Like all the Amazons, Queen Hippolyte enjoyed a bountiful life brimming with every happiness—save one. After centuries of personal development and self-actualization, and ruling over a thriving nation, her heart ached for a different kind of love. She longed for a child. Unfortunately, Aphrodite’s gender restrictions presented a significant impediment to motherhood—but that was okay because Marston had read Pygmalion, the ...
Note: This post builds on The History of Hercules and Herstory of Hippolyte. The legend of the Amazons unfolds on page two of Wonder Woman‘s first issue, told through a scroll Wonder Woman dropped shortly after she arrived in America. A Smithsonian archaeologist called the manuscript “an ancient document sought for centuries — the History of the Unconquerable Amazons!” Marston’s Amazon-centric ...
What’s so special about the Girdle of Hippolyte? One rewarding aspect of reading Wonder Woman is how her story weaves through a broad literary world, from classical mythology to Shakespeare, endowing fantastical comics with a palpable sense of reality. That is rarely the case with other superheroes. If you look up Krypton in the Encyclopedia Brittanica, you will learn about ...
“The truth does seem to change according to who is looking for it — and why.” Phyllis chesler In the pages of Wonder Woman, Marston took the story of Hercules’ Ninth Labor and turned it on its head, offering an alternate version, this time from the Amazons’ point of view. He constructed a cosmology for Wonder Woman’s universe that was particularly ...