Helen Keller: A Life | 
 enlarge | Author: Dorothy Herrmann
Publisher: Knopf
Category: Book
List Price: $30.00
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Avg. Customer Rating:  29 reviews
Sales Rank: 1006991
Media: Hardcover
Edition: 1
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 394
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.7
Dimensions (in): 10 x 6.8 x 1.5
ISBN: 0679443541
Dewey Decimal Number: 362.41092
EAN: 9780679443544
ASIN: 0679443541
Publication Date: August 4, 1998
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Amazon.com Review
William Gibson's The Miracle Worker is justly celebrated for its dramatic depiction of the innovative techniques by which Annie Sullivan taught Helen Keller, who was deaf and blind, to communicate with the outside world. Now, Dorothy Herrmann's solid, readable biography of Keller reveals that the 7-year-old, who was liberated from her isolation in 1887, grew up to be a strong-willed, tough-minded, intellectually independent woman--not at all the "plaster saint" her teacher liked to present to the public. Throughout her long life (1880-1968), Keller worked tirelessly to promote the interests of the handicapped, but she was also an avowed socialist who believed that working-class people deserved a larger share of America's wealth and a racial egalitarian whose support of civil rights horrified her genteel Southern family. Veteran biographer Herrmann paints a nuanced portrait of Keller's complex relationship with Sullivan, which included anger and resentment as well as devoted affection, and she vividly depicts the maddening constraints imposed by society's image of Keller as a perfect Victorian maiden, virginal and selfless, when in fact she had an ego and a sex drive no different from those of hearing and sighted people. The book abounds in colorful touches such as Keller's delight in performing on the vaudeville circuit--her admirers were scandalized by this vulgar display to earn money. She adored "the warm tide of human life pulsing round and round me." Candidly acknowledging Keller's frustrations and some of her less-than-sterling qualities, Herrmann gives readers a flesh-and-blood woman whose achievements are all the more remarkable. --Wendy Smith
Product Description
Helen Keller couldn't hear, couldn't see, and, at first, couldn't speak. Three decades after her death in 1968, she has become a symbol of the indomitable human spirit, and she remains a legendary figure. With her zest for life and learning--and her strength and courage--she was able to transcend her severe disabilities. In a society fearful of limitation and mortality, she is an enduring icon, a woman who, by her inspiring example, made disability seem less horrifying.
William Gibson's play The Miracle Worker, which portrayed Helen Keller's childhood relationship with her teacher Annie Sullivan, was so compelling that most people are only familiar with this early part of Helen's life. But the real Helen Keller did grow up, and her adult life was more problematic than her inspiring childhood. The existence she shared with the complicated, half-blind Annie Sullivan was turbulent--with its intrigues, doomed marriages and love affairs, and battles against physical and mental infirmity, as well as the constant struggles to earn a living.
Dorothy Herrmann's biography of Helen Keller takes us through Helen's long, eventful life, a life that would have crushed a woman less stoic and adaptable--and less protected. She was either venerated as a saint or damned as a fraud. And one of the most persistent controversies surrounding her had to do with her relationship to the fiercely devoted Annie, through whom she largely expressed herself. Dorothy Herrmann explores these questions: Was Annie Sullivan a "miracle worker" or a domineering, emotionally troubled woman who shrewdly realized that making a deaf-blind girl of average intelligence appear extraordinary was her ticket to fame and fortune? Was she merely an instrument through which Helen's "brilliance" could manifest itself? Or was Annie herself the genius, the exceptionally gifted and sensitive one?
Herrmann describes the nature of Helen's strange, sensorily deprived world. (Was it a black and silent tomb?) And she shows how Helen was so cheerful about her disabilities, often appearing in public as the soul of radiance and
altruism. (Was it Helen's real self that emerged at age seven, when she was transformed by language from a savage,
animal-like creature into a human being? Or was it a false persona manufactured by the driven Annie Sullivan?)
