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Helen Keller

American educator Helen Keller overcame the adversity of being blind and deaf to become one of the 20th century's leading humanitarians as well as co-founder of the ACLU.

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(1880-1968)

Who Was Helen Keller?

Early life and family, loss of sight and hearing, keller's teacher, anne sullivan, 'the story of my life', social activism, 'the miracle worker' movie, awards and honors, quick facts:.

Helen Keller was an American educator, advocate for the blind and deaf and co-founder of the ACLU. Stricken by an illness at the age of 2, Keller was left blind and deaf. Beginning in 1887, Keller's teacher, Anne Sullivan, helped her make tremendous progress with her ability to communicate, and Keller went on to college, graduating in 1904. During her lifetime, she received many honors in recognition of her accomplishments.

Keller was born on June 27, 1880, in Tuscumbia, Alabama. Keller was the first of two daughters born to Arthur H. Keller and Katherine Adams Keller. Keller's father had served as an officer in the Confederate Army during the Civil War . She also had two older stepbrothers.

The family was not particularly wealthy and earned income from their cotton plantation. Later, Arthur became the editor of a weekly local newspaper, the North Alabamian .

Keller was born with her senses of sight and hearing, and started speaking when she was just 6 months old. She started walking at the age of 1.

Keller lost both her sight and hearing at just 19 months old. In 1882, she contracted an illness — called "brain fever" by the family doctor — that produced a high body temperature. The true nature of the illness remains a mystery today, though some experts believe it might have been scarlet fever or meningitis.

Within a few days after the fever broke, Keller's mother noticed that her daughter didn't show any reaction when the dinner bell was rung, or when a hand was waved in front of her face.

As Keller grew into childhood, she developed a limited method of communication with her companion, Martha Washington, the young daughter of the family cook. The two had created a type of sign language. By the time Keller was 7, they had invented more than 60 signs to communicate with each other.

During this time, Keller had also become very wild and unruly. She would kick and scream when angry, and giggle uncontrollably when happy. She tormented Martha and inflicted raging tantrums on her parents. Many family relatives felt she should be institutionalized.

Keller worked with her teacher Anne Sullivan for 49 years, from 1887 until Sullivan's death in 1936. In 1932, Sullivan experienced health problems and lost her eyesight completely. A young woman named Polly Thomson, who had begun working as a secretary for Keller and Sullivan in 1914, became Keller's constant companion upon Sullivan's death.

Looking for answers and inspiration, Keller's mother came across a travelogue by Charles Dickens, American Notes, in 1886. She read of the successful education of another deaf and blind child, Laura Bridgman, and soon dispatched Keller and her father to Baltimore, Maryland to see specialist Dr. J. Julian Chisolm.

After examining Keller, Chisolm recommended that she see Alexander Graham Bell , the inventor of the telephone, who was working with deaf children at the time. Bell met with Keller and her parents, and suggested that they travel to the Perkins Institute for the Blind in Boston, Massachusetts.

There, the family met with the school's director, Michael Anaganos. He suggested Keller work with one of the institute's most recent graduates, Sullivan.

On March 3, 1887, Sullivan went to Keller's home in Alabama and immediately went to work. She began by teaching six-year-old Keller finger spelling, starting with the word "doll," to help Keller understand the gift of a doll she had brought along. Other words would follow.

At first, Keller was curious, then defiant, refusing to cooperate with Sullivan's instruction. When Keller did cooperate, Sullivan could tell that she wasn't making the connection between the objects and the letters spelled out in her hand. Sullivan kept working at it, forcing Keller to go through the regimen.

As Keller's frustration grew, the tantrums increased. Finally, Sullivan demanded that she and Keller be isolated from the rest of the family for a time, so that Keller could concentrate only on Sullivan's instruction. They moved to a cottage on the plantation.

In a dramatic struggle, Sullivan taught Keller the word "water"; she helped her make the connection between the object and the letters by taking Keller out to the water pump, and placing Keller's hand under the spout. While Sullivan moved the lever to flush cool water over Keller's hand, she spelled out the word w-a-t-e-r on Keller's other hand. Keller understood and repeated the word in Sullivan's hand. She then pounded the ground, demanding to know its "letter name." Sullivan followed her, spelling out the word into her hand. Keller moved to other objects with Sullivan in tow. By nightfall, she had learned 30 words.

In 1905, Sullivan married John Macy, an instructor at Harvard University, a social critic and a prominent socialist. After the marriage, Sullivan continued to be Keller's guide and mentor. When Keller went to live with the Macys, they both initially gave Keller their undivided attention. Gradually, however, Anne and John became distant to each other, as Anne's devotion to Keller continued unabated. After several years, the couple separated, though were never divorced.

In 1890, Keller began speech classes at the Horace Mann School for the Deaf in Boston. She would toil for 25 years to learn to speak so that others could understand her.

From 1894 to 1896, Keller attended the Wright-Humason School for the Deaf in New York City. There, she worked on improving her communication skills and studied regular academic subjects.

Around this time, Keller became determined to attend college. In 1896, she attended the Cambridge School for Young Ladies, a preparatory school for women.

As her story became known to the general public, Keller began to meet famous and influential people. One of them was the writer Mark Twain , who was very impressed with her. They became friends. Twain introduced her to his friend Henry H. Rogers, a Standard Oil executive.

Rogers was so impressed with Keller's talent, drive and determination that he agreed to pay for her to attend Radcliffe College. There, she was accompanied by Sullivan, who sat by her side to interpret lectures and texts. By this time, Keller had mastered several methods of communication, including touch-lip reading, Braille, speech, typing and finger-spelling.

Keller graduated, cum laude, from Radcliffe College in 1904, at the age of 24.

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With the help of Sullivan and Macy, Sullivan's future husband, Keller wrote her first book, The Story of My Life . Published in 1905, the memoirs covered Keller's transformation from childhood to 21-year-old college student.

'The Story of My Life' by Helen Keller

Throughout the first half of the 20th century, Keller tackled social and political issues, including women's suffrage, pacifism, birth control and socialism.

After college, Keller set out to learn more about the world and how she could help improve the lives of others. News of her story spread beyond Massachusetts and New England. Keller became a well-known celebrity and lecturer by sharing her experiences with audiences, and working on behalf of others living with disabilities. She testified before Congress, strongly advocating to improve the welfare of blind people.

In 1915, along with renowned city planner George Kessler, she co-founded Helen Keller International to combat the causes and consequences of blindness and malnutrition. In 1920, she helped found the American Civil Liberties Union .

When the American Federation for the Blind was established in 1921, Keller had an effective national outlet for her efforts. She became a member in 1924, and participated in many campaigns to raise awareness, money and support for the blind. She also joined other organizations dedicated to helping those less fortunate, including the Permanent Blind War Relief Fund (later called the American Braille Press).

Soon after she graduated from college, Keller became a member of the Socialist Party, most likely due in part to her friendship with John Macy. Between 1909 and 1921, she wrote several articles about socialism and supported Eugene Debs, a Socialist Party presidential candidate. Her series of essays on socialism, entitled "Out of the Dark," described her views on socialism and world affairs.

It was during this time that Keller first experienced public prejudice about her disabilities. For most of her life, the press had been overwhelmingly supportive of her, praising her courage and intelligence. But after she expressed her socialist views, some criticized her by calling attention to her disabilities. One newspaper, the Brooklyn Eagle , wrote that her "mistakes sprung out of the manifest limitations of her development."

In 1946, Keller was appointed counselor of international relations for the American Foundation of Overseas Blind. Between 1946 and 1957, she traveled to 35 countries on five continents.

In 1955, at age 75, Keller embarked on the longest and most grueling trip of her life: a 40,000-mile, five-month trek across Asia. Through her many speeches and appearances, she brought inspiration and encouragement to millions of people.

Keller's autobiography, The Story of My Life , was used as the basis for 1957 television drama The Miracle Worker .

In 1959, the story was developed into a Broadway play of the same title, starring Patty Duke as Keller and Anne Bancroft as Sullivan. The two actresses also performed those roles in the 1962 award-winning film version of the play.

During her lifetime, she received many honors in recognition of her accomplishments, including the Theodore Roosevelt Distinguished Service Medal in 1936, the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1964, and election to the Women's Hall of Fame in 1965.

Keller also received honorary doctoral degrees from Temple University and Harvard University and from the universities of Glasgow, Scotland; Berlin, Germany; Delhi, India; and Witwatersrand in Johannesburg, South Africa. She was named an Honorary Fellow of the Educational Institute of Scotland.

Keller died in her sleep on June 1, 1968, just a few weeks before her 88th birthday. Keller suffered a series of strokes in 1961 and spent the remaining years of her life at her home in Connecticut.

During her remarkable life, Keller stood as a powerful example of how determination, hard work, and imagination can allow an individual to triumph over adversity. By overcoming difficult conditions with a great deal of persistence, she grew into a respected and world-renowned activist who labored for the betterment of others.

FULL NAME: Helen Adams Keller BORN: June 27, 1880 BIRTHPLACE: Tuscumbia, AL DIED: June 1, 1968 ASTROLOGICAL SIGN: Cancer

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• Keep your face to the sunshine and you cannot see the shadow.
• One can never consent to creep when one feels an impulse to soar.
• Remember, no effort that we make to attain something beautiful is ever lost. Sometime, somewhere, somehow we shall find that which we seek.
• Gradually from naming an object we advance step by step until we have traversed the vast distance between our first stammered syllable and the sweep of thought in a line of Shakespeare.
• If it is true that the violin is the most perfect of musical instruments, then Greek is the violin of human thought.
• A happy life consists not in the absence, but in the mastery of hardships.
• The two greatest characters in the 19th century are Napoleon and Helen Keller. Napoleon tried to conquer the world by physical force and failed. Helen tried to conquer the world by power of mind — and succeeded!” (Mark Twain)
• The bulk of the world’s knowledge is an imaginary construction.
• We differ, blind and seeing, one from another, not in our senses, but in the use we make of them, in the imagination and courage with which we seek wisdom beyond the senses.
• [T]he mystery of language was revealed to me. I knew then that "w-a-t-e-r" meant the wonderful cool something that was flowing over my hand. That living word awakened my soul, gave it light, hope, joy, set it free!
• It is more difficult to teach ignorance to think than to teach an intelligent blind man to see the grandeur of Niagara.
• Everything has its wonders, even darkness and silence, and I learn, whatever state I may be in, therein to be content.

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Helen Keller

Undeterred by deafness and blindness, Helen Keller rose to become a major 20 th century humanitarian, educator and writer. She advocated for the blind and for women’s suffrage and co-founded the American Civil Liberties Union.

Born on June 27, 1880 in Tuscumbia, Alabama, Keller was the older of two daughters of Arthur H. Keller, a farmer, newspaper editor, and Confederate Army veteran, and his second wife Katherine Adams Keller, an educated woman from Memphis. Several months before Helen’s second birthday, a serious illness—possibly meningitis or scarlet fever—left her deaf and blind. She had no formal education until age seven, and since she could not speak, she developed a system for communicating with her family by feeling their facial expressions.

