"A Wagner Matinée"

“A Wagner Matinée” is a short story by Willa Cather that tells the story of a man’s aunt who lives on the frontier must come to Boston to help settle the estate of a deceased relative. The man is excited because he used to live with his aunt out in the Nebraska frontier. He credits her with “most of the good that ever came my way in my boyhood” (Cather 522). It is revealed that the man’s aunt, Georgiana, had once been a music teacher at the Boston Conservatory when she met Howard Carpenter, the man’s uncle, and they got married against the wishes of Georgiana’s family’s wishes because Howard had no money. They decided to move to the Nebraska frontier where they took up a plot of land and made their new home.

The story starts to turn to Georgiana’s hard life on the farm, but then it reveals the message that she may not completely enjoy it there when it tells of the time of how the man, then still a boy, was playing the piano and his aunt stopped his practice and solemnly told him “’Don’t love it so well, Clark, or it may be taken from you’” (Cather 522). The quote shows that Georgiana may miss her life in Boston and also that she may be a little bitter about it looking back because she uses the word “taken.” Not only does it reveal her true feelings and possibly foreshadow the rest of the short story, it also lets the reader know that the narrator’s name is Clark, so from now on, I shall refer to him as such.

Then the story turns to how Georgiana seems odd when she arrives, and Clark decides to take her to the local symphony because he knows she likes music. Although she seems to be in a fog in the beginning of her visit, she seems to cheer up once she gets into the concert hall. During the program, she starts to cry, speculatively about her memories of her musical past and how it was now gone. At the end of the program, she started to sob and said that she did not want to leave because she knew that she would have to go back to the frontier.

I think that this is very different than both Thoreau’s and Whitman’s philosophies because in this case, the character wanted to stay in the crowded city instead of the very nature-heavy frontier in Nebraska. It also does not describe the nature and surrounding as much as Thoreau or Whitman most likely would have. It also talks about Clarks studies in things like Latin and music, which is more of an intellectual focus, like that of Rationalists, instead of spiritual-based studies, like that of Romantics.

Cather, Willa. "A Wagner Matinée" Glencoe Literature. By Jeffrey D. Wilhelm, Douglas Fisher, Beverly Ann. Chin, and Jacqueline Jones. Royster. New York: Glencoe/McGraw-Hill, 2009. 521-526. Print.