Free Wonder Woman Unbound by Tim Hanley

forlornly at her bonds.
    Marston took the metaphor even further in Wonder Woman #5. Not only did the fiendish Dr. Psycho capture Wonder Woman and lock her in a cage, he then used a special device to rip her spirit from her body. As Wonder Woman’s body slumped lifelessly in its cage, Dr. Psycho chained her spirit to the wall. Wonder Woman tried desperately to send out a mental distress call to the Holliday Girls, but it was no use; she couldn’t do anything without her body. It wasn’t a subtle message, but it was certainly evocative: don’t let men have control or they will steal your spirit and render you a powerless shell of your true self.
    The brutality of the bondage of women by men was meant to critique patriarchal society and illustrate the political and social oppression of women. When Byrne expressed concerns that patriarchy was too powerful for women to overcome, Marston offered a ray of hope, stating, “My Wonder Woman often lets herself be tied into a bundle with chains as big as your arm. But in the end she easily snaps the chains. Women can do lots of things by letting men think they’re fettered when they’re not.” Even with Dr. Psycho, eventually Wonder Woman’s spirit escaped its bonds, jumped back into her body, and defeated him. The dominant patriarchal society was strict, but in the end it could never keep a strong woman down.
    The Bondage Battle
    Soon after All-American Publications began publishing Wonder Woman, Sensation Comics, and Comic Cavalcade, Max Gaines received several concerned letters from the company’s editorial advisory board. Josette Frank, the staff advisor of the Children’s Book Committee at the Child Study Association of America, wrote to Gaines that “this feature does lay you open to considerable criticism from any such group as ours, partly on the basis of the woman’s costume (or lack of it), and partly on the basis of sadistic bits showing women chained, tortured, etc.” Frank advised Gaines to take her criticisms “very seriously” because she’d heard a lot of concerns about the bondage imagery.
    W. W. D. Sones, a professor of education and director of curriculum study at the University of Pittsburgh, agreed and wrote, “My impressions confirmed those of Miss Frank that there was a considerable amount of chains and bonds, so much so that the bondage idea seemed to dominate the story.” Responding to Marston’s claims about submission and metaphors, Sones was unconvinced and stated, “I could not help but feel that such subtle and almost mystic purposes were a business and social risk.”
    Assistant editor Dorothy Roubicek was given the job of sorting out these complaints. She sent Marston some sketches of less revealing costumes Wonder Woman could wear, and suggested that Wonder Woman avoid Paradise Island, which was obviously a hub for bondage imagery. Marston refused to make any changes; he replied to Gaines with lengthy letters arguing against Frank and Sones’s comments. After months of acting as a go-between for Marston and the advisory board’s letters, Gaines was weary of all the psychological mumbo jumbo and was about to drop the issue when he received another letter that he found very unsettling.
    It was a fan letter addressed to Marston that had arrived at the All-American offices, from an US Army sergeant who wrote, “I am one of those odd, perhaps unfortunate men who derive an extreme erotic pleasure from the mere thought of a beautiful girl, chained or bound, or masked, or wearing extreme high-heels or high-laced boots—in fact, any sort of constriction or strain whatsoever. […] Have you the same interest in bonds and fetters that I have?” The sergeant also said that he was a big fan of William Seabrook, the traveler and occultist, who wrote a lot about “chained women.” *
    This didn’t go over well with Gaines at all. Psychological squabbling was one thing, but a reader aroused by the bondage imagery was far more troubling. Gaines