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.
解析：
这篇小说反映了上个世纪在美国的妇女运动。文中从内布拉斯加州来的乔治安娜姨妈和在波士顿音乐厅里穿着华丽的女性产生了强烈的对比，由此反应当时妇女运动给社会以及女性带来的改变。
在故事中，作者描述了乔治亚娜阿姨的日常生活，“after cooking the three meals–the first of which which ready at six o’clock in the morning–and putting the six children to bed, would often stand until midnight at her ironing board”（煮完三顿饭——第一顿饭在早上六点准备好——并让六个孩子上床睡觉后，常常会在烫衣板前站到半夜）。这样的生活描写，正是当时女性生活的缩影。女性需要承担家务、照顾孩子。他们无法追随自己的热情。然而，妇女运动正在努力改变这一现状。女人就像男人一样，是平等的。女人不应该被束缚在家里，她们也可以尽情享受。作者用音乐厅展示了这种变化。豪华的音乐厅与内布拉斯加州严酷的生活形成了强烈的对比。音乐厅里的女人穿着华丽，衣服用的布料也是上等的，而且多彩多样。然而乔治亚娜阿姨则被描述为“dead shadow”。她的衣服被烟灰弄得很脏。这些颜色相互形成强烈的对比，展示了作为家庭主妇的女性被剥夺了她们的个性和色彩。
乔治安娜姨妈全心全意地致力于家庭，却变得疏忽了自己。她的家庭责任把她困在了那个里铁路80公里（50 miles）的荒野。她放弃了自己对音乐的热情，但乐团让她想起了过去，并带回了她自己。音乐将乔治亚娜姨妈从母亲的负担中解放出来，让她做回自己。“For her, just outside the concert hall, lay the black pond with the cattle-tracked bluffs; the tall, unpainted house, with weather-curled boards, naked as a tower; the crooked-backed ash seedlings where the dishcloths hung up to dry; the gaunt, moulting turkeys picking up refuse about the kitchen door”（对她来说，音乐厅外面有一个黑色的池塘，有牛群踩过的悬崖；那座高大的、未粉刷的房子，木板因风雨而卷曲，像一座塔一样裸露。抹布挂在歪倒额白蜡树苗上晾干；正在换毛的瘦弱火鸡捡起了厨房门周围的垃圾）。音乐是她的逃避之所，这是她能够享受自己的激情并成为乔吉安娜的唯一时间。她不再是任何人的母亲或妻子，她只是她自己。这是妇女运动的理念之一。女性是母亲、妻子，但她们也是独立的个体。他们还可以享受自己并成为任何他们想要的人。