By Willa Sibert Cather
I RECEIVED one morning a letter, written in pale ink, on glassy, blue-lined note-paper, and bearing the postmark of a little Nebraska village. This communication, worn and rubbed, looking as though it had been carried for some days in a coat-pocket that was none too clean, was from my Uncle Howard. It informed me that his wife had been left a small legacy by a bachelor relative who had recently died, and that it had become necessary for her to come to Boston to attend to the settling of the estate. He requested me to meet her at the station, and render her whatever services might prove necessary. On examining the date indicated as that of her arrival, I found it no later than to-morrow. He had characteristically delayed writing until, had I been away from home for a day, I must have missed the good woman altogether.
The name of my Aunt Georgiana called up not alone her own figure, at once pathetic and grotesque, but opened before my feet a gulf of recollections so wide and deep that, as the letter dropped from my hand, I felt suddenly a stranger to all the present conditions of my existence, wholly ill at ease and out of place amid the surroundings of my study. I became, in short, the gangling farmer-boy my aunt had known, scourged with chilblains and bashfulness, my hands cracked and raw from the corn husking. I felt the knuckles of my thumb tentatively, as though they were raw again. I sat again before her parlor organ, thumbing the scales with my stiff, red hands, while she beside me made canvas mittens for the huskers.
The next morning, after preparing my landlady somewhat, I set out for the station. When the train arrived I had some difficulty in finding my aunt. She was the last of the passengers to alight, and when I got her into the carriage she looked not unlike one of those charred, smoked bodies that firemen lift from the débris of a burned building. She had come all the way in a day coach; her linen duster had become black with soot and her black bonnet gray with dust during the journey. When we arrived at my boarding-house the landlady put her to bed at once, and I did not see her again until the next morning.
Whatever shock Mrs. Springer experienced at my aunt's appearance she considerately concealed. Myself, I saw my aunt's misshapened figure with that feeling of awe and respect with which we behold explorers who have left their ears and fingers north of Franz Josef Land, or their health somewhere along the Upper Congo. My Aunt Georgiana had been a music-teacher at the Boston Conservatory, somewhere back in the latter sixties. One summer, which she had spent in the little village in the Green Mountains where her ancestors had dwelt for generations, she had kindled the callow fancy of the most idle and shiftless of all the village lads, and had conceived for this Howard Carpenter one of those absurd and extravagant passions which a handsome country boy of twenty-one sometimes inspires in a plain, angular, spectacled woman of thirty. When she returned to her duties in Boston, Howard followed her; and the upshot of this inexplicable infatuation was that she eloped with him, eluding the reproaches of her family and the criticism of her friends by going with him to the Nebraska frontier. Carpenter, who of course had no money, took a homestead in Red Willow County, fifty miles from the railroad. There they measured off their eighty acres by driving across the prairie in a wagon, to the wheel of which they had tied a red cotton handkerchief, and counting off its revolutions. They built a dugout in the red hillside, one of those cave dwellings whose inmates usually reverted to the conditions of primitive savagery. Their water they got from the lagoons where the buffalo drank, and their slender stock of provisions was always at the mercy of bands of roving Indians. For thirty years my aunt had not been farther than fifty miles from the homestead.
But Mrs. Springer knew nothing of all this, and must have been considerably shocked at what was left of my kinswoman. Beneath the soiled linen duster, which on her arrival was the most conspicuous feature of her costume, she wore a black stuff dress whose ornamentation showed that she had surrendered herself unquestioningly into the hands of a country dressmaker. My poor aunt's figure, however, would have presented astonishing difficulties to any dressmaker. Her skin was yellow as a Mongolian's from constant exposure to a pitiless wind, and to the alkaline water, which transforms the most transparent cuticle into a sort of flexible leather. She wore ill-fitting false teeth. The most striking thing about her physiognomy, however, was an incessant twitching of the mouth and eyebrows, a form of nervous disorder resulting from isolation and monotony, and from frequent physical suffering.
