What is it like to be a prisoner in your own mind?
The concept is terrifying; it seems enough to make anyone want to give up and end it all.
Not Helen Keller though. With the support of family and dedicated educators, she strove to liberate herself from these confines, and engage with the world as wholly as she could. Not only to learn from it, but to inspire great ideas in those fortunate enough to communicate with her over her remarkable life.
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Helen Adams Keller was born in Alabama on June 27, 1880. At just six months, she started speaking, and could walk by the age of one. Keller seemed set for a bright future.
Everything changed when she was 19 months old. Keller contracted a mystery illness, most likely scarlet fever of meningitis. When the fever broke after a few days, Keller’s mother realised that her daughter was not reacting to normal stimulations. She had lost both her sight and hearing.
As children do, Keller adapted to her situation rather quickly. She developed a rudimentary form of signed communication with the daughter of the family’s cook, Martha Washington, and by the time she was seven, they had created over 60 signs.
Still, Keller was hard to deal with. When she was happy she would laugh hysterically, and when angry, she often lashed out violently. Neither Martha nor her parents could soothe her in these states, and so it was that others suggested she be institutionalised.
That was not to be. In 1886, Keller’s mother had read Charles Dickens’ American Notes, in which he wrote an account of Laura Bridgman, another deaf and blind woman who had been taught how to speak, and was inspired to find a similar education for her daughter. Keller and her father therefore travelled to Baltimore, where they met with Alexander Graham Bell. Bell recommended they visit the Perkins Institute for the Blind in Boston, where Bridgman had been taught.
It was at the school that Keller would make the acquaintance of a woman who would help guide her through the rest of her life. That woman was Anne Sullivan, a visually impaired former student who was to become her instructor.
Their work began in March of 1887 at the Keller family home. Initially, Sullivan would spell words by tracing the letters on Keller’s palm. The first of these was ‘doll’, as Sullivan had brought Keller one as a gift. This method did have its problems, however, as Keller had no means of understanding that each object had its own unique name. She would get so frustrated that she would often break items while trying to understand what they were. As a result, Keller and Sullivan relocated to a small cottage on the homestead. It wasn’t until April, when Sullivan thought to pour water on Keller’s hand while writing the word in her palm, that Keller finally understood how to identify individual objects. From there, she slammed her hand on the ground, demanding to know what it was. By that night, she had learnt 30 words.
Keller grew curious and bold, and by the following year was able to attend school. She attended Perkins until the age of 14, at which point she and Sullivan moved to New York to attend two other schools over the next two years. Keller completed her schooling at a normal institute, The Cambridge School for Young Ladies.
It was around this time that Keller’s story became well known, and she was subsequently sought out by those who wanted to learn more about her. One of these admirers was Mark Twain, who Keller wrote “treated me not as a freak, but as a handicapped woman seeking a way to circumvent extraordinary difficulties”. The two would become firm friends. It was Twain that introduced her to Standard Oil magnate Henry Huttleston Rogers, and who convinced him to pay for her tertiary studies at Radcliffe College.
At age 24, Keller graduated from the college, become the first deaf and blind person to receive a Bachelor of Arts degree.
From there, Keller turned her attention to a feat she had been looking to achieve for years: speaking. Desiring to communicate as normally as possible, she would place her hands on the faces of those talking to understand their words. With one finger on their larynx, one on their nose, and two on the mouth, she could pick up such subtle vibrations that she was effectively hearing what they were saying. It was this ability which enabled her to imitate the sounds, and after 25 years, she finally managed to speak.
Soon after, Keller and Sullivan – who had remained Keller’s companion after her education was complete – began to travel on the lecture circuit both nationally and internationally.
“Optimism is the faith that leads to achievement. Nothing can be done without hope and confidence”, she declared, while advocating for the disabled, an end to war, and social equality, amongst other causes.
By 1914, Sullivan’s health began to wane, and she became completely blind in both eyes. A local reporter, Peter Fagan, was sent to assist Keller, who was living in New York while working for the American Foundation for the Blind. The two fell in love, and became secretly engaged, but her family stopped them from eloping due to Keller’s condition. “If I could see, I would marry first of all”, she would later remark.
The following year, she joined with city planner George Kessler to found the Helen Keller International organisation, which was devoted to health sciences. Five years later, she became part of the American Civil Liberties Union, becoming a socialist in the process.
An editor for the Brooklyn Eagle put her political views down to “mistakes sprung out of the manifest limitations of her development”. Keller responded, recalling the time she met the editor before he was aware of her position:
“At that time the compliments he paid me were so generous that I blush to remember them. But now that I have come out for socialism he reminds me and the public that I am blind and deaf and especially liable to error. I must have shrunk in intelligence during the years since I met him. … Oh, ridiculous Brooklyn Eagle! Socially blind and deaf, it defends an intolerable system, a system that is the cause of much of the physical blindness and deafness which we are trying to prevent.”
Anne Sullivan slipped into a coma in 1936, and died while Keller held her hand. Afterwards, Keller moved to Connecticut with Polly Thompson, who would be her companion for most of her remaining life.
Over the years, Keller wrote 12 books and several articles on her early life, political views, and her introduction to Christianity.
Keller remained active until 1961, when she suffered a series of strokes and was confined to her home. Regardless, she continued to raise funds for the American Foundation for the Blind, and was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1964, and elected to the National Women’s Hall of Fame in 1965.
Helen Keller died on June 1st, 1968. She was buried at the Washington National Cathedral alongside her companions, Anne Sullivan and Polly Thompson, in honour of their achievements.
Keller achieved much more in the darkness than many in the light ever could. She stood for equality and understanding, and was a great source of inspiration and motivation to many around the world. May her story never be forgotten.