Loving Frank - Themes

Themes

• Women's Independence “Before Mamah came over to Germany, Mattie had said to her, “What will you do if Frank returns to his wife? You’ll have nothing.” But Mamah felt now that if that came to be, she had more than nothing. "All the rest, it seemed, had just floated away.” (Horan 185). Mamah Borthwick Cheney was a pathbreaker for women’s independence. She struggled to discover how a woman who wanted her own self-expression could "fulfill the traditional-bound, justly demanding needs of her children” (New York Times 03). “Mamah, a brilliant woman with a college degree, was not suited to the role allotted to educated women of her time. She simply could not breathe” (Los Angeles Times 01). Mamah is “a symbol of both the freedoms women yearn to have and of the consequences that may await when they try to take them” (New York Times 03).

• Reputation Mrs. Cheney and Wright Elope Again. Famous Chicago Architect Lives with Divorcee in Seclusion at Hillside, Wis.; Leaves Wife at Home Forgiven After First Escapade, He Now Tacks Rent Sign on Residence” (Horan 241). The love affair between Frank Lloyd Wright and Mamah Borthwick Cheney both “shocked Chicago society and forever changed their lives” (Random House 02). Frank and Mamah left a lot behind them when the fled Oak Park for Europe in 1909. Two dumbfounded spouses and nine children were left between the two of them. The effects of their affair were wide spreading, and not just within their own families. “Beyond its shock value, the outcome would have ramifications . . . for architects, feminists, criminologists and armchair moralists of every stripe” (International Herald Tribune 02). The American press was salivating at the scandalous affair that was seen as so shocking, so wrong, that it couldn’t help but be front page news.

• Morality “Mamah Cheney followed her heart at any cost” (Los Angeles Times 01). “As she leaves her home and children, she examines and reexamines the moral basis of her choice” (Los Angeles 01). She is no longer in love with her husband, Edwin, and is ready to begin living her own life, rather than living a role assigned to her by society. “She feels completely reborn in body and mind through her relationship with Wright” (Los Angeles 01).