Recognizing her daughter’s intelligence, Keller’s mother sought help from experts including inventor Alexander Graham Bell, who had become involved with deaf children. Ultimately, she was referred to Anne Sullivan, a graduate of the Perkins School for the Blind, who became Keller’s lifelong teacher and mentor. Although Helen initially resisted her, Sullivan persevered. She used touch to teach Keller the alphabet and to make words by spelling them with her finger on Keller’s palm. Within a few weeks, Keller caught on. A year later, Sullivan brought Keller to the Perkins School in Boston, where she learned to read Braille and write with a specially made typewriter. Newspapers chronicled her progress. At fourteen, she went to New York for two years where she improved her speaking ability, and then returned to Massachusetts to attend the Cambridge School for Young Ladies. With Sullivan’s tutoring, Keller was admitted to Radcliffe College, graduating cum laude in 1904. Sullivan went with her, helping Keller with her studies. (Impressed by Keller, Mark Twain urged his wealthy friend Henry Rogers to finance her education.)

Even before she graduated, Keller published two books, The Story of My Life (1902) and Optimism (1903), which launched her career as a writer and lecturer. She authored a dozen books and articles in major magazines, advocating for prevention of blindness in children and for other causes.  

Sullivan married Harvard instructor and social critic John Macy in 1905, and Keller lived with them. During that time, Keller’s political awareness heightened. She supported the suffrage movement, embraced socialism, advocated for the blind and became a pacifist during World War I. Keller’s life story was featured in the 1919 film, Deliverance . In 1920, she joined Jane Addams, Crystal Eastman, and other social activists in founding the American Civil Liberties Union; four years later she became affiliated with the new American Foundation for the Blind in 1924.

After Sullivan’s death in 1936, Keller continued to lecture internationally with the support of other aides, and she became one of the world’s most-admired women (though her advocacy of socialism brought her some critics domestically). During World War II, she toured military hospitals bringing comfort to soldiers.

A second film on her life won the Academy Award in 1955; The Miracle Worker —which centered on Sullivan—won the 1960 Pulitzer Prize as a play and was made into a movie two years later. Lifelong activist, Keller met several US presidents and was honored with the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1964. She also received honorary doctorates from Glasgow, Harvard, and Temple Universities.

• “Helen Keller.” Perkins. Accessed February 4, 2015.
• “Helen Keller.” American Foundation for the Blind. Accessed February 4, 2015.
• "Helen Adams Keller." Dictionary of American Biography . New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1988. U.S. History in Context . Accessed February 4, 2015.
• "Keller, Helen." UXL Encyclopedia of U.S. History . Sonia Benson, Daniel E. Brannen, Jr., and Rebecca Valentine. Vol. 5. Detroit: UXL, 2009. 847-849. U.S. History in Context . Accessed February 4, 2015.
• Ozick, Cynthia. “What Helen Keller Saw.” The New Yorker. June 16, 2003. Accessed February 4, 2015.
• Weatherford, Doris. American Women's History: An A to Z of People, Organizations, Issues, and Events . New York: Prentice Hall, 1994.
• PHOTO: Library of Congress

MLA - Michals, Debra.  "Helen Keller."  National Women's History Museum.  National Women's History Museum, 2015.  Date accessed.

Chicago - Michals, Debra.  "Helen Keller."  National Women's History Museum.  2015.  www.womenshistory.org/education-resources/biographies/helen-keller. 

Helen Keller: Described and Captioned Educational Media

Helen Keller Biography, American Foundation for the Blind

Helen Keller, Perkins School for the Blind

Helen Keller Birthplace

Helen Keller International

 The Miracle Worker (1962). Dir. Arthur Penn. (DVD) Film.

The Miracle Worker (2000). Dir. Nadia Tass. (DVD) Film.

Keller, Helen. The World I Live In . New York: NYRB Classics, 2004.

Ford, Carin.  Helen Keller: Lighting the Way for the Blind and Deaf .  Enslow Publishers, 2001.

Herrmann, Dorothy.  Helen Keller: A Life .  Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1998.

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Helen Keller

Helen Adams Keller was born on June 27, 1880, in Tuscumbia, Alabama. When she was 19 months old, she got very sick. The disease left her unable to see or hear.

With Sullivan’s help, Helen made rapid progress. Soon she could read sentences by feeling raised words on cardboard. A few years later she learned Braille . Braille is a special system of writing for the blind that uses raised dots instead of printed words. People read Braille with their fingertips.

Keller was very bright. She graduated from Radcliffe College in 1904. Then she wrote magazine articles that told people about blindness. She also wrote several books about her life.

In 1913 Keller began giving lectures, mainly for the American Foundation for the Blind. Most people had trouble understanding her words, so she took along someone who repeated them to the audience. Keller died in Westport, Connecticut, on June 1, 1968.

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Biography Online

Helen Keller Biography

“Once I knew the depth where no hope was, and darkness lay on the face of all things. Then love came and set my soul free. Once I knew only darkness and stillness. Now I know hope and joy.”

– Helen Keller, On Optimism (1903)

Short Biography of Helen Keller

In 1886, Helen was sent to see an eye, ear and nose specialist in Baltimore. He put them in touch with Alexander Graham Bell , who was currently investigate issues of deafness and sound (he would also develop the first telephone) Bell was moved by the experience of working with Keller, writing that:

“I feel that in this child I have seen more of the Divine than has been manifest in anyone I ever met before.”

Alexander Bell helped Keller to visit the Perkins Institute for the Blind, and this led to a long relationship with Anne Sullivan – who was a former student herself. Sullivan was visually impaired and, aged only 20, and with no prior experience, she set about teaching Helen how to communicate. The two maintained a long relationship of 49 years.

Learning to Communicate

In the beginning, Keller was frustrated by her inability to pick up the hand signals that Sullivan was giving. However, after a frustrating month, Keller picked up on Sullivan’s system of hand signals through understanding the word water. Sullivan poured water over Keller’s left hand and wrote out on her right hand the word ‘water’. This helped Helen to fully understand the system, and she was soon able to identify a variety of household objects.

“The most important day I remember in all my life is the one on which my teacher, Anne Mansfield Sullivan, came to me. I am filled with wonder when I consider the immeasurable contrasts between the two lives which it connects. It was the third of March, 1887, three months before I was seven years old.”

– Helen Keller, The Story of My Life , 1903, Ch. 4

Keller came into contact with American author, Mark Twain . Twain admired the perseverance of Keller and helped persuade Henry Rogers, an oil businessman to fund her education. With great difficulty, Keller was able to study at Radcliffe College, where in 1904, she was able to graduate with a Bachelor of Arts degree. During her education, she also learned to speak and practise lip-reading. Her sense of touch became extremely subtle. She also found that deafness and blindness encouraged her to develop wisdom and understanding from beyond the senses.

“We differ, blind and seeing, one from another, not in our senses, but in the use we make of them, in the imagination and courage with which we seek wisdom beyond the senses.”

― Helen Keller , The Five-sensed World (1910)

Keller became a proficient writer and speaker. In 1903, she published an autobiography ‘ The Story of My Life ‘ It recounted her struggles to overcome her disabilities and the way it forced her to look at life from a different perspective.

“When one door of happiness closes, another opens; but often we look so long at the closed door that we do not see the one which has been opened for us.”

― Helen Keller

Political Views

Keller also wrote on political issues, Keller was a staunch supporter of the American Socialist party and joined the party in 1909. She wished to see a fairer distribution of income, and an end to the inequality of Capitalist society. She said she became a more convinced socialist after the 1912 miners strike. Her book ‘ Out of the Dark ‘ (1913) includes several essays on socialism. She supported Eugene V Debs, in each of the Presidential elections he stood for. In 1912, she joined the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW); as well as advocating socialism, Keller was a pacifist and opposed the American involvement in World War One.

Religious Views

In religious matters, she advocated the teachings of Emanuel Swedenborg, a Christian theologian who advocated a particular spiritual interpretation of the Bible. She published ‘ My Religion ‘ in 1927.

Charity Work

From 1918, she devoted much of her time to raising funds and awareness for blind charities. She sought to raise money and also improve the living conditions of the blind, who at the time were often badly educated and living in asylums. Her public profile helped to de-stigmatise blindness and deafness. She was also noted for her optimism which she sought to cultivate.

“If I am happy in spite of my deprivations, if my happiness is so deep that it is a faith, so thoughtful that it becomes a philosophy of life, — if, in short, I am an optimist, my testimony to the creed of optimism is worth hearing.”

― Helen Keller, Optimism (1903)

Towards the end of her life, she suffered a stroke, and she died in her sleep on June 1, 1968. She was given numerous awards during her life, including the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1964, by Lyndon B. Johnson.

Citation: Pettinger, Tejvan . “Biography of Helen Keller ”, Oxford, UK www.biographyonline.net , Published: 1st Feb. 2014. Last updated 3rd March 2017.

Hellen Keller – The Story of My Life

Hellen Keller – The Story of My Life at Amazon

Biography of Helen Keller, Deaf and Blind Spokesperson and Activist

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Helen Adams Keller (June 27, 1880–June 1, 1968) was a groundbreaking exemplar and advocate for the blind and deaf communities. Blind and deaf from a nearly fatal illness at 19 months old, Helen Keller made a dramatic breakthrough at the age of 6 when she learned to communicate with the help of her teacher, Annie Sullivan. Keller went on to live an illustrious public life, inspiring people with disabilities and fundraising, giving speeches, and writing as a humanitarian activist.

Fast Facts: Helen Keller

• Known For : Blind and deaf from infancy, Helen Keller is known for her emergence from isolation, with the help of her teacher Annie Sullivan, and for a career of public service and humanitarian activism.
• Born : June 27, 1880 in Tuscumbia, Alabama
• Parents : Captain Arthur Keller and Kate Adams Keller
• Died : June 1, 1968 in Easton Connecticut
• Education : Home tutoring with Annie Sullivan, Perkins Institute for the Blind, Wright-Humason School for the Deaf, studies with Sarah Fuller at the Horace Mann School for the Deaf, The Cambridge School for Young Ladies, Radcliffe College of Harvard University
• Published Works : The Story of My Life, The World I Live In, Out of the Dark, My Religion, Light in My Darkness, Midstream: My Later Life
• Awards and Honors : Theodore Roosevelt Distinguished Service Medal in 1936, Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1964, election to the Women's Hall of Fame in 1965, an honorary Academy Award in 1955 (as the inspiration for the documentary about her life), countless honorary degrees
• Notable Quote : "The best and most beautiful things in the world cannot be seen, nor touched ... but are felt in the heart."

Early Childhood

Helen Keller was born on June 27, 1880, in Tuscumbia, Alabama to Captain Arthur Keller and Kate Adams Keller. Captain Keller was a cotton farmer and newspaper editor and had served in the Confederate Army during the Civil War . Kate Keller, 20 years his junior, had been born in the South, but had roots in Massachusetts and was related to founding father John Adams .

Helen was a healthy child until she became seriously ill at 19 months. Stricken with an illness that her doctor called "brain fever," Helen was not expected to survive. The crisis was over after several days, to the great relief of the Kellers. However, they soon learned that Helen had not emerged from the illness unscathed. She was left blind and deaf. Historians believe that Helen had contracted either scarlet fever or meningitis.

The Wild Childhood Years

Frustrated by her inability to express herself, Helen Keller frequently threw tantrums that included breaking dishes and even slapping and biting family members. When Helen, at age 6, tipped over the cradle holding her baby sister, Helen's parents knew something had to be done. Well-meaning friends suggested that she be institutionalized, but Helen's mother resisted that notion.

Soon after the incident with the cradle, Kate Keller read a book by Charles Dickens about the education of Laura Bridgman. Laura was a deaf-blind girl who had been taught to communicate by the director of the Perkins Institute for the Blind in Boston. For the first time, the Kellers felt hopeful that Helen could be helped as well.