In my boyhood this affliction had possessed a sort of horrible fascination for me, of which I was secretly very much ashamed, for in those days I owed to this woman most of the good that ever came my way, and had a reverential affection for her. During the three winters when I was riding herd for my uncle, my aunt, after cooking three meals for half a dozen farm-hands, and putting the six children to bed, would often stand until midnight at her ironing-board, hearing me at the kitchen table beside her recite Latin declensions and conjugations, and gently shaking me when my drowsy head sank down over a page of irregular verbs. It was to her, at her ironing or mending, that I read my first Shakespere; and her old text-book of mythology was the first that ever came into my empty hands. She taught me my scales and exercises, too, on the little parlor organ which her husband had bought her after fifteen years, during which she had not so much as seen any instrument except an accordion, that belonged to one of the Norwegian farm-hands. She would sit beside me by the hour, darning and counting, while I struggled with the "Harmonious Blacksmith"; but she seldom talked to me about music, and I understood why. She was a pious woman; she had the consolation of religion; and to her at least her martyrdom was not wholly sordid. Once when I had been doggedly beating out some easy passages from an old score of "Euryanthe" I had found among her music-books, she came up to me and, putting her hands over my eyes, gently drew my head back upon her shoulder, saying tremulously, "Don't love it so well, Clark, or it may be taken from you. Oh! dear boy, pray that whatever your sacrifice be it is not that."
When my aunt appeared on the morning after her arrival, she was still in a semi-somnambulant state. She seemed not to realize that she was in the city where she had spent her youth, the place longed for hungrily half a lifetime. She had been so wretchedly train-sick throughout the journey that she had no recollection of anything but her discomfort, and, to all intents and purposes, there were but a few hours of nightmare between the farm in Red Willow County and my study on Newbury Street. I had planned a little pleasure for her that afternoon, to repay her for some of the glorious moments she had given me when we used to milk together in the straw-thatched cow-shed, and she, because I was more than usually tired, or because her husband had spoken sharply to me, would tell me of the splendid performance of Meyerbeer's "Huguenots" she had seen in Paris in her youth. At two o'clock the Boston Symphony Orchestra was to give a Wagner programme, and I intended to take my aunt, though as I conversed with her I grew doubtful about her enjoyment of it. Indeed, for her own sake, I could only wish her taste for such things quite dead, and the long struggle mercifully ended at last. I suggested our visiting the Conservatory and the Common before lunch, but she seemed altogether too timid to wish to venture out. She questioned me absently about various changes in the city, but she was chiefly concerned that she had forgotten to leave instructions about feeding half-skimmed milk to a certain weakling calf, "Old Maggie's calf, you know, Clark," she explained, evidently having forgotten how long I had been away. She was further troubled because she had neglected to tell her daughter about the freshly opened kit of mackerel in the cellar, that would spoil if it were not used directly.
I asked her whether she had ever heard any of the Wagnerian operas, and found that she had not, though she was perfectly familiar with their respective situations and had once possessed the piano score of "The Flying Dutchman." I began to think it would have been best to get her back to Red Willow County without waking her, and regretted having suggested the concert.
From the time we entered the concert-hall, however, she was a trifle less passive and inert, and seemed to begin to perceive her surroundings. I had felt some trepidation lest she might become aware of the absurdities of her attire, or might experience some painful embarrassment at stepping suddenly into the world to which she had been dead for a quarter of a century. But again I found how superficially I had judged her. She sat looking about her with eyes as impersonal, almost as stony, as those with which the granite Rameses in a museum watches the froth and fret that ebbs and flows about his pedestal, separated from it by the lonely stretch of centuries. I have seen this same aloofness in old miners who drift into the Brown Hotel at Denver, their pockets full of bullion, their linen soiled, their haggard faces unshorn, and who stand in the thronged corridors as solitary as though they were still in a frozen camp on the Yukon, or in the yellow blaze of the Arizona desert, conscious that certain experiences have isolated them from their fellows by a gulf no haberdasher could conceal.
