Substitutes, hypocrisy, inequality…

the Swedish sculptor Carl Milles and Ellen Key.

“The renowned architect Frank Lloyd Wright has received much historical attention, but author Nancy Horan turns her gaze on Mamah Borthwick, Wright’s lover -- their long-term affair scandalized the public -- who deserves attention in her own right for her work as a feminist. Loving Frank tells the story of Cheney’s affair with Wright and her struggles to mesh her own independence and intelligence with the traditional roles of wife and mother. (the text is taken from here).”

Taliesin the home Wright built for him and Mamah.

Mamah Borthwick Cheney.

Frank Lloyd Wright.

[Updated in the evening with a PPS]. I don't really know what to give this posting as heading (actually many times I don't really know what to use as titles)...

I have been reading the book ”Loving Frank” by Nancy Horan (in Swedish) for a while, now reaching the end of it, about the American architect Frank Lloyd Wright and his love affair with Mamah Borthwick Cheney which occurred in the beginning of the former decade (I am reading many books in parallel, phew!).

They were both married when they got in love. This love caused a scandal and a lot of emotions in the society around them and was written about in the newspapers even.

Here is a review in New York Times "Notes on a Scandal" (also see here). There it stands for instance:

“Public outrage followed Frank and Mamah across the Atlantic in 1909, endangering the young architect’s career and destroying his companion’s good name. Wright’s legacy has been retroactively protected and buttressed by his work, but Mamah Borthwick Cheney’s reputation didn’t survive their romance — and neither did she. Horan follows the couple as their relationship travels from its anxious, ecstatic beginnings, past doubts and compromises, through renewed hope, and on to its tragic close./…/

Mamah Borthwick Cheney wasn’t just any woman, but Horan makes her into an enigmatic [mysterious, puzzling or "gåtfull" in Swedish] Everywoman — a symbol of both the freedoms women yearn to have and of the consequences that may await when they try to take them.”

In the end Horan writes about Wright that (in my amateur translation from the Swedish text):

“This was Frank in a nutshell, conductor out into the fingertips.”

Frank had thought about every single detail about the impression his "creations" would give (even when it came to Mamah's dresses, at least atone occasion)… He had his sides. As Mamah had.

This made me think.

“And this is more okay when it comes to and is about a man still!? Or one has to oversee with it at least!? They lived in a system that allowed some people (men for instance) to play their childhoods out, both in the family (the smallest system) and in the society. Even on the highest level. And in this way these persons (preferably men) didn’t have to do anything about their problems, issues.”

We grant them irresponsibility. They don't have to grow up!? They can still go on being like grown up boys!? My mom used to say that she had one big child and six small children. The child reacted with astonishment, because he didn't give him any opportunity to grow up either. Or was this HER responsibility? I don't know, maybe she also had interests in keeping him like a small child, not to loose him (with a tired smile)??? Because she in turn didn't really believe in her value and real, true rights?

Men don’t have to take responsibility too many times still, didn’t have to do anything an are still more accepted just as they are - in a/many way/s. They could continue to play things out. Women fell back on a false hope to change their men (making them stay in the relation. Hoping an trying and struggling year after year after year, as did Mamah, when she bu time discovered Frank's different sides, for instance a "spoiled child side", his mother's favorite, before Frank's two sisters. Whom accepted their roles)?

Women haven’t had those opportunities. Where have they played their things out? Yes, on their children (if they had any)!? And if they didn’t have any? How do we stop this vicious circle? That only one part/side take responsibility?

And this is still true to a high degree: men are ruling the world (false power - anger? Anger expressed in many different ways give them a sense of power? A need for power that actually have with their childhoods to do?). And can still play all their unprocessed things out, and thus take no responsibility for them. Aren’t really forced to do anything about them. They aren’t compelled doing anything because of how the society still functions!

Here in Sweden more women seek help with therapists, psychologists… And also get abused sometimes by their so called helpers… On top.

And as the society now and still functions the ones loosing most are still women and children and poor people. Who still have least power and status.

But men also looses on this in the end. All men do? But in slightly different ways? They may have more status only by the fact hat they are men (and usually physically stronger) and/or actual power, money etc., but problems with near relations, with closeness.

Filling their needs with substitutes, like power, money, drugs of different kinds (as do women), independency (I don’t need, giving them a sense of power, actually not a true power!? Also going back to their childhoods?).

So women have the strongest immediate interests in changing the state of affairs – still, 100 years later!??? They loose most on the current situation still!?

But men ought to be interested too, for their and the ones sake they maybe love?? And for the world's sake and how things develop in it?

Yes, mothers (AND fathers) can treat their sons badly in many ways... Hating them, not seeing their (justified) needs, using them for filling their own needs (for abreactions for instance)... And give their sons problems later in life. Sometimes tremendous problems. As much as daughters are given problems from their parents... But in slightly different ways?

PS. My postings have looked strange for a while. I get a message about a faulty HTML-code or something. I know nothing about HTML and haven't done anything... But never mind...

Anyway, it's a wonderful day...

Nancy Horan's website see here.

PPS. After fixing up here I took some fika out on the balcony and read the last pages in the book mentioned in this posting, and couldn’t help getting tears in my eyes, actually running down my cheeks, when I read it.

Got three new books on Friday. One of those was Susan Faludi’s “The Terror Dream. Fear and Fantasy in post 9/11 America.” In a meeting summer 2005 with her friend, the Swedish journalist and author, Maria-Pia Boëthius the seeds were sowed that resulted in this book she writes.

I won’t have time reading this book the coming weeks or months I think, so I read words here and there.

The last paragraph made me spontaneously think:

“The whole nation regressed! As its leader(s).”

And that’s what has happened through history here and there, even if we perhaps haven’t thought in those terms.

When we are placed or put before repetition(s) of an experience that formed us we have a possibility solving the old story in a new way. Go back to the future (in the best cases) and turn the long-term denial upside-down.

Faludi talks about a national identity not built on some sort of virile illusion, but on the talents we all, women and men, have to the same degree.

According to wikipedia:

“In her 1999 book ‘Stiffed: The Betrayal of the American Man’ Faludi analyzes the state of the American man. Faludi argues that while many of those in power are men, most individual men have little power. American men have been brought up to be strong, support their families and work hard.

But many men who followed this now find themselves underpaid or unemployed, disillusioned and abandoned by their wives. Changes in American society have affected both men and women, Faludi concludes, and it is wrong to blame individual men for class differences, or for plain differences in individual luck and ability, that they did not cause and from which men and women suffer alike.”