The Secret History of Wonder Woman

This chapter introduces the third main character, Olive Byrne. She was born in 1904 in Corning, New York, and delivered by her aunt, Margaret Sanger. Olive was the daughter of Ethel Byrne, one of Sanger’s 10 siblings. When Olive was two years old, her mother walked out on the family and went to New York City, where she studied to be a nurse. Only single women could be in her program, so she lied and claimed to be unmarried. Olive was cared for by her grandparents until they died in 1914, after which she went to an orphanage.

At that time, Ethel Byrne and her sister Margaret were living in New York’s Greenwich Village and caught up in left-wing causes. They were both proponents of “free love, socialism, and feminism” (83). They joined organizations devoted to such ideas and rubbed shoulders with the likes of Max Eastman, Emma Goldman, and John Reed—all prominent radicals. Lou Rogers, whose work as a feminist cartoonist would later strongly influence the Wonder Woman cartoon, was another in their circle. She illustrated “The Modern Woman” page in the magazine Judge, often depicting women breaking off