ABSTRACT
As arguably the most famous female superhero of all time, Wonder Woman has been front and center on the public stage, both as a product of the social environment and as a force for creating change in it. In examining the relationship between Wonder Woman and the place of women in society in general, we must examine three major elements of the Wonder Woman comics: their real-world context including major ideas and events in the feminist movement; the internal narrative and plot devices that align themselves closely with (or against) that time period’s feminist ideals; and the geometrization of each comic, especially when comparing women and men. In the synthesis of these elements, I will try to demonstrate the connection between media and culture, and especially its two-way nature, that the social and political pressures of a generation are expressed through its art, and that its art in turn shapes and predicts the developing landscape of the real world.
