An evaluation of the role of music in Edna’s life requires a comparison of her two friends, both musicians who play for her: Madame Ratignolle and Mademoiselle Reisz. Each woman represents a path Edna can take in pursuit of her art and her independence.
Edna always enjoyed listening to Madame Ratignolle play the piano; the pieces invoked certain mental images that represented the music’s theme. Yet because Madame Ratignolle’s played sentimental pieces in a rather mundane fashion, the images Edna envisioned were rather mundane, as well—a woman stroking a cat or children at play. When she hears Mademoiselle Reisz play, the powerful artistry of the performance causes her to experience viscerally the extraordinary passions of the piece rather than forming a sentimental image of those emotions. Once back in New Orleans, she comes to prefer Mademoiselle Reisz’s violently emotion-provoking performances in the dingy apartment to Madame Ratignolle’s domesticated performances at her fashionable soiree musicales. Madame Ratignolle plays it safe with her music and her emotions; Edna is ready to gamble with her emotions and her life.
Note that Edna’s death is foreshadowed by the Zampa duet played continuously throughout the summer by the Farival twins. The twins’ performances represent the shackles of domesticity: All the Grand Isle vacationers must pretend to enjoy these endlessly repeated recitals due to the social convention that requires children and their actions to be evaluated entirely with sentiment rather than with honesty. At the gathering where the twins perform the Zampa duet yet again, the parrot (who represents Edna) squawks loudly its phrase “Go away, for God’s sake!” as if voicing everyone’s silent protest, a scene that represents Edna’s later candor about doing what she truly feels like doing rather than what is expected of her. Note, too, that in this same scene, Mademoiselle Reisz is introduced, shown objecting to a crying baby. This scene implies that the necessary honesty of art is at odds with the sentimentality Edna’s culture attaches to motherhood.
Ultimately, Mademoiselle Reisz becomes her mentor in the world of art, providing the definition of an artist and warning Edna about beginning but not finishing a rebellion. Edna is not enough of an artist to make it her reason for living when all else seems lost—unlike Mademoiselle Reisz, who sacrificed everything for her music and has received little in return. She has even molded her body to meet the demands of her art, even though that means when she plays “her body settled into ungraceful curves . . . that gave it an appearance of deformity.” In contrast, Madame Ratignolle bends music to her purpose of “brightening the home and making it attractive.”
