Fever, 1793 Themes

For whom does the bell toll? Well, dear reader, the bell tolls for you. Whether the line is spoken by Metallica, Ernest Hemingway, or the poet John Donne, all of them agree that some day, somewhere...

As we find out in Fever, 1793, people can suffer in so many ways: physically, yes, but also emotionally. The pain of yellow fever completely transforms Matilda's body. She becomes pale and gaunt, t...

What defines a family? Fever, 1793 is a book that would very much like to know. Matilda Cook begins the novel with a pretty small family: it's just her, her mother, and her grandfather. Her grandfa...

For Matilda Cook, the star of Fever, 1793, "America" means a very specific place: Philadelphia, the city of brotherly love, the city of her birth, and the city she very much loves. It's a regular m...

Matilda Cook is a dreamer, just like that darn Jean-Pierre Blanchard she keeps mentioning (1.28). (You know, the guy who floated into the sky in a big yellow hot air balloon?) Like the visionary Bl...

What are the avenues offered to women in Philadelphia in 1793? Before the fever, Matilda's family assumes that she will find a nice young man like Edward Ogilvie and marry him. This, after all, is...

Early on in Fever, 1793, rumors spread that it's the refugees who are responsible for the fever in Philadelphia. While many fleeing from Santo Domingo (now Haiti) were indeed carrying the virus, th...

Fever, 1793 is a historical novel, so it's no surprise that this is a book that has a hankering for the past. This applies to both personal history and the kind of History that gets a capital "H" t...

When Fever, 1793 begins, fourteen-year-old Mattie Cook is a teenager from head to toe. This means that her life is made up of a series of changes, transformations, and metamorphoses. She's going th...

If there's one thing we learn from Fever, 1793 it's that science isn't an exact science. Debates about the cause of the fever and its proper treatment rage through the hospitals and coffeehouses of...