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A Wagner Matinee

INTRODUCTION First published in Everybody's Magazine in 1904, Willa Cather's "A Wagner Matinee" was written early in the author's career and provides a preview of the tone and style that would later become hallmarks of Cather's fiction. In this short story, Cather explores with stark realism the physically and emotionally damaging effects of pioneer life in rural Nebraska. The story is narrated by Clark, who hosts his Aunt Georgiana when she comes to Boston after leaving her Nebraskan homestead for the first time in many years. While "A Wagner Matinee" is set in Boston, it is a frontier story at its core, in its focus on Aunt Georgiana and her transformation from a music teacher in Boston to a woman worn and wounded in both body and spirit after decades on a Nebraskan homestead. The story traces the emotional response of Aunt Georgiana to a concert of the music of the German composer Richard Wagner, a concert that Aunt Georgiana attends with her nephew. Clark's observations of his aunt's behavior and appearance are interspersed with recollections of the harsh years of His own youth, which he spent with Georgiana on her farm. Georgiana's tearful reaction to Wagner's music suggests a longing for her former, perhaps fuller life in the city. "A Wagner Matinee" is available in The Troll Garden, a short story collection by Willa Cather. Originally published in 1905, this collection is available in a 1983 volume edited by James Woodress and published by the University of Nebraska Press. Cather revised the story slightly between its magazine publication in 1904 and its appearance in The Troll Garden in 1905; for example, she eliminated some of the harsher details about Georgiana's appearance in the later version, changing a description of her figure as misshapen to one of her being stooped in posture. An online version of the 1904 Everybody's Magazine printing of "A Wagner Matinee" is available at the Willa Cather Archive, sponsored by the University of Nebraska.

PLOT SUMMARY Cather's "A Wagner Matinee" opens with the narrator, Clark, receiving a letter from Nebraska, which the reader soon learns is from Clark's Uncle Howard. The letter informs Clark that his Aunt Georgiana will be visiting him in Boston when she comes to attend to the estate of a deceased relative. Uncle Howard's letter asks Clark to meet Georgiana at the station and aid her in whatever way is necessary during her stay in Boston. Upon reading his uncle's letter, Clark recalls details of his youth spent on his aunt and uncle's farm in Nebraska. He remembers playing Aunt Georgiana's piano with fingers sore and raw from husking corn. At the train station, Clark experiences some challenges in collecting Georgiana. Not only is she the last of the passengers to disembark, but she is covered with soot and dust from her journey. Clark's landlady, Mrs. Springer, settles Georgiana into her quarters for the evening upon her arrival in Clark's home, and Clark does not see his aunt again until the following morning. Reflecting on Georgiana's haggard appearance, Clark notes how much the woman has changed since she worked as a music teacher in Boston some three decades ago. The reader learns from

Clark's recollections that Aunt Georgiana had fallen in love with a young man from the country, wed him, and followed him to the Nebraskan frontier. Clark mentally enumerates the facts of Georgiana and Howard's primitive existence and the tolls his aunt's hard life has exacted on her appearance. He realizes also how much he owes his aunt, as she sacrificed much of her time to teach him. She would, he recalls, help him with Latin verb conjugations and listen to him read Shakespeare after she had tucked six children into bed. On the day following Georgiana's arrival, Clark takes her to a concert given by the Boston Symphony Orchestra, which would be performing the works of the German composer Richard Wagner. Clark wonders whether Georgiana will, after her years of hardship and deprivation, be able to enjoy or appreciate the music. She seems reluctant to be out in the city and distracted by tasks left undone back home in Nebraska. As the musicians are seated in the concert hall, Clark studies his aunt's reaction closely, noting that she seems to stir with anticipation and finally begins to become tuned in to her surroundings. The concert begins, and Aunt Georgiana grasps Clark's sleeve; he thinks that these first strains of music are breaking thirty years of silence inflicted upon his aunt by the Nebraskan plains. Images of Georgiana's bleak homestead appear in Clark's mind. Wondering what his aunt is gleaning from the music, he recalls what a good pianist she had once been and remembers the breadth of her musical education. During the intermission, Clark questions his aunt about one of the songs they heard, and she informs him that she has actually heard it before, as sung by a German immigrant back in Red Willow County. Aunt and nephew briefly discuss the music and its structure. During the second half of the concert, Aunt Georgiana weeps repeatedly. Again Clark wonders how much of the music's complexities his aunt can comprehend, how much of her ability to process the music has been dissolved through the hard labor and isolation she has endured for so many years. The concert concludes, and the spectators depart the concert hall, yet Clark and his aunt remain behind. When Clark addresses Aunt Georgiana, who has made no move to leave, she bursts into tears, telling him that she does not wish to leave. Clark interprets his aunt's response as an indication not simply of her unwillingness to leave the music behind but also of her extreme reluctance to return to the harshness of her life in Nebraska.

