Fever 1793 Themes

In Fever 1793, 14-year-old Matilda (“Mattie”) Cook faces the devastation of Philadelphia’s yellow fever epidemic. Mattie has dreamed of the day she can escape her work in the family coffeehouse, and especially her demanding mother, Lucille Cook. When the epidemic forces her to fend for herself, however, Mattie learns that “freedom” isn’t quite what she had pictured, and she ultimately achieves independence by saving the family business and providing for her mother. Through…

Fever 1793 is a mother-daughter story. Mattie, 14, resents her mother, Lucille, as a scolding and meddlesome taskmaster. She fails to appreciate her mother’s struggles to support her family and secure Mattie’s future. When yellow fever hits, Lucille is stricken with the disease and disappears to an unknown location in the countryside; the central mystery of the novel is whether Lucille has survived and will reunite with Mattie. Though absent from the central…

At the beginning of Fever 1793, Mattie Cook daydreams about her business ambitions: “I wanted to own an entire city block—a proper restaurant, an apothecary, maybe a school, or a hatter’s shop. Grandfather said I was a Daughter of Liberty, a real American girl.” The yellow fever epidemic disrupts all such dreams, making even ordinary survival seem an unlikely achievement. However, Mattie still puts her ambition and ingenuity to work, proving herself adaptable and…