Dorothy Herrmann tells why, despite her romantic involvements, Helen was never permitted to marry. She shows us the woman who, to communicate with the outside world, relied totally on those who knew the manual finger language. For almost her entire life, these people, some of whom were jealous or dogmatic, were the key to Helen's world.
Reading Dorothy Herrmann's engrossing book, we come to know the real Helen Keller, a complex and enigmatic person--beautiful, intelligent, high-strung, and passionate--a woman who might have lived the life of a spoiled, willful, and highly sexed Southern belle had her disabilities not forced her into a radically different existence.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 24 more reviews...
 Crisp and clean, offering new insights April 23, 2008
My grandfather saw Helen Keller and Annie Sullivan on one of their vaudeville tours in the early 1920s in St. Louis, and never forgot the experience. Helen never achieved her lifelong goal of speaking in a way that was pleasing or comprehensible to the average person. One intimate called her voice "the loneliest sound in the world," but that night she did recite some of the Lord's Prayer, perhaps as a way of demonstrating that truly, all things are possible, if sometimes imperfect.
Herrmann's book is well organized, accessible and a nice companion to the superior "Helen and Teacher" by Joseph P. Lash. She includes anecdotes I had never read before, some of which are fascinating.
Everyone knows the dining room scene from "The Miracle Worker," in which Annie and Helen fight to the death to teach the child table manners. In adulthood, Ms. Herrmann notes, when Helen was the guest at an elegant luncheon or dinner party, when she was shown to her seat Helen would pass her hand once lightly over her table setting, memorize its layout, and proceed to eat with manners equal to those of her sighted companions. But she would occasionally interrupt the conversation she could not hear to ask a question, with sometimes awkward results.
All her long life, the manual alphabet was Helen's continual link to the outside world; it named objects, gave her directions, and described occurring events or those about to happen. The manual alphabet itself is rudimentary and maddeningly limited. So it was through books that Helen's spirit took flight. Her comprehension of Braille came quickly, and it was through her reading that Helen learned abstract and intangible concepts. Teacher gave her nothing to read but the classics, which captivated Helen, but after Teacher's death she occasionally enjoyed the guilty pleasure of a silly romance novel. Helen learned to do what sighted people do -- which is to read whole words, not individual letters. Teacher insisted that she gain a lot of her knowledge through context, just as a sighted person does. Annie set for Helen a demanding course load, even prior to Helen's entering college, (she graduated with honors from Radcliffe in 1904) which insured that Helen was far more well-rounded academically than the average sighted and hearing woman of her day. (I've long felt that Annie should have received a diploma alongside Helen. After all, she had to learn and understand the same subject matter she translated and interpreted for her pupil. What a feather in her cap that would have been.)
Helen acknowledged that exclusive reliance on the manual alphabet for direct communication with others made her a poor conversationalist. She also said late in life that she was still childish in many ways. But these things can be said of many people without her physical limitations.
There is an extraordinary section devoted to restoring eyesight to the blind, particularly those who lost their sight in infancy and early childhood. Such operations have been performed only about 20 times, and the end results have not been the gift many patients hoped for but more often a curse. The world they have imagined for years, even though they had tantalizing glimpses of it as small children, bears little or no resemblance to what they are at last able to see. Herrmann notes that had Helen been a candidate for restoration of her sight, she might not have even been able to recognize Teacher. Some patients have no concept of spatial relationships, no understanding of relative sizes of objects; they cannot attach the names of the nouns they have learned to the physical objects they see before them. The process has been so frightening some have attempted suicide.
Almost all people with physical disabilities become defined in terms of their limitations, both by others and sometimes themselves. The fascination that Helen Keller held and still holds for people all over the world is rooted in the fact that she refused to accept being deafblind as the sole measure of her identity.
Helen Keller was not a genius nor was she a "plaster saint." There was something enigmatic and haunting about her. She was also seemingly without artifice, and possessed of an unquenchable interest in philosophy, other cultures, even music. The reasons she will continue to be studied by schoolchildren and admired by practically everyone are as numerous as the obstacles this remarkable woman overcame.