CHARACTERS Georgiana Carpenter Georgiana Carpenter is the wife of Howard Carpenter and the maternal aunt of the narrator, Clark. From the beginning, the reader is offered a startling physical portrait of Georgiana, whom Clark initially describes as "pathetic and grotesque" in her appearance. Filthy from her travels, Georgiana seems disoriented and fatigued, and Clark comments that only after a little while does she seem to recognize him. Commenting on her meeting of and subsequent marriage to Howard, Clark states that at thirty, Georgiana had been "angular" and "spectacled." Apparently unable to comprehend his aunt's ability to live the kind of life Howard took her to in Nebraska, Clark remarks that, having measured off their homestead, the couple proceeded to build "a dugout in the red hillside, one of those cave dwellings whose inmates so often reverted to primitive conditions." From then on, through Clark, Georgiana is continually presented as a reduced version of her former self, a foreign oddity. He regards her in the same way that explorers are

viewed when they return to civilization with missing limbs. He observes that the wind and alkaline water have yellowed her skin so that it is like that of a "Mongolian's." Her teeth are false and do not fit well in her mouth, and her posture is stooped, her chest sunken.

At the same time, Clark remembers warmly the way Georgiana tutored him when he lived with her as a youth. She was knowledgeable not only in music but in Latin, mythology, and Shakespeare as well. When Clark struggled with difficult piano pieces, she implored him to not love music too much, because if it were ever to be taken from him, as it was from her, the sacrifice might seem too great. Georgiana does indeed seem to resist her response to the music when Clark takes her to the concert; she attempts to not "love it so well," as she had once cautioned her nephew. She seems saddened by listening to the second half of the program, and Clark wonders about her ability to comprehend the structure of the music. Nevertheless, she appears to ascertain enough about the music to feel moved by it, for she weeps during much of the second half of the concert. Georgiana does not rise to leave when the music finishes, instead sobbing to Clark that she does want to go.

Howard Carpenter Howard Carpenter is the husband of Georgiana and the uncle of Clark. He sends Clark a letter informing him that Georgiana will be coming to Boston to attend to the estate of a bachelor relative who has died. Howard requests in his letter that Clark meet Georgiana at the train station and assist her in whatever way he can. Clark notes that, "characteristically," Howard put off writing the letter for so long that Clark would have missed his aunt entirely if he had been away from home for the day. Clark additionally reveals a little of Howard's character as the story progresses, describing him as having been "the most idle and shiftless of all the village lads" in one of the mountain towns to which Georgiana had gone to teach music. The reader is additionally informed that Howard was twenty-one when he met the thirty-year-old Georgiana, whom he followed back to Boston when she returned. The pair eloped, and Howard took his new bride to the frontier in Nebraska. According to Clark, Georgiana's friends and family were critical of her decision to wed Howard, whom Clark points out "of course" had no financial security to offer Georgiana.

Clark Clark is the narrator of "A Wagner Matinee." The reader does not learn his last name, only that he is the nephew of Georgiana, his maternal aunt, and her husband Howard Carpenter. Clark does not reveal much about himself directly throughout the course of the story. His reflections pertain primarily to his aunt, although he does comment about the years he spent on Georgiana and Howard's Nebraskan homestead. Much of what the reader knows about Clark's character is gleaned from his views about his aunt. He seems to revere her for the sacrifices she has made and is, at the same time, somewhat repulsed by the woman into which she has degenerated. Pity and revulsion are the first emotions that rise up when he recalls her appearance, and reading her name in his uncle's letter dredges up in Clark powerful memories from his youth when he was a

