Matilda Cook Sparknotes

Hugh Pate Pate1
A&P
Mr. Sanders
March 5 2016
Introduction
The summer of 1793 was very dark one for the town of Philadelphia. It was the year a terrible yellow fever outbreak took over Philadelphia and killed about 5,000 citizens or 10% of the Philadelphia population in just 3 months. This event rocks the life of everyone in Philadelphia and one particular teenage girl, Matilda “Mattie” Cook.
Key Idea 1
At the beginning of the story Matilda Cook is a normal fourteen year old girl. She’s going through puberty, has a crush on painter boy named Nathaniel Benson, and has an interesting relationship with her mother. She lives above a coffeehouse in Philadelphia with her mother, grandfather, a parrot, and an orange cat

named Silas. Mattie and her mom fight very often about almost everything. In fact from the very beginning of the novel she is in an argument with her.
Key Idea 2
During the summer of 1793 the yellow fever spread like wildfire. This was because of the mosquito infested area. The yellow fever took over, spread, and killed all overnight. For Matilda she first encounters the yellow fever when the coffeehouse’s serving girl , Polly,
Pate2
doesn’t show up for work.

Turns out she came down with a case of the fever. She soon died. Soon more and more cases occur and rumors start about the epidemic spread through the coffeehouse and across the city.
Matilda’s own mother, Lucille, is the next person to fall ill. Doctor after doctor visits the coffeehouse and, soon enough, they start draining her blood in an effort to cure her. Matilda’s mom demands that Matilda be removed to the country to avoid becoming infected with yellow fever too. Which to please Lucille, Matilda and her grandfather do.
Key Idea 3
Matilda and her Grandfather head for the safety of the country in a wagon with a father and his family. Matilda and her grandfather are kicked off the wagon by town guards when they are mistaken for fever patients. They are left abandoned in the country as Matilda tries to care for her grandfather. It is there she becomes infected by the yellow fever. She starts to feel dizzy and then everything goes black. Matilda comes to in bed at the Bush Hill hospital. She is being tended to by different doctors who do not believe in bleeding there patients instead they just believe in bed rest and food. This works amazingly as she becomes

cured.
Key Idea 4
Once she is recovered her and her grandfather return to the city. There unfortunately they find their coffeehouse completely robed and destroyed by looters and thieves. Matilda does everything she can do to provide food for herself and her grandfather, getting everything
Pate3
she can get from a small garden. One night, robbers enter the coffee house through the window and attack Matilda. Her grandfather interferes and gets injured in a shuffle with one of the robbers. He dies with Matilda at his side. This leaves Matilda completely alone.
Key Idea 5
After her grandfather’s death Matilda gives him a proper burial and wanders around the city where she meets Neil. Neil is an orphan who lost his mother. Matilda then finds Eliza, who is on of Matilda’s best friends. Eliza takes Matilda and Neil to her bother Joseph’s house where Matilda meets Joseph, his sons, and his mother smith who has been taking care of the boys since their mother died.
Matilda helps take care of the children until they come down with the yellow fever. It is then she realizes that she must get them to a cooler area for them to survive so she takes them back to the coffeehouse. Where luckily a frost comes and breaks the boys fever. After that the people of the Philadelphia return to the city including George Washington. The coffeehouse opens backup. Matilda’s mother finally returns to the city and is reunited with her daughter.
Conclusion
This novel was very interesting and fun to read. At first glance it seems like any other fiction novel, but when you look closer it is almost one hundred percent historically accurate and scientifically accurate. The yellow fever was a real outbreak that happened in this time period that was a national tragedy and killed an unreal amount of people. It will be remembered forever and was very well documented by Laurie Halsey Anderson in “Fever 1793”.

WORK CITED PAGE
“Fever 1793” by Laurie Halsey Anderson
Ocp.hul.harvard.edu