Gender
Gender dynamics play a significant role in this text. As a young woman, Aunt Georgiana's work as a music teacher at the Boston Conservatory fulfilled a very specific kind of gender role, one that was available perhaps only to women in Boston in the latter half of the 19th century. When she marries Howard and elopes with him to Nebraska, she adopts a different gender role: one of a frontier woman, in charge of a vulnerable homestead. Clark observes this very gendered transformation through his own, no less gendered, lens. As a young man, his experience both of the Nebraska homestead and of the Boston music scene was very different from his aunt's; and yet, he assumes they view the world in the same way.
Frontier vs. Civilization
The central dichotomy of the text is between the barren, remote Nebraska prairie and Boston, the site of high culture and civilization. The harrowing journey that Aunt Georgiana experiences between Nebraska and Boston serves to amplify this thematic difference between the two geographies. Her landing in Boston is jarring because the two worlds are incompatible. The Wagner matinée symbolizes the height of this contrast. Clark wonders if his aunt no longer can handle the pinnacle of Boston civilization—if she has been lost entirely to the cultural emptiness of the frontier. The poignancy of the story rests in Clark's realization that her love of music is still there, even if her outside appearance has been transformed by Nebraska.
Music
Music is an important theme in much of Willa Cather's work. Aunt Georgiana once taught music at the Boston Conservatory, and brought her passion for music to the Nebraska frontier. Clark fondly recalls how his aunt was the sole bearer of culture during his years working as a farmhand on the prairie. Music brought him comfort then, and it has brought his aunt great joy throughout her life. At the same time, however, music is a source of pain and sorrow. Aunt Georgiana gave up her community of music when she moved to Nebraska, and it is this sacrifice that has made her into a martyr. Without music, she suffers, and Clark observes that she is greatly diminished from the cultured woman he once knew. But her love for music still exists, even after all the years without it. In emotional scenes, she listens to a concert by the Boston Symphony Orchestra and weeps for what she has lost.
