Fever 1793

Fever 1793 was written by Laurie Halse Anderson in the year 2000. The main character of the book, Matilda (or Mattie), finds herself caught up in an yellow fever epidemic that all but destroys...

This novel takes place during the yellow fever epidemic of 1793 in Philadelphia, an actual historical event. The epidemic literally decimated the population of the city, killing 10% of its people....

In the beginning of the book, Matilda wants to expand the coffeehouse's business. She thinks they should buy another coffee urn "to serve customers with more haste". She also believes they should...

Fever 1793 takes place in Philadelphia during the yellow fever epidemic of 1793. This was the first major outbreak of yellow fever in the United States. It hit Philadelphia in the summer of 1793,...

Mattie and her mother do not get along. Lucinda, Mattie's mother, has had a hard life raising Mattie alone and running the coffeehouse. She is tough and driven. Mattie is at a time in her life...

Cook Coffeehouse, owned by Mattie's family, is in downtown Philadelphia, on the corner of Seventh and High Street, two blocks from President Washington's Philadelphia home, a central location in...

The most important conflict in this novel is the internal conflict that Mattie has to face with death. As the events in the novel clearly demonstrate, humans are very frail creatures who can die...

Over the course of the book, Mattie develops from a regular teenage girl into a mature young woman. When the story begins, Mattie has to be roused out of bed by her mom, who needs her to do some...

Mother and Matilda have received an invitation to afternoon tea from Mrs. Pernilla Ogilvie, a wealthy resident of Philadelphia. Mother is delighted to be asked to come, calling the invitation "the...

After yellow fever strikes and kills Polly, the family's serving girl, Mattie has the following daily routine. She gets up in the morning in her room above the Cook Coffeehouse and comes down to...

In chapter 22, Mathilda (a.k.a., "Mattie") returns to Philadelphia and manages to reunite with Eliza. Eliza is surprised to see her. Mattie, however, is mostly concerned about the whereabouts of...

Whenever anyone mentions the tolling of church bells, I always think of John Donne's famous Meditation 17, which contains the line "ask not for whom the bell tolls." This gives some indication of...

In Fever 1793, Mattie lives with her mother and grandfather in Philadelphia, where her family runs a coffee house. Initially when her mother falls ill, Mattie, who is fourteen, stays with her and...

The cold weather brought about the end of the yellow fever epidemic. Yellow fever is spread by mosquitoes; people continued to get sick as long as mosquitoes proliferated. Mosquitoes thrive in hot,...

The flowers that Nathaniel gives to Mattie represent hope. Nathaniel doesn't want Mattie to forget him, and it's Mattie's memories prior to the breakout of yellow fever that keep her going through...

Mattie's being bitten by a mosquito is included in the opening chapter of Fever 1793 precisely in order to foreshadow later events, for the deadly fever that descends upon Philadelphia is spread by...

The name of the "hospital" where Mattie wakes up is indeed Bush Hill. Bush Hill is a mansion with a terrible reputation. According to local gossip, "Bush Hill (is) one step away from Hell, filled...

Paris, the city of lights, is another important symbol in the story. For Mattie Paris represents a dream world full of glamor and excitement. It's a place where she can buy trinkets which she hopes...

Dr. Rush believed in purging the sickness from the body by making the person vomit and drawing blood from them. He thought that this would release the illness from them and help heal them. Mattie's...

In chapter 7, Mattie's mother is quite anxious about having tea at the Ogilvie mansion for a couple of reasons. First of all, the Ogilvies are extremely wealthy and belong to the upper crust of...

Mattie dislikes work and cleaning, though she has to do a great deal of work in her mother's coffeehouse. She particularly dislikes working in the heat and getting up early, and she longs for...

Let us remember that the climax of a work of literature is the moment of heighest emotional intensity, which is what the rising action leads up to. If we think about the plot of this novel, then,...

In Laurie Halse Anderson's Fever 1793, Nell is a young girl who becomes orphaned and homeless after her mother dies of yellow fever. Matilda, the novel's main character, discovers her crying in the...

Figurative language adds meaning and interest beyond the merely literal to a written work. In "used the dipper to drink," the factual meaning is that Mattie took a drink of water. However, Anderson...

In regard to Mattie's dream, it is mentioned early on (Chapter 5) that Mattie dreams of far away places: "Paris would smell like a lemon peel, far away and wonderful." (Pg. 29)This quote...

