Helen Keller is one of the most esteemed disability advocates in all of history. So it was an especially powerful moment when, on this day in 1952, Keller herself awarded IBM head Thomas J. Watson the Migel Medal, an award honoring IBM’s inclusion and diversity standards hiring people with disabilities, including those who are blind. It was a history-making start to a workplace culture of valuing diversity and inclusion—a culture that still thrives today.
“On March 3, 1887, Anne Sullivan begins teaching six-year-old Helen Keller, who lost her sight and hearing after a severe illness at the age of 19 months. Under Sullivan’s tutelage, including her pioneering “touch teaching” techniques, the previously uncontrollable Keller flourished, eventually graduating from college and becoming an international lecturer and activist. Sullivan, later dubbed “the miracle worker,” remained Keller’s interpreter and constant companion until the older woman’s death in 1936.
Sullivan, born in Massachusetts in 1866, had firsthand experience with being handicapped: As a child, an infection impaired her vision. She then attended the Perkins Institution for the Blind where she learned the manual alphabet in order to communicate with a classmate who was deaf and blind. Eventually, Sullivan had several operations that improved her weakened eyesight.
Helen Adams Keller was born on June 27, 1880, to Arthur Keller, a former Confederate army officer and newspaper publisher, and his wife Kate, of Tuscumbia, Alabama. As a baby, a brief illness, possibly scarlet fever or a form of bacterial meningitis, left Helen unable to see, hear or speak. She was considered a bright but spoiled and strong-willed child. Her parents eventually sought the advice of Alexander Graham Bell, the inventor of the telephone and an authority on the deaf. He suggested the Kellers contact the Perkins Institution, which in turn recommended Anne Sullivan as a teacher.
Sullivan, age 20, arrived at Ivy Green, the Keller family estate, in 1887 and began working to socialize her wild, stubborn student and teach her by spelling out words in Keller’s hand. Initially, the finger spelling meant nothing to Keller. However, a breakthrough occurred one day when Sullivan held one of Keller’s hands under water from a pump and spelled out “w-a-t-e-r” in Keller’s palm. Keller went on to learn how to read, write and speak. With Sullivan’s assistance, Keller attended Radcliffe College and graduated with honors in 1904.
Helen Keller became a public speaker and author; her first book, “The Story of My Life” was published in 1902. She was also a fundraiser for the American Foundation for the Blind and an advocate for racial and sexual equality, as well as socialism. From 1920 to 1924, Sullivan and Keller even formed a vaudeville act to educate the public and earn money. Helen Keller died on June 1, 1968, at her home in Easton, Connecticut, at age 87, leaving her mark on the world by helping to alter perceptions about the disabled.”
This week in History: February 28, 1861 - Congress creates Colorado Territory March 1, 1961 - President Kennedy establishes the Peace Corps March 2, 1836 - Texas declares independence March 3, 1875 - First indoor game of ice hockey March 4, 1918 - First cases reported in deadly Spanish Flu pandemic March 5, 1963 - Hula Hoop patented March 6, 1820 President Monroe signs the Missouri Compromise
In this class I’ve learned that the idea we have of who Helen Keller was is not entirely accurate. A lot of people either see her only as the seven year old at the water pump, a scene made famous by the film The Miracle Worker. Or, they see her as this elderly woman who could do no wrong and only wanted to help others, that is the image the American Foundation for the Blind and other similar charities and organizations popularized.
There is about fifty years of interesting content lost in that disconnect and I’m going to bring some of it back. Helen Keller was a writer, a socialist, a suffragette, a dog-lover, a nature enthusiast, and a performer.
I’m going to show you pictures from her life and give you samples of her writing and let you hear her voice.
An Exploration of Her Visual Aides and Accommodations while in University
Welcome to Part One of my Helen Keller mini-series. In Spring 2022 I took a Disability in Literature class as part of my degree. The focus was on Helen Keller, her writing, her activism, and her complicated legacy.
While studying Keller’s writings I became fascinated with the occasional mentions of historical visual aids Keller relied on. It was through her autobiography I first learned that there used to be multiple Braille alphabets for the English language, or that raised text was still an incredibly popular printing choice. If you read older posts from my blog, especially Writing a Blind Character in Victorian Era Historical FictionandI found a lost piece of blindness history you’ll know that historical accommodations have been an interest of mine for a long time.
It was also through this class that I first became aware of the 2020 TikTok #helenkellerwasfake controversy. In 2020 handful of TikTok creators claimed that it was absolutely impossible for a Deaf-blind woman to accomplish everything Keller had done. Among the accusations were that her handwriting was too perfect, she could not have possibly written multiple books, or graduated college.
I believe that the skepticism people have towards Keller’s achievements stems from them not knowing what tools she had to accommodate her disabilities and how she used them. So in this post I’m going to describe all the tools Keller used throughout her life and how they contributed to her education and career.
This is a very informative and interesting series of posts. The amount of detail is incredible! I am continually impressed by the amount of work Mimzy puts into posts such as these and I hope they get spread so that people who are curious about Helen or even confused about how she existed can learn.
Educating people about accessibility allows them to expand their ideas of what disabled people can do.
A few things I have extra appreciation for:
-Asking how she wrote print so well is the older version of accusing blind people of faking when they use the internet or print keyboard.
-Sighted-guide as an important accommodation not just for navigation, but also for conversation and description of the world.
Welcome to part three of my mini-series on Helen Keller. I took a Disability in Literature class in Spring 2022 that focused heavily on her legacy. In this class I’ve learned that the idea we have of who Helen Keller was is not entirely accurate. A lot of people either see her only as the seven year old at the water pump, a scene made famous by the film The Miracle Worker. Or, they see her as this elderly woman who could do no wrong and only wanted to help others, that is the image the American Foundation for the Blind and other similar charities and organizations popularized.
In this post I’m going to be discussing some of the controversies surrounding Keller–because there are a lot. Some of these are well known and publicized, and others have been brushed under the rug.
It is important to discuss the controversies around Helen Keller, particularly how internalized ableism can impact a person and disabled communities. I wanted to share this video by Deaf and disabled creator, Jessica Kellgren-Fozard, in which she discusses the topic of internalized audism and eugenics from a Deaf perspective. I tried searching for things that discussed her privilege more in depth and found this that includes the following:
“Helen Keller was a socialist who believed she was able to overcome many of the difficulties in her life because of her class privilege – a privilege not shared by most of her blind or deaf contemporaries. “I owed my success partly to the advantages of my birth and environment,” she said. ” I have learned that the power to rise is not within the reach of everyone.”
I wonder if the other part includes people like Anne Sullivan, part of the community who helped her, which was, in the end, afforded to her through class and white privilege because her family was able to afford to find and pay Sullivan in the first place.
we shouldn’t trust historians to teach us history because they are people with biases. instead we should learn from instagram influencers, who would never lie to us.
people are saying. i’m sorry hold on a minute
Yeah, there’s a series of videos where they question whether Helen Keller was a real person or else “faking it”. Worst of all, the argument for why she couldn’t have been real is that no deaf and blind person could “do all that” referring to her extensive education, the 12 books she wrote, world travel, and work campaigning on things like civil rights and women’s suffrage. (Sources: Guardian Article,Slate Article)
I think my least favorite commentary is from thiswriter on Medium saying: “Generation Z literally does not believe Helen Keller existed. And frankly, I’m having a hard time accepting that she did myself. I don’t feel bad or wrong for it … Does it stem from our own insecurities — could it be that a blind, deaf woman with more success in life than all of us is too much to grasp? Possibly.”
I amend my statement. Disabled people should be allowed to hunt Helen Keller-deniers for sport.
I should be allowed to hunt tiktokkers for sport at my discretion.
[Image Description: first image is a screenshot of tags that say: hashtag I think historians should be allowed to hunt people on TikTok saying Helen Keller didn’t exist.
The second image is an online article. The headline says, “Did Helen Keller really open quote Do all that end quote.” Next line says: A troubling TikTok conspiracy theory questions whether Keller was “real.” Written by Rebecca Onion on the 26th of February 2021. End Image Description]
Welcome to part three of my mini-series on Helen Keller. I took a Disability in Literature class in Spring 2022 that focused heavily on her legacy. In this class I’ve learned that the idea we have of who Helen Keller was is not entirely accurate. A lot of people either see her only as the seven year old at the water pump, a scene made famous by the film The Miracle Worker. Or, they see her as this elderly woman who could do no wrong and only wanted to help others, that is the image the American Foundation for the Blind and other similar charities and organizations popularized.
In this post I’m going to be discussing some of the controversies surrounding Keller–because there are a lot. Some of these are well known and publicized, and others have been brushed under the rug.
Before I get started I’m going to set up my content warnings: this article talks about racism, white privilege, ableism, internalized ableism, eugenics, child abuse and The Miracle Worker(1963)
Captain Keller of the Confederate Army
Fifteen years after the American Civil War ended, Captain Arthur Keller of the Confederate Army and his second wife, Kate Everette welcomed their first child into the world–Captain Keller’s third child, his first daughter.
Arthur Keller was the owner of Ivy Green, a plantation located in north-west Alabama. The plantation was built decades before Helen Keller’s birth and until the 13th amendment it had always relied on the exploitation of of black slaves. If you read the wikipedia article for Ivy Green you will find that the page erases nearly every mention of slave holding. The closest mention to its history is the mention that the cottage Helen was born in was once a plantation office. The article focuses on it being the birthplace and childhood home of Helen Keller and has a section dedicated to The Miracle Worker, a deeply flawed movie about Anne Sullivan’s first month as Keller’s teacher.
In her biography, Keller acknowledges that both her parents had connections to the confederate army (her mother was the daughter of a confederate general). Keller writes this matter-of-factly with no clear distain or pride for her heritage in her tone.
The family on my father’s side is descended from Caspar Keller, a native of Switzerland, who settled in Maryland. One of my Swiss ancestors was the first teacher of the deaf in Zurich and wrote a book on the subject of their education—rather a singular coincidence; though it is true that there is no king who has not had a slave among his ancestors, and no slave who has not had a king among his.
My grandfather, Caspar Keller’s son, “entered” large tracts of land in Alabama and finally settled there. I have been told that once a year he went from Tuscumbia to Philadelphia on horseback to purchase supplies for the plantation, and my aunt has in her possession many of the letters to his family, which give charming and vivid accounts of these trips. My Grandmother Keller was a daughter of one of Lafayette’s aides, Alexander Moore, and granddaughter of Alexander Spotswood, an early Colonial Governor of Virginia. She was also second cousin to Robert E. Lee.
My father, Arthur H. Keller, was a captain in the Confederate Army, and my mother, Kate Adams, was his second wife and many years younger. Her grandfather, Benjamin Adams, married Susanna E. Goodhue, and lived in Newbury, Massachusetts, for many years. Their son, Charles Adams, was born in Newburyport, Massachusetts, and moved to Helena, Arkansas. When the Civil War broke out, he fought on the side of the South and became a brigadier-general. He married Lucy Helen Everett, who belonged to the same family of Everetts as Edward Everett and Dr. Edward Everett Hale. After the war was over the family moved to Memphis, Tennessee.” (The Story of My Life, Chapter 1)
Keller does describe her relationship with some of the servants working on the plantation. The most significant was her childhood friend Martha Washington, the daughter of a servant who was a few years older than Keller. They played together, with Martha playing the role of both friend and baby-sitter to Helen. Keller shares these memories with fond sentiment, but you cannot and should not ignore that there are elements of racism and ignorance to privilege in her work.
