Separated at Birth?
Martha was apparently quite the hottie back in the days of yore and before. Is she perhaps an ancestor of Polygamy poster child, Chloe Sevigny?
Martha was apparently quite the hottie back in the days of yore and before. Is she perhaps an ancestor of Polygamy poster child, Chloe Sevigny?
A few posts ago I wrote about polygamy and the TV “Big Love”. It brought up memories of a rather remarkable man named William Marston (1893-1947). Doctor Marston was a psychology professor, an inventor and a writer. It is the last two occupations that would have a lasting effect on society.
Doctor Marston’s most famous invention was a systolic blood pressure test. It wasn’t used for health purposes but was developed into an early form of a lie detector test. Doctor Marston’s other invention, under the pen name Charles Moulton, was an iconic media character known as Wonder Woman.
Wonder Woman herself was a remarkable invention. In the middle of a World War, during a very conservative period of America absent many of the civil liberties we currently take for granted, comes a self-confident, supremely strong, scantily clad woman, resident of an island inhabited only by women. Marston made sure to point out these differences from the “modern” woman of the time who was still expected to clean the house, cook dinner and raise the children. When Wonder Woman first arrives in America and decides to stay awhile, she looks in a shop window and despairs that the clothes have “so much material” while some locals have an astonished reaction to her outfit which is basically a one piece bathing suit and hooker boots. In a subsequent story where her eternally suffering boyfriend, Steve Trevor, gains greater strength then her in his attempt to make her go truly ga-ga over him, she thinks: Isn’t it more fun to make the man obey.
So what does that make her creator, who wrote for the strip until about two weeks before he died? One of the first modern feminists. Doctor Marston believed the female to be superior to the male and that when women finally took over, things like war, greed, poverty, etc… would vanish from the face of the earth. Doctor Marston’s ideas weren’t the only thing that were unusual. His personal life was as well. While in college, Marston met Elizabeth Halloway and eventually the two were married. Later, while teaching, a student of his, Olive Byrne moved in with the pair. The relationship was more than friendship. Marston had children by both women. The unusual polyamorous arrangement was never a secret, the women were friends to the point that the ladies named their children after each other and Mr. and Mrs. formally adopted Ms. Byrne’s children. Olive’s son pointed out that: “It was an arrangement where they lived together fairly harmoniously.”
Now to the point of this whole thing. When people think of polygamy, they conjure images of arranged marriages and assigned child brides. While, they never called it a marriage, it is an example of a successful polyamorous relationship. This relationship developed naturally. In fact, after Marston’s death from lung cancer in 1947, Elizabeth and Olive continued to live together until Olive’s death in the 1980’s. Elizabeth died fairly recently in 1999 at the age of 100. It seems fitting considering both women were inspirations for Wonder Woman. Elizabeth provided the spunky personality while Olive, with her dark hair, blue eyes and large silver bracelets provided the physical model. Basically, it shows that this type of a relationship can work and perhaps work better than the “traditional family structure”.
There are two unfortunate things here. First is the early death of Doctor Marston. In just a few years after his death, Frederic Wertham released his work Seduction of the Innocent accusing comics of causing all sorts of social ills such as juvenile delinquency and homosexuality. Things went so far as Congressional hearings. I believe Marston’s defense of comic books in general, an art form he loved, and his own creation specifically would have been fascinating. Second, there is no decent biography of Doctor Marston available.
Portions of this entry are derived from Les Daniels’ “Wonder Woman, The Complete History” (Chronicle Books, 2000) and Nick Gillespie’s “William Marston’s Secret Identity” (Reason Magazine, May 2001)
HBO’s latest sensation is a series called Big Love. It’s all about polygamy and it was created by gay couple. Creators Mark V. Olsen and Will Scheffer wanted to create an unbiased look at polygamy. Technically they are exploring a subset of polygamy called polgyny, the marriage of one man and multiple women the most common form of “plural marriage” in the United States thanks to offshoot sects of our friends at The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, informally known as The Mormons.
I became interested in the history of this unique group with the publication of Jon Krakauer’s “Under the Banner of Heaven”. A fascinating book it presents some of the more recent cases of violence in the breakaway Mormon sects (most famously the Fundamental Latter Day Saints or FLDS) and contrasts them with the history of Mormonism in general. It’s a pretty good read. Pick it up if you come across it.
Now, the show actually presents two views of polygyny. We first encounter Bill Henrickson and his wives: Barb, Nicki and Margene. They live in three adjacent houses with a common backyard. This is the voluntary polygyny family. Bill, one of the lost boys thrown out of the compound he called home to reduce competition for wives has developed his relationships with his wives naturally (or as naturally as possible in this situation). Even though the family is strictly patriarchal and Bill is unquestionably the king of his castle, he and his wives are in the situation entirely by consent. (The children are a different matter.) Bill and his family have chosen to live in the mainstream rather than remain on the sect’s compound. It must mirror the difficulties that polygamists have when trying to blend in with society at large.
The other view of polygyny is shown in via the Juniper Creek compound. Here the Mormon sect has separated itself from the rest of the world. It is obviously inspired by the FLDS sect at Colorado City/Hildale. Here marriage is not the product of a developing relationship. Women are assigned to their husbands by the compound’s prophet. (The prophet is an office established by Joseph Smith when he founded the LDS and is believed to be appointed by God.) Though there are similarities to arranged marriages, they are less stable. If the prophet is displeased with a man’s behavior, he could be expelled and his wives could be reassigned to others. Women are very much property and not considered an equal.
We have Bill’s relationships, the good polygamy, and the compound marriages, the bad polygamy. While Bill’s marriages are far from idyllic, I think they show that the one man and one woman dynamic isn’t necessarily the only way we need to go. As long as all parties involved are consenting and of age, there is no real reason to discourage these types of relationships by making them illegal. Of course, all types of polygamy must be legal and any number of men could marry any number of women. Or any number of men could marry any number of other men. Or any number of women could marry any number of other women. It’s certainly not up to government to regulate happiness or attempt to make all relationships conform to a cookie cutter norm. And it’s not a duty of government to deny responsibilities and benefits to a minority. Our constitution is engineered to protect these people. Otherwise we simply become a tyranny of the majority.