The audience was made up chiefly of women. One lost the contour of faces and figures, indeed any effect of line whatever, and there was only the color contrast of bodices past counting, the shimmer and shading of fabrics soft and firm, silky and sheer, resisting and yielding: red, mauve, pink, blue, lilac, purple, écru, rose, yellow, cream, and white, all the colors that an impressionist finds in a sunlit landscape, with here and there the dead black shadow of a frock-coat. My Aunt Georgiana regarded them as though they had been so many daubs of tube paint on a palette.
When the musicians came out and took their places, she gave a little stir of anticipation, and looked with quickening interest down over the rail at that invariable grouping; perhaps the first wholly familiar thing that had greeted her eye since she had left old Maggie and her weakling calf. I could feel how all those details sank into her soul, for I had not forgotten how they had sunk into mine when I came fresh from ploughing forever and forever between green aisles of corn, where, as in a treadmill, one might walk from daybreak to dusk without perceiving a shadow of change in one's environment. I reminded myself of the impression made on me by the clean profiles of the musicians, the gloss of their linen, the dull black of their coats, the beloved shapes of the instruments, the patches of yellow light thrown by the green-shaded stand-lamps on the smooth, varnished bellies of the 'cellos and the bass viols in the rear, the restless, wind-tossed forest of fiddle necks and bows; I recalled how, in the first orchestra I had ever heard, those long bow strokes seemed to draw the soul out of me, as a conjurer's stick reels out paper ribbon from a hat.
The first number was the Tannhäuser overture. When the violins drew out the first strain of the Pilgrim's chorus, my Aunt Georgiana clutched my coat-sleeve. Then it was that I first realized that for her this singing of basses and stinging frenzy of lighter strings broke a silence of thirty years, the inconceivable silence of the plains. With the battle between the two motifs, with the bitter frenzy of the Venusberg theme and its ripping of strings, came to me an overwhelming sense of the waste and wear we are so powerless to combat. I saw again the tall, naked house on the prairie, black and grim as a wooden fortress; the black pond where I had learned to swim, the rain-gullied clay about the naked house; the four dwarf ash-seedlings on which the dishcloths were always hung to dry before the kitchen door. The world there is the flat world of the ancients; to the east, a cornfield that stretched to daybreak; to the west, a corral that stretched to sunset; between, the sordid conquests of peace, more merciless than those of war.
The overture closed. My aunt released my coat-sleeve, but she said nothing. She sat staring at the orchestra through a dullness of thirty years, through the films made little by little, by each of the three hundred and sixty-five days in every one of them. What, I wondered, did she get from it? She had been a good pianist in her day, I knew, and her musical education had been broader than that of most music-teachers of a quarter of a century ago. She had often told me of Mozart's operas and Meyerbeer's, and I could remember hearing her sing, years ago, certain melodies of Verdi's. When I had fallen ill with a fever she used to sit by my cot in the evening, while the cool night wind blew in through the faded mosquito-netting tacked over the window, and I lay watching a bright star that burned red above the cornfield, and sing "Home to our mountains, oh, let us return!" in a way fit to break the heart of a Vermont boy near dead of homesickness already.
I watched her closely through the prelude to Tristan and Isolde, trying vainly to conjecture what that warfare of motifs, that seething turmoil of strings and winds, might mean to her. Had this music any message for her? Did or did not a new planet swim into her ken? Wagner had been a sealed book to Americans before the sixties. Had she anything left with which to comprehend this glory that had flashed around the world since she had gone from it? I was in a fever of curiosity, but Aunt Georgiana sat silent upon her peak in Darien. She preserved this utter immobility throughout the numbers from the "Flying Dutchman," though her fingers worked mechanically upon her black dress, as though of themselves they were recalling the piano score they had once played. Poor old hands! They were stretched and pulled and twisted into mere tentacles to hold, and lift, and knead with; the palms unduly swollen, the fingers bent and knotted, on one of them a thin worn band that had once been a wedding-ring. As I pressed and gently quieted one of those groping hands, I remembered, with quivering eyelids, their services for me in other days.