I do not have the words, knowledge base or experience to give this passage the critical race theory analysis it deserves. What I do have is months of research into Helen Keller, reading her books and essays, reading scholarship from other disabled writers.
And if I’m going to write about her and recommend you read her works and develop your own opinions about her, I’m going to make sure you know the ugly, unflattering aspects too.
“In those days a little coloured girl, Martha Washington, the child of our cook, and Belle, an old setter, and a great hunter in her day, were my constant companions. Martha Washington understood my signs, and I seldom had any difficulty in making her do just as I wished. It pleased me to domineer over her, and she generally submitted to my tyranny rather than risk a hand-to-hand encounter. I was strong, active, indifferent to consequences. I knew my own mind well enough and always had my own way, even if I had to fight tooth and nail for it. We spent a great deal of time in the kitchen, kneading dough balls, helping make ice-cream, grinding coffee, quarreling over the cake-bowl, and feeding the hens and turkeys that swarmed about the kitchen steps.”
“Martha Washington had as great a love of mischief as I. Two little children were seated on the veranda steps one hot July afternoon. One was black as ebony, with little bunches of fuzzy hair tied with shoestrings sticking out all over her head like corkscrews. The other was white, with long golden curls. One child was six years old, the other two or three years older. The younger child was blind—that was I—and the other was Martha Washington. We were busy cutting out paper dolls; but we soon wearied of this amusement, and after cutting up our shoestrings and clipping all the leaves off the honeysuckle that were within reach, I turned my attention to Martha’s corkscrews. She objected at first, but finally submitted. Thinking that turn and turn about is fair play, she seized the scissors and cut off one of my curls, and would have cut them all off but for my mother’s timely interference.” (The Story of My Life, Chapter 2)
While reading Chapter 2 you will find that when Keller talks about her early years before Anne Sullivan became her teacher and taught her how to communicate, she describes her young self as an unruly child who was apathetic and incapable of love. In the editor’s supplementary account of the autobiography you will also find that Keller does not actually remember her childhood much, and she is repeating a lot of the stories she was told. In a later section I’ll explore some of the reasons behind Keller’s outbursts as a child, but right now that isn’t the focus.
The focus is that Keller came from a privileged family, and though her family had lost some of the power it held before the Civil War, those advantages still helped her go far in life. Her family was able to pay Anne Sullivan a salary, able to pay for Keller to travel to Boston to study at the Perkins School for the Blind. After her father died when Keller was a teenager, it seems a lot of her education was also paid for by generous donations.
The woman writing the above excerpts is twenty-two years old and she’s still learning the world. Because of that privilege it doesn’t occur to her that Martha Washington put up with Helen’s behavior because her mother worked for their family and she couldn’t retaliate.
A few years later, after discovering socialism and beginning to advocate for labor rights, the way Keller wrote about minorities began to change. Along with joining the International Workers of the World Union, she also openly supported the NAACP (the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People) both in writing a public letter of her support as well as sending them a financial donation.
She also co-founded the ACLU (American Civil Liberties Union) in 1920 with several others.
Southern states, especially her home state of Alabama, did not react well to this. Her hometown especially, because despite the fame she had brought Tuscumbia, she was no longer welcome among them.
After her death, however, Tuscumbia cashed in. Using the recently released movie The Miracle Worker to rewrite Keller’s legacy. The movie reduced Keller to her seven year old self, many years before she would develop her political opinions, making her more palatable to racist tastes. Ivy Green became a museum in honor of Keller, attracting tourists from all over the country. They opened a gift shop and every summer they would hold a theatrical production of the play The Miracle Worker was originally based off of.
Alexander Graham Bell
Alexander Graham Bell is most famously known for inventing the telephone, but his legacy left scars on the Deaf community. Bell came from a family business of elocutionists. Elocution is the study of pronunciation, grammar, tone, etc. The overall aim of elocutionists was to standardize the English language and improve how native speakers used it. His father, Alexander Melville Bell, invented the Visual Speech System–which was a method of lip reading taught to deaf students. In the 1870’s, A. G. Bell visited several schools for the deaf to teach the Visual Speech System.
In 1886 Arthur Keller wrote to Alexander Graham Bell to ask for advice in educating his daughter, and later met Bell in person with Helen in tow. Bell had recommended Keller reach out to the Perkins School for the Blind in Boston, but he took a liking to young Helen and became invested in her education. In her autobiography, Midstream, she describes him as one of her oldest friends.
“Someone has said that a beautiful memory is the most precious wealth one can possess. I am indeed rich in happy memories of Dr. Bell. Most people know him as the inventor of the telephone; those who are familiar with his work for the deaf, believe that what he did for them was as important as his great invention. I admired him for both, but I remember him not so much as a great inventor or as a great benefactor, but as an affectionate and understanding friend.
I could almost call him my oldest friend. Even before my teacher came he held out a warm hand to me in the dark; indeed, it was through him that Mr. Anagnos sent her to me, but little did he dream, or I, that he was to be the medium of God’s best gift [Sullivan] to me.” (Midstream My Later Life, Chapter 7, My Oldest Friend, pp. 107)
Helen was a child when they met, but Bell was a renowned inventor in the middle of his life. He valued himself as an educator and believed that helping the Deaf was what his real calling was. He was wrong, put plainly. Bell tried to replace sign language with lip reading and oralism. He believed it was better in the long run to insist on integration of the Deaf and hearing worlds, rather than risk Deaf communities becoming isolated and unable to communicate with hearing people.
Decades later we have the research to prove that Deaf/HOH students need sign language for their best chance in success. Early access to sign language helps with brain development in small children. Forcing Deaf/HOH children to rely on speech only negatively impacts their language development.
“All his life Dr. Bell earnestly advocated the oral method of instruction for the deaf. Eloquently he pointed out the folly of developing a deaf variety of the human race, and showed the economic, moral, and social advantages that would result from teaching them in the public schools with normal children. He regarded the sign system as a barrier to the acquisition of language and insistently urged its abolition. He deplored the segregation and intermarriage of deaf mutes, and felt that so long as their only way of communication was through signs and the manual alphabet, they would be isolated from society and very few of them would ever rise to the position of the average intelligent man or woman.
Yet the manual alphabet and the sign system have zealous defenders. They are both easier to acquire, but the ultimate results are not comparable to those of the oral system by means of which the pupil is taught to read the lips and answer in his own voice. In my case there was no choice : my additional handicap of blindness made the use of the manual alphabet essential. Later I learned to read the lips, but I think my education would have been greatly retarded if I had begun with the lip reading in the first place.”(Midstream My Later Life, Chapter 7, My Oldest Friend pp. 113-114)
Because of the social capital A. G. Bell had as the inventor of the telephone, his power stretched far. And because Keller was only a small child when they first met, his philosophy left deep impressions. Keller adopted his stance on teaching oralism and sign language. In some of her writing, Keller expressed a belief that deafness was a worse disability to live with than blindness. From her perspective, blind people had a much easier time at connecting to the world through communication. She believed deafness was much more isolating and lonely.
“You who see and hear may not realize that the teaching of speech to the deaf is one of the divinest miracles of the Nineteenth Century. Perhaps it is impossible for one who sees and hears to realize what it means to be both deaf and dumb. Ours is not the stillness which soothes the weary senses; it is an inhuman silence which severs and estranges. It is a silence not to be broken by a word of greeting, or the song of birds, or the sigh of a breeze. It is a silence which isolates cruelly, completely. Two hundred years ago there was not a ray of hope for us. In an indifferent world not one voice was lifted in our behalf. Yet hearing Is the deepest, most humanizing, philosophical sense man possesses and lonely ones all over the world, because of Dr. Bell’s efforts, have been brought into the pleasant social ways of mankind.” (Midstream My Later Life, Chapter 7, My Oldest Friend pp. 115)
Peter Fagan: Love and Sexuality for Women
In chapter seven of Midstream, Keller relates two different conversations she had with Bell on the subject of her falling in love and getting married.
“It is not you, but circumstances, that will determine your work,” he said, “We are only instruments of the powers that control the universe. Remember, Helen, do not confine yourself to any particular kind of self-expression. Write, speak, study, do whatever you possibly can. The more you accomplish, the more you will help the deaf everywhere.”
After a long pause he said, “It seems to me, Helen, a day must come when love, which is more than friendship, will knock at the door of your heart and demand to be let in.”
“What made you think of that?” I asked.
“Oh, I often think of your future. To me you are a sweet, desirable young girl, and it is natural to think about love and happiness when we are young.”
“I do think of love sometimes,” I admitted; “but it is like a beautiful flower which I may not touch, but whose fragrance makes the garden a place of delight just the same.”
He sat silent for a minute or two, thought-troubled, I fancied. Then his dear fingers touched my hand again like a tender breath, and he said, “Do not think that because you cannot see or hear, you are debarred from the supreme happiness of woman. Heredity is not involved in your case, as it is in so many others.”
“Oh, but I am happy, very happy!” I told him. “I have my teacher and my mother and you, and all kinds of interesting things to do. I really don’t care a bit about being married.”
“I know,” he answered, “but life does strange things to us. You may not always have your mother, and in the nature of things Miss Sullivan will marry, and there may be a barren stretch in your life when you will be very lonely.”
“I can’t imagine a man wanting to marry me,” I said. “I should think it would seem like marrying a statue*”
“You are very young,” he replied, patting my hand tenderly, “and it’s natural that you shouldn’t take what I have said seriously now, but I have long wanted to tell you how I felt about your marrying, should you ever wish to. If a good man should desire to make you his wife, don’t let anyone persuade you to forego that happiness because of your peculiar handicap.”
I was glad when Mrs. Bell and Miss Sullivan joined us, and the talk became less personal.
Years later Dr. Bell referred to that conversation. Miss Sullivan and I had gone to Washington to tell him of her intention to marry John Macy. He said playfully, “I told you, Helen, she would marry. Are you going to take my advice now and build your own nest?”
“No,” I answered, “I feel less inclined than ever to embark upon the great adventure. I have fully made up my mind that a man and a woman must be equally equipped to weather successfully the vicissitudes of life. It would be a severe handicap to any man to saddle upon him the dead weight of my infirmities. I know I have nothing to give a man that would make up for such an unnatural burden.” (Midstream My Later Life, Chapter 7, My Oldest Friend pp. 133-135)
Anne Sullivan married John Macy in 1905 and they lived together with Helen in a farmhouse in Wretham, Massachusetts. John Macy worked as a lecturer at Harvard University. Meanwhile Keller wrote and published essays and went on lecture tours with Sullivan at her side. Somewhere between 1913 and 1914 the Macys’ marriage fell apart. They never divorced, but John Macy did move out of the house. Keller hired Polly Thompson as a secretary to reduce the workload as Sullivan’s health grew gradually worse. In 1916 Thompson went home to Scotland for a vacation and Keller temporarily hired on a friend of John Macy’s as her secretary. His name was Peter Fagan, he was a socialist like Macy and Keller, and twenty-nine years old.
In Chapter 11 of Midstream, “In the Whirlpool,” Keller describes the upset of recent life events (Macy moving out, Sullivan being ill, the war in Europe souring the moods of audiences) had caused her daily life and how in the middle of that chaos something new had happened–she fell in loved and was loved in return.
