“Ellen was arguing that women’s energy should be used for child rearing, that suffragists were wrongheaded to focus so intently on jobs and equal pay when motherhood was their legitimate work. For a woman to rush out seeking men’s work was to abandon her post by the cradle as the shaper of the human race. Far better, Ellen argued, that the emancipators worked toward rewarding and enhancing the job of ‘mother.’” This quote from the text describes the thinking of Ellen Key, a Swedish feminist writer in the early 1900s. Mamah Borthwick, protagonist of Loving Frank, translated some of Key’s work into English and considered Ellen a mentor. Mamah was a real person in this fictionalized history, and the book follows her passionate love affair with Frank Lloyd Wright starting in 1909.
Though Ellen was a mentor, Mamah disagreed that motherhood should be her life’s vocation. In fact, she left her young children and her husband to pursue her dreams of being a writer and translator. Of course, she also sought to travel with Wright and experience his architectural world. She continues to value her lifestyle, even though the press scandalized her living as an unmarried partner to Frank. She values a new morality that allows women to be strong, career-oriented, independent, and cultured. After a considerable time, Mamah regrets leaving her children and negotiates an agreement with her ex-husband to see them for a few weeks each summer.
The story follows Mamah and Frank as they travel from Chicago to Europe and back to Wisconsin, where they live together in the famous Taliesen. Mameh valued freedom over the traditional female roles of her time. She expresses her philosophy with confidence. Frank Lloyd Wright valued her strength and intellect as a woman. Unsurprisingly, people are still writing about her one hundred years after her death.
