Anne Sullivan

American educator

• Born: April 14, 1866
• Birthplace: Feeding Hills, Massachusetts
• Died: October 20, 1936
• Place of death: Forest Hills, Long Island

With patience, determination, and knowledge of the manual alphabet for the hearing impaired, Sullivan taught Helen Keller to communicate. Encouraged by Keller’s quick intelligence, Sullivan devoted her entire life to living and working with Keller in a partnership that inspired many and championed the causes of the blind and the deaf.

Early Life

Anne Sullivan, born Joanna Mansfield Sullivan, experienced a childhood almost as difficult and tragic as that of her famous pupil Helen Keller. Sullivan, the oldest child of Irish immigrants Thomas and Alice Sullivan, had trachoma, a bacterial infection that damaged her eyesight, when she was about five years old. When she was nine years old, her mother died of tuberculosis, leaving her alcoholic father to attempt to care for his three remaining children. Before long, Sullivan and her brother, Jimmie, who suffered from a tubercular hip, were sent to the Tewksbury Almshouse, where Jimmie died a few months later.

Jimmie’s death meant that Sullivan was the only child at Tewksbury, an institution infamous for its slovenly living conditions. Despite almost total blindness, Sullivan was determined to escape, and in 1880 she caught the attention of the visiting chair of the Massachusetts Board of Charities, Frank B. Sanborn. Shortly thereafter, Sullivan was sent to the Perkins School for the Blind in Boston. She initially felt humiliated by her ignorance, and her temper caused friction with her teachers and fellow students, but eventually she settled down to her studies.

The significance of Sullivan’s time at the Perkins School cannot be overstated. It was there that she came to know Laura Bridgman, a deaf-blind resident of Perkins for over forty years who communicated through the manual hand alphabet. In addition, a summer job that the school arranged for Sullivan led to her meeting the doctor who performed the first successful operation on her eyes, restoring some of her lost vision. Sullivan applied herself to her studies as never before, and graduated from Perkins in 1886 as the valedictorian of a class of eight. Perkins director Michael Anagnos wrote to Sullivan about a job opportunity as governess for a deaf-mute (a common term at the time), and blind young woman named Helen Keller.

Life’s Work

Sullivan arrived at the Keller home in Tuscumbia, Alabama, in March, 1887, having spent the preceding weeks reading teaching accounts by Samuel Gridley Howe, the first director of Perkins, who had taught Bridgman. Sullivan was relieved to find that Keller, who was not quite seven years old, was a robust if unruly child rather than frail and seriously disabled as she had feared.

Sullivan soon realized that she needed to calm Keller’s robustness without breaking her spirit, before she could begin meaningful attempts to teach her language skills. Keller’s family, however, was accustomed to giving the child her way, so Sullivan persuaded Keller’s father to let the pair work together in a garden cottage away from the main house. Her initial progress with Keller was slow, but just over a month later, a breakthrough was reached when Sullivan finger-spelled the word “water” into Keller’s hand while water from a pump poured over the girl’s fingers, a scene that was famously re-created in the stage play The Miracle Worker (1956) by William Gibson , which also was produced as a play for television (1957) and as a film (1962).

Once Keller understood that the words Sullivan communicated represented objects, she progressed quickly, and Sullivan was able to convey to Keller not only nouns but also verbs, adjectives, and even abstract concepts. Sullivan concluded that she was meant to devote her life to Keller, and she soon accompanied the girl first on a visit to the Perkins School in Boston, then two years at the Wright-Humason School for the Deaf in were chosen, and eventually to Radcliffe College, from which Keller would graduate in 1904. During these years, Sullivan spent several eye-straining hours every day either reading to Keller or helping her write her autobiography, The Story of My Life , which was published in 1903 with assistance from Harvard professor John Macy.

In 1904, Keller and Sullivan purchased a farmhouse in Wrentham, Massachusetts, thus formalizing their increasingly interdependent relationship. During this period, Macy courted Sullivan, but she initially rejected his proposal, believing that her relationship with Keller would hurt any marriage, and vice versa. In 1905, Macy finally persuaded Sullivan to marry him, but her prediction proved correct. He eventually left Sullivan in 1914 after several strained years and faded out of her life, although she always cared for him.