In Midstream, she only ever refers to Peter Fagan as “the young man” and describes him as vaguely as possible. However, there are newspaper articles which identify him later.
“I was sitting alone in my study one evening, utterly despondent. The young man who was still acting as my secretary in the absence of Miss Thomson, came in and sat down beside me. For a long time he held my hand In silence, then he began talking to me tenderly* I was surprised that he cared so much about me. There was sweet comfort in his loving words. I listened all a-tremble. He was full of plans for my happiness. He said if I would marry him, he would always be near to help me in the difficulties of life. He would be there to read to me, look up material for my books and do as much as he could of the work my teacher had done for me.
His love was a bright sun that shone upon my helplessness and isolation. The sweetness of being loved enchanted me, and I yielded to an imperious longing to be a part of a man’s life. For a brief space I danced in and out of the gates of Heaven, wrapped up in a web of bright imaginings.” (Midstream My Later Life, Chapter 11, In the Whirlpool pp. 178-179)
Helen and Peter kept their relationship a secret because they anticipated Kate Keller (Helen’s mother who was staying with them at the time) to react very poorly to the news. They planned to tell Sullivan first, believing she would be sympathetic and help smooth tides. Afterall, Sullivan was blind in her youth and then had her vision restored with surgery (though she was slowly going blind again) when she was about twenty years old. Sullivan knew what it was like to be disabled and knew the highs and lows of love and marriage.
In the interim they spent their time together and applied for a marriage license in secret. The marriage license is what let the cat out of the bag, because suddenly the press was firing up with articles about Helen Keller getting married. The newspapers were how Kate Keller found out and she immediately confronted Helen about it.
“As we parted one night, I told him I had made up my mind definitely to tell my teacher everything the next morning. But the next morning Fate took matters into her own hands and tangled the web, as is her wont. I was dressing, full of the excitement of what I was going to communicate to my loved ones, when my mother entered my room in great distress. With a shaking hand she demanded, “What have you been doing with that creature? The papers are full of a dreadful story about you and him. What does it mean? Tell me I” I sensed such hostility towards my lover in her manner and words that in a panic I pretended not to know what she was talking about. “Are you engaged to him? Did you apply for a marriage license ?” Terribly frightened, and not knowing just what had happened, but anxious to shield my lover, I denied everything. I even lied to Mrs. Macy, fearing the consequences that would result from the revelation coming to her in this shocking way. My mother ordered the young man out of the house that very day.” (Midstream My Later Life, Chapter 11, In the Whirlpool pp. 180)
Kate Keller then took Helen to Alabama where Helen’s younger sister Mildred was living with her husband. Peter Fagan attempted to talk to the family in Alabama but Helen’s brother-in-law chased him off with a shotgun. They were forced to separate.
A little more than ten years later Helen relates all this in Midstream and reflects on what could have been.
“The brief love will remain in my life, a little island of joy surrounded by dark waters. I am glad that I have had the experience of being loved and desired. The fault was not in the loving, but in the circumstances. A lovely thing tried to express itself; but conditions were not right or adequate, and it never blossomed.” (Midstream My Later Life, Chapter 11, In the Whirlpool pp. 182)
The circumstances in question were an ableist society. Although there was no specific law against a disabled person marrying, there were a lot of societal pressures preventing it because society feared disabled couples would produce disabled children. This led to “great minds” like Alexander Graham Bell firmly believing that Deaf people should not intermarry. It is why he brought up that Keller’s disabilities were not hereditary when they spoke of marriage in the section I provided earlier.
Keller’s family might have objected to the marriage specifically because Keller was the breadwinner in her household and if she married suddenly a man would have control over that.
Eugenics and Internalized Ableism
If you look back on her writing, you’ll notice threads of internalized ableism. She viewed herself as a burden because all her life she’d been dependent on someone else to translate for her, someone to guide her. No matter how accomplished she became, she would always be aware of how much she needed others.
Look again at that moment where Helen tells A. G. Bell that she’s decided she’ll never marry:
“I have fully made up my mind that a man and a woman must be equally equipped to weather successfully the vicissitudes of life. It would be a severe handicap to any man to saddle upon him the dead weight of my infirmities. I know I have nothing to give a man that would make up for such an unnatural burden.”
That is a shitty way to feel about yourself, as if you will be nothing but a curse to those you love. And when Keller describes how Peter declared his love for her, she focuses on his promise to help and assist her as well as love her.
“He was full of plans for my happiness. He said if I would marry him, he would always be near to help me in the difficulties of life. He would be there to read to me, look up material for my books and do as much as he could of the work my teacher had done for me.”
At the time when Midstream was written, Anne Sullivan was living with poor health and everyone in Keller’s circle was watching with bated breath because they believed Helen would fall apart after Anne died. And the death of a life-long friend is debilitating in its own way. Helen had a best friend of fifty years who she spent most of her day every day with, but the grief of losing a best friend wasn’t what others feared. Even Helen herself had doubts about how she would manage when Sullivan died.
Keller was a eugenicist herself and that fact complicates a lot of her advocacy, especially her stance on being pro-birth control. Keller was also in favor of euthanizing infants deemed too disabled to live an enjoyable life, although she firmly believed that no one person could hold that kind of power and that the responsibility must fall upon a board committee of qualified professionals.
She also thought poorly of people with intellectual disabilities, sometimes throwing them under the bus while justifying her right to be heard because she had an analytical mind. The cause of this ableism I think stems from the fact that Keller’s mind was her saving grace. Her hunger for knowledge, love of reading, are what made adults pay attention to her as a child. It’s what got her through college. I think in the same way that sighted and hearing people cannot imagine living a happy life without sight and sound, Keller couldn’t imagine enjoying life if she had an intellectual disability.
It doesn’t make her right, far from it. She isn’t justified or forgiven for her eugenics and ableism. It puts her in the same light as every other major historical figure- she did some things right, some things wrong. Her opinions are not always agreeable. She made mistakes.
I highly recommend checking out this podcast “The Helen Keller Exorcism” by Radio Lab, especially if Keller’s stance on eugenics stymes you. The podcast interviews several disabled scholars, including two deaf-blind women, Elsa Sjunneson and Haben Girma. Along with eugenics, it explores Keller’s internalized ableism and her relationship with Peter Fagan. The podcast is nuance and insightful.
The Miracle Worker
In 1957 William Gibson wrote a play about Helen Keller called The Miracle Worker. It was inspired and sourced from Keller’s autobiography The Story of My Life (1903). Included in the autobiography were letters Anne Sullivan wrote to a friend describing her experience teaching Helen in the early years. Some of the scenes in the play and movie are direct references to events described in the letters. However genuine the source material is, the play dramatizes the events for entertainment value. The greatest example comes from a letter where Sullivan described trying to teach Helen table manners and how it resulted in a food fight and a temper tantrum, but eventually Helen sat down and ate with a spoon. The movie version turns this into a ten minute scene where food and plates are thrown and furniture is knocked over.
The play first premiered on October 19, 1959 on Broadway in the Playhouse Theatre. The play was directed by Arthur Penn. Seven year old Helen Keller was played by thirteen year old Patty Duke. Anne Sullivan was played by Anne Bancroft. In 1963 there was a film adaptation of the play, with Patty Duke and Anne Bancroft resuming their roles. Patty Duke was sixteen when the movie was filmed.
Some problematic details I want to point out:
If you have any experience with child abuse, this movie will be incredibly uncomfortable to watch. The viewer’s first introduction to it is the scene where Helen’s parents have said goodbye to the doctor who treated her for a fever and, turning back to their nineteen month old daughter in her crib, realize she is not responding to their voices or movement. Kate Keller’s actress lets out a horror movie type scream and the father runs in. They should and shake the crib, trying to stir a reaction from Helen. There is no baby on screen but the camera looks up at the parents almost like it’s from Keller’s view point.
Throughout the film, viewers must watch adults regularly shout and scream at Helen, usually out of frustration at her, losing their patience with her inability to communicate or understand what they want. Anne Sullivan’s actress physically shakes and drags Patty Duke through the dining room scene. Plates are thrown and shatter loudly in that scene. Furniture is turned over.
Patty Duke also performs a caricature of a Deaf-blind child rather than an actual person. Picture every stereotype you know of, Duke performed it. She stumbles through every scene with her hands held out, head tilted back. She makes loud whining noises in an imitation of the deaf-child caricature. She has loud temper-tantrums
On the subject of temper-tantrums, I feel the need to state that yes, young Helen Keller did have a lot of those. They happened because she was trying to communicate a need or want and the adults responsible for taking care of her couldn’t understand. Or, the adults were trying to make her do something, but they did not have the tools to explain the how and why of what they were doing, and young Helen grew frustrated. There was a natural reason why Helen had episodes like this and after her communication needs were resolved, they decreased to the point of nearly disappearing. The problem is that the play was over-dramatizing this to portray her as an unruly, feral child that Anne Sullivan saved.
Which brings me to the language heard in the film: multiple members of Keller’s family insist she’s more animal than human. The half-brother watches Helen repeat the hand-signs Sullivan tears her and tells Sullivan that Helen is only imitating her like a monkey because it’s a game. At the beginning of the film her family talks about sending her to an asylum, until Kate Keller convinces her husband to write to the Perkins school as a last ditch effort to find a solution.
The movie features flashbacks to Sullivan’s own childhood, where she lived in a filthy, neglectful and abusive asylum between the ages of 8-14. The scenes themselves are too dark and blurry to distinguish anything, which is a directorial choice to represent that Anne was nearly completely blind during those years. After she graduated Perkins School for the Blind, Sullivan was able to receive surgery to restore some of her sight. In one scene, Sullivan has a nightmare where she hears her younger brother’s voice, Jimmy. Jimmy was also disabled and left in the asylum, but he died within a year or two from an illness he caught while playing in the morgue with rats with Anne.
AndThe Miracle Worker is the most famous representation of Helen Keller in history.
It is the movie that at least two generations of children grew up on, being introduced to disability through the movie’s deeply flawed and inaccurate portrayal. This movie won awards and has been remade at least twice. The Ivy Green museum performs the play every summer and sells merchandise associated with the movie, including DVD copies of the movie.
For the record, Helen Keller was still alive when the movie was released. She was eighty-three years old and had retired from public speaking due to her health failing, including a few small strokes. There is no published response to the movie, I cannot even say if she ever viewed it or had the plot described to her. What I can tell you is that before she was even thirty years old, she was exhausted with the public’s fascination with her childhood. She longed to talk about her life goals as an adult, her opinion on politics, anything other than a told-to-death story of the water pump.
But while other self-recording creatures are permitted at least to seem to change the subject, apparently nobody cares what I think of the tariff, the conservation of our natural resources, or the conflicts which revolve about the name of Dreyfus. If I offer to reform the education system of the world, my editorial friends say, “That is interesting. But will you please tell us what idea you had of goodness and beauty when you were six years old?” (The World I Live In, Preface)
TikTok and #HelenKellerwasfake
In 2020 there was a series of TikToks posted by a handful of different creators claiming that Helen Keller wasn’t real–and “wasn’t real” here could mean many different things. Some claimed that she was a real person who faked her deafness and blindness for attention. Others claimed that she was just a puppet and someone else was writing her speeches and books. Some believed she was just a character in a story, as though someone wrote multiple books about a character in an autobiographical narrative style.
Someone claimed that there was no way she wrote a dozen books because nobody could write that many books, and that even one book from a deaf-blind woman would have been impressive. Nevermind that authors like Stephen King, Ursula K. Le Guin, Anne McCaffrey, Terry Pratchett and many others did not exist and publish prolifically.
