The Dynamic Duo: Helen Keller and Anne Sullivan
By Jeanne McClellan
To write the story of Helen Keller, one of our first advocates for disability rights, one must also write about Anne Sullivan, her teacher and lifelong companion. Each woman filled the needs of the other in such inexplicable, life-changing ways. They are true heroines in the history of the blind community.
I wonder how many reading this know about them? In l962, when I was nine years old, an acclaimed movie, The Miracle Worker, was released. Starring Anne Bancroft and Patty Duke as Anne Sullivan and Helen Keller, respectively, it portrayed the magical relationship between these two women - one who had a tragic childhood and one who was born into wealth and privilege but was stricken with an illness in infancy that left her to become blind and deaf. My generation learned this story and this generation can also benefit from knowing it.
In 1860, twenty years before Helen was born, Anne Sullivan was born in a rural area of Lowell, Massachusetts. Her Irish immigrant parents had fled the potato famine and, like so many other Irish immigrants, were eking out an existence as farmers. At age five, Anne was stricken with an eye infection called trachoma (which still exists and is mostly treated with antibiotics). The disease left her nearly blind. Over the course of her life, she had more than a dozen surgeries, some of which were of no value, until several procedures performed at the Perkins Institute actually restored her vision substantially.
The biggest tragedy for Anne, however, was the death of her mother. When Anne was only eight years old, her father, after trying for two years to manage alone, gave up his three children. While baby Mary went to live with an aunt, Anne and Jimmie, who had a deteriorating hip, were classified as “ill” children and were sent to the Tewksbury Almshouse in Boston.
Anne and Jimmie’s lives would never be the same. While Tewksbury Almshouse had been established by the wisdom of mid-1800s social progressives for the “sick poor,” it was in fact a filthy, rat-infested environment for its “inmates,” as they were called, the poorest citizens of Boston - mainly Irish immigrants who had flocked to the US to escape the recent potato famine but found only disease and want. (In later years, Tewksbury was reformed after a state investigation confirmed reports of sexual deviancy and even cannibalism.) Little Jimmie died within four months after he and Anne arrived. Thereafter, Anne managed as best she could, at one point going to live with the Sisters of Charity and helping the nuns, but then being sent back to Tewksbury “under duress.” Later, after much pleading, she was allowed to apply for admission to the Perkins Institute for the Blind and was finally accepted there in 1880 at the age of twenty.
That same year, in Tuscumbia, Alabama, a healthy, vibrant baby girl named Helen Adams Keller was born to a wealthy plantation owner and his wife. Little did they know how their infant daughter’s life would be transformed by Anne Sullivan - a poor, somewhat brash and unsophisticated Irish girl with a limited education. The Keller’s, wealthy and socially prominent, were everything Anne was not; but during her six years at Perkins, Anne acquired all the basics of a good education. She also became friends with another student named Laura Bridgman, the first blind and deaf person ever taught at Perkins. Anne learned the finger-spelling technique developed by the Perkins instructors that enabled her friend Laura to read, write, and communicate.
When Anne was getting ready to graduate from Perkins in 1886, the school was contacted by Helen’s father, Captain Arthur Keller, who was looking for a tutor, to teach his now six-year-old daughter. Helen had been a precocious baby, able to say the word water at the age of only one year; but when she contracted a disease, now suspected to have been scarlet fever, she became deaf and blind and her social and intellectual development stopped.
As Helen grew older, the Keller’s were at a loss. Their efforts at child-rearing amounted to merely keeping the child happy with attention and her choice of amusements, and largely permitting her to do as she pleased. Little effort was made to teach her language or the basics of proper social behavior. When the Keller’s gathered for the evening meal, Helen was allowed to run around the table grabbing food from others’ plates despite the genteel Southern manners possessed by the rest of the family and the polite and apparently oblivious conversation that ensued.
But all that was about to change—with the arrival of Anne Sullivan. When Anne began the stern and diligent teaching of her spoiled and strong-willed pupil, her first order of business was to insist that Helen sit quietly at the dinner table and eat her food with the proper utensils. What followed was a fierce battle of wills with teacher and pupil becoming embroiled in a physical altercation. (In The Miracle Worker the famous dramatization of this dinner scene took nine days to film and the actresses had to wear pads underneath their dresses to protect them in the free-for-all!)
But Anne soon discovered that the Keller’s tended to sabotage her attempts at discipline. They felt sorry for Helen and tended to be completely indulgent and compliant when she threw a temper tantrum, which was frequent. So, Anne suggested, and Helen’s parents reluctantly agreed, to take Helen to a small cottage on the farm where she and Anne could be alone. They took a long buggy ride so she didn’t know how close she still was to her home.
That’s when the miracle occurred. After only two weeks in the little cottage, Helen had a breakthrough. As Anne pumped water onto Helen’s hands, Helen remembered the word for water. In that instant she realized that things have names—and the whole world opened for her. (This electrifying moment, as vividly portrayed in The Miracle Worker, is an actual event in Helen’s biographical data.) Before the day was over, Helen had learned 30 words.
Not long after this climactic revelation, Helen expressed the desire to learn to speak. Off she and Ann went to Boston, where Helen attended the voice clinic founded by Alexander Graham Bell, The School of Vocal Physiology and Mechanics of Speech. Here she had numerous lessons. After further study with Anne and at the Perkins Institute, Helen expressed the desire to attend college. She was accepted at Radcliffe, a prestigious women’s college, then and now. Anne finger-spelled every word of Helen’s textbooks into her hands, enabling Helen to become an excellent student; and Helen graduated cum laude with a bachelor’s degree in 1904. (At this time, she made the acquaintance of Mark Twain who was fascinated not only by Helen, but especially by Anne, whom he dubbed “the miracle worker.”)
Helen then began her chosen career as a writer, publishing a total of twelve books and numerous articles, including her autobiography The Story of My Life. Remarkably, Helen wrote all her books and articles herself on a Braille typewriter; and her work was then transcribed by others for publication. Helen became a powerful advocate for the deaf and blind. In 192,1 the American Foundation for the Blind was founded and in 1924 Helen became its official spokesperson - a role she would play for over forty years until her death.
Helen was also an outspoken supporter of the suffragette movement and other women’s issues like birth control. But her consuming passion was to elevate deaf and blind people, to give them the ability to function in society through needed education and other services. Her efforts resulted in the creation of multiple Commissions for the Blind, such as the Bureau of Services for the Blind and Visually Impaired in Michigan.
Helen Keller was the pivotal figure, the essential pioneer. With the indispensable aid of Anne Sullivan, she created an awareness of the needs and limitless potential of deaf and blind people. She was the epitome of what people with vision and hearing loss can accomplish.
Anne died in 1936 with Helen at her side, and Helen lived until 1967. (She was assisted by her secretary and companion, Polly Thompson.) We owe a tremendous debt to Helen and Anne, two truly extraordinary women who defied stigma, poverty, and limited opportunities. They forged a world that enabled them to flourish and succeed, one in which we are fortunate to live today.
About the author:
Jeanne McClellan was born and raised in Royal Oak Michigan, got a master's degree in psychology, and worked for approximately 30 years as a counselor and social worker until she retired in 2009.