Soon after the tenor began the Prize Song, I heard a quick-drawn breath, and turned to my aunt. Her eyes were closed, but the tears were glistening on her cheeks, and I think in a moment more they were in my eyes as well. It never really dies, then, the soul? It withers to the outward eye only, like that strange moss which can lie on a dusty shelf half a century and yet, if placed in water, grows green again. My aunt wept gently throughout the development and elaboration of the melody.
During the intermission before the second half of the concert, I questioned my aunt and found that the Prize Song was not new to her. Some years before there had drifted to the farm in Red Willow County a young German, a tramp cow-puncher, who had sung in the chorus at Baireuth, when he was a boy, along with the other peasant boys and girls. Of a Sunday morning he used to sit on his gingham-sheeted bed in the hands' bedroom, which opened off the kitchen, cleaning the leather of his boots and saddle, and singing the Prize Song, while my aunt went about her work in the kitchen. She had hovered about him until she had prevailed upon him to join the country church, though his sole fitness for this step, so far as I could gather, lay in his boyish face and his possession of this divine melody. Shortly afterward he had gone to town on the Fourth of July, been drunk for several days, lost his money at a faro-table, ridden a saddled Texan steer on a bet, and disappeared with a fractured collar-bone.
"Well, we have come to better things than the old Trovatore at any rate, Aunt Georgie?" I queried, with well-meant jocularity.
Her lip quivered and she hastily put her handkerchief up to her mouth. From behind it she murmured, "And you have been hearing this ever since you left me, Clark?" Her question was the gentlest and saddest of reproaches.
"But do you get it, Aunt Georgiana, the astonishing structure of it all?" I persisted.
"Who could?" she said, absently; "why should one?"
The second half of the programme consisted of four numbers from the Ring. This was followed by the forest music from Siegfried, and the programme closed with Siegfried's funeral march. My aunt wept quietly, but almost continuously. I was perplexed as to what measure of musical comprehension was left to her, to her who had heard nothing but the singing of gospel hymns in Methodist services at the square frame school-house on Section Thirteen. I was unable to gauge how much of it had been dissolved in soapsuds, or worked into bread, or milked into the bottom of a pail.
The deluge of sound poured on and on; I never knew what she found in the shining current of it; I never knew how far it bore her, or past what happy islands, or under what skies. From the trembling of her face I could well believe that the Siegfried march, at least, carried her out where the myriad graves are, out into the gray, burying-grounds of the sea; or into some world of death vaster yet, where, from the beginning of the world, hope has lain down with hope, and dream with dream and, renouncing, slept.
The concert was over; the people filed out of the hall chattering and laughing, glad to relax and find the living level again, but my kinswoman made no effort to rise. I spoke gently to her. She burst into tears and sobbed pleadingly, "I don't want to go, Clark, I don't want to go!"
I understood. For her, just outside the door of the concert-hall, lay the black pond with the cattle-tracked bluffs, the tall, unpainted house, naked as a tower, with weather-curled boards; the crook-backed ash-seedlings where the dishcloths hung to dry, the gaunt, moulting turkeys picking up refuse about the kitchen door.
https://cather.unl.edu/writings/shortfiction/ss011
From Everybody's Magazine, 10 (March 1904): 325-328.
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She is leaving her little village in Nebraska to go to the big city of Boston. A reader can already realize that she is leaving because she is not tied down anymore by her husband. He was gone so now she was able to leave. She is going to seek out more things in the city and to meet with her family. Things she probably could not do when her husband was with her and when she was tied down. But now she was free.
