Your introduction already gives a number of helpful
comparisons that can be drawn. I think it is important to remember that Cather herself
lived and worked in Pittsburgh for roughly nine years, and so no doubt she would have
been familiar with the dreary middle class from which Paul emerges and finds so
unbearable. Cather herself was born into a rural family of pioneers, and so presumably
had to struggle in life to make something of
herself.
However, far more important than this link to my
mind is the importance of music to both Paul and to Cather. Whilst she was studying at
the University of Nebraska, Cather developed a passion for music that dominates quite a
bit of her fiction. Paul, too, is enraptured by music and in particular the way that he
is able to use it to transcend his circumstances. Consider the following
description:
When the symphony began Paul sank into one of
the rear seats with a long sigh of relief, and lost himself, as he had done before the
Rico. It was not that symphonies, as such, meant anything in particular to Paul, but the
first sigh of the instruments seemed to free some hilarious and potent spirit within
him; something that struggled there like the genie in the bottle found by the Arab
fisherman. He felt a sudden zest of life; the lights danced before his eyes and the
concert hall blazed into unimaginable
splendour.
There is something
then about the music that allows Paul to forget his background and circumstances and
evokes a spirit of Romance and freedom within him. This was certainly the case for
Cather too, as part of her attraction to music was the way that it allowed her to
transcend her difficulties.
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