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Helen Keller This year marks 125 years since the birth of Helen Keller, a woman who, struck deaf and blind as an infant, went on to alter society's perception of what it meant to be disabled. During her life Helen Keller came to be seen as a heroic figure, a symbol of courage in the face of adversity. She showed that being disabled did not mean a person could not possess high intelligence, ambition, or the ability to achieve great accomplishments. Despite her own unfortunate circumstances she devoted her life to helping others and was a tireless activist for racial and sexual equality as well as disabled rights. It is easy to see why, even today, Helen Keller remains a figure whose achievements and personality are viewed with widespread admiration around the world. This article provides an overview of the life of a woman who, at a time when the lives of most disabled people were constrained by their society's medical, philosophical, social, and economic limitations, managed to rise above her affliction and show the world that disability did not mean a person could not have an impact upon the world. Helen Adams Keller was born on 27 June 1880 in the small rural town of Tuscumbia in Alabama, USA. She lived in a modest home, built by her grandparents sixty years earlier, with her father Arthur Henry Keller, who had been a captain in the Confederate Army in the American Civil War, and her mother, Kate Adams Keller. The family was far from wealthy. Helen's father earned a living as both a cotton plantation owner and the editor of a weekly local newspaper. Her mother, as well as working on the plantation, would save money by making her own butter, lard, bacon and ham. It was in February 1882 that their lives changes dramatically when nineteenth month old Helen contracted a fever which left her blind and deaf. The exact nature of her ailment remains a mystery - doctors at the time called it ‘brain fever' whilst modern physicians suspect it may have been scarlet fever or meningitis. The following few years were a hard time for Helen and her family. She became a very difficult child, smashing household objects and intimidating people with her screaming and tantrums. There were many who thought she would be better off in an institution. By the time Helen was six years old her family had become desperate as they struggled to look after her. They travelled to a specialist doctor in Baltimore who confirmed that she would never see or hear again, but told her parents not to give up hope and advised them to take Helen to a local expert on the problems of deaf children. This expert was the inventor of the telephone, Alexander Graham Bell, who, by that time, was working on what he believed to be his true vocation, the teaching of deaf children. It was Bell who suggested that the Kellers write to Michael Anagnos, the director of the Perkins Institution and Massachusetts Asylum for the Blind, in an attempt to find a teacher for Helen. That teacher was Anne Sullivan, a graduate of the Perkins Institute who had herself lost the majority of her vision by the age of five, though subsequent operations helped her regain a certain amount of sight. She accepted the role of teacher to Helen and on 3 March 1887 arrived at the Keller residence where they met for the first time. Anne immediately began teaching her to finger spell by tracing words on her hands but, although Helen could replicate these movements, she could not fully understand what they meant. Anne Sullivan also faced the challenge of Helen's continuing bad behaviour and manners. Her attempts to improve these were initially met with resistance and Anne found it necessary to punish her pupil by refusing to ‘talk' to her by spelling words on her hands. However, after a few weeks, Anne and Helen, now living in a small cottage on the land of the main house, began to make progress as the bond between them grew stronger. The breakthrough came on 5 April 1897 when Anne led Helen to the nearby water pump. As she pumped water onto Helen's hand she traced the word ‘water' onto Helen's other hand. This brought about a revelation as Helen finally began to grasp the meaning behind the words being shown to her. From that moment on Helen's progress was astounding and she showed an aptitude for learning that seemed to be far in advance of what people had believed possible in a person without sight or hearing. Before long Anne was teaching Helen to read using raised letters and Braille and also to write using both ordinary and Braille typewriters. Michael Anagnos was keen to promote Helen's feats and his articles on her led to a wave of publicity that saw pictures of Helen appearing in a number of newspapers. As her fame grew she even found herself visiting President Cleveland at the White House. By 1890 Helen was living at the Perkins Institute where she continued to be taught by Anne. It was by March of that year that Helen met Mary Lamson who began to try to teach her to speak. At this time however such efforts were met with limited success, a fact later attributed to the fact that that Helen's vocal chords were not properly trained prior to her being taught to speak. In November 1891 Helen sent Michael Anagnos a birthday gift of a short story she had written called ‘The Frost King'. He was so happy with it that he got it published in a magazine, citing it's importance in literary history. However, it soon emerged that the story was the same as an earlier work called ‘The Frost Fairies' which had been written by Margaret Canby some years before. This incident caused quite a storm at the time and led to the end of Helen and Anne's friendship with Anagnos, who felt foolish by what he considered to be a deception. It was subsequently found that Helen had been read the story some time before and had evidently remembered it. This episode also led Helen to doubt herself as she pondered whether any of her thoughts were really her own. Helen and Anne met John D Wright and Dr Thomas Humason in 1894 and learned of their intention to establish a school to teach speech to the deaf in New York City. Helen agreed to