The mood of The Singing Lesson shifts in tandem with Miss Meadows's mood. The initial mood is deeply pessimistic, as Miss Meadows walks with "cold, sharp despair" through the "cold corridors," reflecting on her broken engagement and waning romantic appeal. Through the story's visceral imagery and Miss Meadows's harsh interactions with the Science Mistress and Mary Beazley, readers, too, feel the music teacher's profound woe. This sense of sorrow persists throughout her class, as she instructs her students to sing "A Lament," in which "[e]very note was a sigh, a sob, a groan of awful mournfulness."
But when Basil sends Miss Meadows a telegram restoring their engagement, the mood changes completely to one of elation. Miss Meadows experiences the world with a newfound sense of fast-paced exuberance, speeding back to her class "[o]n the wings of hope, of love, of joy [...] up the aisle, up the steps over to the piano." Readers are swept along, and—as the girls replace their winter song with a summer one—they end the story feeling joyous. However, Mansfield's satirical style and the story's dramatized tone inform the mood, and readers are meant to interpret this pendulum swing from utter sorrow to utter joy as rather absurd. It thus follows that Miss Meadows and Basil—with their ever-shifting feelings, thoughts, and choices—ought to be read as ridiculous too.