Someone pointed out that Helen Keller once piloted a plane, with a smug “got’chya” attitude.
Oh no, you go me (*sarcasm*) blind people can’t fly planes. Neither can the ten year olds pilots sometimes bring into the cockpit and allow to hold the steering wheel while their co-pilot takes control.
Did I ever tell you that I once captained a ferry? And by captained, I mean I was five years old and my uncle brought me aboard the ferry he was employed at and let me blow the horn a few times.
But it’s true actually and there is video evidence of it. Helen Keller actually flew a bi-plane with a co-pilot. She did it while filming Deliverance in 1919, a silent film about her life. I found a clip of her flying the plane if you’d like to see it.
[Video Description: “And isn’t everyone flying these days” a radio caster says while a silent clip plays.
Helen is surrounded by her loved ones (Anne Sullivan, Polly Thompson, Kate Keller, and her younger brother) as they fuss about her, buttoning her coat and securing her helmet. Keller turns with a smile, accommodating them.
“Helen knows the scene is absurd,” the radio caster says, “and her mother, brother, and Anne Sullivan consider the flight hazardous. But there is no stopping the producers whose inspirations change daily. Helen Keller herself has never feared physical action.”
Helen climbs aboard the plane, struggling a little.
“As a child she learned to dive into the ocean with a rope around her waist tied to a stake on the shore. She has enjoyed tobogganing down steep New England slopes. And she knows to that if it will serve to rouse public interests about the capabilities of the blind, almost anything she can do to get attention can be justified.”
Keller settles into the front cockpit, getting comfy and roaming her hands along the surface to familiarize and orientate herself with this new environment. The camera angle zooms out as someone gives the plane propellor a big push to help it get started. It whirls and swirls up a cloud of dust on the now visible field.
The plane takes off the ground while the radio caster says, “But the plane ride, though pointless itself, still thrills the onlookers.”
The camera switches to watch Keller’s loved ones watching the plane fly with baited breath.
Over clips of the plane in the air, the caster says, “Helen is in the air for half an hour and says she feels more physical freedom than ever in her life.” A clip of Keller and her copilot in the plane plays. Keller is smiling as the wings of the plane sway from side to side.
The plane begins to approach the ground to land. “Only later does she learn that in this landing she and the pilot are in genuine danger of motor engine failure.” The plane lands smoothly despite the weighing danger.
“Helen’s good humor is taxed much more than her courage,” the radio caster says. “There will be scenes [in Deliverance] where she dresses herself just to show the public she can, and in which she sleeps to prove to the curious that she closes her eyes.”
The plane comes to a stop, engine shutting off, and the crowd of loved ones and flight crew approach the plane. Helen is given a hand by her brother to keep her balance as she climbs down. As soon as both feet are on the ground she turns to hug Anne Sullivan first. The clip ends and shows a portrait of Helen Keller from when she was in her twenties. End of Video Description]
Here is what I want you to know about the TikTok controversy: It wasn’t new. All through Keller’s life there were skeptics who thought she couldn’t do all the things she was doing. There were people who believed insane things about her like that she didn’t close her eyes to sleep, as you saw in the video. There were people who believed someone else wrote her speeches and she was little more than a puppet.
But that was never the lasting narrative. Those dissenting voices were disproven by everyone who actually spent time talking to her, who experienced both her witty and insightful conversation and the day-to-day struggle she had.
The TikTok creators saying these things now do so for a few reasons:
One, they genuinely don’t understand anything about blindness or deafness, they have never been given the chance to learn how disabled people navigate their lives. If you know someone in this position, I genuinely recommend sending them a link to one of my other Keller posts in which I explore and explain all the tools and accommodations Keller used to navigate her life [link].
Two, controversy generates views. Sensationalism has been the marketing strategy of the media for decades, stirring up emotion instead of informing. TikTok thrives on views, generating money for the handful of creators with enough of a following to enter the creator’s fund (although their earnings are a pittance compared to what the app makers get).
I encourage you to do your own research in cases like this. Don’t just take my word for it, look at the sources I’ve linked for you. Read Keller’s books. Enter your arguments fully armed.
About the author of this post:
Hello, I’m Mimzy. I run a writing advice blog and my most popular subject is teaching writers how to better write blind characters. This includes helping them build interesting blind characters, determine the limits and skills of their characters, brainstorm accommodations for them (especially in fantasy and sci-fi stories) and avoid ableist tropes and phrasing. I am a visually impaired writer and currently I’m in university studying English literature and Disability Studies.
In this class I’ve learned that the idea we have of who Helen Keller was is not entirely accurate. A lot of people either see her only as the seven year old at the water pump, a scene made famous by the film The Miracle Worker. Or, they see her as this elderly woman who could do no wrong and only wanted to help others, that is the image the American Foundation for the Blind and other similar charities and organizations popularized.
There is about fifty years of interesting content lost in that disconnect and I’m going to bring some of it back. Helen Keller was a writer, a socialist, a suffragette, a dog-lover, a nature enthusiast, and a performer.
I’m going to show you pictures from her life and give you samples of her writing and let you hear her voice.
Writer
In her lifetime, Helen Keller published The Story of my Life (1903); The World I Live In (1908); My Religion (1927) and Midstream My Later Life (1929). There were also more than a dozen small essays published on the subject of socialism and labor rights.
While she was studying English literature at Radcliffe college, she was assigned small autobiographical writing prompts. Her professor liked them so much that he suggested she publish them and got her in contact with the editors of The Ladies’ Home Journal.
“The first part of The Story of My Life was written in the form of daily and fortnightly themes in English 22 at Radcliffe College under Professor Charles Townsend Copeland. I had no idea of publishing them and I do not remember how Mr. Bok became interested in them. I only know that one morning I was called out of my Latin class to meet Mr. William Alexander of the Ladies’ Home Journal If I remember rightly, Mr. Alexander said that Mr. Bok wished to publish The Story of My Life in monthly installments. I told him that it was out of the question, as my college work was all I could manage. His answer surprised me. “You have already written a considerable part of it in your themes."
"How in the world did you find out I was writing themes?” I exclaimed. He laughed and said it was his business to find out such things. He talked so optimistically about how easily the themes could be connected to form magazine articles that, without having a very clear idea of what I was doing, I signed an agreement to furnish the Ladies’ Home Journal with The Story of My Life in monthly installments for three thousand dollars. At the moment I thought of nothing but the three thousand dollars. There was magic in those three words. In my imagination the story was already written.” (Midstream My Later Life, Chapter 1, Tuning In, pp. 4-5)
After graduating college, Keller collected all the published pieces of The Story of My Life and sat down to organize them into a full autobiography. After rigorously editing the book, she republished it with new additions, including Anne Sullivan’s letters from her early education and copies of letters she had written when she was a child still learning language.
The money Keller received from publishing her autobiography allowed her to buy her own home in Wrentham, Massachusetts. A few years later she published more autobiographical essays detailing her own experiences navigating the world. It wasn’t just touch, sound, and taste. There are essays about everything she can understand about a person just by touching her hand, about vibrations and what they tell her, about her dreams. These essays were published as a collection and titled The World I Live In.
In the 1910s she published essays on socialism which I will explore more thoroughly in the next section.
Between 1927 and 1929, Keller sat down and chronicled all that the last thirty years had brought her in life, the highs and lows. In it you will find accounts of how she struggled with her career as a public speaker
Socialist
Keller was first introduced to socialism through New Worlds of Old by H. G. Wells, published in 1908. The book was recommended to her by Anne Sullivan, her teacher.
“I read it on Mrs. Macy’s recommendation. She was attracted by its imaginative quality, and hoped that its electric style might stimulate and interest me. When she gave me the book, she was not a socialist and she is not a socialist now” (How I Became a Socialist, 1912).
After finishing New Worlds of Old, Keller approached John Macy for new material. John Macy was Anne Sullivan’s husband and Keller was living with the couple at the time. Unlike his wife, he was an avid socialist with a mini-library of socialist literature. Keller subscribed to multiple socialist magazines. A few times a week a friend would visit her home and read the magazines to her via the manual alphabet.
The world did not respond to Keller’s socialism with delight. Newspapers ran wild printing out articles to respond to this. Some articles speculated that someone was using Keller like a puppet, piggy-backing off her fame to promote the socialist cause. Others argued that Keller’s interest in socialism was a sign of ignorance that stemmed from being deaf-blind and depending on someone else to tell her about the world around her. Macy and Sullivan were often accused of “poisoning Keller’s impressionable mind” with their socialist views. Another argument was that Keller’s interest in socialism stemmed from a deficit in her critical thinking abilities.
As Keller saw it, capitalism generated an abundance of human misery through exploitation. The extreme hours and intensity of labor meant failing health and early death for many. It meant that even when laborers returned home they had too little time to sleep and recover, let alone enjoy their free time. There was no time for family or caring for the home, meaning that living environments were unsanitary and worsened moral.
Keller also recognized that her family’s wealth and her education had given her a privilege to not experience this exploitation herself. But knowing she was safe from that suffering, an exception, was not a comfort.
“I know those men are hungry for more life, more opportunity. They are tired of the hollow mockery of mere existence in a world of plenty. I am glad of every effort that the workingmen make to organize. I realize that all things will never be better until they are organized, until they stand all together like one man. That is my hope of world democracy. Despite their errors, their blunders and the ignominy heaped upon them, I sympathize with the IWWs. Their cause is my cause. While they are threatened and imprisoned, I am manacled. If they are denied a living wage, I too am defrauded. While they are industrial slaves, I cannot be free. My hunger is not satisfied while they are unfed. I cannot enjoy the good things of life that come to me while they are hindered and neglected.” (In Behalf of the IWW, 1918)
And reading that, it’s easy to say “those are pretty words, but did she do anything for them?” Yes, she did. Just giving them her voice gave the IWW a platform. Keller was widely looked upon with admiration, her vocal support was one of the best gifts she could give to social justice causes. Moreover, she utilized the critical thinking skills she developed in college to reason with readers to see the necessity to support those causes.
Helen Keller entered her twenties in 1900, graduated from a women’s college in 1904, and became increasingly interested in human rights from 1910 and onward. Unsurprisingly, she was a suffragist. The fight to get women the right to vote was just as important to her as every other fight she participated in.
[Image Description: A newspaper clipping. The headline says: “Helen Keller Riding in the Great Parade of Suffragists in Boston Campaign.” Pictured in black and white is Helen Keller on the left beside another unidentified woman. Both women are wearing hats, and with the sun shining on their backs it casts shadows on their faces. Below the photo is the caption that says: “Helen Keller, shown at the left, was unable to see the crowds that lined Boston’s downtown streets for the recent suffrage parade, in which she was photographed, but her face beamed with smiles as she ‘heard’ the cheers for ‘votes for women’” End Image Description]
On June 11, 1916 Helen Keller spoke before the newly formed National Women’s Party, a political party focused on women’s suffrage. From this speech is where the quote “women’s inferiority is man-made” originates but this is my favorite part of the speech:
“The suffrage movement means more than votes for women. It stands for our solidarity. It embodies the ideals and aspirations of the millions of women who think, and whose intelligence and capabilities both men and women respect. We have prayed, we have coaxed, we have begged, for the vote, with the hope that men, out of chivalry, would bestow equal rights upon women and take them into partnership in the affairs of the state. We hoped that their common sense would triumph over prejudices and stupidity. We thought their boasted sense of justice would overcome the errors that so often fetter the human spirit; but we have always gone away empty handed. We shall beg no more. With the ballow [bludgeon or club] in our hands, we demand suffrage for all women.”