The Guidance of Alexander Graham Bell

During a visit to a Baltimore eye doctor in 1886, the Kellers received the same verdict they had heard before. Nothing could be done to restore Helen's eyesight. The doctor, however, advised the Kellers that Helen might benefit from a visit with the famous inventor Alexander Graham Bell in Washington, D.C.

Bell's mother and wife were deaf and he had devoted himself to improving life for the deaf, inventing several assistive devices for them. Bell and Helen Keller got along very well and would later develop a lifelong friendship.

Bell suggested that the Kellers write to the director of the Perkins Institute for the Blind, where Laura Bridgman, now an adult, still resided. The director wrote the Kellers back, with the name of a teacher for Helen: Annie Sullivan .

Annie Sullivan Arrives

Helen Keller's new teacher had also lived through difficult times. Annie Sullivan had lost her mother to tuberculosis when she was 8. Unable to care for his children, her father sent Annie and her younger brother Jimmie to live in the poorhouse in 1876. They shared quarters with criminals, prostitutes, and the mentally ill.

Young Jimmie died of a weak hip ailment only three months after their arrival, leaving Annie grief-stricken. Adding to her misery, Annie was gradually losing her vision to trachoma, an eye disease. Although not completely blind, Annie had very poor vision and would be plagued with eye problems for the rest of her life.

When she was 14, Annie begged visiting officials to send her to school. She was lucky, for they agreed to take her out of the poorhouse and send her to the Perkins Institute. Annie had a lot of catching up to do. She learned to read and write, then later learned braille and the manual alphabet (a system of hand signs used by the deaf).

After graduating first in her class, Annie was given the job that would determine the course of her life: teacher to Helen Keller. Without any formal training to teach a deaf-blind child, 20-year-old Annie Sullivan arrived at the Keller home on March 3, 1887. It was a day that Helen Keller later referred to as "my soul's birthday."

A Battle of Wills

Teacher and pupil were both very strong-willed and frequently clashed. One of the first of these battles revolved around Helen's behavior at the dinner table, where she roamed freely and grabbed food from the plates of others.

Dismissing the family from the room, Annie locked herself in with Helen. Hours of struggle ensued, during which Annie insisted Helen eat with a spoon and sit in her chair.

In order to distance Helen from her parents, who gave in to her every demand, Annie proposed that she and Helen move out of the house temporarily. They spent about two weeks in the "annex," a small house on the Keller property. Annie knew that if she could teach Helen self-control, Helen would be more receptive to learning.

Helen fought Annie on every front, from getting dressed and eating to going to bed at night. Eventually, Helen resigned herself to the situation, becoming calmer and more cooperative.

Now the teaching could begin. Annie constantly spelled words into Helen's hand, using the manual alphabet to name the items she handed to Helen. Helen seemed intrigued but did not yet realize that what they were doing was more than a game.

Helen Keller's Breakthrough

On the morning of April 5, 1887, Annie Sullivan and Helen Keller were outside at the water pump, filling a mug with water. Annie pumped the water over Helen's hand while repeatedly spelling “w-a-t-e-r” into her hand. Helen suddenly dropped the mug. As Annie later described it, "a new light came into her face." She understood.

All the way back to the house, Helen touched objects and Annie spelled their names into her hand. Before the day was over, Helen had learned 30 new words. It was just the beginning of a very long process, but a door had been opened for Helen.

Annie also taught her how to write and how to read braille. By the end of that summer, Helen had learned more than 600 words. 

Annie Sullivan sent regular reports on Helen Keller's progress to the director of the Perkins Institute. On a visit to the Perkins Institute in 1888, Helen met other blind children for the first time. She returned to Perkins the following year and stayed for several months of study.

High School Years

Helen Keller dreamed of attending college and was determined to get into Radcliffe , a women's university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. However, she would first need to complete high school.

Helen attended a high school for the deaf in New York City, then later transferred to a school in Cambridge. She had her tuition and living expenses paid for by wealthy benefactors.

Keeping up with school work challenged both Helen and Annie. Copies of books in braille were rarely available, requiring that Annie read the books, then spell them into Helen's hand. Helen would then type out notes using her braille typewriter. It was a grueling process.

Helen withdrew from the school after two years, completing her studies with a private tutor. She gained admission to Radcliffe in 1900, making her the first deaf-blind person to attend college.

Life as a Coed

College was somewhat disappointing for Helen Keller. She was unable to form friendships both because of her limitations and the fact that she lived off campus, which further isolated her. The rigorous routine continued, in which Annie worked at least as much as Helen. As a result, Annie suffered severe eyestrain.

Helen found the courses very difficult and struggled to keep up with her workload. Although she detested math, Helen did enjoy English classes and received praise for her writing. Before long, she would be doing plenty of writing.

Editors from Ladies' Home Journal offered Helen $3,000, an enormous sum at the time, to write a series of articles about her life.

Overwhelmed by the task of writing the articles, Helen admitted she needed help. Friends introduced her to John Macy, an editor and English teacher at Harvard . Macy quickly learned the manual alphabet and began to work with Helen on editing her work.

Certain that Helen's articles could successfully be turned into a book, Macy negotiated a deal with a publisher and "The Story of My Life" was published in 1903 when Helen was only 22 years old. Helen graduated from Radcliffe with honors in June 1904.

Annie Sullivan Marries John Macy

John Macy remained friends with Helen and Annie after the book's publication. He found himself falling in love with Annie Sullivan, although she was 11 years his senior. Annie had feelings for him as well, but wouldn't accept his proposal until he assured her that Helen would always have a place in their home. They were married in May 1905 and the trio moved into a farmhouse in Massachusetts.

The pleasant farmhouse was reminiscent of the home Helen had grown up in. Macy arranged a system of ropes out in the yard so that Helen could safely take walks by herself. Soon, Helen was at work on her second memoir, "The World I Live In," with John Macy as her editor.

By all accounts, although Helen and Macy were close in age and spent a lot of time together, they were never more than friends.

An active member of the Socialist Party, John Macy encouraged Helen to read books on socialist and communist theory. Helen joined the Socialist Party in 1909 and she also supported the women's suffrage movement .

Helen's third book, a series of essays defending her political views, did poorly. Worried about their dwindling funds, Helen and Annie decided to go on a lecture tour.

Helen and Annie Go on the Road

Helen had taken speaking lessons over the years and had made some progress, but only those closest to her could understand her speech. Annie would need to interpret Helen's speech for the audience.

Another concern was Helen's appearance. She was very attractive and always well dressed, but her eyes were obviously abnormal. Unbeknownst to the public, Helen had her eyes surgically removed and replaced by prosthetic ones prior to the start of the tour in 1913.

Prior to this, Annie made certain that the photographs were always taken of Helen's right profile because her left eye protruded and was obviously blind, whereas Helen appeared almost normal on the right side.

The tour appearances consisted of a well-scripted routine. Annie spoke about her years with Helen and then Helen spoke, only to have Annie interpret what she had said. At the end, they took questions from the audience. The tour was successful, but exhausting for Annie. After taking a break, they went back on tour two more times.

Annie's marriage suffered from the strain as well. She and John Macy separated permanently in 1914. Helen and Annie hired a new assistant, Polly Thomson, in 1915, in an effort to relieve Annie of some of her duties.

Helen Finds Love

In 1916, the women hired Peter Fagan as a secretary to accompany them on their tour while Polly was out of town. After the tour, Annie became seriously ill and was diagnosed with tuberculosis.

While Polly took Annie to a rest home in Lake Placid, plans were made for Helen to join her mother and sister Mildred in Alabama. For a brief time, Helen and Peter were alone together at the farmhouse, where Peter confessed his love for Helen and asked her to marry him.

The couple tried to keep their plans a secret, but when they traveled to Boston to obtain a marriage license, the press obtained a copy of the license and published a story about Helen's engagement.

Kate Keller was furious and brought Helen back to Alabama with her. Although Helen was 36 years old at the time, her family was very protective of her and disapproved of any romantic relationship.

Several times, Peter attempted to reunite with Helen, but her family would not let him near her. At one point, Mildred's husband threatened Peter with a gun if he did not get off his property.

Helen and Peter were never together again. Later in life, Helen described the relationship as her "little island of joy surrounded by dark waters."

The World of Showbiz

Annie recovered from her illness, which had been misdiagnosed as tuberculosis, and returned home. With their financial difficulties mounting, Helen, Annie, and Polly sold their house and moved to Forest Hills, New York in 1917.

Helen received an offer to star in a film about her life, which she readily accepted. The 1920 movie, "Deliverance," was absurdly melodramatic and did poorly at the box office.

In dire need of a steady income, Helen and Annie, now 40 and 54 respectively, next turned to vaudeville. They reprised their act from the lecture tour, but this time they did it in glitzy costumes and full stage makeup, alongside various dancers and comedians.

Helen enjoyed the theater, but Annie found it vulgar. The money, however, was very good and they stayed in vaudeville until 1924.

American Foundation for the Blind

That same year, Helen became involved with an organization that would employ her for much of the rest of her life. The newly-formed American Foundation for the Blind (AFB) sought a spokesperson and Helen seemed the perfect candidate.

Helen Keller drew crowds whenever she spoke in public and became very successful at raising money for the organization. Helen also convinced Congress to approve more funding for books printed in braille.

Taking time off from her duties at the AFB in 1927, Helen began work on another memoir, "Midstream," which she completed with the help of an editor.

Losing 'Teacher' and Polly

Annie Sullivan's health deteriorated over several years' time. She became completely blind and could no longer travel, leaving both women entirely reliant on Polly. Annie Sullivan died in October 1936 at the age of 70. Helen was devastated to have lost the woman whom she had known only as "Teacher," and who had given so much to her.

After the funeral, Helen and Polly took a trip to Scotland to visit Polly's family. Returning home to a life without Annie was difficult for Helen. Life was made easier when Helen learned that she would be taken care of financially for life by the AFB, which built a new home for her in Connecticut.

Helen continued her travels around the world through the 1940s and 1950s accompanied by Polly, but the women, now in their 70s, began to tire of travel.

In 1957, Polly suffered a severe stroke. She survived, but had brain damage and could no longer function as Helen's assistant. Two caretakers were hired to come and live with Helen and Polly. In 1960, after spending 46 years of her life with Helen, Polly Thomson died.

Later Years

Helen Keller settled into a quieter life, enjoying visits from friends and her daily martini before dinner. In 1960, she was intrigued to learn of a new play on Broadway that told the dramatic story of her early days with Annie Sullivan. "The Miracle Worker" was a smash hit and was made into an equally popular movie in 1962.

Strong and healthy all of her life, Helen became frail in her 80s. She suffered a stroke in 1961 and developed diabetes.

On June 1, 1968, Helen Keller died in her home at the age of 87 following a heart attack. Her funeral service, held at the National Cathedral in Washington, D.C., was attended by 1,200 mourners.

Helen Keller was a groundbreaker in her personal and public lives. Becoming a writer and lecturer with Annie while blind and deaf was an enormous accomplishment. Helen Keller was the first deaf-blind individual to earn a college degree.

She was an advocate for communities of people with disabilities in many ways, raising awareness through her lecture circuits and books and raising funds for the American Foundation for the Blind. Her political work included helping to found the American Civil Liberties Union and advocacy for increased funding for braille books and for women's suffrage.

