 he (Mamah Chaney) was a writer, she was an early feminist; she had translated a lot of feminist writings. She wasn’t particularly interested in children. She was very interested in Wright’s work. She was also... all for him, in a way that Kitty was no longer. Kitty was much too involved in those six children to pay much attention to Frank. And Mamah never made that mistake.
When Frank left Oak Park in 1909, I really don’t think he had any idea of the repercussions... Frank... had really constructed an idea of himself as a superior being. He was a creative artist. And he really, I think, innocently thought that everybody else would think he was a creative artist, therefore outside the bounds of conventional morality, you know. And I think he took this quite seriously. In fact, he published several kind of rather innocent sounding manifestos saying he really didn’t understand why people were so upset about all of this. After all, didn’t they know that the creative the artist was a superior being, therefore outside the bounds of the kind of conventional ways ordinary men had to live?
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