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

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