A Study Guide for Willa Cather's "A Wagner Matinee"

By Gale and Cengage

A Study Guide for Willa Cather's "A Wagner Matinee," excerpted from Gale's acclaimed Short Stories for Students. This concise study guide includes plot summary; character analysis; author biography; study questions; historical context; suggestions for further reading; and much more. For any literature project, trust Short Stories for Students for all of your research needs.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Cengage Learning - Gale
• Release date: Jul 15, 2016
• ISBN: 9781535817462

Book preview

09

A Wagner Matinee

Willa Cather

1904

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. Just as A Wagner Matinee features a male character's point of view, Cather's later works similarly employ male characters from whose points of view the stories are told. Perhaps most notably, Cather uses this approach in her well-known novel My Ántonia (1918), a work that is set in rural Nebraska. Her first book-length exploration of the frontier setting was the highly acclaimed O Pioneers! (1913).

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