From Oz to Amazon Island: American Feminist Matriarchalism in U.S. Children's Popular Culture

In the early twentieth century, two seemingly unrelated sets of children’s media tapped into an under-represented brand of American feminist politics known as matriarchalism. First charted by suffragist Matilda Joslyn Gage, matriarchalism was based on the premise that early human societies were female-ruled, and that the story of human “progress” was, in reality, a sordid tale of masculine oppression of feminine power. The matriarchal past, according to Gage, represented a democratic ideal, and thus a revival of female social, economic, and political power was justified, and even necessary, to correct contemporary problems. After her death in 1898, the politics of matriarchalism lived on through the writings of Gage’s son-in-law, L. Frank Baum, who created The Wonderful Wizard of Oz series. As an ode to Gage, Oz features a queer, matriarchal, socialist land of peace and prosperity. Baum acknowledged that his goal was to teach children lessons, and the political lessons of the Oz series reveal the perversions of power that undergird patriarchal systems. Just a few decades later, in 1941, Wonder Woman debuted; this second set of American matriarchal fiction for children was equally political, as the creator, psychologist William Moulton Marston, claimed that he was using the comic to train children for “the coming matriarchy.” However, Marston’s matriarchalism differed significantly from Baum’s, as he emphasized heterosexism, reformed capitalism, and nationalism. In this paper, I explore multiple meanings of feminist matriarchalism in children’s popular culture in the United States.