In the meantime, in 1913, Sullivan and Keller had begun a lecture tour throughout New England. Partly because of Sullivan’s poor health, the pair engaged Polly Thomson in 1914 as a secretary to Keller, taking some of the burden from Sullivan, who had weak eyes. Public interest in Keller continued unabated. Although Keller tried to direct some of the attention toward her teacher, Sullivan felt she did not deserve any special acclaim. Nonetheless, in 1915, she and Keller were both awarded Teacher’s Medals at the Panama-Pacific Exposition in San Francisco.

In 1918, the trio traveled again to California to film Deliverance, a movie about Keller’s life that was critically received but not commercially successful. In 1920, Sullivan and Keller went on the vaudeville circuit, making appearances in which Sullivan asked prepared questions and Keller answered with witty comments. Again, however, Sullivan’s health suffered, and they were forced to give up the tour. After a period of rest, all three women accepted positions with the American Foundation for the Blind, for which they gave speeches and raised public awareness of blindness. Thomson and Sullivan also continued to help Keller write and edit books, interspersed with trips abroad to improve Sullivan’s health. In 1932, Sullivan reluctantly accepted an honorary degree from Temple University, which had been trying to bestow the honor upon her for more than a year.

Sullivan’s failing eyesight and other maladies greatly depressed her; even the publication of Nella Braddy Henney’s biography Anne Sullivan Macy (1933) did little to cheer her. Because she now felt assured that Thomson was a dependable companion for Keller, she almost seemed to welcome death, but she lived another three years before passing away on October 20, 1936, in Forest Hills, New York, due to a heart-related condition. Shortly before her death she dictated farewell messages to Keller and Thomson and spoke of her desire to see again her beloved husband, who had died a few years earlier, and her long-deceased brother.

Significance

Although Sullivan had difficulty accepting the value of her contributions to society, the fact remains that with little formal training, she both utilized and improved upon the teaching techniques of those who came before her. In addition, although she herself was shy, she selflessly provided the means by which Keller could bask in the public’s attention, thus offering thousands of disabled Americans the chance to see a shining example of what they themselves might achieve.

As testament to the skills Sullivan provided Keller, and in tribute to her teacher, Keller wrote the biography Teacher: Anne Sullivan Macy (1955). Sullivan believed that any teacher could have achieved the same feats with Keller, but Sullivan’s inherent abilities, which allowed Keller not only to naturally acquire language skills the same way other children did but also to determine the direction of her own education, were truly miraculous.

Bibliography

Garrett, Leslie. Helen Keller: A Photographic Story of a Life. New York: DK, 2004. Although this juvenile biography focuses primarily on Keller, it does address Sullivan’s early life and contains many photographs of the teacher as well as facsimile reproductions of announcements pertaining to Sullivan’s and Keller’s many public appearances.

Henney, Nella Braddy. Anne Sullivan Macy: The Story Behind Helen Keller. Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, Doran, 1933. Although somewhat difficult to locate, this book is considered the definitive biography of Sullivan. The author’s close relationship with Sullivan and Keller allowed her to examine and analyze the dynamics of the pair’s relationship.

Keller, Helen. The Story of My Life. New York: W. W. Norton, 2003. Newly edited and published on the hundredth anniversary of the original edition, this autobiography by Keller, which provides extensive insight on her relationship with her teacher, also contains “supplementary accounts” by Sullivan and by John Macy. Includes an extensive index and a list for further reading.

‗‗‗‗‗‗‗. Teacher: Anne Sullivan Macy, a Tribute by the Foster-Child of Her Mind. Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1955. The last of Keller’s published books, this volume consists of Keller’s perceptions of the woman she called Teacher for the almost fifty years they lived and worked together.

Lash, Joseph H. Helen and Teacher: The Story of Helen Keller and Anne Sullivan Macy. 1980. New ed. New York: Addison-Wesley, 1997. In addition to an exhaustive examination of Keller and Sullivan’s relationship, this book also discusses the influences of John Macy and Polly Thomson on the pair’s lives. Includes a chronology and extensive index.