Themes[
edit] Marston's "Wonder Woman" is an early example of bondage themes that were entering popular culture in the 1930s. 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, who dropped such characters as the Nazi-like blond female slaver
Eviless completely, despite her having formed the original
Villany Inc. of WW's enemies (in
Wonder Woman #28, the last by Marston).
Though Marston had described female nature as submissive, in his other writings and interviews[SUP]
[citation needed][/SUP] 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.[SUP]
[10][/SUP]
He purposely tried to induce eroticism in readers through these images of submission, because he aimed to condition readers to becoming more readily accepting to submission to loving authorities rather than being so assertive to their own destructive egos.
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!".[SUP]
[11][/SUP]
Marston combined these themes with others, including restorative and transformative justice, rehabilitation, regret and its role in civilization. These appeared often in his depiction of the near-ideal Amazon civilization of
Paradise Island, and especially its
Reform Island penal colony, which played a central role in many stories, and was the "loving" alternative to
retributive justice of the world run by men. These themes are particularly evident in his last story, in which prisoners freed by Eviless, who have responded to Amazon rehabilitation and now have good dominance/submission, stop her and restore the Amazons to power.
Some of these themes continued on in Silver Age characters who may have been influenced by Marston, notably
Saturn Girl and
Saturn Queen, who (like Eviless and her female army) are also from Saturn, also clad in tight dark red bodysuits, also blond or red-haired, and also have telepathic powers.[SUP]
[12][/SUP] Stories involving the latter have been especially focused on the emotions involved in changing sides from evil to good, or the use of power over minds even to do good. Wonder Woman's golden lasso and Girdle of Venus in particular were the focus of many of the early stories, and have the same capability to influence people for good in the short term that Transformation Island offered in the longer term. The Venus Girdle was an allegory for Marston's theory of "sex love" training, where people can be "trained" to embrace submission through eroticism.[SUP]
[citation needed] [/SUP]