American Publications. Given the go-ahead, Marston developed Wonder Woman with Elizabeth (whom Marston believed to be a model of that era's unconventional, liberated woman).^[1] In creating Wonder Woman, Marston was also inspired by Olive Byrne, who lived with the couple in a polygamous/polyamorous relationship.^[6] Marston's pseudonym, Charles Moulton, combined his own and Gaines' middle names.

In a 1943 issue of The American Scholar, Marston wrote:

Not even girls want to be girls so long as our feminine archetype lacks force, strength, and power. Not wanting to be girls, they don't want to be tender, submissive, peace-loving as good women are. Women's strong qualities have become despised because of their weakness. The obvious remedy is to create a feminine character with all the strength of Superman plus all the allure of a good and beautiful woman.^[7]

Development

Marston intended his character, which he called Suprema, to be "tender, submissive, peaceloving as good women are," combining "all the strength of a Superman plus all the allure of a good and beautiful woman." His character was a native of an all-female utopia who became a crime-fighting U.S. government agent, using her superhuman strength and agility, and her ability to force villains to tell the truth by binding them with her magic lasso. Her appearance, including her heavy silver bracelets (which she used to deflect bullets), was based somewhat on Olive Byrne.

Editor Sheldon Mayer replaced the name "Suprema" with "Wonder Woman", and the character made her debut in All Star Comics #8 (December 1941). The character next appeared in Sensation Comics #1 (January 1942), and six months later, Wonder Woman #1 debuted. Except for four months in 2006, the series has been in print ever since, and it now appears bi-monthly. The stories were initially written by Marston and illustrated by newspaper artist Harry Peter. During his life Marston had written many articles and books on psychological topics, but his last six years of writing were devoted to his comics creation.

William Moulton Marston died of cancer on May 2, 1947 in Rye, New York, seven days shy of his 54th birthday. After his death, Elizabeth and Olive continued to live together until Olive's death in the late 1980s; Elizabeth died in 1993, aged 100. In 1985, Marston was posthumously named as one of the honorees by DC Comics in the company's 50th anniversary publication Fifty Who Made DC Great.^[8]

Themes

Marston's Wonder Woman is an early example of bondage themes entering popular culture: physical submission appears again and again throughout Marston's comics work, with Wonder Woman and her criminal opponents frequently being tied up or otherwise restrained, and her Amazonian friends engaging in frequent wrestling and bondage play. These elements were softened by later writers of the series. Though Marston had described female nature as submissive, in his other writings and interviews^{[citation needed]} he referred to submission as a noble practice and did not shy away from the sexual implications, saying:

The only hope for peace is to teach people who are full of pep and unbound force to enjoy being bound... Only when the control of self by others is more pleasant than the unbound assertion of self in human relationships can we hope for a stable, peaceful human society... Giving to others, being controlled by them, submitting to other people cannot possibly be enjoyable without a strong erotic element".^[9]

About male readers, he later wrote: "Give them an alluring woman stronger than themselves to submit to, and they'll be proud to become her willing slaves!"^[10]

Bibliography

Doctoral Dissertation: "Systolic blood pressure symptoms of deception and constituent mental states." (Harvard University, 1921)

Books

• (1999; originally published 1928) Emotions of Normal People. Taylor & Francis Ltd. ISBN 0-415-21076-3
• (1930) Walter B. Pitkin & William M. Marston, The Art of Sound Pictures. New York: Appleton.
• (1931) Integrative Psychology: A Study of Unit Response (with C. Daly King, and Elizabeth Holloway Marston).

• (c. 1932) Venus with us; a tale of the Caesar. New York: Sears.
• (1936) You can be popular. New York: Home Institute.
• (1937) Try living. New York: Crowell.
• (1938) The lie detector test. New York: Smith.
• (1941) March on! Facing life with courage. New York: Doubleday, Doran.
• (1943) F.F. Proctor, vaudeville pioneer (with J.H. Feller). New York: Smith.

Journal Articles

• (1917) "Systolic blood pressure symptoms of deception." Journal of Experimental Psychology, Vol 2(2), 117–163.
• (1920) "Reaction time symptoms of deception." Journal of Experimental Psychology, 3, 72–87.
• (1921) "Psychological Possibilities in the Deception Tests." Journal of Criminal Law & Criminology, 11, 551–570.
• (1923) "Sex Characteristics of Systolic Blood Pressure Behavior." Journal of Experimental Psychology, 6, 387–419.
• (1924) "Studies in Testimony." Journal of Criminal Law & Criminology, 15, 5–31.
• (1924) "A Theory of Emotions and Affection Based Upon Systolic Blood Pressure Studies." American Journal of Psychology, 35, 469–506.
• (1925) "Negative type reaction-time symptoms of deception." Psychological Review, 32, 241–247.
• (1926) "The psychonic theory of consciousness." Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology, 21, 161–169.
• (1927) "Primary emotions." Psychological Review, 34, 336–363.
• (1927) "Consciousness, motation, and emotion." Psyche, 29, 40–52.
• (1927) "Primary colors and primary emotions." Psyche, 30, 4–33.
• (1927) "Motor consciousness as a basis for emotion." Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology, 22, 140-150.
• (1928) "Materialism, vitalism and psychology." Psyche, 8, 15–34.
• (1929) "Bodily symptoms of elementary emotions." Psyche, 10, 70–86.
• (1929) "The psychonic theory of consciousness—an experimental study," (with C.D. King). Psyche, 9, 39–5.
• (1938) "'You might as well enjoy it.'" Rotarian, 53, No. 3, 22–25.
• (1938) "What people are for." Rotarian, 53, No. 2, 8-10.
• (1944) "Why 100,000,000 Americans read comics." The American Scholar, 13 (1), 35-44.
• (1944) "Women can out-think men!" Ladies Home Journal, 61 (May), 4-5.
• (1947) "Lie detection's bodily basis and test procedures," in: P.L. Harriman (Ed.), Encyclopedia of Psychology, New York, 354-363.