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One theme represented in this specific instance is how considerate many men were towards women at the time. His wife is, as written, a “good woman”. So even though he has a good woman and considering the time period she was definitely a “good” wife in order to gain that “title”. It shows how here uncle wasn’t even considerate enough, seeing as it is characteristic, to not only make sure his wife arrived safely and actually had what she needed, but that his niece would even be available.
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Clark remembers the life he had when he lived with his aunt Georgiana, by which he recalls her image to be awful, and that he had sympathy for her ugliness. He also remembers how he suffered from working in the corn fields, and of how he was a weird and ugly person too. Clark is admitting that his aunt is the complete opposite of being beautiful or of even being decent at the least. Although the aunt’s appearance is clearly horrible for people to see, he does not complain or make any small remarks about fixing up her appearance. This is because he has respect and a full understanding of what his aunt has gone through; he knows the pain Georgiana has endured since he experienced part of it when he was living with her and her husband, painfully working in the corn fields that have shaped his ugly figure, as well as Georgiana’s ugly figure. Experiencing the experiences of others allows a person to fully understand the reason why a person behaves or looks a certain way, but at the same time we are able to sympathize and respect that person now that one is not ignorant of their past.
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The setting pictures a young farm boy now starting to live in the urban city. This change suggests themes of sustainability. The young man was a hard laborer on the field and now he will have to learn how to adapt to a completely different lifestyle. What will bring about this new sudden change? Additionally will he truly find himself happy or successful. This change of location also depicts matureness as a human. From a bash ignorant child to a member of urban society, whether he is now the same or different is something we should look out for during the rest of the story.
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The author uses a metaphor to compare both his aunt and sacking debris from a burning building. I think this is because she works long demanding hours, to the extent where the narrator only sees her once a day. She cripples herself up from working so hard she is approaching her limit. Additionally, I see a level of maturity in aunt Georgina that the narrator must become. This created point of view because I have a feeling we will see Clark be compared/contrasted to her later in the story. I wonder if Clark will end up just as his aunt is.
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A possible theme for this story could be the long-term effects that a miserable situation can have on a person. Georgiana’s life on the prairie was affecting her both physically and mentally. She had become so different, that she seemed like a stranger to Clark. She was in a long-term situation that gave her no satisfaction. She was unable to enjoy her life without music, since it was a part of her soul. Her physical features represented how she felt internally. Clark described her as “not unlike one of those charred, smoked bodies that firemen lift from the debris of a burned building.” This is a clear picture of how Georgiana was, as a result of her life on the prairie. The misery had consumed her, and it was not until she had attended the concert, that she felt alive and at home again.
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He compares his aunts body to one that is shared and coming out of a burning building. I think this is because she has worked all of her life and he can see that. She worked in the house and is getting older. She does not want to work anymore probably and is going to see new things. She does not have to work. She is a free women now that her husband has died and she is going to do new things like go to bigger cities and see what she could not before.
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You can see how aunt Georgia looked rough because she was compared to “smoked bodies” and a “burnt building.” Because Aunt Georgina was very hard working. Smoke, and burning can be compared to something that is worn out, such as aunt Georgina. You can tell that aunt Georgina was not herself because of the way that she “looked” but once she started to so the things hat she loved again, she seemed “whole” again. Listening to music, made her feel much better about herself.
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The color black is most often tied to negative emotions and feelings, such as darkness, mystery, or a void state. When Clark saw Georgiana, she was “black with soot” and had a “black bonnet gray with dust.” This was a metaphorical statement that conveyed the darkness that had consumed Georgiana, to the point that she was not even recognizable to her own nephew. The author also described Georgiana during the matinee by saying, “…through her fingers worked mechanically upon her black dress…” Once again, the author is using the color black to represent Georgiana’s being. Her life on the homestead had affected her internally, as well as externally. She was void and out of place. This metaphorical comparison is how Cather was able to portray Clark’s point of view, when it came to his aunt. Through his accounts, the audience is able to see the effects that living on the prairie had on his aunt, in comparison to the city life that he lived in Boston.
