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Chapter 15
Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in Fever 1793, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Freedom and Independence
Mothers, Daughters, and Familial Love
Disaster and Human Nature
Ingenuity, Ambition, and Survival
Summary
Analysis
The next day, Grandfather salutes a tearful Mrs. Flagg as he and Mattie depart in a wagon filled with fever orphans. Grandfather sits up front with the driver while Mattie sits in back with the children and a Quaker woman named Mrs. Bowles. Mrs. Bowles is older than Mother and has kind eyes and laughter lines. As she soothes a crying child, she questions Mattie, adding that these “trying times […] bring out the best and worst in the people around us.”
Just as they were in the antislavery movement, Pennsylvania’s Quakers were disproportionately active in humanitarian efforts like those created by the epidemic. Mrs. Bowles also has a realistic outlook on the fever’s effects on people—it showcases both the best and worst in human nature.
Themes
When Mrs. Bowles learns that Mattie is 14, almost 15, she asks if Mattie has considered doing something to help, now that she’s recovered. Mattie wonders aloud how she can help, as she’s just a girl. She immediately wants to pinch herself, thinking, “The first time anyone treats me like a woman and I respond like an infant.” Mrs. Bowles assures Mattie than she would be of use in the orphan house, and she would be safe and fed there.
Mattie is at an awkward point—she’s still technically a child, yet she’s approaching adulthood, and the crisis has forced her to shoulder more mature responsibilities than she otherwise would. This is reflected in her conflicted response to Mrs. Bowles’s offer. She’s also not used to being seen as capable in an adult’s eyes, which throws her off guard.
Themes
Mattie explains that she and Grandfather will take care of one another. Mrs. Bowles says that if Mattie is determined to remain with him at home, then she mustn’t leave their house—“the streets of Philadelphia are more dangerous than your darkest nightmare,” with lurking thieves and little food. When Mrs. Bowles explains that Susannah, one of the orphans who’s not too much younger than Mattie, will eventually get work as a scullery maid, Mattie thinks that she will never take such a job. Instead, she dreams of running the coffeehouse and seeing Mother’s face when she returns home—“she would exclaim how clean and well run [it] was.”
Mrs. Bowles tells Mattie something of the way Philadelphia has deteriorated in light of the social crisis spawned by the epidemic—an example of the way that disaster can transform communities for the worse. Even now, newly recovered from the fever, impressing Mother is still at the top of Mattie’s mind, showing how much she wants Lucille to take her seriously. She hopes the crisis will give her the opportunity to prove herself in the coffeehouse.
Themes
Mattie emerges from her daydream, realizing that they’re passing through “a dying city.” Businesses are closed, weeping is heard, and yellow rags mark the homes of the sick and dying. Mattie is horrified when they pass the body of a young man, his clothes stained and his eyes yellow, who has just died. She can’t understand the drastic change in Philadelphia—yellow fever is “infecting the cobblestones, the trees, the nature of the people.” They see a line of carts moving toward the Potter’s Field, where most of the dead are being unceremoniously buried. They stop at the orphan house. Mrs. Bowles waves goodbye, telling Mattie, “Whatever you do, take care.”
As often happens in the story, Mattie is jolted from her daydream by harsh reality—her city is no longer familiar to her. Everything about its barren, apocalyptic appearance shows how yellow fever has challenged the soul of the community. Before she indulges in dreams of revamping the coffeehouse, it’s clear that Mattie will face an uphill struggle just to survive.
Themes
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