She met with every U.S. president from Grover Cleveland to Lyndon Johnson. While she was still alive, in 1964, Helen received the highest honor awarded to a U.S. citizen, the Presidential Medal of Freedom, from President Lyndon Johnson .

Helen Keller remains a source of inspiration to all people for her enormous courage overcoming the obstacles of being both deaf and blind and for her ensuing life of humanitarian selfless service.

• Herrmann, Dorothy. Helen Keller: A Life. University of Chicago Press, 1998.
• Keller, Helen. Midstream: My Later Life . Nabu Press, 2011.
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Helen Keller

• Occupation: Activist
• Born: June 27, 1880 in Tuscumbia, Alabama
• Died: June 1, 1968 in Arcan Ridge, Easton, Connecticut
• Best known for: Accomplishing much despite being both deaf and blind.

• Annie Sullivan was often called the "Miracle Worker" for the way she was able to help Helen.
• Helen became very famous. She met with every President of the United States from Grover Cleveland to Lyndon Johnson . That's a lot of presidents!
• Helen starred in a movie about herself called Deliverance . Critics liked the movie, but not a lot of people went to see it.
• She loved dogs. They were a great source of joy to her.
• Helen became friends with famous people such as the inventor of the telephone Alexander Graham Bell and the author Mark Twain .
• She wrote a book titled Teacher about Annie Sullivan's life.
• Two films about Helen Keller won Academy Awards. One was a documentary called The Unconquered (1954) and the other was a drama called The Miracle Worker (1962) starring Anne Bancroft and Patty Duke.
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Helen Keller’s Life and Legacy

Helen keller.

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. 

A Living Legacy

Helen Keller Intl was  co-founded in 1915  by two extraordinary individuals, Helen Keller and George Kessler, to assist soldiers blinded during their service in the first World War. Since our founding, we have committed ourselves to continuing Helen’s work.

Guided by her fierce optimism, we have been working on the front lines of health for more than 100 years. We deliver life-changing health care to vulnerable families in places where the need is great, but access is limited. Our proven, science-based programs empower people to create opportunities in their own lives.

Today we prioritize the essential building blocks of good health, sound nutrition and clear vision, helping millions of people create lasting change in their own lives.

Our commitment to continuing Helen’s work is firmly rooted in her own belief:

The welfare of each is bound up in the welfare of all. — Helen Keller

A Brief Biographical Timeline

1880:  On June 27, Helen Keller is born in Tuscumbia, Alabama.

1882:   Following a bout of illness, Helen loses her sight and hearing.

1887:  Helen’s parents hire Anne Sullivan, a graduate of the Perkins School for the Blind, to be Helen’s tutor.  Anne begins by teaching Helen that objects have names and that she can use her fingers to spell them. Over time, Helen learns to communicate via sign language, to read and write in Braille, to touch-lip read, and to speak.

1900:  After attending schools in Boston and New York, Helen matriculates at Radcliffe College.

1903:  Helen’s first book, an autobiography called  The Story of My Life , is published.

1904:  Helen graduates  cum laude  from Radcliffe, becoming the first deafblind person to earn a Bachelor of Arts degree.

1915:  Helen, already a vocal advocate for people with disabilities, co-founds the American Foundation for Overseas Blind to support World War I veterans blinded in combat. This organization later becomes  Helen Keller Intl  and expands its mission to address the causes and consequences of blindness, malnutrition and poor health.

Help sustain — and build — Helen’s legacy.  Your donation now can transform the lives of vulnerable children and adults facing vision loss, malnutrition and diseases of poverty.

Help sustain—and build—Helen’s legacy.  Your donation now can transform the lives of vulnerable children and adults facing vision loss, malnutrition and diseases of poverty.

1920:  Helen helps found the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU).

1924:  Helen joins the American Foundation for the Blind. She serves as a spokesperson and ambassador for the foundation until her death.

1946:  Helen begins touring internationally on behalf of the American Foundation for Overseas Blind (see 1915 above), expanding her advocacy for people with vision impairment.  In 11 years, she will visit 35 countries on five continents.

1956:  Helen wins an Academy Award for a documentary film about her life.

1961:  Helen suffers a stroke and retires from public life.

1964:  Helen is awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by President Lyndon Johnson.

1968:  On June 1, Helen dies peacefully at her home in Connecticut.  Her ashes are interred at the National Cathedral in Washington, DC.

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Essay on Helen Keller | Helen Keller Essay for Students and Children in English

February 12, 2024 by sastry

Essay on Helen Keller: “The public must learn that the blind man is neither genius nor a freak nor an idiot. He has a mind that can be educated it is the duty of the public to help him make the best of himself.” These words by Helen Keller echo the fact that disability need not be the end of the world. But one can overcome all hurdles through one’s spirit. – The Indomitable Spirit

You can read more  Essay Writing  about articles, events, people, sports, technology many more.

Long and Short Essays on Helen Keller for Kids and Students in English

Given below are two essays in English for students and children about the topic of ‘Helen Keller’ in both long and short form. The first essay is a long essay on the Helen Keller of 400-500 words. This long essay about Helen Keller is suitable for students of class 7, 8, 9 and 10, and also for competitive exam aspirants. The second essay is a short essay on Helen Keller of 150-200 words. These are suitable for students and children in class 6 and below.

Long Essay on Helen Keller 500 Words in English

Below we have given a long essay on Helen Keller of 500 words is helpful for classes 7, 8, 9 and 10 and Competitive Exam Aspirants. This long essay on the topic is suitable for students of class 7 to class 10, and also for competitive exam aspirants.

Born on 27th June 1880 in Tuscumbia, USA, daughter of captain Arthur Henley Keller and Kate Adams Keller, she was born with full sight and hearing. The family lived in a house, Ivy Green, that was built decades ago by her grandfather. She had two younger siblings and two older half brothers.

They were leading a quiet life. But this was soon going to be short lived. In February 1882, when Helen was nineteen months old, she fell ill. To this day, the nature of her ailment remains a mystery. The doctors of that time called it ‘brain fever’, while today’s doctors think it may have been scarlet fever or meningitis. Whatever the illness, Helen was expected to die. When eventually, the fever subsided, Helen’s family was believed that their daughter was well again.

However, Helen’s mother soon noticed that her daughter failed to respond when the dinner bell rang or when she passed her hand in front of her daughter’s eyes. Helen became a very difficult child, smashing dishes, lamps and terrorising the household with her screaming and temper tantrums. Relatives regarded her as a monster and said that she should be put into an institution. By the time Helen was six, her family had become desperate.

Looking after Helen was proving too much for them. So her mother travelled to a specialist doctor for advice. They were given confirmation that Helen could never see or hear again. But the doctor believed that Helen could be taught and he advised them to visit a local expert on the problems of dumb children. This expert was Alexander Graham Bell, the inventor of telephone.

Bell suggested that the Kellers write to Michael Anagnos, Director of the Perkins Institution and Massachustts Asylum for the Blind and request him for another teacher. He considered Helen’s case and immediately recommended a former pupil of the institution, Anne Sullivan. On 3rd March, 1887, Anne met Helen Keller for the first time. Anne immediately started teaching Helen to finger spell. Spelling out the word ‘Doll’ to signify a present she had brought with her for Helen.

The next word she taught Helen was ‘Cake.’ Although Helen could repeat these finger movements, she could not quite understand what they meant. What frustrated her was that every object had a unique word for it. When Anne was teaching her the word ‘mug’, Keller broke the doll in rage.

Anne and Helen then moved into a small cottage on the mainland house to try and get Helen to improve her behaviour of particular concern were Helen’s table manners. She had taken to eating with her hands and from the plates of everyone on the table. Over the coming weeks, however, Helen’s behaviour did begin to improve as a bond grew between the two. Then after a month of Anne’s teaching, what the people of the time called, a ‘miracle’ occurred. Helen had until now not yet fully understood the meaning of words.

When Anne led her to the water pump on 5th April, 1887, a drastic change occured. As the cool stream gushed into Helen’s one hand, Anne slowly spelled the word ‘water’ on ‘Helen’s hand’. Helen suddenly, felt that the mystery of the language was revealed to her. Within the next few hours, Helen learnt the spelling of thirty new words.

Helen’s progress from then on was astonishing. Her ability to learn was far in advance of anything that anybody had seen before in someone without sight or hearing. Soon, she could write with both ordinary and braille typewriters. Helen had now become a phenomenon to reckon with. Her next achievement which brought her laurels from all over the world was when she moved to the Cambridge school for young ladies in 1896 and in the Autumn of 1900 entered the Radcliffe college, becoming the first deaf and blind person to have ever enrolled at an institution of higher learning. In 1904, Helen graduated from the college, becoming the first deaf-blind person to have a Bachelor’s degree.

She maintained contacts with Austrian philosopher Wilhelm Jerusalem, who was one of the first people to discover her literary skills. With her, determination, she learnt to speak and gave lectures and speeches. She ‘heard’ others speeches by feeling their lips with her hands. She became adept at Braille and sign language. She could also feel music by placing her hands on top of a resonant table.

Short Essay on Helen Keller 200 Words in English

Below we have given a short essay on Helen Keller is for Classes 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 and 6. This short essay on the topic is suitable for students of class 6 and below.

She was an advocate for people with disabilities. In 1915, she and George Kessler founded Helen Keller International (HKI) organisation. This organisation undertakes research in vision, health and nutrition. She also helped in the foundation of American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) in 1940. She was a member of the Socialist Party and supported the working class.

She published 12 books and several articles. One of her earliest writings was ‘The Frost King’, which she wrote when she was only 11 years old.

During her college time, Helen also started working on her first book ‘The Story of My Life,’ which later became a classic. After this success, Helen and Anne went on lecture tours throughout the world speaking on their experiences. In 1908, she wrote ‘The World I live in’. Her essay series on Socialism, ‘Out of the Dark’ was published in 1913. Her spiritual autobiography, ‘My Religion’ was published in 1927, and revised edition, right in My Darkness came out in 1994. In October 1961, Helen suffered the first of a series of strokes, and her public life was drawn to a close. On 1 st June 1968, at Arcon ridge, Helen Keller died peacefully in her sleep.

Today, Helen’s final resting place is a popular tourist attraction. Her life has inspired many. In 1962, the play ‘The Miracle Worker’ was made into a film and was a phenomenal success. More recently in India, the film ‘Black’ was made on her life.

Her achievements and admiration prompt us to ask the question what else could somebody desire from life? It’s so true that some of the best things in the world can’t be seen or touched, they can only be felt with the heart.

Helen Keller Essay Word Meanings for Simple Understanding

• Hurdle – a difficult problem to be overcome
• Ailment – a physical disorder or illness
• Tantrum – a violent demonstration of rage or frustration, a sudden burst of ill temper
• Desperate – having an urgent need, desire, etc
• Frustrated – dissatisfied
• Drastic – extremely severe or extensive
• Astonishing – causing surprise, amazing
• Phenomenon – something that is impressive or extraordinary
• Adept – very skilled
• Resonant – causing amplification or sustension of sound
• Phenomenal – highly extraordinary or prodigious, exceptional
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Helen Keller summary

Helen Keller , (born June 27, 1880, Tuscumbia, Ala., U.S.—died June 1, 1968, Westport, Conn.), U.S. author and educator who was blind and deaf. Keller was deprived by illness of sight and hearing at the age of 19 months, and her speech development soon ceased as well. Five years later she began to be instructed by Anne Sullivan (1866–1936), who taught her the names of objects by pressing the manual alphabet into her palm. Eventually Keller learned to read and write in Braille . She wrote several books, including The Story of My Life (1902). Her childhood was dramatized in William Gibson’s play The Miracle Worker (1959; film, 1962).

