Hypatia Pt 1*

As Lovely as Aphrodite, as Wise as Athena.

These words appear on the splash page of every Golden Age Wonder Woman that Marston wrote. They always remind me of another woman who invariably is described the same way, Hypatia of Alexandria. Hypatia was a Neoplatonist philosopher, born circa 355CE in Alexandria, Egypt. She was Alexandria’s most famous teacher at the turn of the fifth century. According to contemporary sources, she was brilliant, beautiful, and one of the most respected individuals in Alexandria.” In her book, Hypatia of Alexandria, Maria Dzielska writes that “high officials … who assumed the burden of public responsibilities in Alexandria paid early calls on Hypatia as one of the foremost people of the city (38).”

She had the political acumen to advise the rulers of the city while remaining officially detached from affairs of state. Students came from all parts of the Greco-Roman world to study mathematics and philosophy with her. For a woman to have that kind of power in a truly cosmopolitan city, a city where peace was always tenuous, is a testament to her skill and wisdom. She wielded her power behind the scenes, managing to stay out of danger by not publicly favoring any side over another.

Sadly, she is more famous today for the brutal nature of her death than for any of her accomplishments in life. In 415CE, she was pulled out of her carriage, dragged to the Caesarium, and flayed to death by a Christian mob. Some consider her a pagan martyr. In the intervening centuries, the brutality of her death and the subsequent romanticisation of her life have obscured Hypatia the person as well as the accomplishments that made her both famous and alternately beloved and reviled in her own time.

Wonder Woman too was beloved and reviled, both in the comic and in the United States. Clearly, the Japanese and German spies whose plots she foiled were against her. Those who were good, liked and admired her. She was no less divisive in the US. Meant to be an ideal role model, she was clearly drawn for the male gaze. Her skimpy outfits, and those of other Amazons, raised eyebrows in and out of the comic itself. There were some that protested, but she was an instant hit with almost everyone. Strong, brave, and wise, traits she shares with Hypatia, Wonder Woman was a new kind of role model that women and girls could look up to. She showed young girls as no one else could, that they, too, could be and do whatever they tried to do.

Such strength and wisdom attracted both admirers and detractors, sometimes even violence. While the violence in the comic was fake, it mirrored the real violence of World War II, as well as the violence used against Hypatia and strong, educated women in every place and time. There is no evidence of physical violence toward Hypatia until her death, yet she had her verbal detractors. She was called a witch and was accused of practicing magic. Wonder Woman, too, was called a witch and worse in the comic. They were feared by those who did not understand them, like most strong women today, a subject I will explore in my next post.

*I have copied word for word a paper I previously wrote for this piece.*

Wonder Woman

If you ask me, there’s no better day to begin writing a Wonder Woman blog than the fourth of July; Independence Day in the US. There was no one more patriotic than Wonder Woman. Even Superman, created in 1939, didn’t fight for the “American Way” until 1942. Wonder Woman’s mandate from Athena and Aphrodite themselves was to fight alongside Captain Steve Trevor for American Democracy. Even her original outfit, with its blue, star-spangled skirt and gold eagle spread across her chest, incorporated symbols of the United States.

It was 1941 and war was raging in Europe and Asia. Hidden behind it’s shield of fog, Paradise Island received its first male visitor. Captain Trevor’s plane had crashed. Princess Diana saved him and won the right to fly him back to the United States. She came on a mission to bring peace to the world by fighting alongside Trevor against German and Japanese operatives determined to sink America’s might before it could join the war.

We’re all fighting for American Democracy now. Well, those of us who believe in the promise of what the United States can become. We’ve been working these last two decades to understand the many ways we’ve fallen short. Racism, sexism, heteronormativity, misogyny, violence, and ableism have all flourished here. They flourished in the original comics as well. Although Wonder Woman was to be a feminist hero, it was a 40s feminism that still thought of home and motherhood as a woman’s highest calling.

Wonder Woman is a problematic figure in the way we all are: we’re human. She may have had super strength due to her Amazon training, she may have been fast for the same reason, and she may have had the gifts of her gods – including her magic lasso, but after all she, too, was human. Some of the predicaments she gets herself into are due to her own carelessness or miscalculations. No, Wonder Woman is not the perfect woman, in spite of the expressed intention of her creator, William Moulton Marston. Wonder Woman was, in his words, “psychological propaganda for the type of woman who, I believe, should rule the world.”

The wonder women in the title of this blog do not refer to women who are perfect in any way. Rather, they are women who used what they had in the service of their families, their country, their god(s), or their communities. Women who fought racism, sexism, heteronormativity, ableism, misogyny, and violence in their own backyards. There are a lot of them out there. Join me as I go in search of them.