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Summary
Themes
and Colors
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in A Journal of the Plague Year, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Public Health vs. The Individual
Poverty
Providence
Religion vs. Superstition and Quackery
Foresight vs. Hysteria and Complacency
Summary
Analysis
In September 1664, the narrator hears rumors that plague has struck Holland. Then two Frenchmen die in Drury-Lane in November or December. Doctors examine the Frenchmen’s bodies and find “Tokens” (i.e. certain specific symptoms) of plague. As a result, the parish clerk publishes two plague deaths in that week’s Bill of Mortality, which causes a panic—especially after a third plague death occurs in the same house where the Frenchmen died.
The narrator does not say explicitly that the Frenchmen were asymptomatic early in their course of infection; indeed, the narrator presumably doesn’t know. However, readers can infer that since the “Tokens” of plague either did not appear or were easily concealed until the Frenchmen’s deaths, a person recently infected with plague can be without symptoms or minimally symptomatic—foreshadowing a major problem for London’s attempts to curb the spread of plague. Meanwhile, the narrator leaves unclear, at this point in his story, whether the public panic in response to plague deaths will lead to some rational self-protection or mere hysteria.
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For six weeks, no one dies of plague. The people relax. Then, in February 1665, another plague death occurs in the same neighborhood as the prior three. Afterward, deaths rise in the Bills of Mortality from St. Giles’s parish; inferring that the deaths are plague, people start avoiding Drury-Lane. From late February into May, the population grows alternately complacent and alarmed with fluctuations in death tolls coming out of St. Giles and adjoining parishes.
Evidently, after six weeks without a recorded plague death, people relax prematurely—failing to consider the possibility of unrecorded plague cases in London. The narrator’s claim that Londoners later grow alternately complacent and alarmed by fluctuating plague numbers without substantially changing their behavior (except by avoiding Drury-Lane) hints that, in the narrator’s opinion, Londoners are failing to engage in rational foresight and self-protection.
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Toward the end of May 1665, a search is conducted in St. Giles that uncovers a greater spread of plague than previously thought. The following week, the Bills list 14 plague deaths—but people believe that plague deaths are being recorded as deaths from other causes, (e.g., “Spotted-Feaver”). In June, deaths spike further. The Bills attribute many plague mortalities to other causes, as plague-stricken people hide their illness for fear of government-enforced quarantine, which is not yet being practiced but is widely discussed.
The plague spreads from the outer parishes into London’s city walls, and the city records four plague deaths. The narrator lives beyond the walls near Aldgate. As the plague remains across the city from him, he and his neighbors are relatively unconcerned. However, he notices rich families in west London fleeing the city. Indeed, the rush to flee London leads to crowds seeking health documents required to stay in inns and pass through towns thronging about the Lord Mayor’s house. Rumors that the government will soon interdict travel out of London exacerbate the chaos.
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The narrator wonders whether he too should flee, leaving behind his saddler shop without anyone to watch his goods. His brother tells him to flee, arguing that if the narrator trusts God to save him from plague, he should trust God to guard his goods. The narrator plans to leave but can’t find a horse. Then, the servant with whom he planned to travel abandons him. The narrator suggests to his brother that these mishaps are signs from God that he should stay. Despite the brother’s religiosity, he mocks this idea.
The night before the narrator’s brother flees London, the narrator ponders fleeing with him. Asking God for guidance, the narrator opens the Bible and sees Psalm 91, verses 2–10, which he takes as a sign that God will protect him in London. The next day, the narrator is too sick (though not of plague) to travel, which he takes as another sign. Meanwhile, his brother leaves.
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By July, plague rages in London’s poor “out-Parishes,” but the narrator continues to venture outdoors and periodically checks on his brother’s house in the city. He sees fear on people’s faces and hears grieving cries. Sometimes his work takes him to plague-stricken neighborhoods with streets deserted and houses closed—not yet due to quarantine but due to their owners having fled the plague or followed the court to Oxford. Yet the narrator notes that it was mostly wealthy people from west London who tended to flee, whereas poor people from east London and the suburbs stayed and became “hardned” to danger.
The narrator muses that the plague killed so many in London in part because so many people had moved there for work, especially in “Finery” trades, after the Restoration. It surprises him that more people didn’t flee London given the omens before the plague. For example, a comet appeared a few months prior to the plague (much as a comet preceded the Great Fire the next year), though the narrator, aware that comets have scientific causes, had trouble treating them as omens the way women and superstitious men do.
