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Clerc Scar 11.38 September 2009
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Book under review:
Blind Rage: Letters to Helen Keller
Like Georgina Kleege, the author of Blind Rage: Letters to Helen Keller, I have been plagued by thoughtless remarks from others. Because she had low vision, Kleege reports, others would say to her: "Why can't you be more like Helen Keller?" I read about Helen Keller. I read the pump story, and later I read The Miracle Worker. Then I read an autobiography written by William Gibson, the author of The Miracle Worker. I saw the film starring Anne Bancroft and Patty Duke. I resented these people "playing" at being Helen and Anne Sullivan. I read Patty Duke's autobiography, in which she described touring with The Miracle Worker. She said that the acting became so intense at times that she and Anne would forget themselves, and deliver real blows when acting out Gibson's version of Helen's resistance to Anne's discipline. I resented William Gibson's success. He seemed like someone who might have visited my parents' farm, and when I appeared, would say, "Helen Keller was deaf and blind!" reproachfully. I read Helen's autobiography, but once past the pump story, her book paled. Her recital seemed choreographed. Biographies written about her were more interesting--if I avoided the writers who indulged in hyperbole. I read about Helen's brief romance: she tried to elope but her relatives drove off her suitor, Peter Fagan. The thought of Helen sitting on the porch at night with her suitcase packed, waiting, and with no one coming, filled me with intense disquiet. It remained for Kleege to tear the veil aside and show me Helen. For a year and a half, Kleege, an assistant professor of English at the University of California at Berkeley, having read Helen's writings and that of others, prepared a series of letters to Helen in which she attempts to confront the icon with the discrepancies in the accounts of her life. Kleege re-enacts, on paper, the events in question. She manages, in retelling, to resurrect the scenes convincingly. For example, in Part One: Consciousness on Trial, Kleege writes about a visit to Keller's childhood home. Kleege and her husband join a tour group. The guide points out a carpet that was woven for Helen, and when everyone agrees it is lovely, intones: "Too bad Helen Keller never saw it." "But she could touch it," Kleege says, aloud. The guide is taken aback, "She what?" "She could touch it," Kleege reiterates. "She had the sense of touch. One of the pleasures of a nice carpet is texture. She could feel it. She could walk on it barefoot. She had an imagination. Someone could describe it to her and she could imagine it." The tour group moves on, the guide now leery of Kleege, the loose cannon. The tour pauses at a collection of photos. Kleege cannot see photographs well and relies on her husband Nick to describe them. Later she writes to her nemesis, Helen: " . . . you're wearing a dress with a lot of ruffles, and your hair is an elaborate arrangement . . . what could a photograph mean to you at that age? Later, you've got the hang of it. In other photographs . . . you're always wearing a big smile and have your eyes aimed directly at the lens." As the tour enters the dining room, things take an ominous turn. The guide describes Helen as a "hellion." Kleege realizes the guide is parroting The Miracle Worker as if this were gospel rather than a fictional play. Kleege learns that reenactments of The Miracle Worker are conducted nightly in Helen's childhood home in summer. Kleege writes to Helen: " . . . the main thing that disturbed me . . . was that The Miracle Worker is Teacher's story, not yours. She was the one who worked a miracle and triumphed over adversity. You were the adversary she overcame. You were the site of miracles . . ." The reader learns about blind people from Kleege. We begin to be increasingly aware of how Helen adjusted herself to fit the world around her. Kleege writes knowingly of how Helen drew information by, for example, pressing her leg against a bed so that she could feel the motions of whoever sat or lay on that bed. And the subtle ways Helen might have derived meaning from fingerspelling--a hand hesitating to answer, or tapping out words into her palm hurriedly, or tripping over the letters. Helen Keller wished to magnify Anne Sullivan whom she loved. Kleege, however, was not looking for Anne Sullivan but for the child, and later, the woman Helen. Kleege describes what the child was like, and the language that child used. Helen had signs for many things and people, and used these to communicate with the people around her. She learned so fast, with such passion, it was obvious, as Kleege noted, Helen had an affinity for language. Helen was not the empty vessel she has been portrayed as. Before Anne Sullivan arrived, Helen had an impressive vocabulary of signs she'd generated herself, and a sensory world. Later, however, Helen dismissed that child and her system of communication. She replaced it with writing, lipreading (by touch), and fingerspelling, presumably to be more in sync with a hearing, sighted world and its expectations. Kleege is not at all impressed with Anne Sullivan, a departure from most biographers. Kleege thinks Sullivan's complaints about her eyes were weapons she used to manipulate Helen. Perhaps the most difficult issue Kleege raises in her letters to Helen is Helen's role in Sullivan's marriage to John Macy. Helen had met Macy while at Harvard. They had shared many campus activities, and Helen was a beautiful young woman, two years younger than Macy, while Anne Sullivan was eleven years older. After considering the situation, Kleege writes in her letter to Helen: "What I'm asking is this. Did the three of you decide that since the world was not ready to accept a marriage between a Normal man like him and a disabled woman like you, to avoid scandal he should marry Teacher?" Because Kleege herself has vision difficulties, her recreation of Helen's choices and endeavors provides insight unusual in biography. Kleege describes how she employs others to read for her, then examines what problems Helen might have encountered if she'd wanted to read or re-read a piece of text. She would have had to ask Polly, the woman who joined Sullivan and Helen after Sullivan's vision, and her marriage to Macy, began to fail, or send the text out to be Brailled. Inevitably Sullivan would know--and might not approve. Kleege imagines her saying, "Why, Helen? Why do you want to dwell on that?" if Helen should want to read one of John Macy's books. A central point of Kleege's book is the difficult role Helen had had, forced to maneuver, always, for any measure of access. "Normals," or the majority population, did not believe she was capable of true thinking or being. This created the greatest obstacle for Helen's self realization. Kleege's treatment of the later years of Helen's life is stark and daunting. This is a powerful, fascinating book, for anyone who wants a bolder, no-holds-barred look at Helen Keller. Read it and wonder--or weep.
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