Short Essay & Paragraph About Helen Keller

Helen Keller is a well-known American author and professor who is known best for her book “The Story of My Life” (1903), which recounts how she learned to communicate with her teacher, Anne Sullivan, when she was a child.

Table of Contents

Short 350 Words Paragraph On Helen Keller For students

Helen Keller was born in Tuscumbia, Alabama, on June 27, 1880. Her father was an army officer named Arthur H. Keller, and her mother was Katherine Adams. She was blind and deaf since infancy due to illness and disease, and she met Anne Sullivan when she was seven years old. They stayed together throughout her primary education at Perkins Organization for the Blind in Boston and at Radcliffe College, where Miss Sullivan was her instructor, until the teacher’s death in 1936.

Helen Keller is best known for her work on behalf of the blind, which started in 1887 with a campaign to improve blind children’s education and opportunities. She was also an outspoken supporter of women’s suffrage and global peace.

Keller’s first book about her spiritual beliefs, The World I Live In, was published in 1915; it was decided to follow by My Religion (1927), Out of the Dark (1933), and Midstream: My Later Life (1952). She outlined her philosophy in these works, which holds that the physically and spiritually worlds are inextricably linked and that all people are interconnected. Keller was a prolific writer who wrote articles, essays, and plays, including The Miracle Worker (1959), which was inspired by her relationship with Anne Sullivan.

Helen Keller received numerous awards and honors, such as the Presidential Medal of Freedom (1964), which she was the first woman to receive. She received the Congressional Gold Medal posthumously in 1980. Keller’s life has been the subject of several biographies as well as a feature film, The Miracle Worker (1962), which did win two Academy Awards, which include best actress for Anne Bancroft in the role of Sullivan.

Read a short paragraph about William Shakespeare

Helen Keller is without a doubt one of the twentieth century’s most inspirational figures. Despite the fact that she was born deaf and blind, she went on to become a well-known author and speaker who dedicated her life to helping others. Her powerful message of compassion and unity is more relevant today than ever before.

500 Words Essay On Helen Keller

Helen Keller was an American author, political activist, and lecturer who is best known for her work as a pioneer in the field of education for the blind and deaf. Born in Tuscumbia, Alabama in 1880, Keller was struck with an illness at the age of 19 months that left her blind and deaf. Despite these challenges, Keller went on to become one of the most famous and influential figures of the 20th century.

At the age of seven, Keller was introduced to Anne Sullivan, a teacher who would become her lifelong companion and mentor. Sullivan began teaching Keller how to communicate using the manual alphabet and soon Keller was able to understand simple words and phrases. With Sullivan’s help, Keller learned to read and write in braille and eventually graduated from Radcliffe College with a Bachelor of Arts degree.

Throughout her life, Keller was an advocate for the rights of people with disabilities. She was a member of the American Association of the Blind and the American Foundation for the Blind, and she worked tirelessly to raise awareness about the challenges faced by people who were blind or deaf. Keller also spoke out against discrimination and advocated for equal rights for all people, regardless of their abilities.

Keller’s work as an advocate and lecturer led her to travel extensively throughout the United States and Europe. She gave speeches, wrote articles, and even testified before Congress. Keller’s speeches were powerful and moving, and she was able to capture the imagination of audiences with her personal story of overcoming adversity.

In addition to her work as an advocate, Keller was also an accomplished author. She wrote several books, including “The Story of My Life,” which was published in 1903. This book, which was written with the help of Sullivan, detailed Keller’s experiences and gave readers a glimpse into the challenges she faced as a blind and deaf person. “The Story of My Life” was a best-seller and is still widely read today.

Keller’s life and legacy continue to inspire people around the world. She was an example of how determination and hard work can overcome even the most difficult of obstacles. Her legacy lives on through the Helen Keller International organization, which was founded in 1915. The organization is dedicated to improving the quality of life for people who are blind, visually impaired, and deaf blind.

In conclusion, Helen Keller is an American author, political activist, and lecturer who is best known for her work as a pioneer in the field of education for the blind and deaf. Despite the challenges she faced as a blind and deaf person, Keller went on to become one of the most famous and influential figures of the 20th century. She was an advocate for the rights of people with disabilities and traveled extensively throughout the United States and Europe to raise awareness about the challenges faced by people who were blind or deaf. Keller’s work as an advocate and lecturer, and her books, helped to change the way society viewed people with disabilities and continue to inspire people around the world.

Hello! Welcome to my Blog StudyParagraphs.co. My name is Angelina. I am a college professor. I love reading writing for kids students. This blog is full with valuable knowledge for all class students. Thank you for reading my articles.

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Home — Essay Samples — Literature — Helen Keller — Helen Keller – An Inspirational Woman

Helen Keller – an Inspirational Woman

• Categories: Biography Helen Keller Heroes

About this sample

Words: 555 |

Published: Aug 6, 2021

Words: 555 | Page: 1 | 3 min read

Works Cited

• Berger, E. (1998). Helen Keller: A Life. Penguin Books.
• Herrmann, D. (1998). Helen Keller: A Photographic Story of a Life. DK Children.
• Larsen, D. (2019). Helen Keller: A Biography. Routledge.
• Keller, H. (1903). The Story of My Life. Doubleday, Page & Co.
• Swift, H. G. (2008). The Life and Times of Helen Keller. Read Books.
• Keller, H. (2003). The World I Live In. Dover Publications.
• Herrmann, D. (2003). Helen Keller: Selected Writings. NYU Press.
• Helen Keller International. (n.d.). About Helen Keller. Retrieved from https://www.hki.org/about-hki/helen-keller
• National Women's History Museum. (n.d.). Helen Keller. Retrieved from https://www.womenshistory.org/education-resources/biographies/helen-keller
• American Foundation for the Blind. (n.d.). Helen Keller: AFB and Helen Keller. Retrieved from https://www.afb.org/about-afb/history/helen-keller

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Essay on Helen Keller: 10 lines, Inspiring Life Story Short and Long essay and Facts

Essay on helen keller: this article is an informative source for students to understand and learn about the journey or helen keller. the article will help you know amazing facts and short and long essays on helen keller. read the complete article for better understanding and insights. .

10 lines on Helen Keller 

• Helen Keller was born on June 27, 1880, in Alabama, USA.
• She became deaf and blind due to an illness when she was a baby.
• With the help of her teacher, Anne Sullivan, Helen learned to communicate using sign language and Braille.
• She was the first deaf-blind person to earn a Bachelor of Arts degree from Radcliffe College.
• Helen Keller wrote several books, including her autobiography, "The Story of My Life."
• She traveled around the world advocating for the rights of people with disabilities.
• Helen Keller's determination and courage continue to inspire millions of people.
• She believed strongly in the power of education and equal opportunities for all.
• Helen Keller's birthday, June 27th, is celebrated as Helen Keller Day.
• Her life teaches us that with perseverance, anything is possible.

Short Essay on Helen Keller in 100 words: 

Long essay on helen keller in 300 words: .

Helen Keller's life shows us how determination can overcome any obstacle. She was born on June 27, 1880, in Tuscumbia, Alabama. At a very young age, Helen lost her ability to see and hear due to an illness. This made her feel isolated and cut off from the world around her. However, Helen's strong spirit and the love of her family made a big difference in her life.

When Helen was seven years old, Anne Sullivan came into her life as a teacher and friend. Anne patiently taught Helen how to communicate using sign language by spelling words into her hand. This was a breakthrough for Helen, as it opened up a whole new world of learning for her. She learned to read, write, and understand many things that seemed impossible at first.

Despite her disabilities, Helen Keller was determined to achieve great things. She worked hard and eventually earned a Bachelor of Arts degree from Radcliffe College. She was the first person who was deaf-blind to achieve this milestone. Throughout her life, Helen wrote books, including her famous autobiography, "The Story of My Life." She became well-known as a speaker and advocate for the rights of people with disabilities and social justice.

Helen Keller's influence went beyond her personal achievements. She traveled all over the world, meeting with leaders and speaking up for the rights of people with disabilities. Her courage and determination inspired many people, showing them that they could overcome any challenges they faced. Helen believed strongly in the power of education and never gave up on her dreams.

Interesting Facts about Helen Keller:

• Helen Keller was not born deaf and blind but lost her sight and hearing due to an illness (possibly scarlet fever or meningitis) at 19 months old.
• Anne Sullivan, Helen Keller's teacher, played a crucial role in Helen's education and remained her companion throughout her life.
• Helen Keller was a prolific writer and speaker, advocating for women's suffrage, labor rights, and pacifism, in addition to disability rights.
• She was the first deaf-blind person to earn a Bachelor of Arts degree, graduating with honors from Radcliffe College.
• Helen Keller met several U.S. presidents, including Franklin D. Roosevelt and Lyndon B. Johnson, and influenced disability policies during her lifetime.
• She learned to speak later in life with the help of Anne Sullivan and others, challenging perceptions about the capabilities of people with disabilities.
• Helen Keller's birthday, June 27th, is commemorated annually as Helen Keller Day to honor her contributions to disability rights and education.
• Despite her disabilities, Helen Keller loved to dance and enjoyed the tactile sensation of music and rhythm.
• Helen Keller's home in Tuscumbia, Alabama, known as Ivy Green, is now a museum dedicated to her life and achievements.
• She received numerous awards and honors during her lifetime, including the Presidential Medal of Freedom, for her advocacy and humanitarian efforts.
• Helen Keller Day 2024: Top Motivational and Famous Quotes For Students
• Helen Keller Easy Drawing Ideas for Students
• Helen Keller Day 2024: Know Her Inspiring Story, A Perfect Example For Gen-Z’s!

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A Short Biography of Helen Keller

Helen Keller (1880-1968) had passed away for more than half a century. However, she remains an inspiration to many people. Despite being deafblind, Helen Keller became one of the leading advocates of her time for people with disabilities. Learn more about Helen Keller’s life, family, education, literary works, and political activities in this short biography.

Helen Keller Short Biography

Early years – birth & family, helen adams keller was born a healthy child on june 27, 1880, in tuscumbia, alabama to a distinguished southern family..

Helen Keller’s father Arthur Henley Keller was an editor of the Tuscumbia North Alabamian. During the American Civil War, he had served as a captain in the Confederate Army. Helen Keller’s mother Catherine Everett Keller was a young educated woman from Memphis. She was the daughter of Charles W. Adams, a Confederate Army general. Helen Keller had four siblings: two full siblings and two half-siblings from her father’s previous marriage. Helen Keller was born in Ivy Green — a homestead built by her grandfather — where she spent her early childhood. The family homestead was also where she first met her mentor and life companion Anne Sullivan.

Early Years – Becoming Deafblind

When helen keller was 19 months old, she contracted an unknown illness that left her both deaf and blind..

In her autobiography The Story of My Life , she described that deafblindness left her living “at sea in a dense fog.” People suspect today that she might have contracted either scarlet fever or spinal meningitis . Despite her disabilities, Keller was able to communicate somewhat with Martha Washington, the six-year-old daughter of the family cook. Martha was able to distinguish some of Keller’s signs and communicate with her through their very own language system. By the age of seven, Helen Keller had developed over 60 hand gestures of her own . She was also able to identify her family members by the vibrations of their steps on the floor.