• Articles "Consciousness," "Defense mechanisms," and "Synapse" in the 1929 edition of the Encyclopædia Britannica.

Notes

1. ^ ^{a b c} 'Who Was Wonder Woman?
2. ^ OUR TOWNS; She's Behind the Match For That Man of Steel
3. ^ WILLIAM MOULTON MARSTON, THE NATIONAL RESEARCH COUNCIL, AND WONDER WOMAN
4. ^ Committee to Review the Scientific Evidence on the Polygraph (National Research Council (U.S.)), Mark H. Moore, National Research Council (U.S.). Board on Behavioral, Cognitive, and Sensory Sciences, National Research Council (U.S.). Committee on National Statistics, National Research Council (U.S.). Division of Behavioral and Social Sciences and Education (2003). The Polygraph and Lie Detection. National Academies Press. ISBN 0309084369. http://books.google.com/books?id=USg-j9esZagC&pg=PA292&lpg=PA292&dq=elizabeth+marston+%22wonder+woman%22&source=web&ots=eL7Vd4wTR4&sig=pzvRdGsniz6h9-dGgEXdlyzdem4. 
5. ^ Richard, Olive. Our Women Are Our Future
6. ^ Daniels, Les. Wonder Woman: The Complete History, (DC Comics, 2000), pp. 28-30.
7. ^ The American Scholar, 1943.
8. ^ Marx, Barry, Cavalieri, Joey and Hill, Thomas (w), Petruccio, Steven (a), Marx, Barry (ed). "William Moulton Marston Wonder Woman's Legend Born" Fifty Who Made DC Great: 17 (1985), DC Comics
9. ^ Jones, Gerard Men of Tomorrow New York: Basic Books 2004, p. 210
10. ^ Quoted in Daniels, DC Comics Little, Brown and Company, 1995, p. 58; Goulart, Ron, Great American Comic Books Publications International Ltd, 2001, p. 113; Wright, Nicky The Classic Era of American Comics Contemporary Books 2000, p. 98. The third book does not quote with an exclamation point.

References

• Biographical entry in Jaques Cattell, (ed.), American Men of Science: A Biographical Directory, Seventh Edition, (Lancaster, 1944), pp. 1173–1174.
• Bunn, Geoffrey C. "The Lie Detector, Wonder Woman and Liberty: The Life and Works of William Moulton Marston, " History of the Human Sciences 10 (1997): 91–119.
• Daniels, Les, and Chip Kidd. Wonder Woman: A Complete History. (Chronicle Books, 2000); ISBN 0-8118-2913-8
• Gillespie, Nick. "William Marston’s Secret Identity: The strange private life of Wonder Woman's creator." Reason, May 2001.
• Glen, Joshua. "Wonder-working power." Boston Globe, 4 April 2004.
• Lamb, Marguerite. "Who Was Wonder Woman? Long-ago LAW alumna Elizabeth Marston was the muse who gave us a superheroine." Boston University, Fall 2001.
• Malcom, Andrew H."She's Behind the Match For That Man of Steel". New York Times. 18 February 1992.
• Moore, Mark Harrison. The Polygraph and Lie Detection. Committee to Review the Scientific Evidence on the Polygraph (National Research Council (U.S.)), 2003.
• Richard, Olive. "Our Women Are Our Future." Family Circle, 14 August 1942.
• William Moulton Marston at the Grand Comics Database
• William Moulton Marston at the Comic Book DB
• "Charles Moulton" at the Comic Book DB

External links

• William Moulton Marston.com
• William M. Marston at the Internet Movie Database
• FBI File of William Moulton Marston
• Bibliography on the histories of lie detectors

Preceded by None

Wonder Woman writer 1941–1947

Succeeded by Robert Kanigher

Persondata
Name	Marston, William Moulton
Alternative names
Short description	Psychologist
Date of birth	May 9, 1893
Place of birth	Cliftondale, Massachusetts
Date of death	May 2, 1947
Place of death	Rye, New York