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Almanacs and “pretended religious Books” also frightened people with dire predictions prior to the plague, as did doomsday prophets. The narrator recalls a woman in the street who claimed to see an angel brandishing “a fiery Sword” in the sky. When the narrator admitted he couldn’t see it, the crowd around the woman turned on him, and he had to leave before they could attack him. Similarly, astrologers foretold “Drought, Famine, and Pestilence” prior to the plague (though no drought or famine occurred).
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The narrator notes that many religious leaders, perhaps to inspire their followers to repent, also spread dire predictions of God’s fury—a tactic the narrator deplores, noting the Bible’s emphasis on mercy. He notes further that religious controversy was common prior to the plague, especially between the restored Church of England and dissenter sects. Though the plague suppresses controversy and leads to Christian unity, the controversy reappears once the plague ends.
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The narrator decries the satanic superstitions that spread before and during the plague, for example people’s consultations with astrologers and magicians. Though religious leaders condemn “Quack Conjurers,” the “labouring Poor” keep frequenting them, especially servants asking whether their employers will bring them along when they flee London or fire them and leave them to plague, poverty, and death—the latter being what usually happens.
Most Londoners—with government support—behave well, praying and pleading with God for forgiveness and mercy. The court stops watching plays, and various public entertainments are shut down. Yet the superstitious poor still sicken themselves with fake remedies, making themselves more susceptible to plague. Quack doctors take advantage of the poor. For example, one advertises free medical advice—and then advises everyone to buy his special, expensive “Physick.” Many poor people also buy amulets and charms—and die anyway.
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After the plague rages a while and kills many, the poor realize that quackery will not save them—but don’t know what else to do. The narrator deeply pities those who, sickening and fearing death, publicly confess serious sins but can find no one to “administer Comfort” to them in their distress. Some religious leaders continue making house visits for a time, but plague often makes visits inadvisable or impossible.
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London’s Lord Mayor, seeing how quack doctors are scamming the poor, commands the College of Physicians to publicize cheap cures, primarily to prevent the poor from taking quack cures that will harm them. The narrator notes that much as the Great Fire later destroys all attempts to extinguish it, so the plague “defie[s] all Medicines” and kills doctors, both quack and genuine, who try to cure it. Yet he does not mean to insult the doctors who die. To the contrary, he admires them for doing their duty, though they are powerless against “God’s Judgments.”
In June, local government officials begin taking action to stop the plague. Houses in infected neighborhoods are “shut up” and guarded. On July 1, the mayor and alderman invoke a 1603 Act of Parliament to impose public health measures on London. These measures include appointing “examiners” in every parish to monitor plague cases and determine which houses need forcible quarantines; watchmen to ensure people do not enter or exit quarantined houses; “searchers” and “chirurgeons” to examine bodies; and so forth.
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The public health measures also require that a household notify an examiner as soon as any family member falls sick; that that household be quarantined for a month; that any visitors to such households be quarantined for a month; that no one exit quarantined houses except to a public pest-house or to another house owned by the same quarantined family; that the plague dead be buried at night in graves a minimum of six feet deep, with no attendants at their funerals; and that every quarantined house be marked with a red cross on the door and guarded by watchmen.
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Additionally, the public health measures require that the streets be swept; that no rotten meat, fish, fruit, or grain be sold; and that all pets within the city limits, including dogs, be killed. Finally, the measures require that no beggars live on the streets; that public entertainment be banned; that public eating establishments close; and that cafés and bars close after 9:00 p.m. Though these measures apply only to London, officials in municipalities around London soon adopt them as well.
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The city government fields many complaints about its policy of shutting up entire households when one member of the household catches the plague. The narrator notes that many people who might otherwise have survived die due to being shut up with plague-stricken family members, though he believes that the policy was motivated by the “publick Good.”
Many people, nevertheless, circumvent the policy. One morning, the narrator is walking in Houndsditch when he hears a hullaballoo in the street. He learns that a watchman guarding a plague-stricken house at night heard a sad commotion, knocked to ask what the matter was, and was told to summon a Dead-Cart. Once the Dead-Cart came, he knocked again—but no one answered. When the day watchman came to relieve the night watchman, they found a ladder and climbed up to peer in the house’s window, through which was visible a dead woman on the floor. Later the house was searched, and it was found that the whole family had escaped quarantine except the dead woman.
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Such escapes are common, though the watchmen begin padlocking houses from the outside. The narrator tells a story of a family whose maidservant catches the plague. The family, forced into quarantine, refuses to go near the servant and asks their watchman to fetch a nurse for her. While the watchman is gone, the father of the family breaks a hole through one of the house’s walls, and the family escapes.
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The narrator has heard many such escape stories, and he believes they are true overall, though some of the details might not be. He also notes that during the plague, 18 or 20 watchmen were killed, mostly by people escaping quarantine. One quarantined family “blow’d up a Watchman with Gun-powder” and fled.