Early Education

In 1886, after reading charles dickens’ american notes, helen keller’s mother was inspired to pursue formal education for her daughter..

Helen Keller’s parents, Catherine and Arthur Keller set about finding the appropriate institution to educate their child. Through this journey, they ended up in contact with the Perkins School for the Blind . The director of the school recommended that a former student by the name of Anne Sullivan would be an ideal choice for helping Keller. The two would work closely together for the rest of Anne’s life.

Anne Mansfield Sullivan

One of helen keller’s constant companion in life. anne sullivan played crucial roles as the teacher and supporter in keller’s life..

On March 5th, 1887, Anne Sullivan arrived at Keller’s home. Keller called the day of Sullivan’s arrival as the “birthday of her soul”. Anne Sullivan began to teach Helen to spell words by writing into her hand. They struggled with this method it first until they made a breakthrough. Sullivan was signing the word for water into Keller’s hand while running her other hand under running water. This is the first instance that Helen Keller recalled understanding that the signs Anne Sullivan made were connected to real-world objects. This moment can be seen as awakening Helen’s desire to learn and interact with the world around her.

Throughout the years, Helen had her companion Anne at her side helping her through the world. Anne Sullivan died in 1936 with Helen at her side.

Formal Education

By 1888, Helen Keller had become a student at the Perkins Institute. By 1894, she was attending school at Wright-Humason School for the Deaf. And by 1900, Helen was attending Radcliffe College — a women’s liberal arts college in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Helen wanted to go to Harvard, but Harvard was an all-male university during her time. So she went to Radcliffe instead, which was the female coordinate institution for Harvard College . When Helen Keller graduated from Radcliffe in 1904, she became the first deaf-blind person ever to be awarded a Bachelor of Arts degree . Despite her circumstances, Keller showed a great aptitude for learning. She also demonstrated an unyielding desire to further her abilities.

Her quest to learn did not end here. Over the next few years, she would learn to use her physical voice. She discovered ways to experience music through the use of a resonant table to feel the vibrations of songs. She could even lip-read by touching the lips of a person who is speaking to her; her heightened sense of touch allowed her to know what was being said.

Literary Works

Some of helen keller’s contributions to society are her literary works..

Helen Keller was a prolific writer. She produced many works on her experiences as a member of the deaf and blind communities. In total, she has published 12 books and written several articles.

Among her earliest works was a fictional story The Frost King (1891) which Keller wrote at the tender age of 11. However, there were allegations that the story had been plagiarized. Perhaps shunted by the accusations, The Frost King became the last fictional story Keller published.

At age 21, Helen Keller published The Story of My Life (1903), her first autobiography. In this book, she talked about the story of her life up to age 21. The autobiography was written when Keller was in college with the help of Anne Sullivan and her husband John Macy.

In 1908, she published The World I Live In. In this book, she shared with her readers some insights into her life. A series of essays on socialism (more on Keller’s involvement in advocating for socialism below) were published in 1913.

This is not an exhaustive list of Helen Keller’s works.

Social & Political Activities

Helen keller’s challenges in seeing and hearing did not prevent her from advocating for what she thought was right..

The year before Keller graduated from Radcliffe, she had published her autobiography The Story of My Life . After she graduated in 1904, she continued to inspire people with her life story. At the same time, Keller worked toward raising awareness on the challenges faced by people with disabilities. Helen Keller also testified in front of the US Congress as an advocate for the blind.

In 1915, Keller co-founded Helen Keller International (HKI) with George Kessler, a wealthy wine merchant from New York City. Still active to this very day, HKI is a non-profit organization exists to help people with blindness. Among HKI’s missions and goals are to reduce preventable blindness and reduce malnutrition.

Fiver years later, Helen Keller co-founded American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU). Like HKI, ACLU remains active to this day. It is one of the largest non-profit non-partisan activist organization in the US. ACLU’s stated mission is to defend the liberties and individual rights of the citizens of the United States of American.

Keller’s effort was not limited within the United States borders. During her active years, she was known to have visited 35 countries and gave inspirational speeches that brought awareness. Among the countries that Keller had visited was Japan. It was said that Keller was a favorite of the Japanese people .

As an outspoken activist who dared to stand for what she thought was right, it’s only natural that she was active in the women’s suffrage movement. The movement fought for equal voting rights for both men and women.

Keller also believed in socialism. She was a member of the Socialist Party and advocated for a revolution. Federal Bureau of Investigation FBI even opened an investigation into her. Her advocacy for socialism is often downplayed in mainstream media. However, the fact is that socialism is a core part of Keller’s political philosophy. She even produced a number of essays on the topic of socialism.

In her later life, Keller devoted much of her time and effort to raising fund for the American Foundation for the Blind .

Later Life & Death

In 1961 Keller suffered a series of strokes. As a result, she had to spend the last few years of her life at her home. In 1964, Helen Keller was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by President Lyndon B. Johnson. The award was one of the United State’s two highest civilian honors. The medal is awarded to distinguished individuals who have made significant contributions to the United States. The recipients of this medal include John F. Kennedy, Pope John XXIII, and Mother Theresa.

On June 1, 1968, she died in her sleep at her home in Connecticut. She was 87 years old when she passed on and was a few weeks short of her eighty-eighth birthday. The symbol of perseverance found her final resting place at the Washington National Cathedral in Washington, D.C. next to her constant companions, Anne Sullivan and Polly Thomson.

Using her voice and her experiences, Keller shared her thoughts on social and political issues. Today she is an iconic figure who is known to have labored for the betterment of others despite her own disabilities.

Quick Facts About Helen Keller

• Birthday: June 27, 1880
• Birth Place: Tuscumbia, Alabama.
• Death Date: June 1, 1968
• Parents: Arthur Henley Keller, Catherine Everett Keller
• Number of siblings: 4
• Birthplace: Tuscumbia, Alabama
• Helen Keller was the first deaf-blind person to earn a Bachelor’s Degree.
• Education History: Perkins Institute, Wright-Humason School for the Deaf, Radcliffe College
• Notable Literary Works: The Frost King (1891, fiction), The Story of My Life (1903, autobiography), The World I Live In (1908), Out of the Dark, a series of essays on socialism (1913), My Religion (1927)
• Related Organizations: Helen Keller International (Co-founder), American Civil Liberties Union ACLU (Co-founder)

You should also check out these interesting facts about Helen Kellers .

• FBI File on Helen Keller
• Helen Keller’s Digital Photo Collection
• A longer biography of Helen Keller @ American Foundation for the Blind

How Did Helen Keller Learn to Speak?

Helen Keller speaks out (1954)

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Helen Keller: Our Champion

Helen Keller worked for the American Foundation for the Blind for more than 40 years. She was born in Tuscumbia, Alabama, on June 27, 1880, and became deaf and blind at 19 months. Few could have imagined the leading role she would go on to play in many of the significant political, social, and cultural movements of the 20th century. Until her passing on June 1, 1968, she worked unceasingly to improve the lives of people with disabilities.

As caretakers of Helen Keller's archival collection and legacy, we are honored to share her history with you via our website. Learn more about Helen Keller's life through AFB's biography and chronology , her letters and speeches , and famous quotes .

AFB is proud to preserve and provide access to this unique collection of Helen Keller papers, letters, scrapbooks, artifacts, photograph albums, and photographs—the world’s largest repository of materials about and by Helen Keller—via the digital Helen Keller Archive , the first fully accessible digital archive collection.

Find anything you save across the site in your account

How Helen Keller Learned to Write

Suspicion stalks fame; incredulity stalks great fame. At least three times—at the ages of eleven, twenty-three, and fifty-two—Helen Keller was assaulted by accusation, doubt, and overt disbelief. She was the butt of skeptics and the cynosure of idolaters. Mark Twain compared her to Joan of Arc, and pronounced her “fellow to Caesar, Alexander, Napoleon, Homer, Shakespeare and the rest of the immortals.” Her renown, he said, would endure a thousand years.

It has, so far, lasted more than a hundred, while steadily dimming. Fifty years ago, even twenty, nearly every ten-year-old knew who Helen Keller was. “The Story of My Life,” her youthful autobiography, was on the reading lists of most schools, and its author was popularly understood to be a heroine of uncommon grace and courage, a sort of worldly saint. Much of that worshipfulness has receded. No one nowadays, without intending satire, would place her alongside Caesar and Napoleon; and, in an era of earnest disabilities legislation, who would think to charge a stone-blind, stone-deaf woman with faking her experience?

Yet as a child she was accused of plagiarism, and in maturity of “verbalism”—substituting parroted words for firsthand perception. All this came about because she was at once liberated by language and in bondage to it, in a way few other human beings can fathom. The merely blind have the window of their ears, the merely deaf listen through their eyes. For Helen Keller there was no ameliorating “merely”; what she suffered was a totality of exclusion. The illness that annihilated her sight and hearing, and left her mute, has never been diagnosed. In 1882, when she was four months short of two years, medical knowledge could assert only “acute congestion of the stomach and brain,” though later speculation proposes meningitis or scarlet fever. Whatever the cause, the consequence was ferocity—tantrums, kicking, rages—but also an invented system of sixty simple signs, intimations of intelligence. The child could mimic what she could neither see nor hear: putting on a hat before a mirror, her father reading a newspaper with his glasses on. She could fold laundry and pick out her own things. Such quiet times were few. Having discovered the use of a key, she shut up her mother in a closet. She overturned her baby sister’s cradle. Her wants were physical, impatient, helpless, and nearly always belligerent.

She was born in Tuscumbia, Alabama, fifteen years after the Civil War, when Confederate consciousness was still inflamed. Her father, who had fought at Vicksburg, called himself a “gentleman farmer,” and edited a small Democratic weekly until, thanks to political influence, he was appointed a United States marshal. He was a zealous hunter who loved his guns and his dogs. Money was usually short; there were escalating marital angers. His second wife, Helen’s mother, was younger by twenty years, a spirited woman of intellect condemned to farmhouse toil. She had a strong literary side (Edward Everett Hale, the New Englander who wrote “The Man Without a Country,” was a relative) and read seriously and searchingly. In Charles Dickens’s “American Notes,” she learned about Laura Bridgman, a deaf-blind country girl who was being educated at the Perkins Institution for the Blind, in Boston. Ravaged by scarlet fever at the age of two, she was even more circumscribed than Helen Keller—she could neither smell nor taste. She was confined, Dickens said, “in a marble cell, impervious to any ray of light, or particle of sound,” lost to language beyond a handful of words unidiomatically strung together.

News of Laura Bridgman ignited hope—she had been socialized into a semblance of personhood, while Helen remained a small savage—and hope led, eventually, to Alexander Graham Bell. By then, the invention of the telephone was well behind him, and he was tenaciously committed to teaching the deaf to speak intelligibly. His wife was deaf; his mother had been deaf. When the six-year-old Helen was brought to him, he took her on his lap and instantly calmed her by letting her feel the vibrations of his pocket watch as it struck the hour. Her responsiveness did not register in her face; he described it as “chillingly empty.” But he judged her educable, and advised her father to apply to Michael Anagnos, the director of the Perkins Institution, for a teacher to be sent to Tuscumbia.