Keller was famously a pacifist who spoke out against entering the war during World War 1, but this call to arms (metaphorical arms) delights me.
Animal Lover
All her life Helen Keller had dogs by her side. From her earliest childhood years before Anne Sullivan, to her final years, she adored and doted on her dogs.
“Nobody, who is not blind, as much as they may love their pet, can know what a dog’s love really means. Dogs have travelled all over the world with me. They have always been my companions. A dog has never failed me.”
[Image Description: Ten year old Helen Keller in a white dress standing beside a chair. Sitting on the chair is a medium sized dog with a brown and white coat. The dog’s white chest and floppy ears are especially fluffy. Helen has her left hand touching the back of the dog’s neck while her right hand sits at her side. The background is a painted drop cloth used as a background in professional portraits. End Image Description]
Perkins could not confirm which dog this was, but their best guess is that we’re looking at Belle, the dog Keller described as her best friend in her childhood years.
[Image Description: Helen Keller between the ages of thirteen and fourteen. She is sitting with a bull mastiff by her side. The dog’s name is Lioness and she has a dark, shiny coat with a white streak crossing down her forehead and covering her snout. Lioness is positioned behind Keller, lounging with only her head and one front leg visible. Lioness gazes directly at the camera while Keller has her head positioned at a profile angle, chin up. Her hair is down with curls framing her face. End Image Description]
When Helen was attending Radcliffe College, some of her classmates took her on a small adventure into the city with the end goal of surprising her with a gift.
Another episode I like to recall was a surprise my class planned for me. One day several girls invited me to go with them to see some jolly friends in Brookline. That was all they would tell me, and when we reached our destination, they were very mysterious, I began to sniff, and in a moment I realized that instead of a human habitation we were entering a kennel, the abode of many Boston terriers. The dogs gave us a royal welcome, and one ugly beauty, heir of a noble pedigree, with the title of Sir Thomas Belvedere, bestowed upon me his special favour, planting himself resolutely at my feet, protesting with his whole body if I touched any other dog. The girls asked me if I liked him. I said I adored him. “Take him home then,” they said. “He is our gift to you." Sir Thomas seemed to understand; for he began spinning round and round me like a top. When he had quieted down a little I told him I did not care much for titles. He assured me that he had no objection to changing his name, and when I told him that I was going to call him Phiz he rolled over thrice by way of showing his approval. So we carried him happily back with us to Cambridge. (Midstream My Later Life, You Oh Youth, page 18-19)
[Image Description: Twenty-two year old Helen Keller sitting while Phiz, a Boston bull Terrier sits on the table beside her. Keller is leaning forward and pressing her face to the dog’s side while her hands wrap around his chest. The dog has a dark coat with a white snout, chesk, and paws. His ears are short and pointed. Keller’s eyes are half closed while the dog looks off to the side. End Image Description]
[Image Description: Twenty-five year old Helen Keller sitting down with her body turned towards the black French bull terrier. This dog is assumed to be Kaiser, and his attention is fully on Keller, looking up at her fondly and bending his head forward to ask for more pets. Helen has her left hand touching the back of Kaiser’s neck, temporarily paused to hold still for the photo. Keller is wearing an Edwardian blouse with three quarter sleeve and a lace collar, as well as a striped skirt. Her clothing and the backdrop of the portrait are both light in color, making Kaiser stand out. End Image Description]
[Image Description: Helen Keller, Anne Sullivan, and Polly Thompson sitting on a fainting couch with a Great Dane named Sieglinde sitting in front of them. Sieglinde has a light coat with darker markings around her snout and ears. All three women are dressed in black dresses with white accents, each wearing her hair in finger waves, a style popular to the twenties. Thompson has her arm wrapped around Sullivan’s shoulder while Sullivan rests her hand on Keller’s. End Image Description]
In 1937 Helen Keller traveled to Japan for the first time. While there she first heard of akitas, a dog breed in Japan, and heard the story of Hachiko. “During her visit, she heard about Hachiko, a famous Akita who had died two years earlier. Hachiko was renowned for his exceptional loyalty. The dog had accompanied his owner to the train station every morning and met him there again every afternoon. Then one day, while away at work in Tokyo, the owner passed away. But that didn’t stop Hachiko. Until his own death almost ten years later, Hachiko went to the station every single evening to search for his beloved owner until his own death.” (link to American Kennel Foundation article quoted)
The Japanese government gifted Keller with an akita puppy named Kamikaze-Go.
[Image Description: Helen Keller and Polly Thompson fawn over an akita puppy named Kamikaze-Go. The dog is standing on his hind legs with his front paws balanced in Polly Thompson’s hands. His head is pressed up to Keller’s chest as he looks up at Thompson. Kamikaze-Go has light fur with dark markings around his snout and ears. End Image Description]
Keller was enamored with him, calling him “an angel in fur.”
Unfortunately Kamikaze-Go contracted canine distemper and died at seven months old. We modern dog lovers are lucky because now there’s a vaccine to prevent tragedies like this. Keller was devastated.
Two years later the Japanese government acquainted Keller with Kamikaze-Go’s younger brother, named Kenzan-Go. It was love at first sight. Keller nicknamed him Go-Go and doted on him. Through watching her, the American public became aware of the akita breed and began to love them too. Akitas became more popular in the U.S., became a recognized breed, and entered dog shows.
[Image Description: Helen Keller and Polly Thompson are seated together on a fainting couch, the same one from the photo of Keller, Sullivan, and Thompson over ten years ago. Go-Go lays on the ground by their feet. He has a medium colored coat that appears to get darker along his back and his ears. Keller’s right hand is wrapped around Thompson’s hand. Thompson looks almost directly at the camera while Keller looks to the side. End Image Description]
Nature Enthusiast
Keller’s love of nature started long before Anne Sullivan arrived in her life. Growing up on a post-Civil War plantation, there was an abundance of fields and gardens for Keller to explore on her family’s land. Keller’s most used senses were touch and smell and she received an abundance of stimulation in the fragrant gardens surrounding her home.
“I never smell daises without living over again the ecstatic mornings that my teacher and I spent wandering in the fields, while I learned new words and the names of things. Smell is a potent wizard that transports us across a thousand miles and all the years we have lived. The odor of fruits wafts to me my Southern home, to my childish frolics in the peach orchard.” (The World I Live In and Optimism - Chapter Six. Smell, the Fallen Angel)
In this chapter of The World I Live In, Keller approaches the subject of nature conservation, firmly planting herself as someone who believes the exploitation of natural resources such as lumber strips Mother Earth of the natural facets that make her so enjoyable to live on. The message is not new, Native American tribes have advocated for the preservation of natural resources for centuries and practiced sustainable living long before colonization began. Keller is adding her voice to the fight, and doing it in an emotional, sentimental way. She takes you through the moment of realizing the forest you love has been stripped into pieces for industry.
“The other day I walked toward a familiar wood. Suddenly a disturbing odour made me pause in dismay. Then followed a peculiar, measured jar, followed my a dull, heavy thunder. I understood the odour and jar only too well. The trees were being cut down. We climbed the stone wall to the left. It borders the wood which I have loved so long that it seems to be my peculiar possession. But today an unfamiliar rush of air and an unwonted outburst of sun told me that my tree friends were gone.”
When Keller bought her first home in Wrentham, Massachusetts, she had dreams of having her own farm. She kept chickens, had a horse, and planted an apple orchard. She wasn’t exactly skilled at farm labor, and in fact had more failures than success on that front. However, that relationship with nature gave her genuine happiness.
In Midstream My Later Life you’ll find mentions of adventurous hikes she took with Mark Twain on his property, getting lost and having to wander onto the main road to find their way back home.
“We [Keller with Anne Sullivan, her husband John Macy, and Mark Twain, referred to as Mr. Clemens] wandered on and on, forgetful of time and distance, beguiled by stream and meadow and seductive stone walls wearing their autumn draperies of red and gold vines a little dimmed by rain and snow, but still exquisitely beautiful When we turned at last, and started to climb the hill, Mr. Clemens paused and stood gazing ever the frosty New England valley, and said, "Age is like this, we stand on the summit and look back over the distance and time. Alas, how swift are the feet of the days of the years of youth.” We realized that he was very tired.
Mr. Macy suggested that he should return cross-lots and meet us on the road with a carriage. Mr. Clemens thought this a good idea, and agreed to pilot Mrs. Macy and me to the road, which he hadevery reason to suppose was just beyond that elephant of a hill. Our search for that road was a wonderful and fearsome adventure. It led through cowpaths, across ditches filled with ice-cold water into fields dotted with little islands of red and gold which rose gently out of the white snow. On closer inspection we found that they were composed of patches of dry goldenrod and huckleberry bushes. We picked our way through treacherously smiling cart roads. He said, “Every path leading out of this jungle dwindles into a squirrel track and runs up a tree.” The cart roads proved to be ruts that ensnared our innocent feet Mr, Clemens had the wary air of a discoverer as he turned and twisted between spreading branches of majestic pines and dwarfed hazel bushes. I remarked that we seemed to be away off our course. He answered, “This is the uncharted wilderness. We have wandered into the chaos that existed before Jehovah divided the waters from the land. The road is just over there,” he asserted with conviction. “Yes,” we murmured faintly, wondering how we should ever ford the roaring, tumbling imp of a stream which flung itself at us out of the hills.
“There was no doubt about it. The road was just there “where you see that rail fence.” Prophecy deepened into happy certainty when we saw Mr. Macy and the coachman waiting for us. “Stay where you are,” they shouted. In a few seconds they had dismembered the rail fence and were transporting it over the field. It did not take them long to construct a rough bridge, over which we safely crossed the Redding Rubicon, and sure enough, there was the narrow road of civilization winding up the hillside between stone walls and clustering sumachs and wild cherry trees on which little icicles were beginning to form like pendants. Half way down the drive Miss Lyon met us with tearful reproaches. Mr. Clemens mumbled weakly, “It has happened again the woman tempted me."
I think I never enjoyed a walk more. Sweet is the memory of hours spent with a beloved companion.” Midstream My Later Life, Chapter 4, Our Mark Twain pp. 61-63)
In The Story of My Life you’ll read about the outdoor lessons Anne Sullivan took Keller on, her first jaunt into the ocean, her experience riding horses and hiking through the woods with Sullivan and her sister.
“One summer I had my pony at Fern Quarry. I called him Black Beauty, as I had just read the book, and he resembled his namesake in every way, from his glossy black coat to the white star on his forehead. I spent many of my happiest hours on his back.
Occasionally, when it was quite safe, my teacher would let go the leading-rein, and the pony sauntered on or stopped at his sweet will to eat grass or nibble the leaves of the trees that grew beside the narrow trail. On mornings when I did not care for the ride, my teacher and I would start after breakfast for a ramble in the woods, and allow ourselves to get lost amid the trees and vines, with no road to follow except the paths made by cows and horses. Frequently we came upon impassable thickets which forced us to take a round about way. We always returned to the cottage with armfuls of laurel, goldenrod, ferns and gorgeous swamp-flowers such as grow only in the South.
