![]() ![]() A similar adaptability saves the day on a broader scale, helping Philadelphia doctors conquer the outbreak. However, Mattie still puts her ambition and ingenuity to work, proving herself adaptable and thereby surviving the fever, even helping others survive. Grandfather said I was a Daughter of Liberty, a real American girl.” The yellow fever epidemic disrupts all such dreams, making even ordinary survival seem an unlikely achievement. ![]() As she watches the sun rise one morning (“a giant balloon filled with prayers and hopes and promise”), she looks forward to fulfilling her dreams as a businesswoman, but remaining tethered to her family by the obligations of love-a new kind of freedom.At the beginning of Fever 1793, Mattie Cook daydreams about her business ambitions: “I wanted to own an entire city block-a proper restaurant, an apothecary, maybe a school, or a hatter’s shop. At the end of the novel, Mattie is the proprietor of the revitalized Cook Coffeehouse, caring for and supporting her frail mother, a fever survivor. ![]() As she’s swept up in the yellow fever epidemic, however, Mattie’s perspective on freedom changes-she learns that true independence requires the maturity to help those in need, adapting to circumstances as necessary. She, too, longs to “slip free of the ropes that held me,” longing to travel to France and start her own businesses, away from the expectations and demands of her family. ![]() In Mattie’s mind, Blanchard’s balloon-“a yellow silk bubble escaping the earth”-symbolizes freedom, particularly an escape from her home, where she feels as if she’s trapped and treated like a child. Most of Philadelphia’s population witnessed the takeoff, and Mattie vividly remembers the event. In January, 1793, a French aeronaut named Jean Pierre Blanchard launched the first hot-air balloon to be flown in the United States, taking off from Philadelphia and landing 15 miles away in New Jersey. ![]()
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