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
When Mattie awakens the next morning, she heads to the nearby stream to replenish their water, King George flying along after her. Mattie thinks of Mother and wishes she’d been strong like Eliza instead of crying while caring for her. She figures her mother sees her as weak, “a backward, lazy girl child.” She cheers herself by reasoning that they’ll find a carriage ride back to Philadelphia later that day.
Mattie imagines that her mother’s attitudes toward her—criticizing her, sending her into the country instead of accepting her care—are rooted in disdain. Lucille, she thinks, doesn’t believe she’s strong or mature enough to handle the responsibilities thrust upon them by the epidemic. This assumption stiffens her resolve to prove herself.
Themes
Leaving her petticoat drying in the sun, Mattie cools herself in the stream. When she hears fish leaping, she has the idea to use her petticoat as a net. She pulls the drawstring as tightly closed as possible and holds the hem open, hoping “an unusually stupid fish” will swim into it. She spends a long time uncomfortably poised in the icy stream, waiting. Just when a fish appears ready to enter the net, King George swoops over her head and topples her into the water. Mattie emerges from the water, shouting at the parrot.
Mattie can’t waste more time fishing. She gets some more water and berries and hurries back to Grandfather. He’s shivering and almost too weary to speak. Mattie wonders how to make a fire with no flint and tinder at hand. Grandfather tells her to find a farm and pay for a meal and some blankets. Reluctantly, Mattie heads off in the midday heat.
Unfortunately, the fishing isn’t successful, and Grandfather is suffering. Mattie must now find the courage to hunt for their provisions another way.
Themes
Mattie encounters one farmer, but he runs inside and locks the door, shouting that he can’t help if she has the fever. Mattie keeps stumbling along, hungry, wondering if the world has gone mad. At one point, she steps on a rotted pear and looks up to find a tree laden with the fruit. She grabs as many as she can carry and hurries back toward Grandfather.
People are hiding from any possible fever carriers out of fear. Mattie feels as if the epidemic has caused basic, neighborly kindness to disappear; ordinary social bonds can no longer be taken for granted.
Themes
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At some point, the pears grow terribly heavy. Mattie is breathing heavily and imagines that she hears whispering voices. Suddenly she thinks that she’s not walking on a dirt road, but “slipping across the frozen river,” and the sun is a snowball. Her teeth are chattering. She thinks she sees Grandfather’s figure in the distance, but she can’t call to him or remember why she’s carrying heavy rocks. Soon, there’s just blackness.
Suddenly, it becomes evident that Mattie is terribly sick, which gives a sufferer’s inside perspective on the fever for the first time in the book. It’s a frightening one—Mattie’s chills and fever distort her perceptions and memory, and it’s unclear how she will survive.
Themes
