Fever 1793

by

Laurie Halse Anderson

Teachers and parents! Our Teacher Edition on Fever 1793 makes teaching easy.
Themes and Colors
Freedom and Independence Theme Icon
Mothers, Daughters, and Familial Love Theme Icon
Disaster and Human Nature Theme Icon
Ingenuity, Ambition, and Survival Theme Icon
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

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…

read analysis of Freedom and Independence

Mothers, Daughters, and Familial Love

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…

read analysis of Mothers, Daughters, and Familial Love

Disaster and Human Nature

In Fever 1793, Mattie Cook observes, “Yellow fever was wrestling the life out of Philadelphia, infecting the cobblestones, the trees, the nature of the people.” Throughout the book, Anderson highlights the varied reactions and decisions of many ordinary Philadelphians in order to show how crisis reveals the hidden potential of human hearts. Sometimes that potential is shockingly selfish and even destructive, while other times, the love displayed is remarkably noble and even creative in…

read analysis of Disaster and Human Nature
Get the entire Fever 1793 LitChart as a printable PDF.
Fever 1793 PDF

Ingenuity, Ambition, and Survival

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…

read analysis of Ingenuity, Ambition, and Survival