A great biography; a disturbing life July 10, 2007
Many or most nondisabled peoples' only knowledge of Helen Keller's life is the events of William Gibson's "The Miracle Worker". If you only know of the events from this play you would think Helen, Annie Sullivan, and Helen's family lived happily ever after. This is far from the case. Helen's disablities took quite a toll on how much she and her family loved each other. Annie became quite possessive and controlling of Helen during her childhood. Annie had a troubled personality as a result of the horrors of her childhood. Apparently she was never as psychologically stable as she might've been had she had a far better childhood. Throughout Helen's life, both when Annie was alive and after her death in 1936, she was surrounded by people and groups who sought to use her for their own purposes or goals. John Macy, after several years of marriage to Annie, saw the mistake of falling in love with her. It's easy to see why John eventually became an alcoholic, given that his second significant other passed away after only 5 years of living with each other. In the mid 1950's when Helen and Polly Thomson were living together Polly's behavior toward Helen became obsessive enough that Helen was cut off from virtually all human contact except Polly herself. In 1959/1960 Helen terminated a friendship with editor Nella Henney, perhaps as a result of being surrounded since childhood by people and groups who sought to use her for their own purposes or goals.
An irony about "The Miracle Worker" is that while it's a happy tale, the true story of Helen Keller is quite a sad tale. "The Miracle Worker"
is not Helen's "real life" at all.
However, given the time Helen lived in, I can see why her life story went the way it did. I wish she'd never become disabled during childhood and wished she'd been able to live a normal life. But this biography is more believeable than previous biographies of Helen Keller.
Fascinating, but too disturbing April 21, 2004
3 out of 7 found this review helpful
The Helen Keller most of us are familiar with is the beligerent and frustrated little girl who in that fateful Spring of 1887, became docile, loving, and all of a sudden able to understand things when she put her hand under the water pump. But little was always written about her adult life. I always thought she had perfect features for a woman who was 100% blind and deaf. I recall Annie Sullivan's description of Helen when she first met her was that she was "noticeably blind with one protruding eye" and I thought her eyes looked perfect and beautiful, if not unfocused, for a blind woman, but then again I looked at photographs of her from her twenties on down and they were always right profile pics, with the exception of her photo on the front cover revealing her protruding left eye. It gives me the heebeejeebees that she had them removed and replaced with prosthetics. Anyway, they should make a movie about this detailing her life from Radcliffe college to her death.
 Helen Keller Loves Martinis January 29, 2004
4 out of 4 found this review helpful
This is a wonderful addition to all the bios on these two remarkable women. While the definitive is "Helen and Teacher," by Joseph Lash, this book adds lots of interesting details. I had no idea that Helen had her eyes replaced with plastic ones (hence the full face photos in adulthood) or that she enjoyed martinis, high heels and fur coats. What a woman! This is a very enjoyable book with plenty of great photographs. I wonder how much of Helen and Annie's fame was based on their youthful beauty?
Anne Sullivan Given Special Attention December 11, 2001
6 out of 7 found this review helpful
Anne Sullivan (Helen Kellers teacher) is probably my biggest hero.
She endured a life of harsh physical pain from various ailments. Any direct exposer to sunlight caused her eyes agonizing pain. She was also plagued with intense emotional trauma, Orphaned, Anne and her younger brother both were shipped to an asylum where they played with rats as toys and frequently were housed in the room where they kept the dead bodies. The year Anne stayed there 70 babies were admitted, 60 died, as did Anne's brother. Anne had seen more death and pain by age 7 then many hardened solders. It was difficult for most people to understand her cantankerous personality and tendency to fly off the handle. It was said at the school she attended she would have been expelled many times, if they had someplace to expell her to. Despite these setbacks she saw Helen Keller, another girl people gave up on and showed her the world of language and communication. This new biography strips away all the well meaning sentimentality and shows us two souls, bruised and scared, but beautiful
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