In "A Wagner Matinee" how would you describe Aunt Georgiana's life before she married Howard? I know she enjoys her previous life better but I do...

Before she married Howard, Georgiana lived in Boston, Massachusetts, where she was a music teacher. There, too, she was able to attend the symphony and was afforded cultural opportunities. However, on the desolate farm in Nebraska, Georgiana has been deprived of such opportunities and experiences.

Since music speaks to the soul, it is a language that cannot be replaced and it leaves an emptiness when it is absent. At the time of the setting of...

Before she married Howard, Georgiana lived in Boston, Massachusetts, where she was a music teacher. There, too, she was able to attend the symphony and was afforded cultural opportunities. However, on the desolate farm in Nebraska, Georgiana has been deprived of such opportunities and experiences.

Since music speaks to the soul, it is a language that cannot be replaced and it leaves an emptiness when it is absent. At the time of the setting of Cather's story, the only music that could be heard was that which one played oneself or what one heard at concerts and recitals. But, on the remote plains of Nebraska, there would be no such opportunities for concerts, or even recitals. Nor would there be enough time to travel to areas where there might be recitals and concerts.

Her nephew recalls the years when he lived with his aunt and her family in Nebraska as she faced the daunting tasks of farm life. In the evenings she would have him recite Latin declensions of nouns and conjugations of verbs. She heard him read Shakespeare or mythology from her old books. She taught him the scales on her little parlor piano, but she rarely spoke to him of music. When she realized that her nephew hungered for more, she held him and said poignantly, 

"Don't love it so well, Clark, or it may be taken from you. Oh! dear boy, pray that whatever your sacrifice may be, it be not that."

When she was young, Georgiana attended in Paris a performance of the Huguenots, an opera about the conflict between the Catholics and the Protestant Huguenots. Indeed, her previous life was one of comfort and culture, and one in which she delighted. For, when she attends the Wagnerian opera, she weeps from joy in the music and from sorrow for all that she has missed.