Fever 1793
Moral Values of Fever 1793 Laurie Halse Anderson states publicly in her book Fever 1793, that she does believe in universal moral truths. This is supported by many pieces of evidence from the text. The setting in her text is summer 1793 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania where Matilda works at her mother’s coffee shop. One morning her mother wakes her to get to work while they wait for their other worker, Polly, to come into work. On the way downstairs, her cat Silas had caught a mouse and left in lying around. Matilda says “I can’t throw it into High Street; it might spook one of the horses. I crossed the room and opened the back window overlooking the garden. Maybe Silas would smell his treat out there and get a decent breakfast after all.” (5) Matilda thought wasting meat is bad, and instead of letting her cat starve she gave him breakfast. Minutes later, Matilda learns of Polly’s death from an illness, with a symptom being a fever. She is outraged and takes her mother’s statement to heart. Matilda wants to know why Polly had to die and asks her mother “What about the funeral? You must let me attend that.”(16) Surprisingly, her mother says “No. Absolutely not. I forbid it. You’ll have nightmares”(16) which makes Matilda even more upset. She only wants to say goodbye to her long known friend and she is being kept from Polly and her illness. Yet, coming from Matilda’s mother’s point of view, she is keeping Matilda safe from Polly’s illness. This is Matilda’s reward for loving Polly according to her mother. Matilda is also a good girl. She never disobeys her mother or walks around like, as people would put it back then, a whore. A dress that goes down to her feet and to her wrists is her daily outfit. Because of this, the boy she has her eye on, Nathaniel Benson, starts to flirt with her, saying “The day is mine, so I’m going fishing. Want to come?” (31). Matilda did not have to act out in such a way that she is looked down upon and has caught the eye of the
Cited: Anderson, Laurie Halse. Fever 1793. New York City: Simon and Schuster For Young People, 2000. Print.