A Wagner Matinee

Fiction | Short Story | Adult | Published in 1904

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Physical and Spiritual Deprivation

Although life on the American frontier is a common topic in Cather's work, she does not romanticize the hardships associated with it. In fact, the portrait she paints in "A Wagner Matinée" suggests that physical survival in Red Willow County is a struggle in and of itself. The trees that grow there are stunted and crooked, the turkeys are thin and forced to pick among "refuse" for scraps of food, and Howard and Georgiana's "slender stock of provisions [is] always at the mercy of roving Indians."Because existence is so precarious, day-to-day life becomes a series of basic, subsistence-level activities; Clark, for instance, describes how his aunt would rise early to have breakfast ready by six, work through the day, and sometimes stay up as late as midnight stitching and ironing. This takes an inevitable toll on her physical health, so that by the time the story begins, she appears "battered" and prematurely aged.

Even more than these physical hardships, of course, it is the spiritual deprivation associated with life on the frontier that wears on Georgiana. The two are interrelated, however, in part because of the sheer nature of the Nebraska landscape, which is featureless and unchanging: "To the east, a cornfield that stretched to daybreak; to the west, a corral that reached to sunset." The farm itself is similarly plain (or "naked") except for its "weather-curled boards." Life in Nebraska thus involves a kind of sensory deprivation that feeds into and parallels Georgiana's artistic frustration (which Clark, significantly, describes as a "silence of thirty years"). Furthermore, the physical demands of frontier existence leave little time for pursuits that are purely emotional or spiritual, with many settlers "revert[ing] to primitive conditions."

Georgiana herself, of course, eventually acquires a parlor organ and so does not completely lose touch with the "soul which can suffer so excruciatingly and so interminably." As this passage suggests, retaining the capacity to appreciate art and beauty is a mixed blessing in a life that offers few outlets for those feelings; in fact, Georgiana herself warned Clark against appreciating music too much,in case he was ever forced to give it up. As Clark describes it, however, a purely physical existence—that is, one that never appeals to a person's "higher" emotions—is basically indistinguishable from death.It is therefore an open question whether Clark, in "waking" Georgiana by taking her to the concert, has done her a disservice or a vital (though painful) favor.

The Power and Limits of Art

"A Wagner Matinée" is a powerful—though bittersweet—testament to how powerful a force art can be in a person’s life. Many of Clark's fondest memories of his time in Nebraska, for instance, center on his music lessons, which seem to have provided a temporary reprieve from an otherwise harsh and physically-demanding life. This is perhaps because music, as Clark depicts it, has the ability to lift a person out of their immediate, physical surroundings—up to and including his own body. Clark says, for instance, that when he attended his first concert, he felt as if the music was "draw[ing] the heart out of [him], as a conjurer's stick reels out yards of paper ribbon from a hat."

For Georgiana, a former music teacher, the effect is even more pronounced. In fact, Clark finds himself unable to even imagine where the concert has taken her, at first because he doubts that she still has the capacity to appreciate music and later because he realizes that that capacity has not only survived, but likely surpasses his own. As Georgiana listens to Siegfried's funeral march, he imagines that she has lost herself so completely in the music that she herself is out "among the grey, nameless burying grounds of the sea" (in Wagner's opera, Siegfried's death results in a cataclysmic flood).

In a certain sense, then, the concert seems to have induced such a complete state of self-forgetfulness that Georgiana has entirely transcended her own life and self: she is just another of the "nameless" people buried at sea.What appears to move Georgiana in this particular passage, however, is the realization that her own hopes and dreams have died as well. In other words, Cather depicts art as a double-edged sword: although it has the power to elevate us out of ourselves, the very intensity of this state contrasts painfully with the realities of our everyday life.As a result, art can only be a temporary and imperfect remedy to physical and emotional isolation.

Disillusionment and Nostalgia

Georgiana's decision to sacrifice her job as a music teacher to marry Howard is the emotional crux of "A Wagner Matinée." Although she never explicitly says that she regrets her choice, it is clear that the loss of something so central to her identity has been extremely painful, so much so that she can hardly bear to even talk about music after moving to the frontier. With that said, Cather ultimately implies that music is just one of the many things Georgiana has given up or lost over the years. Georgiana's decision to elope, for instance, suggests that she was deeply romantic as a young woman. There are hints, however, that Georgiana's faith in her relationship with Howard was ill-founded: Clark describes the romance as an "infatuation" and (on Howard's part) a "callow fancy," implying that the couple's feelings for one another were not especially enduring.

Georgiana's loss of music thus parallels a broader process of disillusionment at work in the story. Having sacrificed so much for love, Georgiana then seems to lose love itself as an ideal when faced with the realities of her married life. The music Cather references in the story underscores this point, subtly suggesting that romantic disappointment is at least as responsible for Georgiana's decline as the physical conditions in which she has been living. When Clark reflects on the "waste and wear" of life, he is reacting to a piece from Tannhäuser––an opera that deals in part with the ruinous effects of "callow" love. On an even more abstract level, Clark imagines that the concert's closing piece (Siegfried's funeral march) might strike his aunt not just as a reminder of lost music or lost love, but of the loss of all hopes or dreams for the future—or, as he puts it, "a world of death vaster yet, where […] hope has lain down with hope and dream with dream and, renouncing, slept."

This in turn helps explain the strong sense of nostalgia at work in the story. If Clark's interpretation is correct, Georgiana's future holds nothing but death, literal and figurative: she has lost her youth and health, but also most, if not all, of what made her life worth living. The literal "homesickness" Georgiana feels for Boston, then, functions as a metaphor for a broader longing to return to an earlier and more idealistic time. Whether this desire can be satisfied is debatable. Cather clearly depicts Boston as a place that Georgiana can no longer call home; her clothing alone, for instance, marks her clearly as an outsider. On the other hand, the music's effect on Georgiana—which Clark compares to awakening or even resurrection—suggests that she can perhaps recover some of what used to give her life meaning. Ultimately, the story closes on an ambiguous note; Clark is adamant about what returning to Nebraska would mean for Georgiana, but since the story ends before she does, it is possible (though probably unlikely) that she decides to remain in Boston after all.