Ingenuity, Ambition, and Survival Theme Analysis

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 thereby surviving the fever, even helping others survive. A similar adaptability saves the day on a broader scale, helping Philadelphia doctors conquer the outbreak. By showcasing Mattie and the doctors’ “American” traits of ingenuity and ambition in this way, Anderson suggests that characteristics like these, especially when directed toward the good of others and society at large, can help struggling people come together, survive, and thrive.

When the epidemic turns ordinary life upside down, adaptability proves to be a potentially lifesaving trait, both for Mattie and for the Philadelphia medical establishment. From childhood, Mattie has been taught “old soldier’s tricks” and basic survival skills by her veteran grandfather. She uses some of these to enable her weakened grandfather to survive when they’re abandoned in the Pennsylvania countryside—“Find a willow tree and you’ll soon find water nearby […] Raspberry bushes mean rabbits are about”—but she also has to improvise off of these basic skills using the objects she has at hand. For example, she uses her petticoat as a fishing net. Rather than relying on a strict application of what she’s been taught, Mattie creatively builds off her grandfather’s lessons in order to serve the pressing needs of the moment.

The medical establishment in the city of Philadelphia also has to adapt to the ravages of the fever. When Mattie emerges from her fever and hears she’s at Bush Hill—known as one of Philadelphia’s worst hospitals—she learns from a nurse that “Bush Hill is now a respectable place […] Mr. Stephen Girard, Lord bless his name, has taken over and turned this into a right proper hospital. All them thieving scoundrels have been driven off.” The emergency transformation of Bush Hill is an example of forward-thinking ingenuity that saves countless lives.

Similarly, Philadelphia doctors were divided between those who practiced more traditional methods of bleeding in order to cure fevers, like American Dr. Benjamin Rush, and those French doctors who, acquainted with yellow fever from the jungles of the West Indies, pushed to treat the suffering through fluids, fresh air, and rest. “You’ll hear folks say that Dr. Rush is a hero for saving folks with his purges and blood letting. But I’ve seen different. It’s these French doctors here that know how to cure the fever. I don’t care if Dr. Rush did sign the Declaration of Independence,” Nurse Flagg explains to Mattie (who later uses this information to spare Eliza’s nephews from potentially fatal bleeding). Ingenuity and adaptability are vital in a crisis, on personal, institutional, and societal levels.

Mattie summons untried physical and emotional strength to undertake unprecedented tasks, putting others’ needs before her own. For example, Mattie assists in her own grandfather’s burial and funeral because there is no one else available for the tasks. When the weight of her grandfather’s remains is too much, the man pushing the cart of corpses “looked me up and down once, then moved to the side. […] Together we pushed the cart to the burial ground.” When there’s a shortage of ministers at the makeshift graveyard, Mattie takes charge of the situation by leading the assembled workers in prayer. Though she is just a 14-year-old girl, Mattie’s courageous initiative, spurred by love, seems to cut through whatever doubts others have about her.

Later, although Mattie is still recovering from yellow fever and literally dreams of bountiful food, she puts her comfort and wellbeing second to the children for whom she’s helping to care, as when she makes sure that most of the limited food supply goes to them: “The stew in the kettle was made for four, not six […] I poured half of [my portion] back. ‘I don’t need all of this, Eliza. The boys should eat so they don’t take sick.’” Though she’d shirked work and happily indulged herself at the beginning of the story, Mattie adapts to her changed circumstances by putting others first.

Although Mattie has always had a creative, ambitious outlook, she adapts her dreams to immediate needs created by the epidemic. Even as a young girl, Mattie has notable business acumen and longs to someday expand on her mother’s plans for the coffeehouse: “‘First we should buy another coffee urn, to serve customers with more haste,” I said […] And we could have an upstairs meeting room for the gentlemen […] And we could reserve space to sell paintings, and combs, and fripperies from France.’” She especially longs to prove herself by achieving even more than her mother did, but she has not yet been forced to develop the motivation and adaptability necessary to achieve those dreams.

After the epidemic has passed, Mattie doesn’t give up on her more fanciful dreams or her desire to impress her mother, but she is most concerned about her loved ones’ wellbeing. She combines her love for Eliza with her good business sense in order to find a mutually beneficial solution for the coffeehouse, telling Eliza: “My partner has to be someone I can trust. Someone who knows how to run a coffeehouse and isn’t afraid to give me a kick in the backside every now and then […] I’m sharing it with you. It’s the right thing to do, and it’s good business.” Mattie’s kindhearted adaptability, combined with her natural ambition, allows her to provide greater security for Eliza and her family while realizing some of her dreams for the coffeehouse.

Anderson also shows examples of people who “adapt” in unhealthy and injurious ways; for example, some merchants, even pharmacists, charge outrageous prices during the epidemic, taking advantage of people’s desperation. However, she portrays Mattie as the inverse of this—a kind of archetypal early American girl who is brave, forward-looking, and balancing her own desires with neighborly concern. By showcasing this type of courage and intelligence in the protagonist of the novel, as well as the other heroic characters, Anderson shows that ingenuity and adaptability are crucial to surviving difficult obstacles and even large-scale crises.