The narrator suggests that the strict quarantines don’t work because houses, unlike prisons, contain many escape routes—and that the orders force people to “desperate” “Extremities” to escape. Then the escapees spread the plague because they are running around desperate to flee. In other instances, after families notice one member is sick, they abandon the sick person to escape quarantine—not realizing that they themselves are infected. The narrator believes this phenomenon partly accounts for rumors that plague-stricken people don’t care whether they infect others.
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Some families do effectively flee the plague, and others stockpile enough food to lock their houses and wait it out. Yet many die horribly. The narrator recalls a story of a lady and her daughter. Arriving home from a journey, the daughter falls ill. When the lady examines her daughter, she finds “Tokens” (certain specific symptoms) of plague. The lady screams and becomes “distracted.” Her daughter dies within hours, while the lady dies a few weeks later. The narrator suggests that such cases in which people are “frighted to Death” by plague are common.
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Some families also bribe watchmen to let them escape. Many escapees from London have adventures; one such tale the narrator will relate. But first, he wants to explain what he’s up to. After plague reaches his neighborhood, a pit is begun in Aldgate churchyard in September. Before the month ends, 1,114 corpses fill the pit. One night, the narrator goes to see the pit. The sexton lets him in after criticizing his “Curiosity,” suggesting the pit might be “a Sermon.” When the Dead-Cart arrives, it dumps 16 or 17 corpses, some “naked,” into the pit. (The narrator has heard that some people steal “good Linen” from plague corpses, but he doesn’t know whether it’s true.)
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The narrator also sees a man grieving the death of his entire family. The narrator follows the man to Pye Tavern, which a group of rude drinkers also frequents. This group sometimes opens the tavern window to mock mourners in the street. Now, the group mocks the man whose family died. When narrator criticizes them, they ask him why he’s alive when “honester Men” are dead. When the narrator replies that God has protected him, they “blaspheme” and mock God. Within two weeks, plague will have killed every member of the group.
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By this point, people fear attending church, and many religious leaders have died or left London. Nevertheless, people engage in individual worship with “great Fervency.” The narrator walks home from Pye Tavern, convinced that this wicked group will die. At home, he prays for God to forgive them—in part to make sure he is not giving into “private Passions and Resentment.”
Reflecting again on quarantined houses, the narrator repeats that the watchmen are ineffective and that quarantine escapees often infect others—the source of the rumor that plague victims want to infect others. To counter this idea, he says he has known people who self-quarantined to protect their families; he expects that escapees who infect others do so only, for example, while finding “Provision.” He concludes that quarantines are “hurtful,” sending infected people outdoors when they might “otherwise have died quietly in their Beds.”
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It’s common practice for families with two houses, upon learning that one of their members has plague, to send everyone who is still healthy in the family to the other house before alerting the authorities of the plague case. This practice likely saves many who would have died if quarantined with a plague-stricken family member. Yet when other family members have already been infected but leave the house, it can cause the plague to spread further.
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The narrator notes that many families catch the plague from servants sent on errands to crowded places. He argues that London should have more than one Pest-House and should send plague victims there rather than forcibly quarantining whole families with plague victims in their houses. He believes that such a practice would save lives. He also believes that the plague is airborne and scorns people who argue that it’s sent directly from God with no natural medium.
The narrator notes that people should have stockpiled food once they knew the plague was coming. Having been “thoughtless” himself, he has to send his servants on errands for “Provision.” He second-guesses his decision not to flee London and spends three- to four-day stretches inside, reading, writing, and praying, though he sometimes visits his friend Dr. Heath. When the plague gets worse, Dr. Heath advises him to stay home entirely—but he and his servants still have to go get food sometimes.
The narrator emphasizes that the need to shop for food kills many people during the plague. Everyone hears stories of people falling dead in the marketplace, though by this point the marketplace is “thinly” populated by goods or people. At any rate, the narrator buys many provisions and locks himself up with his servants. Yet, too curious to stay entirely inside, he leaves the house occasionally—for example, once or twice a week, he checks on his brother’s house. On these walks, he sees people dying in the street and hears screaming inside houses. One time, he hears a woman screaming that her “Old Master”—whom he knows to be a rich, reputable “Deputy Alderman”—has died by hanging himself.
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The narrator notes that this death by suicide is just one example of the plague-time’s terrors. Many die by suicide. Some mothers go insane and kill their children. And plague victims with “Swelling” are sometimes effectively tortured to death by doctors trying to cure them by cutting or burning the swellings. (Yet infected people whose swellings burst are more likely to survive, whereas those with “Tokens” (other symptoms of plague) but without swellings die.)
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