attend the Wright-Humason School for the Deaf but, unfortunately, her speech never really improved beyond the sounds that only Anne and others close to her could understand. In 1896 Helen moved on to the Cambridge School for Young Ladies, before entering Radcliffe college in the autumn of 1900. She was, at the time, the first deaf-blind person to have ever enrolled at an institution of higher learning. It was during this time that Helen, using both Braille and a normal typewriter began to write about her life. Her first book, ‘The Story of My Life', was published in 1903. Helen graduated from Radcliffe College in 1904, as the first deaf-blind person to earn a Bachelor of Arts degree. In May 1905 Anne Sullivan married John Macy, who had helped edit Helen's first book. All three of them lived together in Wrentham, Massachusetts and during this period Helen wrote ‘The World I Live In' which, for the first time, revealed her thoughts on the world. John Macy also introduced Helen to a new political way of thinking and, in 1909, Helen became a member of the Socialist Party of Massachusetts. Her political thoughts were published in 1913 in a work called ‘Out of the Dark', which consisted of a number of essays conveying her thoughts on socialism and its impact. This work had a great impact on Helen's public image and, in the following years, herself and Anne embarked on a series of lecture tours that allowed Helen, through Anne's interpretations, to speak of her experiences and beliefs. In 1918 Anne and John, along with Helen, moved to New York. It was from here that Helen launched a number of fundraising tours for the American Foundation for the Blind and also campaigned to improve the living and working conditions of blind people, who at that time were generally poorly educated and living in asylums. Her efforts were a significant catalyst in changing these conditions. In 1921, the same year Helen's mother died, Anne fell ill and a year later contracted bronchitis, which left her unable to speak coherently enough to work with Helen on stage. At this time Polly Thomson, who had started working for Helen and Anne in 1914 as a secretary, took on the role of explaining Helen's thoughts and experiences to the public whilst on her tours. These continuing tours and the awareness and money raised to help blind and deaf people led to Helen and Polly meeting King George and Queen Mary at Buckingham Palace in 1931. On 20 October 1936, after years of deteriorating health, Anne died. This led to Helen and Polly moving to Westport, Connecticut, which Helen would make home for the remainder of her life. After World War Two, Helen and Polly spent many years traversing the globe as they raised funds for the American Foundation for the Overseas Blind. It was whilst they were abroad that they heard about the fire that had destroyed their Connecticut home, along with the latest book that Helen had been working on called ‘Teacher', a work about Anne Sullivan. It was during this time that Polly's health began to worsen which led doctors to advise that she and Helen stop their touring, though their work continued once Polly had recovered. In 1953 a documentary film about Helen's life called ‘The Unconquered' was made and went on to win an Academy Award as the best feature length documentary. Helen also resumed work on ‘Teacher' and in 1955, seven years after the original had been lost in the fire, it was published. It was in 1957 that Polly Thomson suffered a stroke from which she never truly recovered and would lead to her passing on three years later. This was also the year that ‘The Miracle Worker', a play depicting Anne Sullivan's first success in communicating with Helen as a child, was first performed. Two years later it was re-written as a Broadway play and opened to much critical acclaim. Then, in 1962, it was re-made as a film which gained Oscars for the two women portraying Helen and Anne. October 1961 saw Helen suffer the first of a series of strokes, which led to the end of her public life. She spent her remaining years being cared for at her home in Westport, Connecticut. In 1964 Helen received the nation's highest civilian award, the Presidential Medal of Freedom, from President Lyndon Johnson and she was elected to the Women's Hall of Fame at the New York World's Fair a year later. Helen Keller died peacefully in her sleep at home on June 1 1968 Connecticut. A funeral service was held at the National Cathedral in Washington DC where the urn containing her ashes would later be placed next to those of Anne Sullivan and Polly Thomson. Had Helen Keller been born today she would have had the opportunity to avail herself of the modern teaching methods and technologies that have been developed to aid deaf and blind people communicate with the world and provide them with more independence than ever before. She may also have learned to speak with a greater degree of fluency than she was able to achieve during her life. As it is, Helen Keller's legacy can be seen in the way people with disabilities are viewed in modern society. She proved how language could liberate the blind and the deaf and give them the freedom to be as extraordinary as the sighted. Through her writings and thoughts she has shown that disability need not be the end of the world. HELEN KELLER QUOTES “The public must learn that the blind man is neither genius nor a freak nor an idiot. He has a mind that can be educated, a hand which can be trained, ambitions which it is right for him to strive to realise, and it is the duty of the public to help him make the best of himself so that he can win light through work.” “Although the world is full of suffering, it is also full of the overcoming of it.” “I seldom think of my limitations, and they never make me sad. Perhaps there is just a touch of yearning at times; but it is vague, like a breeze among flowers.” “The best and most beautiful things in the world cannot be seen, nor touched…but are felt in the heart.” “Life is either a daring adventure or nothing at all.” If you are a poet or a writer with some work to share, would you like to send some of it to us? Email editor@anAurora.co.uk |