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Franz Josef Land and the Upper Congo were both newly “discovered” areas relative to the time this story was written. Because of this, they have a sense of mystery surrounding them, and feel almost alien, like “those who have left their ears and fingers” there. This metaphorical comparison to Georgiana’s appearance shows that Clark’s point of view is bewildered/astonished, but also respectful of the fact that Georgiana looks and feels so out of place, even in her hometown. He knows that she has not been outside her prairie home in Nebraska for years and looks up to her with a sense of awe for living such a different way of life than most others.
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This concluding sentence suggests the theme of individuality. Clark has lived with his aunt for multiple years of his life and now he is finally precasting change. Individuality is shown by the distance away from comfort, as well as the new location and setting they just into. The life away from his aunt shows how new opportunities and experiences occur while his new mature life as an adult represents the new individuality he faces.
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I found this interesting of how the narrator points out all of these ugly detail about her aunt yet he is not upset by them. Rather he sees all these little imperfection as a result of hard work and care. This point of view shows there very optimistic perspective of clark, and it for sure makes other people like me seem very pessimistic. Even though others may view his aunt as a less sophisticated and as a less feminine character, Clark still shows gratitude in her and is not upset at her.
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Here, Clark shows that he has full respect, admiration, and sympathy for his aunt in which he noticed in his childhood that she has suffered a great deal. The sufferings of his aunt, he judges to be terrible but fascinating and that she deserves better. This clearly shows the way Clark feels towards his aunt and his feelings are what guides him to behave a certain way. Since he feels that he owes her all the good things that has happened to him, he feels the need to give a special surprise to his aunt, as a way to show his appreciation. It is important to notice, appreciate, and show affection for someone who has suffered greatly for you. By feeling this way, one is able to give something special back to them, just as Clark’s affection and great respect towards his aunt was able to lead him to the idea of taking his aunt to an instrumental concert by which she adored.
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Clark’s point of view and him telling the story really makes a difference. We see him in this sentence we see him thinking about his past and he’s telling us how he has some regret. He thinks that it is important for him to show respect to his aunt. He is starting to realize how he should have given her more respect and did not truly see how much she meant to him. This is just one way how the point of view in the story has a different meaning when coming from him. Now he is thinking about what she did for him and how she cared for him. After thinking about that he wants to show her how much she means to him and treat her how he should of all his life.
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Music is what connected Clark to his aunt. From his point of view, the audience is able to see the impact that music had on both of their lives. This becomes clear when the most notable memories of the two, have to deal with music. For Georgiana, music represented a life that she had longed for, but never received. This is why she specifically told Clark to not get too attached to the music by explaining “it may be taken from you.” She continued on and said, “Oh! dear boy, pray that whatever your sacrifice be it is not that.” Clark’s recollection of this exact moment reveals the significance that music had on Georgiana’s life, and how its loss was even greater. This point of view is what created the central meaning that depicted the impacts that loss and regret can have on people’s lives. This impact can be felt when Clark recognizes the deep pain that his aunt was experiencing during the concert. Music was not just a past time for Georgiana, it was a part of herself that she had given up. The impacts of loss and regret is something that the audience can pick up throughout the whole story.
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When his aunt goes into the concert-hall its an all new experience for her. She is amazed by her surroundings and shocked. This is opening her eyes up to the world. She is becoming free again and is wondering why she ever left. Taking all of that in really makes the reader think about how she was feeling before. Why did she leave? What was holding her back? Was her husband the one or the thing that was restricting her? Now that she is there she is seeing things she probably never has or did not think she ever would. It’s almost like the world has opened up to her again.