Anagnos chose Anne Mansfield Sullivan, a former student at Perkins. “Mansfield” was her own embellishment; it had the sound of gentility. If the fabricated name was intended to confer an elevated status, it was because Annie Sullivan, born into penury, had no status at all. At five, she contracted trachoma, a disease of the eye. Three years on, her mother died of tuberculosis and was buried in potter’s field—after which her father, a drunkard prone to beating his children, deserted the family. The half-blind Annie was tossed into the poorhouse at Tewksbury, Massachusetts, among syphilitic prostitutes and madmen. Decades later, recalling its “strangeness, grotesqueness and even terribleness,” Annie Sullivan wrote, “I doubt if life or for that matter eternity is long enough to erase the terrors and ugly blots scored upon my mind during those dismal years from 8 to 14.”

She was rescued from Tewksbury by a committee investigating its spreading notoriety, and was mercifully transferred to Perkins. She learned Braille and the manual alphabet—finger positions representing letters—and, at the Massachusetts Eye and Ear Infirmary, underwent two operations, which enabled her to read almost normally, though the condition of her eyes was fragile and inconsistent over her lifetime. After six years, she graduated from Perkins as class valedictorian. But what was to become of her? How was she to earn a living? Someone suggested that she might wash dishes or peddle needlework. “Sewing and crocheting are inventions of the devil,” she sneered. “I’d rather break stones on the king’s highway than hem a handkerchief.”

She went to Tuscumbia instead. She was twenty years old and had no experience suitable for what she would encounter in the despairs and chaotic defeats of the Keller household. The child she had come to educate threw cutlery, pinched, grabbed food off dinner plates, sent chairs tumbling, shrieked, struggled. She was strong, beautiful but for one protruding eye, unsmiling, painfully untamed: virtually her first act on meeting the new teacher was to knock out one of her front teeth. The afflictions of the marble cell had become inflictions. Annie demanded that Helen be separated from her family; her father could not bear to see his ruined little daughter disciplined. The teacher and her recalcitrant pupil retreated to a cottage on the grounds of the main house, where Annie was to be the sole authority.

What happened then and afterward she chronicled in letter after letter, to Anagnos and, more confidingly, to Mrs. Sophia Hopkins, the Perkins housemother who had given her shelter during school vacations. Mark Twain saw in Annie Sullivan a writer: “How she stands out in her letters!” he exclaimed. “Her brilliancy, penetration, originality, wisdom, character and the fine literary competencies of her pen—they are all there.” Jubilantly, she set down the progress, almost hour by hour, of an exuberant deliverance far more remarkable than Laura Bridgman’s frail and inarticulate release. Annie Sullivan’s method, insofar as she recognized it formally as a method, was pure freedom. Like any writer, she wrote and wrote and wrote, all day long: words, phrases, sentences, lines of poetry, descriptions of animals, trees, flowers, weather, skies, clouds, concepts—whatever lay before her or came usefully to mind. She wrote not on paper with a pen but with her fingers, spelling rapidly into the child’s alert palm. Mimicking unknowable configurations, Helen spelled the same letters back—but not until a connection was effected between finger-wriggling and its referent did mind break free.

This was, of course, the fabled incident at the well pump, when Helen suddenly understood that the pecking at her hand was inescapably related to the gush of cold water spilling over it. “Somehow,” the adult Helen Keller recollected, “the mystery of language was revealed to me.” In the course of a single month, from Annie’s arrival to her triumph in bridling the household despot, Helen had grown docile, affectionate, and tirelessly intent on learning from moment to moment. Her intellect was fiercely engaged, and when language began to flood it she rode on a salvational ark of words.

To Mrs. Hopkins, Annie wrote ecstatically:

Something within me tells me that I shall succeed beyond my dreams. . . . I know that [Helen] has remarkable powers, and I believe that I shall be able to develop and mould them. I cannot tell how I know these things. I had no idea a short time ago how to go to work; I was feeling about in the dark; but somehow I know now, and I know that I know. I cannot explain it; but when difficulties arise, I am not perplexed or doubtful. I know how to meet them; I seem to divine Helen’s peculiar needs. . . .

Already people are taking a deep interest in Helen. No one can see her without being impressed. She is no ordinary child, and people’s interest in her education will be no ordinary interest. Therefore let us be exceedingly careful in what we say and write about her. . . . My beautiful Helen shall not be transformed into a prodigy if I can help it.

At this time, Helen was not yet seven years old, and Annie was being paid twenty-five dollars a month.

The public scrutiny Helen Keller aroused far exceeded Annie’s predictions. It was Michael Anagnos who first proclaimed her to be a miracle child—a young goddess. “History presents no case like hers,” he exulted. “As soon as a slight crevice was opened in the outer wall of their twofold imprisonment, her mental faculties emerged full-armed from their living tomb as Pallas Athene from the head of Zeus.” And again: “She is the queen of precocious and brilliant children, Emersonian in temper, most exquisitely organized, with intellectual sight of unsurpassed sharpness and infinite reach, a true daughter of Mnemosyne.” Annie, the teacher of a flesh-and-blood child, protested: “His extravagant way of saying [these things] rubs me the wrong way. The simple facts would be so much more convincing!” But Anagnos’s glorifications caught fire: one year after Annie had begun spelling into her hand, Helen Keller was celebrated in newspapers all over America and Europe. When her dog was inadvertently shot, an avalanche of contributions poured in to replace it; unprompted, she directed that the money be set aside for the care of an impoverished deaf-blind boy at Perkins. At eight, she was taken to visit President Cleveland at the White House, and in Boston was introduced to many of the luminaries of the period: Oliver Wendell Holmes, John Greenleaf Whittier, Edward Everett Hale, and Bishop Phillips Brooks (who addressed her puzzlement over the nature of God). At nine, she wrote to Whittier, saluting him as “Dear Poet”:

I thought you would be glad to hear that your beautiful poems make me very happy. Yesterday I read “In School Days” and “My Playmate,” and I enjoyed them greatly. . . . It is very pleasant to live here in our beautiful world. I cannot see the lovely things with my eyes, but my mind can see them all, and so I am joyful all the day long.

When I walk out in my garden I cannot see the beautiful flowers, but I know that they are all around me; for is not the air sweet with their fragrance? I know too that the tiny lily-bells are whispering pretty secrets to their companions else they would not look so happy. I love you very dearly, because you have taught me so many lovely things about flowers and birds, and people.

Her dependence on Annie for the assimilation of her immediate surroundings was nearly total, but through the raised letters of Braille she could be altogether untethered: books coursed through her. In childhood, she was captivated by “Little Lord Fauntleroy,” Frances Hodgson Burnett’s story of a sunnily virtuous boy who melts a crusty old man’s heart; it became a secret template of her own character as she hoped she might always manifest it—not sentimentally but in full awareness of dread. She was not deaf to Caliban’s wounded cry: “You taught me language, and my profit on’t / Is, I know how to curse.” Helen Keller’s profit was that she knew how to rejoice. In young adulthood, she seized on Swedenborgian spiritualism. Annie had kept away from teaching any religion at all: she was a down-to-earth agnostic whom Tewksbury had cured of easy belief. When Helen’s responsiveness to bitter social deprivation later took on a worldly strength, leading her to socialism, and even to unpopular Bolshevik sympathies, Annie would have no part of it, and worried that Helen had gone too far. Marx was not in Annie’s canon. Homer, Virgil, Shakespeare, and Milton were: she had Helen reading “Paradise Lost” at twelve.

But Helen’s formal schooling was widening beyond Annie’s tutelage. With her teacher at her side—and the financial support of such patrons as John Spaulding, the Sugar King, and Henry Rogers, of Standard Oil—Helen spent a year at Perkins, and then entered the Wright-Humason School, in New York, a fashionable academy for deaf girls; she was its single deaf-blind pupil. She was also determined to learn to speak like other people, but her efforts could not be readily understood. Speech was not her only ambition: she intended to go to college. To prepare, she enrolled in the Cambridge School for Young Ladies, where she studied mathematics, German, French, Latin, and Greek and Roman history. In 1900, she was admitted to Radcliffe (then an “annex” to Harvard), still with Annie in attendance. Despite Annie’s presence in every class, diligently spelling the lecture into Helen’s hand, and wearing out her troubled eyes as she transcribed text after text into the manual alphabet, no one thought of granting her a degree along with Helen: the radiant miracle outshone the driven miracle worker. It was not uncommon for Annie Sullivan to play second fiddle to Helen Keller, or to be charged with being Helen’s jailer, or harrier, or ventriloquist. During examinations at Radcliffe, Annie was not permitted to be in the building. Otherwise, Helen relied on her own extraordinary memory and on Annie’s lightning fingers. Luckily, a second helper soon turned up: he was John Macy, a twenty-five-year-old English instructor at Harvard, a writer and editor, a fervent socialist, and, eventually, Annie Sullivan’s husband, eleven years her junior.

At Radcliffe, Helen became a writer. Charles Townsend Copeland—Harvard’s illustrious Copey, a professor of rhetoric—had encouraged her (as she put it to him in a grateful letter) “to make my own observations and describe the experiences peculiarly my own. Henceforth I am resolved to be myself, to live my own life and write my own thoughts.” Out of this came “The Story of My Life,” the autobiography of a twenty-one-year-old, published while she was still an undergraduate. It began as a series of sketches for the Ladies ’ Home Journal; the fee was three thousand dollars. John Macy described the laborious process:

When she began work at her story, more than a year ago, she set up on the Braille machine about a hundred pages of what she called “material,” consisting of detached episodes and notes put down as they came to her without definite order or coherent plan. . . . Then came the task where one who has eyes to see must help her. Miss Sullivan and I read the disconnected passages, put them into chronological order, and counted the words to be sure the articles should be the right length. All this work we did with Miss Keller beside us, referring everything, especially matters of phrasing, to her for revision. . . .

Her memory of what she had written was astonishing. She remembered whole passages, some of which she had not seen for many weeks, and could tell, before Miss Sullivan had spelled into her hand a half-dozen words of the paragraphs under discussion, where they belonged and what sentences were necessary to make the connections clear.

This method of collaboration continued throughout Helen Keller’s professional writing life; yet within these constraints the design and the sensibility were her own. She was a self-conscious stylist. Macy remarked that she had the courage of her metaphors—he meant that she sometimes let them carry her away—and Helen herself worried that her prose could now and then seem “periwigged.” To the contemporary ear, there is too much Victorian lace and striving uplift in her cadences; but the contemporary ear is scarcely entitled, simply by being contemporary, to set itself up as judge—every period is marked by a prevailing voice. Helen Keller’s earnestness is a kind of piety. It is as if Tennyson and the transcendentalists had together got hold of her typewriter. At the same time, she is embroiled in the whole range of human perplexity—except, tellingly, for irony. She has no “edge,” and why should she? Irony is a radar that seeks out the dark side; she had darkness enough. She rarely knew what part of her mind was instinct and what part was information, and she was cautious about the difference. “It is certain,” she wrote, “that I cannot always distinguish my own thoughts from those I read, because what I read becomes the very substance and texture of my mind. . . . It seems to me that the great difficulty of writing is to make the language of the educated mind express our confused ideas, half feelings, half thoughts, where we are little more than bundles of instinctive tendencies.” She who had once been incarcerated in the id did not require Freud to instruct her in its inchoate presence.