The yellow fever epidemic in Philadelphia moved quickly and killed thousands of people. As mentioned in the previous answer, Dr. Benjamin Rush tried a number of herbal treatments to help patients....

Mathilda (Mattie) matures greatly as a result of her experiences during Philadelphia's 1793 Yellow Fever epidemic. When the story begins, the teenaged (14-year-old) Mattie depends on her mother and...

Mother happens to be at Mrs. Luddington's farm when she comes down with yellow fever. Mrs. Luddington puts her to bed, but Mother is so worried about what has become of Mattie that she takes a...

Mattie's day starts early at the Cook Coffeehouse, just as it does for Mother and the servant, Eliza. Eliza serves Mattie a substantial breakfast of oatmeal, veal, and cornbread, followed by...

This novel is of the genre called historical fiction. Although the main characters and their dialogue is fictional,the story is based on real happenings in history. 1. historical- The city of...

Dr. Kerr first appears in chapter 10 on page 70 of the novel. Eliza and Mattie's grandfather bring him to the house to help Mattie's sick mother. He is described as a small, educated man from...

Upon recovering from the yellow fever at Bush Hill, Matilda and her grandfather return to the Cook Coffeehouse, the business run by her family in the heart of Philadelphia. They discover a yellow...

Mattie's family runs a coffee shop in Philadelphia, and Mattie lives above the shop with her widowed mother and grandmother. She's none too pleased about all the menial chores she has to carry out...

The biggest obstacle that Mattie faces in Fever 1793 is the yellow fever epidemic that strikes, causing members of her family to die or become ill. Mattie gets yellow fever but survives.In the...

Matilda's mother married Matilda's father against her parents' wishes. The family essentially "washed their hands of her when she ran off to marry a carpenter, a tradesman...when she was...

The problem in the book Fever 1793 is the outbreak of Yellow Fever in Philadelphia in the year 1793. This epidemic infected and killed about 10% of the population, which at the time was about...

Grandfather thinks he has been a fool because he failed to see the inherent threat in the yellow fever. In Chapter 5, Lucille (Matilda's mother) wanted to send Matilda to the Ludingtons at Gwynedd....

The falling action of Fever 1793, by Laurie Halse Anderson, begins when the cold winter climate sets in and results in the mosquitoes that carry the fever dying off, which signals an end to the...

I believe that your question refers to the package that Mattie receives in chapter 10. This is a dire time for Mattie. Her mother has contracted the fever and is being bled by Dr. Kerr. Her...

Laurie Halse Anderson's historical novel Fever 1793 takes place in Philadelphia. As portrayed in the book, Philadelphia was then the nation's capital. The narrator of the novel mentions the State...

Matilda Cook (Mattie) is the protagonist of Fever 1793, a young adult historical novel by Laura Halse Anderson that takes place in Philadephia during a yellow fever outbreak that killed ten percent...

Eliza is the free black who works for the family, she is an excellent cook and Mattie considers her to be a friend. But, more than that, Mattie has a close relationship with Eliza, more like a...

In Chapter 7, Matilda (or "Mattie") visits the Ogilvie mansion with her mother. A maid leads them to a drawing room as large as the coffee shop, and the lengthy windows are dressed with expensive...

Early on in the novel, death carts holding the corpses of cholera victims begin to pass the coffeehouse. When a cart goes by the coffeehouse holding the dead body of a man with its arm flopping...

Fever 1793 is set in Philadelphia, which is the capital of the newly formed United States at the time. Daily life is disturbed by the introduction of yellow fever into the city during a very hot...

Matilda, or "Mattie" does not have much of a conflict with her grandfather in a direct sense. Compared to her relationship with her mother, Mattie's relationship with her grandfather is much more...

Grandfather is becoming sicker and sicker with cholera as he and Mattie walk to the Ludingtons. He finally becomes so sick and feverish that he has to stop. He sends Mattie to a nearby farmhouse to...

At the end of Chapter 3, Mattie likens her mother, Lucille, to the captain of a ship. Life was a battle, and Mother a tired and bitter captain. The captain I had to obey. (17) She describes her...

It tells you something about the primitive state of medicine at the time that it was genuinely believed, by a qualified medical practitioner, that African Americans were immune from yellow fever....

Fever 1793, by Laurie Halse Anderson, was published in 2000. It is a historical novel about the 1793 yellow fever epidemic in Philadelphia, which killed approximately 10% of the city’s population....