shy, "gangling farmer-boy," with hands "cracked and sore from the corn husking." He recalls practicing musical scales on Georgiana's organ with his painful fingers. After seeing his aunt disembark from the train and escorting her home, Clark's response to her is again a combination of positive and negative feelings. He remarks upon her disfigured appearance just prior to discussing the respect he has for her. Clark then, in a somewhat condescending tone, describes the absurdity of Georgiana's attraction to Howard when the couple first met and remarks that "of course" Howard was penniless when the pair left for Nebraska. Clark's continued fascination with the flaws in his aunt's physical appearance is revealed when he describes her drab clothing, sallow skin, and poor posture. These exterior flaws Clark juxtaposes with the "reverential affection" he possesses for Georgiana. He fondly recalls all she taught him despite her personal fatigue and suffering, admitting how much he owes her. During the course of the Wagner concert, to which Clark takes his aunt in an effort to entertain her with the music that so inspired her life years ago, Clark's attitude is a mixture of pity and concern. He wonders on more than one occasion if she is able to understand the intricacies of the music's structure and composition. He worries that perhaps he should have left her memories undisturbed, so as to have let her remain in what he perceives to be a numbed state. When at the end of the concert Georgiana sobs and blurts that she does not want to go, Clark claims to understand her despair. For her, he states, just beyond the door of the concert hall lies the rough frontier life that she has temporarily left behind. Having tasted her former life once again, Georgiana is desperate to forestall her return to Nebraska, Clark assumes.

Mrs. Springer Mrs. Springer is the landlady at the boarding house where Clark, the narrator of the story, lives. She shows Georgiana to her room, and Clark observes the consideration Mrs. Springer shows Georgiana by hiding any surprise she might have had at Georgiana's bedraggled appearance.

THEMES Frontier Life Although "A Wagner Matinee" is set in Boston, the story is at its core about life on the western frontier. In particular, the harshness of frontier living is contrasted with the pleasantness of urban society in the Northeast. Through the observations of her narrator, Clark, Cather takes pains to demonstrate the brutal effects of frontier living on the former Boston music teacher, Georgiana. Her appearance is regarded as horrifying and alien. Whereas Georgiana was once an ordinary, if "angular" woman of thirty, after thirty years on the prairie she is now viewed as "grotesque," her figure "stooped," her skin sallow in pallor and leathery in texture. Clark attributes these developments to Georgiana's isolation from civilization, to the monotony of her daily routine, and to the intense physical suffering resulting from the labor necessary to make one's living on a Nebraskan homestead. Clark did not return unscathed from his own youthful years spent on his aunt and uncle's homestead, during which he was "riding herd" for his uncle. The mere mention of his aunt's name conjures in him potent memories of husking corn until his hands were red,

raw, and cracked. Clark recalls that his aunt's duties included cooking breakfast at six o'clock in the morning and working until midnight, long after she had put six children to bed. Once she has arrived in Boston, Georgiana remains distracted by the chores awaiting her back home—by the calf who needs special care, or by the food in the cellar that needs to be eaten before it spoils. All of these details, from Clark's recollections of his youth to Georgiana's current itemization of pending chores and concerns, serve to emphasize the all-consuming nature of frontier life. Through Clark's characterization of his aunt's appearance and preoccupations, Cather underscores the notion that life on the Nebraskan prairie is devouring Georgiana spiritually and mentally. Clark is quite convinced that his aunt can no longer appreciate or comprehend the elements of the music she used to love so passionately. He views her as having been numbed into some sort of stupor by her harsh life, and he even wonders whether it would have been best to send her back home "without waking her." The story closes with a fresh reminder of the toll frontier life has taken on Georgiana. Sobbing, she pleads to her nephew as the concert ends, "I don't want to go, Clark, I don't want to go!" That she is crying and that she repeats the sentiment serve to indicate that she is not merely reluctant to leave the music hall because she has enjoyed the program so much. Rather, the reader is intended to take her reaction, as Clark does, as an indictment of frontier life. Clark suggests that for Georgiana, the act of leaving the concert hall will be a symbolic one, whereby she will again turn her back on who she once was, to return once more to a lonely life devoid of civilized pleasures and comforts.