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Their presence at the concert-hall made Clark wonder and fear a bit if Georgiana was going to realize that the way she was dressed was inappropriate for the event. She is dressed in dirty and dusty country clothes while the rest of the women in her surroundings are dressed very elegantly and colorful for the occasion. After Georgiana realizes the fanciness of the women around her, but she only looks about but does not complain one bit about her own appearance. Georgiana’s behavior and decisions about her appearance demonstrate that one should not adjust their looks to the beauty standards of other women or men. The physical appearance of someone should not matter to others and it should especially not matter to one’s self. Just as Georgiana showed Clark that her appearance was of no importance to her, but what was important in the moment was the beautiful event they were experiencing.
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When Clark inspects his aunt’s profile, he compares her distant look to the exhausted, suffering faces and isolated presence of old dirty miners. This discovery and comparison that Clark makes shows the reader how he is so attentive on the aunt’s expression and her emotions that he ultimately and simply found fatigue, loneliness, and emptiness, based on how he was able to descriptively compare her expression to the old miner’s. Clark views his aunt as a very distant-minded woman who has worked abundantly to the point of being unwell.
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You can see the meaning behind this message. The power of music. When they are at the concert, Clark is reminded of all of the things that his aunt would do for him that has to do with music. Music brings Clark and Georgina together, it is like a way for them to bond. Clark goes on to talk about the accomplishments of his aunt Georgina. She grew up her whole life playing and learning music. His aunt Georgina knows everything about music, so she made music with the people that are really cared about, one of them being Clark. So when they both listen to music together, it brings them closer, which is why music is very powerful throughout this whole story.
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The story is written in first person POV. Clark is the one talking about his aunt. He explains the love that his aunt has with music, and how he is thankful is aunt passed that down to him. Clark admires the passion that his aunt has towards music, and how Georgina uses music to express her love for Clark. Clark loves the way that him and his aunt can connect through music, and he is thankful that his aunt passed down her love for music to him.
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One theme represented throughout this story is the power of music. When Clark thinks of music, he is reminded with memories from his childhood when he lived on the frontier with Georgiana. Her singing was a reminder of home for him and the idea that there is hope and life outside of the bleak prairie. Georgiana had felt like she had lost this part of her music-loving self by moving to the frontier, but in reality, it never left her. This shows how music in this story is able to transcend the monotonous routine of Georgiana’s (and once Clark’s) being and reminds her of what is truly fufulling and meaningful in life.
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Clark and Georgina are still at the concert, but after the music had ended and the concert was over, Clark had looked over at Georgina and saw that she was crying. This could possibly be because of the fact that Georgina had left music, and when she has listened to how beautiful music can be, it has reminded her of her past, when she used to play music. She was sad about the fact that she left music. She was reminded of the many good memories she had made with music. Which is why she was crying.
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The way Georgina is emotionally upset that her life has changed so much and that she gave up music reminds me of a theme of passion and remembrance. The setting of a concert hall is very nostalgic to her and is deeply different compared to a farm/field. Her life has changed so much that Georgina is emotionally distraught. The concert hall brings up a nostalgic remembrance of the passion she once had and how the times have changed. It truly is crazy to imagine how much our lives could change with a simple change of heart/decision-making. The amount of opportunities we experience as well as the ones we don’t is extraordinary.
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After taking Georgiana to the concert, Clark feels like he finally understands why his aunt became so emotional when hearing music. His point of view is that when she moved to the frontier, she sacrificed part of her soul, music, to be with her husband and make him happy. When she was reintroduced to her previous way of life, her soul shone through – and Clark realizes that the soul never really dies at all, but it can go into hiding. Clark’s point of view shows that sometimes we make choices for the sake of others and don’t consider ourselves enough. If you really love something, so much that is really a part of your soul, you shouldn’t have to compromise on that.
