Willa Cather - A Wagner Matinee & Paul's Case

Willa Cather seemed a little unusual to me. While reading her biography, the first thing I wondered if she had been a homosexual. During her time, I would say that homosexuality was unheard of so the outward expression would not be allowed, so I would say a homosexual would be quite repressed in their feelings and emotions. That seemed evident to me in her writings.
In her first story of “A Wagner Matinee,” the first thing I noticed was the main character was a boy. I then wondered if she lived out her fantasies in her stories as the boy she desired to be. With this story, we see a young man who had been raised by his Aunt Georgiana on a farm in Nebraska. Once an adult, he left the farm for the city. One day after he received a letter from his Aunt Georgiana saying she was coming to the city, he (the narrator) becomes a little anxious not knowing what to expect. His Aunt Georgiana had been a great pianist and a music teacher in her younger day and she had loved and appreciated music. As she arrived in town, the narrator took her to a Symphony Orchestra. At first she seem dull to everything, but as the orchestra began, she became consumed by the music. The music brought the music in her soul back to life; she was revived!
“Paul’s Case” was a different kind of story compared to the first. The first story of “A Wagner Matinee” seemed to be about being revived to life again, and “Paul’s Case” is about spiraling downhill in life and character. Paul is a difficult child at school, but he does work a job, but this job causes him to have desires for a life that he didn’t have. This desire caused him to lie, steal, and run away. I would say much of his difficult character stemmed from the loss of his mother and the stiff structure of a home that his father tried to uphold. After stealing $1,000.00, he takes off to New York to temporarily live a “fake” life. When the money runs out and he feels his life closing in on him, he takes his own life. This may appear to be a coward’s way out, but from my own experiences in life, when a person truly gets to that point in life, they are at the bottom. It may not appear that way to those on the outside looking in, but with the person willing to take their own life, they are at the bottom of everything they are and everything they have. It’s a very sad place to be; to feel hopeless and completely alone. I wonder if that was an explored thought for the writer?