Willa Cather - A Wagner Matinee

     I enjoyed reading the short story ‘A Wagner Matinee’ by Willa Cather.  The details in this story is great, I can visualize most of everything that is described.  A theme of love is established throughout this short story.  Aunt Georgiana shows love towards music, her hometown of Boston, and her husband.  Clark shows his love for his aunt and his respect for her sacrifice when he comforts her and recalls the lessons about music, literature, and culture that she gave him as a child.  This short story is about a man, Clark, who received a letter stating that his aunt is coming to town.  Clark has been asked to take care of his aunt while she is in town.  Clark remembers his aunt lovingly and he wants to show her a good time while she is in town.  He decides to take her to an opera because she was trained in music when she was younger.  The story takes place on Boston, but Clark portrays Nebraska in great detail.  He described how the early settlers lived in dugout homes, which he says made their “inmates” return to “primitive savagery.”  He talks of the flatness of the landscape and the endless rows of corn.  Clark describes his Aunt Georgiana’s house as being weather worn, “black and grim as a wooden fortress,” and located near a “black pond.”  He describes the weather as constantly exposing its residents “to a pitiless wind, and to the alkaline water, which transforms the most transparent cuticle into sort of flexible leather."  Clark is telling the story and he describes himself as having been “a gangling farmer-boy" with "chilblains and bashfulness."  Clark is a bachelor who lives in Boston.  He is a very well civilized man and he takes his aunt to the opera to show her how much he appreciates her.  He wants to give back to his aunt for all the efforts that she put into raising him as a child.  His aunt Georgiana gave him an appreciation for music and he knows a lot about Wagner.  Clark hates Nebraska and he characterizes his aunt’s life there negatively.  His aunt was a well-trained music teacher at the Boston Conservatory.  When she was younger she traveled to Paris.  At the age of 30, she met her husband, Howard, and she eloped with him to a Nebraska homestead.  She is coming to Boston to settle an estate that was left to her.  Her appearance is “shocking” to Clark.  She is small, distorted, and has yellow, leathery skin.  Clark states that she wears false teeth and her eyebrows and mouth twitch.  Georgiana has lived in Nebraska for 30 years and she has not left Nebraska for the entire time that she has lived there.  Her nephew calls her pathetic and ridiculous.  His aunt helped him learn Latin, the organ, Shakespeare, and classical music when he was younger.  When she left Boston for Nebraska she sacrificed her music.       

Works Cited

  "A Wagner Matinee." Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. Wikimedia Foundation, Inc. 2004. 2 March 2011. <http://www.enotes.com/topic/A_Wagner_Matinee>.

"A Wagner Matinee by Cather." Notes4free. Web. 02 Mar. 2011. <http://www.notes4free.com/a-wagner-matinee-by-cather>.