Sometimes I would go with Mildred and my little cousins to gather persimmons. I did not eat them; but I loved their fragrance and enjoyed hunting for them in the leaves and grass. We also went nutting, and I helped them open the chestnut burrs and break the shells of hickory-nuts and walnuts—the big, sweet walnuts!” (The Story of My Life, Chapter 11)
Performer
In 1919 Helen Keller was offered the chance to play herself in a silent film about her own life. Taking a break from her hectic lecture tour, she traveled to California with Anne Sullivan, Polly Thompson and her mother, Kate Keller.
The film was a bit of a mess. The script was getting edited every day as producers drummed up new wild ideas to keep the audience interested. The film was a Frankenstein creation of fiction, documentary, and theatrical.
“We had not been long at work before we began to realize that there was very little drama in the story of my life. The chorus that surrounded Mr. Platt suggested that a mystical unfoldment of my story would be more interesting than a matter-of-fact narrative. When he said that it would be impossible to film they chanted that nothing was impossible to those who tried. - "Can’t you see,” they wailed, “that there has been no romance in Helen Keller’s life no lover, no adventures of the heart? Let her imagine a lover and follow him in fancy. The picture will be a dismal failure without excitement”
One of our experiments in getting excitement was to introduce a fight in which Knowledge and Ignorance contended fiercely for my mind at the entrance of the Cave of Father Time. The whole company went out to find a suitable location for the battle, and a spot that seemed fairly appropriate was chosen about forty miles away among the hills. It was more exciting than a real prize fight because one of the combatants was a woman. Ignorance, a hideous giant, and Knowledge, white and panting, wrestled on the hillside for the spirit of the infant Helen.
I held my breath when Ignorance hurled Knowledge over the cliff, wondering what insurance we should pay her if she was dead. Ignorance, laughing a bloodthirsty laugh, stretched his mighty limbs on the hill, while wild surmises ran from tongue to tongue. After what seemed an eternity, Knowledge’s pale brow appeared above the edge of the rocks. Apparently she was only a little breathless from her precipitous descent and laborious climb back to the battlefield. The fight recommenced fiercer than ever. Finally, Knowledge got Ignorance at a disadvantage, her floating garments having entangled him and thrown him to the ground. She held him down until he gave a pledge of submission. The evil genie then departed with a madman’s glare of hate into the shadows of the earth, while Knowledge covered the infant with her mantle of conscious light.
The mystic vapours of this performance distilled into an overflowing cup of optimism. It was now clear to the dullest of us that there was no limit to what might be wrought into the Helen Keller picture. Why waste time on a historic picture when the realm of imagination was ours for the taking?” (Midstream My Later Life, Chapter 12, I Make Believe I am an Actress, pp. 195-196)
How did Helen Keller act in her own scenes, you might ask…
“We worked at the Brunton studio under the direction of Mr. George Foster Platt, who was most patient with me. He devised a signal system of taps that I could follow and allowed plenty of time for Polly Thomson to interpret his direction to me. After general directions had been spelled into my hand, I was supposed to go through the action with the help of signal taps. “Tap, tap, tap” walk toward the window on your right “Tap, tap, tap” hold up your hands to the sun (a blaze of heat from the big lamps). “Tap, tap, tap” discover the bird’s cage; (I had already discovered the cage five times). “Tap, tap, tap” express surprise, feel for the bird, express pleasure. “Tap, tap, tap” be natural. In my hand impatiently: “There’s nothing to be afraid of ; it isn’t a lion in the cage it’s a canary. Repeat”
I was never quite at my ease when I posed. It was hard to be natural before the camera, and not to see it at that! I had little skill to throw myself into the spirit of the scene. There I sat or stood for a picture, growing hotter and hotter, my hands more and more moist as the light poured upon me. My embarrassment caused my brow and nose to shine unartistically. Instead of putting on a winning smile, I often discharged all life and intelligence from my countenance, and gazed stiffly into vacancy. When I became too absorbed in a difficult detail, like writing in large letters suited to the screen, I unconsciously frowned, and I believe that only the good nature of those about me saved my reputation for amiability. Besides, we had to go to the studio twice a day, and that meant “making up” and “unmaking” each time.” (Midstream My Later Life, Chapter 12, I Make Believe I am an Actress, pp. 189-190)
The film itself did not sell well. The film had reached too far into the absurd to keep audiences entertain. After its failure, Keller returned home. The next year she was given the opportunity to tour with Vaudeville.
Vaudeville, generally, is a type of theatrical performance for comedy. The Vaudeville tours in America were actually very much like what you imagine a circus would be. The show had dancers, musicians, acrobats, clowns, jugglers, animals, plays, and celebrities.
As a celebrity, Keller would give brief performances on stage with Anne Sullivan. Sullivan would explain how the manual alphabet worked, she would demonstrate translating for Keller, and Keller would repeat what Sullivan had said. Afterwards there was a time slot for questions.
“We returned to our home in Forest Hills and for two years lived quietly. But we were faced with the necessity of earning more money. The funds my friends had provided for my support would cease with my death, and if I died before my teacher, she would be left almost destitute. The income I had I could live on, but I could not save anything.
In the winter of 1920 we went into vaudeville and remained until the spring of 1924* That does not mean that we worked continually during all four years. We appeared for short periods in and around New York, in New England, and in Canada. In 1921 and 1922 we went from coast to coast on the Qrpheum Circuit.
It had always been said that we went into public life only to attract attention, and I had letters from friends in Europe remonstrating with me about “the deplorable theatrical exhibition” into which I had allowed myself to be dragged. Now the truth is, I went of my own free will and persuaded my teacher to go with me. Vaudeville offered us better pay than either literary work or lecturing. Besides, the work was easier in an essential respect we usually stayed in one place a week, instead of having to travel constantly from town to town and speak so soon after our arrival that we had no time for rest or preparation. We were on the stage only twenty minutes in the afternoon and evening, and the rules of the theatre usually protected us against the friendly invasion of the crowds who used to swarm around to shake hands with us at the lectures.
My teacher was not happy in vaudeville. She could never get used to the rush, glare, and noise of the theatre; but I enjoyed it keenly. At first it seemed odd to find ourselves on the same “bill” with acrobats, monkeys, horses, dogs, and parrots; but our little act was dignified and people seemed to like it I found the world of vaudeville much more amusing than the world I had always lived in, and I liked it. I liked to feel the warm tide of human life pulsing round and round me. I liked to weep at its sorrows, to be annoyed at its foibles, to laugh at its absurdities, to be set-a-thrill by its flashes of unexpected goodness and courage.” (Midstream, Chapter 13 The Play World, pages 208-209
Given what I said about it not being unlike your expectations for a circus, you can imagine why friends were concerned about Keller’s participation in the show. They believed that she was being exploited and turned into a “freak show,” which was completely at odds with all that Keller had tried to accomplish for the disabled community in decades past.
In terms of performance, Vaudeville wasn’t much different from the lectures Keller had toured cross-country to give in the 10+ years prior. The biggest difference was that the audience wasn’t so restricted, meaning that people who ordinarily couldn’t afford to attend her lecture before could afford it now. Vaudeville also had a labor union to protect the rights of performers and provide benefits.
“The audiences always made us feel their interest and friendliness. Sometimes many of them were foreigners, and could not understand what we said, but their applause and sympathy were gratifying. After my teacher had explained how I was taught, I made my entrance and gave a brief talk, at the end of which the audience was allowed to ask questions. Some of them were very funny. Can you tell the time of day without a watch? Have you ever thought of getting married? Have you ever used a ouija board? Do you think business is looking up? Am I going on a trip? Why has a cow two stomachs? How much is too many? Do you believe in ghosts? Do you think it is a blessing to be poof? Do you dream? There were hundreds of them. I am always intensely conscious of my audience. Before I say a word I feel its breath as it comes in little pulsations to my face. I sense its appreciation or indifference. I found vaudeville audiences especially easy to speak before. They were much more demonstrative than most others, and showed instantly when they were pleased.” (Midstream, Chapter 13 The Play World, pages 214)
Advocate for the Blind
After four years Keller left the Vaudeville stage. Though she took joy in the energy and atmosphere of the stage, it did not make Anne Sullivan happy.
The American Foundation for the Blind (AFB) was founded in 1921 with the mission to represent the blind. They planned to advocate for accessibility and equal rights as well as source funding into research for the blind. In 1924 they hired Sullivan and Keller as ambassadors to raise interest in the AFB. The offer of steady-income was too good to resist.
The downside of working for the AFB is that they needed to please the men with deep pockets, capitalists who would be offended if Keller brought up socialism. If Keller wanted to generate enough funding to help the blind community get access to accommodations and education, she would have to set aside her politics, smile, and play nice.
Through the AFB, Keller was able to travel to new countries, speak to world leaders, and generate charitable donations to held the entire blind community. In return, the AFB provided Keller with both income and housing. After Polly Thompson died, they provided care-givers to help Keller through her day to day life even after she stepped away from the public eye.
They currently hold the largest online archive of Keller related content, including correspondence between her and others, newspaper clippings, transcripts of her speech, photos and much more.
Hello, I’m Mimzy. I run a writing advice blog and my most popular subject is teaching writers how to better write blind characters. This includes helping them build interesting blind characters, determine the limits and skills of their characters, brainstorm accommodations for them (especially in fantasy and sci-fi stories) and avoid ableist tropes and phrasing. I am a visually impaired writer and currently I’m in university studying English literature and Disability Studies.
An Exploration of Her Visual Aides and Accommodations while in University
Welcome to Part One of my Helen Keller mini-series. In Spring 2022 I took a Disability in Literature class as part of my degree. The focus was on Helen Keller, her writing, her activism, and her complicated legacy.
While studying Keller’s writings I became fascinated with the occasional mentions of historical visual aids Keller relied on. It was through her autobiography I first learned that there used to be multiple Braille alphabets for the English language, or that raised text was still an incredibly popular printing choice. If you read older posts from my blog, especially Writing a Blind Character in Victorian Era Historical FictionandI found a lost piece of blindness history you’ll know that historical accommodations have been an interest of mine for a long time.
It was also through this class that I first became aware of the 2020 TikTok #helenkellerwasfake controversy. In 2020 handful of TikTok creators claimed that it was absolutely impossible for a Deaf-blind woman to accomplish everything Keller had done. Among the accusations were that her handwriting was too perfect, she could not have possibly written multiple books, or graduated college.
I believe that the skepticism people have towards Keller’s achievements stems from them not knowing what tools she had to accommodate her disabilities and how she used them. So in this post I’m going to describe all the tools Keller used throughout her life and how they contributed to her education and career.
In this post I’m going to explore:
The Manual Alphabet
Braille and Raised Print
How Accessible was Keller’s College Experience
How did Keller Write by Hand
Writing with a Typewriter
Sighted Guides
I also include several quotes from Keller’s own writings and I will link those sources here:
Note: The link I’m providing is to a free copy through The Project Gutenberg, but it isn’t exactly the most pleasant reading experience. If you would prefer a print version or an ebook copy of The Story of My Life, you’ll probably be able to buy a copy online for cheap.
Note: This book is incredibly hard to come by, with printed copies costing 80$ (US) or more, and I cannot find a convenient ebook of it. So I’m providing a link to archive.org which provides different formats for you to download the book in.
The Manual Alphabet
This is the concept that I think is hardest for anyone to conceptualize. The basics of the manual alphabet are that someone finger-spells every word they say with their signing hand held to the listener’s hand.
