Helen Keller's Education and Literary Careerįrom a very young age, Helen was determined to go to college. Read a letter from Mark Twain to Helen lamenting "that 'plagiarism' farce." Both Bell and Twain, who were friends and supporters of Helen and Anne, flew to the defense of both pupil and teacher and mocked their detractors. Famously, at the age of 11, Helen was accused of plagiarism. The closeness of Helen and Anne's relationship led to accusations that Helen's ideas were not her own. Twain declared, "The two most interesting characters of the 19th century are Napoleon and Helen Keller." Helen's extraordinary abilities and her teacher's unique skills were noticed by Alexander Graham Bell and Mark Twain, two giants of American culture. Throughout her life, however, Helen remained dissatisfied with her spoken voice, which was hard to understand. Fuller gave Helen 11 lessons, after which Anne taught Helen. In 1890, when she was just 10, she expressed a desire to learn to speak Anne took Helen to see Sarah Fuller at the Horace Mann School for the Deaf and Hard of Hearing in Boston. In Helen's handwriting, many round letters look square, but you can easily read everything. Helen quickly proceeded to master the alphabet, both manual and in raised print for blind readers, and gained facility in reading and writing. Helen's early writing, completed seven days before she turned seven (the page is dated June 20th, 1887) Quickly, she stopped and touched the earth and demanded its letter name and by nightfall she had learned 30 words. She knew that "water" meant the wonderful cool substance flowing over her hand. Suddenly, the signals had meaning in Helen's mind. As the cool water gushed over one hand, she spelled into the other hand the word "w-a-t-e-r" first slowly, then rapidly. On April 5, 1887, less than a month after her arrival in Tuscumbia, Anne sought to resolve the confusion her pupil was having between the nouns "mug" and "milk," which Helen confused with the verb "drink."Īnne took Helen to the water pump outside and put Helen's hand under the spout. In the days that followed, she learned to spell a great many more words in this uncomprehending way. Helen quickly learned to form the letters correctly and in the correct order, but did not know she was spelling a word, or even that words existed. By spelling "d-o-l-l" into the child's hand, she hoped to teach her to connect objects with letters. Anne had brought a doll that the children at Perkins had made for her to take to Helen. They remained there for two weeks.Īnne began her task of teaching Helen by manually signing into the child's hand. As a result, within a week of her arrival, she had gained permission to remove Helen from the main house and live alone with her in the nearby cottage. She saw the need to discipline, but not crush, the spirit of her young charge. The film correctly depicted Helen as an unruly, spoiled-but very bright-child who tyrannized the household with her temper tantrums.Īnne believed that the key to reaching Helen was to teach her obedience and love. Anne underwent many botched operations at a young age before her sight was partially restored.Īnne's success with Helen remains an extraordinary and remarkable story and is best known to people because of the film The Miracle Worker. She was just 14 years older than her pupil Helen, and she too suffered from serious vision problems. The daughter of poor Irish immigrants, she entered Perkins at 14 years of age after four horrific years as a ward of the state at the Tewksbury Almshouse in Massachusetts. Compared with Helen, Anne couldn't have had a more different childhood and upbringing. On that day, Anne Mansfield Sullivan came to Tuscumbia to be her teacher.Īnne was a 20-year-old graduate of the Perkins School for the Blind. When Did Helen Keller Meet Anne Sullivan?Īs she so often remarked as an adult, her life changed on March 3, 1887. As Helen grew from infancy into childhood, she became wild and unruly. The family lost most of its wealth during the Civil War and lived modestly.Īfter the war, Captain Keller edited a local newspaper, the North Alabamian, and in 1885, under the Cleveland administration, he was appointed Marshal of North Alabama.Īt the age of 19 months, Helen became deaf and blind as a result of an unknown illness, perhaps rubella or scarlet fever. Helen's father, Arthur Keller, was a captain in the Confederate army. On her father's side she was descended from Colonel Alexander Spottswood, a colonial governor of Virginia, and on her mother's side, she was related to a number of prominent New England families. Her parents were Kate Adams Keller and Colonel Arthur Keller. Helen Adams Keller was born a healthy child in Tuscumbia, Alabama, on June 27, 1880. Portrait of Helen Keller as a young girl, with a white dog on her lap (August 1887)
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