Regret The theme of regret in "A Wagner Matinee" is voiced through Clark, who contrasts his notions of who his aunt used to be with who she has become after thirty years of frontier living. He cannot help but see her as irreversibly diminished by her experiences. Personally, he appears to pity her, while he projects the notion of regret onto her. This is indicated in several ways. As Clark and his aunt listen to what Clark describes as "Siegfried's funeral march," he intuits from the "trembling of her face" that Georgiana is responding to the death of hopes and dreams that the music conveys. The music explores the extinguishing of hope, and Clark assumes that if his aunt is able to respond to anything in the composition, it will be to this theme in particular. As Clark extrapolates from his aunt's reluctance to leave the concert hall that she fervently wishes to avoid returning to her life in Nebraska, it is suggested that Georgiana regrets ever having gone to Nebraska at all. The reader views Georgiana's likely regret through the filter of Clark's observations. His personal experience of life on the frontier adds weight to his interpretation. Clark is not simply guessing how taxing the work of maintaining a homestead is; he experienced it firsthand and was an eye witness

CRITICISM Through Clark, the narrator of "A Wagner Matinee," Cather offers the reader a cool and somewhat distant assessment of the character of Georgiana; all the reader is able to ascertain about Georgiana is captured through the filter of Clark's observations. Yet through Clark's observations of, comments about, and attitude toward Georgiana, his own character is revealed. Cather employs a youthful male character, one who appears perfectly at home and content with

life in the city, to present a portrait of an elderly female character, one who, having transplanted herself from an eastern city, has resided on the western frontier for three decades. By presenting Georgiana in this manner, as a contrast to Clark and to the culture that seems vital to his character, Cather challenges the reader to uncover Clark's biases and perhaps the author's own as well. Ultimately, Cather's characterization of Georgiana and Clark suggests the author's bias in favor of the American East and its culture and sophistication over the raw and unruly American West.

Upon discovering that his aunt will soon be visiting him in Boston, Clark begins to reminisce about his aunt and the Nebraskan homestead where she lives and where he himself spent some time as a youth. Clark does not withhold his judgments of Nebraska, his aunt, or her choices in life. Her physical appearance is recollected in the most pejorative of terms, and upon seeing his aunt, Clark does not soften the adjectives he uses to describe her. In memory she is "pathetic and grotesque," and at first sight at the train station he comments on her disheveled appearance, covered as she is in soot and the grime of travel. The 1904 version of the story, in contrast with the 1905 version, compares Georgiana's appearance when getting off the train to that of a burned body. In recalling how Georgiana came to reside in Nebraska, Clark recounts the meeting between Georgiana and Howard. She was an "angular, spectacled woman of thirty," a teacher of music employed by the Boston Conservatory, he explains. Her soon-to-be husband, Howard, was a young "country boy" possessing an "extravagant" attraction for Georgiana. The pair eloped after Howard followed Georgiana back to Boston, and Clark is certain that his aunt sought to escape "the reproaches of her family and the criticisms of her friends" by accompanying Howard to the Nebraskan frontier. In these recollections, Clark's disapproval and condescension is plain, and he continues to view his aunt in this light for the remainder of her stay in Boston. Her choice to leave in the first place clearly left Clark feeling slightly disgusted, and this negativity was compounded by his disapproval of the man Georgiana married, the couple's destination, and the fact that Howard was in fact poor.

Following Clark's discussion of Georgiana's marriage and departure for Nebraska, he provides an almost clinical assessment of her appearance. Her skin is yellow and leathery; she wears false teeth; her posture is poor. Clark claims that as a youth, he possessed a "reverential affection" for Georgiana. Yet his memories of his youth with her indicate that the suffering she endured from the back-breaking, unending physical labor as well as from the isolation from her former society are tainted by his understanding that she willingly sacrificed the society and culture she had once held so dear. Clark states that "she had the consolations of religion and, to her at least, her martyrdom was not wholly sordid." The implication here, emphasized by the phrase "to her at least," is that while to Georgiana the sacrifices that she has made for things she believes in are not contemptible, to Clark, the sacrifices Georgiana made are indeed contemptible or ignoble in some w...