If you know how to finger-spell, I strongly recommend holding your signing hand to the palm of your other hand–we’ll call it the receiving hand. Try finger spelling through the alphabet and focusing on what your receiving hand feels. I use the American Sign Language alphabet, and I will describe how those letters feel to me.
A. I feel four flat, smooth surfaces, about an inch long, maybe a quarter inch wide. Those are my middle phalanges. I can also feel the tip of my thumb sticking up, but that’s a curved surface instead of flat.
B. I feel four cold fingertips touching my hand, but I can’t touch my hands palm to palm because my thumb is in the way, held at a diagonal angle
C. Five slightly-sharp pricks. Those are my fingernails, they’ve grown out recently. There are four pricks on top in a crescent shape and one at the bottom.
D. I feel the cold smoothness of my nails again, but instead of the tips it’s the entire nailbed. There are three on top, one at the bottom.There’s a cold fingertip pressed against my index finger. That is the index finger of the signing hand, making the letter D.
E. Four cool nail beds against my palm and the side of a thumb pressed between hands.
F. Three cold finger tips match up to my pinky, ring, and middle finger. Those are the fingers that stay up for the letter F. The nail bed of a thumb and index finger held together touch the dip where my palm creases are, almost scratchy.
G. The back of an index finger held horizontally along my palm. The fingers of my receiving hand curl over the one finger.
H. This sign is very similar to G, but it’s two fingers instead of one.
I. It feels a lot like A, but the pinky finger extends and touches the tip of my pinky finger.
J. The hand makes the sign for I, and then rotates against my hand, three knuckles grazing my palm, the end of a finger tracing down the side of my hand, along the inside of my wrist, and to my thumb.
K. The index and middle finger press against mine. The side of the thumb touches the shallow valley between my second and third metacarpals. The pinky and ring finger of the signing hand are folded down, pressing against my palm and leaving the last two fingers of my receiving hand the chance to fold down.
L. An index finger pushes against mine while the thumb sits almost horizontally. The knuckles of three fingers are pressed against my palm. The middle, ring, and pinky finger of my receiving hand could fold down around the signing hand.
M. This one is tricky. It feels very similar to A, and it’s only my wrapping receiving thumb over the signing hand that I find the person has folded their thumb into their fist. Folding my entire hand over theirs, I find the nail of the thumb poking between the ring and pinky finger.
N is almost exactly like M, but I find the nail of the thumb sitting between the ring and middle finger.
O feels similar to C, but with C there was an inch or so gap between the nails, and now they’re clustered tightly together
P. The tips of two fingers touch my palm. By closing my palm around theirs I realize that it’s the middle and index finger poking me, and that the thumb is touching the index finger. The ring and pinky finger are curled inwards.
Q is similar to P, but the middle finger has been folded into a fist with the ring and pinky finger.
R. Two finger tips press against one of my fingers, one tip underneath the other in a vertical line. Curling my receiving fingers around the hand, I find that it’s two fingers crossed over each other, the middle finger crossing over the index finger. The pinky and ring finger are curled in, allowing my receiving fingers to fold over their knuckles.
S. A folded fist presses to my palm, but instead of the thumb sitting to the side of it, it’s pressed between the knuckles of those fingers and my hand.
T. This one feels a lot like M and N, but the thumb pokes up between the index and middle fingers
U. Two long fingers press against my index and middle fingers, held tightly together while the remaining fingers and thumb fold into a fist.
V one is like U, but the fingers spread to have a gap between them, literally in a V shape.
W is three fingers press against my hand, a gap between each one. It’s like V in that way, but doubled.
X feels a lot like C, but instead it’s just a thumb and an index finger nail poking into my palm.
Y is the backs of three fingers press against my palm while the thumb and pinky finger of the signing hand press against the thumb and pinky of my receiving hand.
For Z, a cold index finger draws a Z onto my palm.
All these signs are a distinct sensation experience, and with practice Keller began to recognize the differences in the way sighted people recognize the visual differences in their printed alphabets. And like the process of visually reading, where we string together letters in recognizable groups to form words, Keller adapted to stringing touch-letters together into words. Within a few months this method of hand-reading, of sign recognition, became second nature to her. Her vocabulary began to expand and her speed at signing and receiving increased.
Reading Braille and Raised Print
After Keller learned the manual alphabet, Sullivan began using it to read to her. Just as parents read aloud to their hearing children, Sullivan signed every letter into Keller’s palm. In one of her letters to a friend back at the Perkins Institute, Sullivan wrote that she was inspired by how one of Keller’s baby cousins was learning language by listening to her mom, and thought that continuous exposure to language through her hands would give Helen the chance to learn language as fluidly as hearing children. Because Keller was learning words through spelling instead of sound, it wasn’t long before she was reading on her own through both raised print and braille.
Sullivan started teaching Keller to read raised print first because the alphabet resembled printed letters and would allow her to write on her own. She had observed Helen attempting to write letters in an imitation of what Sullivan did in her free time.
Raised print was a prototype to Braille, which was invented by Louis Braille in 1824 while he was a student at Institut National des Jeunes Aveugles, the first ever school for the blind, located in France. Imagine a page of large font and instead of being printed in black ink, the letters are raised. You can trace your fingers over the edges to feel the shape of each letter. But raised print had some weaknesses–
1. The letters had to be printed in a very large font in order for someone to trace each letter with their fingers. This meant each page could only contain a handful of letters and words and every book needed far more paper to be printed in full.
2. Eventually the letters would fade and wear out. Braille letters wear out too, but at a much slower rate. These books did not have much longevity.
Braille had its own weakness in that there was no standardized Braille alphabet for all English speakers until 1932. In The Story of My Life Keller mentions being able to read in multiple varieties of Braille: English; American; and New York Point.
The Accessibility of University in 1900
Helen Keller was determined to go to college, and she wanted to go to Harvard specifically. There were a few problems to this goal: 1. Harvard did not admit female students, but they had a sister school, a women’s college, on the same campus called Radcliffe College. 2. Radcliffe was incredibly competitive, and unlikely to want to accommodate a disabled student. Years later in Midstream, Keller reflects on a dinner party where both Mark Twain (referred to as Mr. Clemens rather than his pen name) and Woodrow Wilson (before his presidency) were in attendance.
“He [Wilson] asked me why I had chosen Radcliffe College rather than Wellesley, Smith, or Bryn Mawr. I said, ‘Because they didn’t want me at Radcliffe, and as I was stubborn by nature, I chose to override their objections.’" (Midstream, Chapter Seven, Wanderings, pp. 104)
Keller was only a teenager at the time but she was by then very used to everyone doubting she’d accomplish anything and doing everything in her power to surpass their expectations.
In Chapter 18 of The Story of My Life, Keller describes the experience of preparing for Radcliffe College by attending the Cambridge School for Young Ladies (1896-1899). While there she had a massive struggle obtaining accessible reading materials. The textbooks her teachers assigned had never been printed in raised print or braille before, and though Keller had friends who volunteered to transcribe her reading material, there was never enough time to transcribe all of it. When Keller could not rely on accessible reading material, Anne Sullivan would step in and read to her through the manual alphabet. Sullivan was also present for all of Keller’s lectures to translate what the professors were saying. Keller would listen to Sullivan’s hand and try to remember everything she could, and at night when her classmates were sleeping she would be up transcribing what she remembered into notes she could read.
Only a few of Keller’s teachers over the years learned the manual alphabet to communicate with her directly. In one passage recalling her first year at Cambridge, Keller describes her experience learning German.
“At the Cambridge School the plan was to have Miss Sullivan attend the classes with me and interpret to me the instruction given.-Of course my instructors had had no experience in teaching any but normal pupils, and my only means of conversing with them was reading their lips. My studies for the first year were English history, English literature, German, Latin, arithmetic, Latin composition and occasional themes. Until then I had never taken a course of study with the idea of preparing for college; but I had been well drilled in English by Miss Sullivan, and it soon became evident to my teachers that I needed no special instruction in this subject beyond a critical study of the books prescribed by the college. I had had, moreover, a good start in French, and received six months’ instruction in Latin; but German was the subject with which I was most familiar. In spite, however, of these advantages, there were serious drawbacks to my progress. Miss Sullivan could not spell out in my hand all that the books required, and it was very difficult to have textbooks embossed in time to be of use to me, although my friends in London and Philadelphia were willing to hasten the work. For a while, indeed, I had to copy my Latin in braille, so that I could recite with the other girls. My instructors soon became sufficiently familiar with my imperfect speech to answer my questions readily and correct mistakes. I could not make notes in class or write exercises; but I wrote all my compositions and translations at home on my typewriter.-Each day Miss Sullivan went to the classes with me and spelled into my hand with infinite patience all that the teachers said. In study hours she had to look up new words for me and read and reread notes and books I did not have in raised print. The tedium of that work is hard to conceive. Frau Grote, my German teacher, and Mr. Gilman, the principal, were the only teachers in the school who learned the finger alphabet to give me instruction. No one realized more fully than dear Frau Grote how slow and inadequate her spelling was. Nevertheless, in the goodness of her heart she laboriously spelled out her instructions to me in special lessons twice a week, to give Miss Sullivan a little rest. But, though everybody was kind and ready to help us, there was only one hand that could turn drudgery into pleasure. That year I finished arithmetic, reviewed my Latin grammar, and read three chapters of Caesar’s “Gallic War.” In German I read, partly with my fingers and partly with Miss Sullivan’s assistance, Schiller’s “Lied von der Glocke” and “Taucher,” Heine’s “Harzreise,” Freytag’s “Aus dem Staat Friedrichs des Grossen,” Riehl’s “Fluch Der Schonheit,” Lessing’s “Minna von Barnhelm,” and Goethe’s “Aus meinem Leben.” I took the greatest delight in these German books, especially Schiller’s wonderful lyrics, the history of Frederick the Great’s magnificent achievements and the account of Goethe’s life. I was sorry to finish “Die Harzreise,” so full of happy witticisms and charming descriptions of vine-clad hills, streams that sing and ripple in the sunshine, and wild regions, sacred to tradition and legend, the gray sisters of a long-vanished, imaginative age—descriptions such as can be given only by those to whom nature is “a feeling, a love and an appetite.” (The Story of My Life, Chapter 18)
I think it’s worth noting that Keller both enjoyed and excelled in German because her teacher was willing to learn the manual alphabet to accommodate her. The direct communication nurtured her interest and streamlined Keller’s learning experience, even if the teacher was not the most fluent signer. When Keller took her exams later that year, German was one of her most successful subjects.
“I took my preliminary examinations for Radcliffe from the 29th of June to the 3rd of July in 1897. The subjects I offered were Elementary and Advanced German, French, Latin, English, and Greek and Roman history, making nine hours in all. I passed in everything, and received “honours” in German and English.”
I recommend reading The Story of My Life if you want to learn more about her experience at college, the struggles she experienced, the memories she made, what she read, what she enjoyed or disliked about college. The Story of My Life was written during her sophomore year of college, so those accounts of her struggles were fresh in her memory and ongoing. If you yourself are a student, I think you will relate to some of what she writes.
Writing by Hand
In one of her letters, Anne Sullivan describes the process of teaching Helen to write with a pencil on paper:
“I put one of the writing boards used by the blind between the folds of the paper on the table, and allowed her to examine an alphabet of the square letters, such as she was to make.”