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A possible theme for this story could be the realization that “home is where the heart is.” Although Georgiana seemed out of place at the concert, it was where she felt the most at home. She had found comfort that she had never felt living on the prairie. Even when the concert was over, Georgiana did not want to leave. The text stated, “She burst into tears and sobbed pleadingly, ‘I don’t want to go, Clark, I don’t want to go!’” (Cather 25). This experience made it harder for Georgiana to return to the homestead. The homestead was not much of a home. It became clear that the concert hall, and music in general, gave her sense of warmth that she could not receive anywhere else.
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A possible theme for the story could be the importance of maintaining relationships with the people that we care about. Throughout the story, Georgiana seems like a mother figure in Clark’s life, who gave him the greatest gift of all — music. Even though it had been years since Clark saw his aunt, he was still able to have a connection with her. He referred to Georgiana as his “kinswoman,” which represented their strong relationship. Their bond with each through music, is what allowed Georgiana to realize where her home truly was. Not only was this significant for her, but it also allowed Clark to actually understand his aunt. Both of them truly cared for one another, which is something that the audience can see, throughout the story.
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Another theme presented in this narrative follows Georgiana’s changing sense of what is truly home. After listening to the music in the concert hall, she seems to be a new woman. She realizes how much love and passion she has for music and knows that sacrificing it for a man was ill-advised. Georgiana now must struggle on whether to return to Nebraska, knowing she will never be happy there again, or leave and abandon all she has ever known for the past 30 years.
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His aunt does not want to leave the concert hall and when telling him this she is sobbing. It’s almost like the concert opened her up to new possibilities in life. The concert made her realize things that she has not seen her whole life. For her it was not just a concert. After she does not want to go back to her life. That is why she does not want to leave. It is because she sees it as an escape. We get to she what she is truly into and how she had to change for her husband.
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Another theme can be the fact that Georgina has found what truly makes her happy. Even though she already knew that she liked music and it made her happy, she still left it. The theme could be that sometimes taking a break from things that you love, may better help you understand why you love what you do. An example could be, Georgina leaving music, then coming back helped her understand why she likes music so much. Sometimes taking a break, helps you. After the concert, Georgina said that she did not want to leave, which may indicate that she did not want the concert to be over, since she had missed music so much. The concert helped Georgina realize that music is something that she truly loves and misses.
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One main theme seen throughout this short story is Georgiana’s internal conflict of the happiness she felt while visiting Clark versus her way of life out on the prairie. To his aunt, the music hall is a reminder of her old way of life and the sacrifices she had to make when getting married. Clark understands this, and knows that outside of that concert hall, the same, bleak, frontier life awaits her back home – which is something Georgiana dreads after being reintroduced to such an important part of her life.
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In this sentence, the point of view is coming from Clark, and his overall perspective in “A Wagner Matinée” is directly towards his aunt’s lifestyle that is described as “dark” and “unpainted”. In this same sentence, the setting of her aunt’s home is created with tons of ugly and old descriptions such as “naked as a tower” by which the reader can obtain a vivid image of the house’s condition. The place is understood to be a rural place when Clark mentions “the cattle-tracked bluffs”, as we know that cattle is found in rural areas and that there are dirt paths in these areas too. Clark’s point of view on the country, poor, old, and ugly setting in which his aunt Georgiana lives, shows that this is the kind of life Georgiana led herself into when she played along the game of love with Howard Carpenter and both ended up building their country home that swapped Georgiana’s young, happy, musical life for a lonely, repetitive, and burdensome one. It is extremely important for women to ponder through and understand the consequences of marrying someone. It may bring a good life, but then it can also bring a horrible one like it did to Georgiana.
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General Document Comments 0
Read “A Wagner Matinée” and make 5 comments:
Locate one metaphor within “A Wagner Matinée” and base a comment on it: How does that metaphor create point of view in the story?
Base one comment a sentence that demonstrates the point of view in “A Wagner Matinée” (Voice telling the story that controls the information)? How does that point of view create meaning in the story?
Base three comments on locations that demonstrate possible themes (topic + judgement) for “A Wagner Matinée”.
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