The yellow fever epidemic forces Mattie to take charge in ways she never expected in her daydreams, thus forcing her to reframe her notions of independence as the ability to freely step up and help others, rather than to run from responsibility. They would call me ‘Ma’am.’” Mattie feels the tension between being young enough to be subject to her family, yet old enough to have her own opinions about her future as a result, she imagines that freedom entails being able to do exactly as she wishes. I was big enough to be ordered around like an unpaid servant Big enough to plan for the day when I would no longer live here o one would call me little Mattie. Mattie also resents being regarded as a child and having to do what the rest of the household, including her mother’s employee, Eliza, tells her: “Little Mattie, indeed. I vowed to do that one day, slip free of the ropes that held me.” Mattie imagines freedom as something like the famous hot-air balloon that had sailed from Philadelphia earlier that year-when she “slips free,” she will be disconnected from the unwanted ties of family and obligation. The novel opens with Mattie’s mother lecturing her about laziness and responsibility while Mattie daydreams about a different life: “A few blocks south Blanchard had flown that remarkable balloon a yellow silk bubble escaping the earth. Through Mattie’s fight for survival and renewed appreciation for her family, Anderson shows that independence requires hard work and transformation, not mere escape, and that independence is often built on familial bonds, not by severing them.Īt first, Mattie longs to grow up and escape her family’s demands and expectations. 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. Mattie has dreamed of the day she can escape her work in the family coffeehouse, and especially her demanding mother, Lucille Cook. In Fever 1793, 14-year-old Matilda (“Mattie”) Cook faces the devastation of Philadelphia’s yellow fever epidemic.
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