Unfortunately I couldn’t find a photo, drawing or description of the writing board, so I will have to make some speculation based off my past research into historical accessibility tools. I believe the board was designed to sit underneath the page and that it had grooves carved into it. These grooves were a little less than an inch tall and stretched horizontally from one edge of the board to the other. The grooves resembled the blank space between lines we see on lined paper today. The separating lines remained raised, creating boundaries for the pencil to stop so that a person could write in a straight line.
When we teach blind students to write by hand today, we teach them a style of penmanship where the tip of a pencil never leaves the page. The letters are very blocky and have a line at the bottom that connects one letter to the next.
Here is a photo of Helen Keller’s handwriting when she was a child:
[Image Description: a yellowed page with pencil writing that fills the entire page and reads: “South Boston Mass. Nov. 7, 1889. Mon cher Monsieur Anagnos. Today is your birthday and how I wish I could put my two arms around your neck and give you many sweet kisses, but I cannot do that because you are far away, so I will write you a nice long letter, and when you come home I will give you the kisses. Now I am going to tell you something which will surprise you very much. I came to Boston three weeks ago to study with my dear teacher. I was delighted to see all of my friends again and they were glad to see me. I miss you and I hope you will come back soon.” End Image Description]
If you’re familiar with the 2020 TikTok controversy where several TikTok creators claimed Helen Keller wasn’t real, you might know that someone specifically pointed out her handwriting and said it was too perfect to have come from a deaf-blind woman. And this handwriting is perfect. Every letter is written super carefully, hesitantly. The lines of penmanship on this are also unnaturally straight on a page with no visible lines. Sighted people cannot write that straight, they veer off and write slightly diagonally and have uneven space between their words because there is nothing on the page to set a clear boundary.
A blind writer who positions a writing board underneath their papers will have built in lines they can feel as they write but we cannot see. Note where her lowercase letters have
And if you observe her lowercase Y’s, P’s and G’s you might notice that some have an odd indent on the line, like something disrupted Keller’s otherwise smooth handwriting. That’s the slightly raised line on the board behind her page. “Delighted” “surprised” and “glad” are excellent examples of where that disruption is most noticeable.
It’s also worth noting that Helen Keller’s handwriting style remained unchanged throughout her entire life. Here is a sample from when she was older:
[Image Description: On a slanted writing surface is a piece of write paper where Helen Keller has written: “Faith is the strength by which a shattered world shall emerge into the light. Helen Keller.” Both her hands are pictured in the photo. Her left hand is holding the page steady while her right hand finishes writing her signature. Her hands are wrinkled with age. End Image Description]
The photo is dated from the year 1930, so Keller would be fifty years old in this photo. Her hand writing is nearly identical to the older sample. She favors sharp corners for her M’s, N’s, and H’s instead of soft curves. Her T’s and L’s have little tails at the bottom pointing to the right, like her pencil was drawing the line downward, hit a bump and moved to the right to prepare for the next word.
Now there are no visible lines on the surface the photo is held to, but this photo is not a candid. Many photos of Keller are posed with the photographer and her translator telling her how to position her body and face. The page was probably written with a writing board ahead of time and then posed on a writing desk that would photograph well.
But handwriting doesn’t stagnate for forty years like that. Sighted girls change up their style all the time for aesthetic purposes. Keller’s handwriting is purely functional. The little tails at the beginning and end of letters look decorative but they function to prepare her pencil to write the next letter as smoothly as possible. Muscle memory is guiding where and how her hand moves.
Writing by Typewriter
When it came to her writing, Helen Keller favored her typewriter. It was faster than brailling everything by hand and accessible to sighted readers, which was what mattered when it came to her goals to become a professional writer. She became a proficient typist with practice, much like sighted people today with their laptop keyboards, typing away with their eyes on the screen instead of roaming across the keyboard.
You might ask how she learned how to use a typewriter without ever being able to see the keys. I have not yet found any record of Keller describing how she learned to use a typewriter, but I will speculate. The most likely answer is that Anne Sullivan held Helen’s finger to every key and used the manual alphabet to tell her which letter that key produced. It was slow work and a lot of memorization.
I did find an interesting detail about how Keller uses her typewriter from the perspective of her sighted editor, John Macy:
“Although she has used the typewriter since she was eleven years old, she is rather careful than rapid. She writes with fair speed and absolute sureness. Her manuscripts seldom contain typographical errors when she hands them to Miss Sullivan to read. Her typewriter has no special attachments. She keeps the relative position of the keys by an occasional touch of the little finger on the outer edge of the board.” (The Story of My Life, A Supplementary Account, Chapter 2: Personality)
There is also a mention from Keller about what typewriter she liked best while writing The Story of My Life:
“I use the Hammond typewriter. I have tried many machines, and I find the Hammond is the best adapted to the peculiar needs of my work. With this machine movable type shuttles can be used, and one can have several shuttles, each with a different set of characters—Greek, French, or mathematical, according to the kind of writing one wishes to do on the typewriter. Without it, I doubt if I could go to college.” (Chapter 20 of The Story of My Life)
[Image Description: Helen Keller from her Radcliffe years, seated at a narrow wooden table with a Hammond typewriter set on top. One hand is poised on the keys, the other hand is hidden behind the typewriter. Helen’s hair is pulled back in a low bun or braid and her chin is tipped down. She is wearing a dark blouse with poofy sleeves and a shiny satin ribbon tie. Behind her is a bookshelf and floral curtains. End Image Description]
Helen Keller never used a white cane for the blind. White canes were not popularized until after World War 1, which ended when Keller was almost forty years old and already comfortable with how she navigated the world. She also never had a guide dog despite being a dog lover, despite being so famous that a guide dog school would happily assign her a dog if she applied for one.
Instead Keller relied on sighted guides for her entire life because they offered an advantage that a cane or dog never could–they could use the manual alphabet to translate conversation and describe their surroundings. A cane could never do that, but a hearing-blind person would not need someone to manually describe their surroundings by hand because they could hear nearby conversations and ambient noise like birds chirping and nearby traffic. Sighted guides accommodate her deafness as well as her blindness.
Helen Keller attended every event and location with a sighted guide and translator. For most of her life that guide and translator was Anne Sullivan, but after Sullivan’s death the role was filled by Polly Thompson for many years. After Thompson’s death, the American Foundation for the Blind that employed Keller to help fundraise for their foundation provided trained volunteers who could fill the role.
ExtraReading Material
Along with the two books I’ve referenced, I think one of the best Helen Keller readings you can pick up is The World I Live In (1908), where Keller describes the sensory experience of how she navigates through her life. It also includes discussions of what her dreams were like.
Hello, I’m Mimzy. I run a writing advice blog and my most popular subject is teaching writers how to better write blind characters. This includes helping them build interesting blind characters, determine the limits and skills of their characters, brainstorm accommodations for them (especially in fantasy and sci-fi stories) and avoid ableist tropes and phrasing. I am a visually impaired writer and currently I’m in university studying English literature and Disability Studies.
“No pessimist ever discovered the secret of the stars or sailed an uncharted land, or opened a new doorway for the human spirit.” ~ Helen Keller [Venetian Doorway, c.1902 - John Singer Sargent]
• Helen Keller is known the world over as a symbol of courage in the face of overwhelming odds. Yet she was so much more. A woman of luminous intelligence, high ambition and great accomplishment, she was driven by her deep compassion for others to devote her life to helping them overcome significant obstacles to living healthy and productive lives. More: https://www.hki.org/helen-kellers-life-and-legacy/
• John Singer Sargent (1856–1925) was an American expatriate artist, considered the “leading portrait painter of his generation” for his evocations of Edwardian-era luxury. He created roughly 900 oil paintings and more than 2,000 watercolors, as well as countless sketches and charcoal drawings. More: https://www.mfa.org/news/sargent-bioandhttps://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/sarg/hd_sarg.htm
Today we have an episode so good, it got 3 high fives! This time, our topic is retro video games and we have two guests: Christina Troitino and Dan the Heel. And we figure out what a segue is! Yes, that’s really how you spell segue!
In this episode, we cover:
bon iver
fuckveal
Montell Jordan & Montel Williams
Helen Keller
Video games
Gamer girls
and Ron Zacapa is the drink of choice for the host. our guests keep it classy with 40s.
Let us know what we could be doing better with the twitter and the electronic mail. Also, ask us questions. We can answer anything! @jaffemike@iambland@one_is_done. email us at [email protected]!
Helen Keller Met Anne Sullivan #OTW in 1887 Suffragist, Rights Activist, & Humanitarian
By Miriam Kleiman, Public Affairs
“The two most interesting characters of the 19th century are Napoleon and Helen Keller.”–-Mark Twain
Keller and Mark Twain, 1902, Keller left her records to the American Federation for the Blind (AFB). Our National Historical Publications and Records Commission (NHPRC) helped fund online access to this collection.
Happy Women’s History Month! 135 years ago this week, 6-year-old Helen Keller began working with Anne Sullivan (later dubbed “the miracle worker” & immortalized by Hollywood). Undeterred by her deafness and blindness, Keller became a suffragist, activist, educator, writer, and co-founder of the ACLU. Of course we have related records!
Interesting related fact Keller and Sullivan’s were inseparable for nearly 50 years (from 1877 until Sullivan’s death) and remain together today–interred in DC’s National Cathedral crypt, marked by a bronze plaque in braille. Sullivan was the first woman interred at the Cathedral(sourcehere).
Suffragist Helen Keller Keller participated in the 1913 “Woman Suffrage Parade” in DC and spoke/wrote/advocated in support of not only women’s suffrage but also civil rights, labor rights, reproductive rights, and disability rights.
Petition to support the Federal Suffrage Amendment,6/15/1916, NARA ID 167059922.
We demand the right to vote, not because we think we are better or wiser than men, but because it is our right as much as it is theirs. And… we cannot abuse this right more than the men have done by themselves.
Excerpt from Keller’s speech: “Why Woman Wants to Vote” 1920, made available in part thanks to a grant from the NHPRC.
Helen Keller and Eleanor Roosevelt The two first met in 1936 and remained friends for decades. They had much in common as famous women actively involved in human rights, women’s rights, and global cooperation. Our FDR Library holds correspondence between Keller and both Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt.
Eleanor wrote about Keller in her July 3, 1945, My Daycolumn,emphasesadded:
Last week I went to the office of the American Federation for the Blind to receive the resolution… which Miss Helen Keller wanted to present to me personally… commemorating my husband’s services as honorary chairman. As I stood and listened to Miss Keller speak, I thought how wonderfully both Miss Keller and my husband typified the triumph over physical handicap. Many of you may not know that Miss Keller, with her faithful friend and interpreter, has visited a number of our service hospitals. Some people felt that she might discourage our wounded men. Instead of that, the men recognized the greatness of her personality and the serene and courageous spirit which has made of her life a rich and full existence. She carried comfort to the men who were facing their own handicaps and trying to find the courage to build normal lives in spite of them.
Eleanor and Helen at Martha’s Vineyard, 8/25/1954, FDR Library, NARA ID 195945.
Letter from Keller to President Hoover, 2/5/1933, Hoover Library, NARA ID 7722949.
Helen Keller and President Hoover Keller asked President Hoover to visit the American Foundation for the Blind’s NY recording studio to see “talking books recorded on a phonograph disc.”
Excerpt:
Your presence at the Foundation studio would give a tremendous impetus to this project, and the blind in this country would be gladdened by a message from you saying that a new pathway of light is being blazed through their darkness.