“The Story of My Life,” first published in 1903, is being honored in its centenary year by two new reissues, one from the Modern Library, edited and with a preface by James Berger, and the other from W. W. Norton, edited by Roger Shattuck with Dorothy Herrmann; Shattuck also supplies a thoughtful foreword and afterword. Much else accompanies the Keller text: Macy’s ample contribution to the original edition, as well as Annie’s indelible reports and Helen’s increasingly impressive letters from childhood on. All these elements together make up at least a partial biography, though they do not take us into Helen Keller’s astonishing future as world traveller and energetic advocate for the blind. (Two full biographies, “Helen Keller: A Life,” by Dorothy Herrmann, and “Helen and Teacher,” by Joseph P. Lash, flesh out her long and active life.) Macy was able to write about Helen nearly as authoritatively as Annie, but also (in private) more skeptically: after his marriage, the three of them, a feverishly literary crew, set up housekeeping in rural Wrentham, Massachusetts. Macy soon discovered that he had married not just a woman, and a moody one at that, but the infrastructure of a public institution. As Helen’s secondary amanuensis, he continued to be of use until the marriage foundered—on his profligacy with money, on Annie’s irritability (she scorned his uncompromising socialism), and, finally, on his accelerating alcoholism.

Because Macy was known to have assisted Helen in the preparation of “The Story of My Life,” the insinuations of control that often assailed Annie landed on him. Helen’s ideas, it was suggested, were really Macy’s; he had transformed her into a “Marxist propagandist.” It was true that she sympathized with his political bent, but she had arrived at her views independently. The charge of expropriation, of both thought and idiom, was old, and dogged her at intervals during her early and middle years: she was a fraud, a puppet, a plagiarist. She was false coin. She was “a living lie.”

Helen Keller was eleven when these words were first hurled at her by an infuriated Michael Anagnos. What brought on this defection was a little story she had written, called “The Frost King,” which she sent him as a birthday present. In the voice of a highly literary children’s narrative, it recounts how the “frost fairies” cause the season’s turning:

When the children saw the trees all aglow with brilliant colors they clapped their hands and shouted for joy, and immediately began to pick great bunches to take home. “The leaves are as lovely as the flowers!” cried they, in their delight.

Anagnos—doubtless clapping his hands and shouting for joy—immediately began to publicize Helen’s newest accomplishment. “The Frost King” appeared both in the Perkins alumni magazine and in another journal for the blind, which, following Anagnos, unhesitatingly named it “without parallel in the history of literature.” But more than a parallel was at stake; the story was found to be nearly identical to “The Frost Fairies,” by Margaret Canby, a writer of children’s books. Anagnos was humiliated, and fled headlong from adulation to excoriation. Feeling personally betrayed and institutionally discredited, he arranged an inquisition for the terrified Helen, standing her alone in a room before a jury of eight Perkins officials and himself, all mercilessly cross-examining her. Her mature recollection of Anagnos’s “court of investigation” registers as pitiably as the ordeal itself:

Mr. Anagnos, who loved me tenderly, thinking that he had been deceived, turned a deaf ear to the pleadings of love and innocence. He believed, or at least suspected, that Miss Sullivan and I had deliberately stolen the bright thoughts of another and imposed them on him to win his admiration. . . . As I lay in my bed that night, I wept as I hope few children have wept. I felt so cold, I imagined I should die before morning, and the thought comforted me. I think if this sorrow had come to me when I was older, it would have broken my spirit beyond repairing.

She was defended by Alexander Graham Bell, and by Mark Twain, who parodied the whole procedure with a thumping hurrah for plagiarism, and disgust for the egotism of “these solemn donkeys breaking a little child’s heart with their ignorant damned rubbish! . . . A gang of dull and hoary pirates piously setting themselves the task of disciplining and purifying a kitten that they think they’ve caught filching a chop!” Margaret Canby’s tale had been spelled to Helen perhaps three years before, and lay dormant in her prodigiously retentive memory; she was entirely oblivious of reproducing phrases not her own. The scandal Anagnos had precipitated left a lasting bruise. But it was also the beginning of a psychological, even a metaphysical, clarification that Helen refined and ratified as she grew older, when similar, if subtler, suspicions cropped up in the press. “The Story of My Life” was attacked in The Nation not for plagiarism in the usual sense but for the purloining of “things beyond her powers of perception with the assurance of one who has verified every word. . . . One resents the pages of second-hand description of natural objects.” The reviewer blamed her for the sin of vicariousness. “All her knowledge,” he insisted, “is hearsay knowledge.”

It was almost a reprise of the Perkins tribunal: she was again being confronted with the charge of inauthenticity. Anagnos’s rebuke—“Helen Keller is a living lie”—regularly resurfaced, in the form of a neurologist’s or a psychologist’s assessment, or in the reservations of reviewers. A French professor of literature, who was himself blind, determined that she was “a dupe of words, and her aesthetic enjoyment of most of the arts is a matter of auto-suggestion rather than perception.” A New Yorker interviewer complained, “She talks bookishly. . . . To express her ideas, she falls back on the phrases she has learned from books, and uses words that sound stilted, poetical metaphors.”

But the cruellest appraisal of all came, in 1933, from Thomas Cutsforth, a blind psychologist. By this time, Helen was fifty-two, and had published four additional autobiographical volumes. Cutsforth disparaged everything she had become. The wordless child she once was, he maintained, was closer to reality than what her teacher had made of her through the imposition of “word-mindedness.” He objected to her use of images such as “a mist of green,” “blue pools of dog violets,” “soft clouds tumbling.” All that, he protested, was “implied chicanery” and “a birthright sold for a mess of verbiage.” He criticized

the aims of the educational system in which [Helen Keller] has been confined during her whole life. Literary expression has been the goal of her formal education. Fine writing, regardless of its meaningful content, has been the end toward which both she and her teacher have striven. . . . Her own experiential life was rapidly made secondary, and it was regarded as such by the victim. . . . Her teacher’s ideals became her ideals, her teacher’s likes became her likes, and whatever emotional activity her teacher experienced she experienced.

For Cutsforth—and not only for him—she was the victim of language rather than its victorious master. She was no better than a copy; whatever was primary, and thereby genuine, had been stamped out. As for Annie, while here she was pilloried as her pupil’s victimizer, elsewhere she was pitied as a woman cheated of her own life by having sacrificed it to serve another. Either Helen was Annie’s slave or Annie was Helen’s.

Helen knew what she saw. Once, having been taken to the uppermost viewing platform of what was then the tallest building in the world, she defined her condition:

I will concede that my guides saw a thousand things that escaped me from the top of the Empire State Building, but I am not envious. For imagination creates distances that reach to the end of the world. . . . There was the Hudson—more like the flash of a swordblade than a noble river. The little island of Manhattan, set like a jewel in its nest of rainbow waters, stared up into my face, and the solar system circled about my head!

Her rebuttal to word-mindedness, to vicariousness, to implied chicanery and the living lie, was inscribed deliberately and defiantly in her images of “swordblade” and “rainbow waters.” The deaf-blind person, she wrote, “seizes every word of sight and hearing, because his sensations compel it. Light and color, of which he has no tactual evidence, he studies fearlessly, believing that all humanly knowable truth is open to him.” She was not ashamed of talking bookishly: it meant a ready access to the storehouse of history and literature. She disposed of her critics with a dazzling apothegm—“The bulk of the world’s knowledge is an imaginary construction”—and went on to contend that history itself “is but a mode of imagining, of making us see civilizations that no longer appear upon the earth.” Those who ridiculed her rendering of color she dismissed as “spirit-vandals” who would force her “to bite the dust of material things.” Her idea of the subjective onlooker was broader than that of physics, and while “red” may denote an explicit and measurable wavelength in the visible spectrum, in the mind it varies from the bluster of rage to the reticence of a blush: physics cannot cage metaphor.

She saw, then, what she wished, or was blessed, to see, and rightly named it imagination. In this she belongs to a broader class than that narrow order of the deaf-blind. Her class, her tribe, hears what no healthy ear can catch and sees what no eye chart can quantify. Her common language was not with the man who crushed a child for memorizing what the fairies do, or with the carpers who scolded her for the crime of a literary vocabulary. She was a member of the race of poets, the Romantic kind; she was close cousin to those novelists who write not only what they do not know but what they cannot possibly know.

And though she was early taken in hand by a writerly intelligence, it was hardly in the power of the manual alphabet to pry out a writer who was not already there. Laura Bridgman stuck to her lacemaking, and with all her senses intact might have remained a needlewoman. John Macy believed finally that between Helen and Annie there was only one genius—his wife. In the absence of Annie’s inventiveness and direction, he implied, Helen’s efforts would show up as the lesser gifts they were. This did not happen. Annie died, at seventy, in 1936, four years after Macy; they had long been estranged. Depressed, obese, cranky, and inconsolable, she had herself gone blind. Helen came under the care of her secretary, Polly Thomson, a loyal but unliterary Scotswoman: the scenes she spelled into Helen’s hand never matched Annie’s quicksilver evocations.

Even as Helen mourned the loss of her teacher, she flourished. With the assistance of Nella Henney, Annie Sullivan’s biographer, she continued to publish journals and memoirs. She undertook gruelling visits to Japan, India, Israel, Europe, Australia, everywhere championing the disabled and the dispossessed. She was indefatigable until her very last years, and died in 1968, weeks before her eighty-eighth birthday.

Yet the story of her life is not the good she did, the panegyrics she inspired, or the disputes (genuine or counterfeit? victim or victimizer?) that stormed around her. The most persuasive story of Helen Keller’s life is what she said it was: “I observe, I feel, I think, I imagine.” She was an artist. She imagined.

“Blindness has no limiting effect upon mental vision,” she argued again and again. “My intellectual horizon is infinitely wide. The universe it encircles is immeasurable.” And, like any writer making imagination’s mysterious claims before the material-minded, she had cause to cry out, “Oh, the supercilious doubters!”

Nevertheless, she was a warrior in a vaster and more vexing conflict. Do we know only what we see, or do we see what we somehow already know? Are we more than the sum of our senses? Does a picture—whatever strikes the retina—engender thought, or does thought create the picture? Can there be subjectivity without an object to glance off? Theorists have their differing notions, to which the ungraspable organism that is Helen Keller is a retort. She is not an advocate for one side or the other in the ancient debate concerning the nature of the real. She is not a philosophical or neurological or therapeutic topic. She stands for enigma; there lurks in her still the angry child who demanded to be understood yet could not be deciphered. She refutes those who cannot perceive, or do not care to value, what is hidden from sensation: collective memory, heritage, literature.

Helen Keller’s lot, it turns out, was not unique. “We work in the dark,” Henry James affirmed, on behalf of his own art; and so did she. It was the same dark. She knew her Wordsworth: “Visionary power / Attends the motions of the viewless winds, / Embodied in the mystery of words: / There, darkness makes abode.” She vivified Keats’s phantom theme of negative capability, the poet’s oarless casting about for the hallucinatory shadows of desire. She fought the debunkers who, for the sake of a spurious honesty, would denude her of landscape and return her to the marble cell. She fought the literalists who took imagination for mendacity, who meant to disinherit her, and everyone, of poetry. Her legacy, after all, is an epistemological marker of sorts: proof of the real existence of the mind’s eye.

In one respect, though, she was as fraudulent as the cynics charged. She had always been photographed in profile; this hid her disfigured left eye. In maturity, she had both eyes surgically removed and replaced with glass—an expedient known only to her intimates. Everywhere she went, her sparkling blue prosthetic eyes were admired for their living beauty and humane depth. ♦